

Glio (YC S13) Aims To Be The “Yelp of Brazil” And Beyond in Latin America - RRiccio
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/06/glio/

======
fsckin
Why isn't Yelp really making an effort to capture the market in other
countries? There are many [0] "Yelp for Country X" clones out there. Billions
of people outside the USA want to find food, attractions, shopping, etc. All
it takes is one clone to take off in a country, and the window of opportunity
is gone.

A friend showed me how to use Dianping (the Yelp of China) which has no
english UI or reviews, and very little use of iconography in the category
selection. Once a friend showed me how to sort by avg review, price, distance,
etc, just browsing pictures I was able to find somewhere I was interested in
going in a few minutes.

[0] [http://www.quora.com/Asia/Is-there-a-Yelp-for-
Asia](http://www.quora.com/Asia/Is-there-a-Yelp-for-Asia)

~~~
gcb0
Probably it's just to expensive to defend from litigation on the user
generated content business when it's about reviews for other business... i'm
taking that out of my butt as i have no idea. but i sure as hell was
infuriated when i couldn't use yelp to check places not protected by the NSA.

now i use foursquare in the US, even though the reviews are less abundant, the
paid reviews (just read _any_ mechanic review in yelp!) are almost nowhere to
be found.

yelp is just blind trying to monetize US and digging it's grave.

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personlurking
Like the TC article mentions, there have been/are other players in the market,
though, to my limited knowledge none have been able to get a ton of traction.
Honestly, I just don't see a Yelp-like site taking off country-wide, but I
wish them luck. The reason is that Brazil is pretty fragmented and trying to
get a site that people use in Rio-SP to be used in Manaus or Fortaleza, for
example, will be their up hill battle. In the several recent years I lived
in/all over Brazil, I thought many times about "what if Brazil had this or
that service?" but in the cases where there was some sort of cloned-US (or
even original) service that I could use, once I moved to the other side of the
country, that same service was no longer useful due to the concentrated
userbase.

The likely other market would be Belo Horizonte, since RJ-SP-BH are where most
of the startups [1], and presumably early adopters, are. 1 - Brazil's
Crunchbase [http://www.startupbase.net/](http://www.startupbase.net/)

By the way, here's Glio's numbers (translated)

\- 75% of the published reviews are positive - 4/5 stars

\- 450 people on average read each review

\- 400,000 consumers have already used Glio

\- 1 million page views

\- 4 million characters written in user reviews

~~~
RRiccio
Yes, that's one of the main challenges with Brazil & Latin America -- to make
sure we get every single city's unique aspects right, we're going to roll out
one city at a time.

And Belo Horizonte is for sure one of the most promising next cities where
Glio's product can be really useful.

By the way, I've got to update the About page numbers, those are from a while
ago.

Thanks a lot for the feedback.

~~~
personlurking
No problem.

Just an idea or two, btw. Glio could make a video, like the 'about' page one,
for each city, showing people interacting with the city you're rolling out in.
With 4G being installed, at least in the World Cup cities, it will be a boon
for your service.

Another suggestion, in case it's not already a feature of Glio, is to
implement ReclameAqui's company response ability (Resposta da
Empresa/Reclamações Atendidas), at least privately so a company can respond to
negative reviews and invite the user to come again to try them out and perhaps
change their mind/review.

~~~
RRiccio
Both are great ideas, thanks!

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tiagobraw
Too bad they require a facebook account to even view their website...

~~~
rdl
I don't think that's a big deal in the US. I wonder how much penetration
Facebook has in Brazil. Is it as popular as in the US? You could almost do a
Bay Area focused review site which required FB/Twitter/hn/bitcoin/AWS and have
enough users available to be viable, but I'm pretty sure in Russia or China
you couldn't require Facebook and still be viable. I only have one Brazilian
FB friend, but that seems more a limitation of my social circle than an
indication of FB's Brazilian success.

~~~
tiagobraw
FB is pretty popular here...

But if I was planning to make a site for reviews, I would not be putting
barriers just to view it...

disclaimer: I don't have a facebook account...

~~~
rdl
From what I've seen of review sites, being moderately exclusive on review
_authors_ early on is totally fine; you just want to make sure Google/etc. can
bring readers in.

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nandemo
Glad to see a Brazilian startup getting accepted at YC.

------
raverbashing
"Riccio said there is no existing dominant market incumbent, although there
are competitors like Foursquare, Kekanto and Apontador."

Well, geez, no crap Sherlock. There will be one dominant incumbent once
someone reaches that position (even though 4sq looks like it's ahead of the
competition). Kekanto was selling themselves as the "Yelp of Brazil" as well.

When reading about Brazilian startups I can smell the naivety _from a
distance_. Somethings may be lost in translation as well (their english is
good, but not that good). But it's ok, foreign investors are also naive (in
some aspects and better at others)

That being said, all the best. Their tone on the website still feels too
formal in some phrases and informal in others, getting the right tone and
rhythm takes some time

~~~
GFischer
There are some non-naive startups too.

I was very impressed by the winners of the Latam Startup Challenge (4pets in
particular, though Zoop was very ambitious too).

------
GFischer
Crap, the screenshots:

[https://angel.co/glio](https://angel.co/glio)

look really similar to what I'm building :( though we're focusing on the
location-based category search part rather than on the reviews part, and I'm
in Uruguay, not Brazil.

"local" search and discovery is something Google hasn't conquered yet, at
least for my country.

There's also the local discounts angle Foursquare tried to do.

Our very shallow customer discovery so far yelded a few insights on what to do
differently :) . Also, I wonder where Glio will get its data from.

This is something that is needed, good luck to Glio :)

------
citizenkeys
Summer Olympics 2016 are held in Rio De Janeiro. Glio might consider planning
some sort of strategy around that. [http://www.olympic.org/rio-2016-summer-
olympics](http://www.olympic.org/rio-2016-summer-olympics)

------
falk
I hope they are more ethical than Yelp.

~~~
debt
How isn't Yelp ethical?

~~~
mhartl
There have been many stories about Yelp like [this
one]([http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-
business-...](http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-business-of-
extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635)) alleging extortionary tactics.

~~~
debt
This article is 4 years old. Does yelp still employ these tactics? From what I
gather it seems like a small sect of Yelps employees engaged in the practice.

~~~
mhartl
You're right, of course. I'm not claiming that Yelp _does_ extort, only that
these allegations are the source of their imperfect reputation.

