local-experiences
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Thrillist built a business on getting you out of the house
A newsletter for 600 friends became a guide to where to eat, drink, and disappear for the weekend. Its detour into selling clothes explains why knowing an audience and running a shop are very different talents.
John Peterson Built a Company to Rescue Your Weekend. Then the Deal Vanished.
For eight years, John Peterson and his sister built The Nudge around a charmingly stubborn idea: a phone could help people leave their phones. Its final chapter became a candid lesson in community, product taste and the peril hidden inside a signed term sheet.
The Nudge
The Nudge is a San Francisco company that texts its members curated plans for real-world fun - hikes, date ideas, restaurants, events and hidden gems in their city. Founded by siblings John and Sarah Peterson in 2018, it began as a $9/month SMS subscription pitched as an 'anti-startup' to get people off their phones, and has since grown into an AI-powered advisor and locals-only social network with roughly a million users across cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin and New York.