Wave app, how to locate your friends with no effort

Wave Application startup
  • The company operates worldwide and has daily active traffic in more than 150 countries, especially in Asia, Latam, USA and Spain.

Wave Application is free app that allows any iOS or Android user to share their LIVE location between friends, 100% privately. It’s a Spanish startup founded by Luis Gelado (COO) and Manuel de la Esperanza (CEO) in 2014.  It is an answer to the question we all make countless times a day: “Where are you?”. If we are constantly moving, we need a solution that keeps up with our rhythm no matter where we are, without having to call, text or send static locations. 

The company operates worldwide and has daily active traffic in more than 150 countries, especially in Asia, Latam, USA and Spain. Wave won several awards in Spain like Plug and Play Expoday and they have been selected as featured startup in many tech events as 4YFN, Web Summit or Next Summit. 

They have an innovate business model that consists of sharing the same insight of leaving behind the obsolete forms of locating each other but their approach is completely different. Manuel highlights that “privacy is taken very seriously”.  They display a personal and private map to locate in real time each of our friends for a limited period of time. This way people are always aware and agree on sharing their location and can expire the session at any moment. Having said that, their core values are privacy, bidirectionality, real time and limited period of time, design and top end UX. 

INVESTMENT ROUNDS

Wave closed three rounds of investment, the most recent one at Crowcube this year about $1M, the round exceeded the expectations of the founders. They spent the funds in developing our real time technology, designing a new version and attracting new talent in order to do all the before mentioned. 

The first round was closed with Friends and Family, and the second one with some business angels (Jordi Roses)and a small Spanish  Venture Capitalists (NewTech Capital). The next one with the equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube.

The business model of Wave is user-based. Luis explains, “We focus on user acquisition with an accelerated growth. We want to build a strong community around our service and follow the same American business model as other huge companies.  In the near future we will start monetizing the app through different and very interesting options we are already studying”.

THE FUTURE

In the future, location based services are the next big thing and they believe firmly in what they are doing.  Their aim is nothing less than to be a must have app in every smartphone user’s daily toolkit.  Luis adds that “Wave will be become a worldwide leader in location based technologies”.