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Dreaming is easy. Making them a reality is hard.
Despite Shia LeBeouf’s bullish outlook, crossing things off your bucket list can take some serious time and money. A new LA app is here to help, providing wishful thinkers with the connections and motivation to take the first step towards realizing their dreams.
With BUCKiTDREAM, users can create their own bucket list and collaborate with other users and vendors to make them a reality. Once completed, experiences and pictures can be shared with followers to not only boast in true millennial fashion, but help inspire others who share similar dreams.
The Redondo Beach-based company just closed out a $2.5 million second seed round, which has allowed them to grow from a concept to a fully realized product.
As the CMO for Village Roadshow Pictures, founder Tim Carroll made dreams come true on the big screen for more than 11 years, but with BUCKiTDREAM he believes he has finally tapped into what drives consumers.
“What I saw in regards to what consumers partake in and what they love from an experience point of view used to be centered around the ticket. But I saw more and more it was about the total experience than just buying a ticket to a game or music event. I began to notice that the next stage of the internet would be based around consumer intentions and those are powered by dreams and passions.”
The company had a proof of concept in October running a small campaign on Facebook to meet Richard Branson and stay on his private island. With over 40,000 applicants, they eventually selected a young woman from Seattle who had posted 65 dreams on the sight, one of which was to meet the Virgin billionaire.
After a few small trials, the platform currently holds more than 50,000 dreams. Carroll believes the app will catch on with advertisers and consumers by understanding what they want to do, who they want to do it with, and how much money they’re willing to spend.
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“We all have dreams that we seek to fulfill,” Carroll said. “Whether it’s a father and son white water rafting in the Grand Canyon or a golf lover wanting to do the holy grail of the U.S. Masters. “We will be able to create that connectivity between a consumer's dream, their planning capability, and connecting them with a merchant who would happily fulfill all the things you want to do. In that situation, everybody wins.”
The platform will begin incorporating merchants on a larger scale beginning in 2016, but Carroll emphasized the fact that BUCKiTDREAM won’t turn into another deal website. Instead of scraping the bottom of the barrell for low prices, the site will direct their focus toward a well rounded experience at any price level— whether that be $400 for scuba diving in Bora Bora or $4 to eat a cheeseburger at a local diner.
To aide in the experience, the site encourages mostly user-generated content to provide a well-rounded and reliable opinion for people’s travels. If users aren’t interested in publically collaborating on a dream, they also have the option to make select dreams private.
The company currently has 15 international employees and shareholders in three continents including representatives from Cisco, Visa, and Village Roadshow. But despite their internationally ambitions, Carroll doesn’t plan on leaving Los Angeles any time in the near future.
“LA will be our business base for BUCKiTDREAM. It is the epicenter where media, commerce and entertainment meet and as we scale, we believe that BUCKiTDREAM will be the world’s biggest depository of dreams in the world.”
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