About Pike

The app that turns your taste, and your city, into something you can actually use.

How Pike Came to Exist

It started, like a lot of good ideas, with a problem nobody had bothered to fix. Our founder was the friend. The one everyone in NYC texted before booking anything. Where should we eat, where's good for a birthday, what's that bar you took me to. His recommendations got screenshotted, forwarded, group-chatted, and then, every single time, lost. Saved into camera rolls with two thousand other photos, never to be seen again right when someone actually needed them.

He started noticing the pattern everywhere. People had incredible taste and no way to use it. The best spots in the city lived in one person's head or buried in a thread three months deep. Yelp turned a simple decision into a forty-five minute spiral. Google handed tourists the same five places on a loop. The knowledge existed, it just had nowhere to live and no way to travel.

So PIKE was built to be that place. A home for the recommendations worth keeping, organized on a map, easy to share with anyone, and impossible to lose. The screenshot graveyard, finally, had an exit.

"Everyone has that one friend. Now everyone can be one."

Why It's Called Pike

Pike is short for turnpike. Every turnpike has a tollbooth, the point you pass through to get to the other side, and that stuck with us as a way to think about discovery. When you're sitting at home trying to figure out where to go, Pike is the thing you move through to get to the good stuff. Build guides of the places you love, see how close they are at a glance, and send them to anyone, even people without the app. It's not a review site and it's not a reservations tool. It's your taste, made useful, for you and for everyone you put on.

"The knowledge existed. It just had nowhere to live."

Where We're Going

Pike started in NYC because it's home, and because no city tests an app like this one. But the idea doesn't stop at the bridge. Flip on travel mode and you can pull up local guides in any city before you even land, planning your trip around the people who actually live there. City by city, guide by guide, we're expanding outward.

The bigger goal is the one we started with: unlock the tastemaker in everyone. We believe the people with great taste should be able to share it, grow a following around it, even build something from it, and that everyone else should get to discover and enjoy what they know. That's the future we're building toward. A world where your taste is never lost, always shareable, and finally worth something.

"Your city, organized by the people who actually know it."

Got Questions?

Everything you need to know about PIKE,
from how it works to where to get it.

  • Pike is short for turnpike. Historically, every turnpike has a tollbooth you pass through to get to the other side, and we loved that as an analogy for discovery. When you're sitting at home trying to figure out what to do, Pike is the thing you move through to get to the good stuff. It's your way in: discover a spot, then go experience it.

  • Pike is a location based social app for discovering, saving, and sharing the best places in any city. You build guides of your favorite spots, restaurants, bars, cafes, shops, hotels, hidden corners, and everything gets plotted on a map so you can see what's near you at a glance. Think of it as the place where your taste, and the taste of the people you trust, finally lives in one organized spot instead of scattered across screenshots.

  • Our vision is to unlock the tastemaker in everyone. We want to give people a real way to live off their recommendations, and give the people who follow them a way to enjoy and be inspired by that taste. Everyone has that one friend who always knows the spot. Pike turns that knowledge into something you can save, share, and actually use.

  • You can build guides of the places you love and organize them however you want. Every guide sits on a map for in-the-moment decisions, and each spot comes with the practical stuff: address, hours, website, phone, price range, and photos, plus a social signal showing which people you follow have bookmarked it. You can follow friends, creators, and tastemakers, like and comment on their guides, and save the ones worth keeping.

  • A few ways. The map view shows you what's actually close instead of sending you on a 14 block detour. Vibe search lets you type how you feel instead of rigid keywords, so things like "rainy day cafe" or "first date energy" pull up matching guides. And the discovery feed surfaces guides based on what you love and what you haven't seen yet, mixing the familiar with the new so you're always finding something.

  • Absolutely. Travel mode lets you change your location to any city, country, or destination and pull up local guides before you even land. No more defaulting to whatever Google Maps surfaces first when you get somewhere new. You can plan the whole trip, save what looks good, and have it all mapped and ready when you arrive.

  • We designed Pike to feel both familiar and novel. We hired world-class designers to make sure the experience is simple, fast, and genuinely enjoyable to use. If you've ever saved a place on a map or shared a list with a friend, you already know how it works.

  • Yes. Every public guide has a unique URL you can send to anyone, even people who don't have Pike. They can open it and view it for free, no signup required. If your profile is private, that person will need to be an approved follower to access your guide inside the app.

  • Public guides are made to be seen. They can be liked, commented on, saved, and shared, so they work as both content and a useful tool for the people who follow you. Private folders are just for you, a personal collection of spots you want to keep without putting them out into the world.

  • Yes, Pike is free to download and use, and anyone can view a shared public guide for free without signing up.

  • Pike is available now on both iOS and Android. Head to getpike.app to download it and start building your first guide.