# Desti (2011 – 2014)

- URL: https://girisimcikafasi.com/en/startup-graveyard/desti/
- Sector: Travel
- Country: United States
- Total funding: unknown
- Cause of closure: Acquired and shut down

## What did it do?

Desti was an iPad travel guide app spun out of SRI International, drawing on the super intelligence work at SRI that formed the basis of Siri. Users could search in everyday language and get recommendations for their destination, saving the results as collections; the app extracted meaningful facts and sentiments from reviews and summarised them.

## Why did it shut down?

Founded by Nadav Gur and Imri Goldberg in 2011, the company launched its iPad app in November 2012 with $1 million in seed funding from Horizons Ventures, and became an SXSW Accelerator finalist in 2013. The app emphasised its impartiality, stressing that it took no booking or promotional fees from hotels. At the end of May 2014 HERE, Nokia's mapping unit, bought the company and planned to use Desti's technology to make its own location search more personal and intelligent. The app was removed from the App Store and the service was shut down on 3 September 2014. After that date, users could no longer access their searches or saved trips.

## The story

Desti came out of the super intelligence research at SRI International, also the origin of Apple's Siri. Technology from SRI's CALO project was this time aimed at users planning holidays. Nadav Gur, a serial entrepreneur with ten years' experience in mobile travel, and Imri Goldberg, a software developer and entrepreneur, founded the company in Menlo Park, California, in 2011.

Launched in November 2012 with $1 million in seed funding from Horizons Ventures, the iPad app tried to understand users' questions in natural language. When a user typed what they were looking for in an everyday sentence, Desti scanned content on the web, offered recommendations and summarised the meaningful facts and sentiments in reviews. The company stressed that it took no booking or promotional fees from hotels, and that its assessments were therefore impartial. Desti became an SXSW Accelerator finalist in 2013.

At the end of May 2014 HERE, Nokia's mapping and location unit, bought Desti. The plan was to add Desti's technology to HERE's location search to make searches more personal and intelligent. The app was removed from the App Store, and the company announced that the service would end on 3 September 2014. Users were asked to share their itineraries with themselves or their travel companions so as not to lose their saved trips.

Desti's story reflects a common scenario in which powerful technology, rather than surviving as an independent consumer product, becomes part of a large company's infrastructure. The team and technology lived on inside the new owner, but the app users knew closed less than two years after its public launch.

## Lessons

- Technology from a strong research institution is not a business model on its own; test what users will pay for as seriously as you test the technology.
- Being acquired may be an exit for the founders, but for users it can be the end of the product; offer a clear way to export their data during the shutdown.
- Promising impartiality by refusing hotel and booking commissions earns trust but narrows your revenue options; work out the cost of that choice from the outset.

## Sources

- [Following acquisition by Nokia HERE, Desti to shut down on September 3](https://thenextweb.com/news/following-acquisition-nokia-desti-shut-september-3)
- [Plan Your Next Trip With Desti, A Conversational iPad App Spun Out From Siri-Creator SRI](https://techcrunch.com/2012/11/08/sri-desti-launch/)
- [Desti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desti)
- [Desti has joined the team at HERE (archived copy)](https://web.archive.org/web/20140704043106/http://desti.com/)