What Supernaut Has Built So Far: A Community Platform For Foodies

My personal favorite. Meet Detour, and the community of Detourists: a private, member-built network where people pass the places they love to the people they trust.

It started as something else. I wanted a map that collected every curated list in one place — the 100 Best Coffee Shops, Michelin, best boulangerie in the arrondissement. I threw the idea at Supernaut and it built a great prototype: map, pinned places, guides, related articles. And it felt, well, soulless.

That’s when I realized I didn’t care about THE guide. What I wanted was TRUST. Supernaut got me there. If you’re curious, Supernaut’s long-read summarizing the pivot decision is here.

A member should be able to say: “Detour is where people I trust pass me the places they love — and where I can pass mine on.”

It works by invitation only. Too restrictive? Maybe. But the community has to be built, not collected. So I asked Supernaut for a realistic three-day launch plan, and it came back with one:

• Day 1 — Seed the circle. Draw up a list of thirty people whose recommendations you have actually followed, invite the first ten or twelve personally, and seed your own five strongest places so the circle has life on arrival.
• Day 2 — Turn joining into contributing. Track who has added a place, and nudge the rest with a specific ask: the five places you would send a close friend to.
• Day 3 — Prove the network. Show members what has accumulated, send the last of the first-wave invitations, then pick the next ten from the actual gaps in the circle rather than expanding broadly.

The plan is finished. The circle isn’t.

That’s the honest place to end a post like this. Supernaut built the map in an afternoon and rebuilt it as something better in another one. It wrote this launch plan in about the time it took me to describe what I wanted. What it can’t do is be the person whose taste you trust — that part is still mine, and yours, and every Detourist’s.

So the invitations are open. Ask Supernaut for one.