BlockAvenue Archives - Serious Startups

We got a sneak peak at a great freshly launched Boston starutp in August, BlockAvenue. This unique startup has been described as a yelp for neighborhoods, and to some extent it is, but it actually offers a whole lot more.

While BlockAvenue is a bit of a discovery, and recommendation startup, it’s also a big data startup wrapped up in a really sexy frame. To that end, BlockAvenue, in it’s current form, touches over 50 million data points of neighborhood information. BlockAvenue helps you discover, and research neighborhoods any way you want.

Picture this, you’re thinking about moving to a new neighborhood. You want to find out about crime, schools,restaurants, transits and sex offenders. These are the typical things people research online before moving somewhere. Before BlockAvenue that would be five different websites and of course if you didn’t go to the right site you may be out of luck with outdated data and searching even more. BlockAvenue lays it all out for you.

“Until now, location-based information, has not been aggregated in an easy and useful way for people to understand and consume,” said BlockAvenue Founder Anthony Longo. “By providing an intuitive platform powered by both geo-data and social conversation, we can help people understand what the makeup is or where the trend is heading at virtually any location throughout the U.S.”

BlockAvenue lays everything out for you across a map. It aggregates a ton of data to give you a “block score” this block score is an A-F grade based on some of the information about like crime, sex offenders, schools, transit and crowdsourced reviews. As you can see from checking out DuPont Circle, a trendy neighborhood in Washington DC, there are already a few user reviews in the neighborhood.

The hope is that more people will join in the conversation to add to the data sets provided by BlockAvenue. As more and more people add their block reviews the platform will grow exponentially. This is another case where most of these resources have already been online but never aggregated in such an easy to use way.

BlockAvenue was built in DogPatch Labs at the Microsoft building in Boston Massachusetts.

Linkage:

Check out our interview with BlockAvenue here

Check out BlockAvenue for yourself here

Are you a startup everywhere else, we hope to see you here

Whether you’re a local history buff, looking to move somewhere new or just want to know what’s up with your block there’s a startup incubating at DogPatch Labs in Boston for you. That startup is called BlockAvenue and it’s going to be your one stop shop for anything and everything about your neighborhood.

BlockAvenue uses a number of ways to find out everything about your block. The startup utilizes geodata, local trends, local happenings and plain old crowd sourced information from your neighbors. This is valuable information for other neighbors, people thinking about visiting, and people thinking about moving to the neighborhood. Sure all of this information can be found on the net, but there’s not one single site that serves it up all together, and quite in the way BlockAvenue will.

We’re sure that BlockAvenue is going to be epic why? Because DogPatch Labs, a Polaris Ventures backed incubator, is also where great startups like Instagram and Apptopia grew up. In fact, BlockAvenue’s founder, serial entrepreneur Tony Longo wrote a blog post about what it’s like to incubate at the dogpatch check that out here.

Dogpatch just oozes startups. The building the Boston Dogpatch is in is One Cambridge Center which also happens to be the address for TechStars Boston. Not including the 13 startups in the current fall class at TechStars the building itself is home to over 50 startups, and is also the Microsoft office for the Cambridge area.

As for BlockAvenue, this is going to be an amazing resource for anyone that wants information on their neighborhood. More and more people are starting to have more civic pride on a hyperlocal level than ever before. They’re taking to other blogs, and social networks to share the kind of information you’ll find at BlockAvenue. Once there’s one place for all that information it will continue to grow as more people get engaged with the service.

We were able to break the BlockAvenue team away from the whiteboards, conference rooms, coding and ping-pong for a short little interview. Check it out below.

Boston Startup: BlockAvenue Officially The New Kid On The Block

Find Out Everything There Is To Know About Your Hood With Boston Startup BlockAvenue