Wander

Overview

Wander is a travel product built around a simple claim: the world is bigger than your feed. It collects places from friends, from destination stewards, and from links you paste, then lets you plan days and take the map offline.

The problem

Travel inspiration lives in feeds, group chats, and screenshots. The same ten spots get saved everywhere, and the useful recs never make it onto a map you can actually use.

Approach

Wander puts saved places, friend recommendations, and official destination maps in one product. Links from social posts can land as pins; planning is about days and routes, not a notes app full of names you will forget.

Results

The live product is a map-first travel app: import from common social and web sources, ask Wander AI for nearby ideas, follow friends' saves, and download maps for offline use.

What I learned

A map is only useful if getting a place onto it is cheaper than taking a screenshot. Import and social graph matter more than another pretty pin style.

What I would do differently

I would keep the path from 'I saw this' to 'it is on my map' as the main loop, and I would be stricter about which surfaces need native work versus what can stay in the map UI.