Guide Central launches iPhone and Android apps to reinvent how-to guides

Guide Central is launching free iPhone and Android apps that let users browse how-to guides and tutorials on a wide range of topics, the startup announced today. Users can also create their own guides and share them with the community.

While Guide Central’s apps are new, its four creators aren’t exactly newcomers, having previously worked at Google, YouTube, Fullsix and mobile app development companies. According to Guide Central’s CEO, Gaston Irigoyen, he first saw the opportunity to improve the DIY segment while working at YouTube:

“On the one hand, there are thousands of talented creators around the world publishing useful guides in blogs and websites. On the other hand, every day millions of users search for how-to guides to solve daily problems. Yet they face difficulties to discover useful content and, even when they do so, they hardly ever engage with their creators,” he explains.

This is the problem that Guide Central hopes to tackle, by building a global destination for DIY creators and consumers. At the same time, it is also working on simplifying the content creation and discovery processes, while “making them more engaging and mobile centric,” Irigoyen says.

In practical terms, the guides you can find on Guide Central are very diverse, from food recipes and beauty tips to lifehacks and home repairs. It’s worth noting that all guides are in English.

Guide Central also works as a community of its own, with gamified incentives to motivate users to create popular guides that their followers will like, favorite and share. To make the process easier, they can also upload or take pictures directly from their smartphone.

According to Irigoyen, the best guides will be highlighted on the app’s featured section on its main screen, which is manually curated. Automatic filters also let users sort guides by number of views to help discovery.

Originally from Argentina, Guide Central received funding from Google executives and Buenos Aires-based accelerator NXTP Labs, which is a member of the Global Accelerator Network (see our previous post). More recently, the startup has joined Polaris Ventures’ Dogpatch Labs, becoming a resident of its European base in Dublin.

➤  Guide Central, via the App Store and Google Play

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