A new app called Wrinkles uses your location to automatically surface stories about the places around you. Wrinkles, available on both iOS and Android, essentially acts as an AI-powered audio tour guide that reveals hidden history and local stories.
The idea behind the app is to allow you to move through the world while hearing the places around you come to life without having to stare at your phone. As you explore, Wrinkles can tell you the secrets behind a building, the history of a street, and other local lore.
Wrinkles was founded by David Stemler, a longtime advertising executive, and Ryan Hansan, who previously founded ScratchDC, a meal delivery service, and TasteLab, a shared commercial kitchen that helped independent food businesses launch and grow.
The pair have known each other since middle school and say travel has always been a defining part of their friendship. They began taking trips abroad together as teenagers and continue to travel together today, now with their families. Over the years, many of their business ideas have grown out of long conversations while traveling and questioning how the experiences around them could be improved. Wrinkles was born from that same curiosity.
Stemler came up with the idea for Wrinkles while visiting the British Museum in London and using its official app for a self-guided tour. Although he believed the app was well designed, Stemler found the experience frustrating.
“I spent the entire visit heads-down, matching numbers on the walls to lists on my phone instead of taking in my surroundings while learning about them,” Stemler told TechCrunch in an email. At the end of his trip, he called Hansan from the airport and asked, ”If the phone in my pocket knows exactly where I am, shouldn’t the places in front of me be able speak?”
The startup has built a global foundation of 1.3 million Wrinkles, or points of interest, across 177 countries. Beyond this foundational content, historians, museums, creators, and brands can add their own stories and experiences to the map. Users can discover these stories as they move through the world or explore them remotely by searching and browsing the map.
To make the experience feel like a traditional tour, users can ask questions as they explore. For example, while learning about how the Trevi Fountain was built, you could ask a question like, “Where does this water actually come from?”
There’s also a social aspect to Wrinkles, as users can follow friends, family, creators, and organizations, then save and share Wrinkles or organize them into custom maps and guides.
Users can personalize their Wrinkles, too, by attaching family memories, photos, videos, and recordings to specific places. Families can collaborate on these histories to preserve stories tied to places like a childhood home, a first date location, or a hometown.
Hansan and Stemler see Wrinkles as more than a travel app. While it can help spontaneous travelers discover the stories behind new places, they believe it’s also designed for people who want to learn more about the buildings they pass every day or rediscover their own hometown.
“The common thread isn’t travel — it’s curiosity,” Hansan said. “A travel app gets used on one trip a year. Wrinkles gets used on your commute, at the botanical garden, at the zoo with your kids, leaving a permanent legacy for a loved one, and on the trip to Spain.”
While the duo has experimented with a freemium model, they say they’re committed to keeping the app free for users. Wrinkle’s revenue primarily comes from the supply side, with museums, tourism boards, universities, and hotels using Wrinkles to create location-based experiences for visitors without having to build their own apps.
Creators and media partners can build sponsored place-based guides, while businesses can promote Wrinkles connected to their locations. Partners can also add links for users to book tours, reserve tables, buy tickets, or visit businesses, with Wrinkles earning a share of those transactions.
As for the company’s long-term vision, the duo sees Winkles becoming a normal part of how people navigate places, whether that means discovering the history of a college campus, learning more about their own city, exploring a map while planning a trip, or getting a deeper understanding of a city they’re visiting for the first time.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.