Outernet app turns online discovery into real-world outings

Outernet’s app, outernet: go outside & explore, is built to do one simple thing: push people off their screens and into streets, venues and neighborhoods they first spotted online. The App Store listing says it helps users “save & organise things to do,” while Outernet says it is “creating a new type of internet use” in which phones become “a map of IRL exploration.”

The pitch lands in a crowded market for digital tools that promise more offline life, but Outernet is tying the app to a much broader experiential business. Its website describes Outernet London as “the most visited cultural attraction in the UK,” an immersive entertainment and music district in central London built around wrap-around screens. The app page carries the tagline “Experiences Worth Sharing,” making the product read less like a standalone utility than a funnel from discovery to attendance.

Outernet’s site also shows the app as a multi-city product, with city stamp graphics for San Francisco and New York City on the Outernet Explorer pages. That matters because the company’s public brand is already rooted in place-based engagement, not pure software. Its B2B materials promote Outernet as a venue for brand and product launches and as a canvas for “brand storytelling,” linking the consumer app to the company’s advertising, partnerships and venue-hire business in central London.

The company’s connection to the Pursuit scavenger hunt in San Francisco offers the clearest example of how that strategy has worked in the real world. Pursuit launched in 2024, and SFist later reported that the citywide game drew more than 2,000 participants in the previous year. Built as a monthlong scavenger hunt, Pursuit turned hidden clues and puzzles into a physical search across San Francisco, the same kind of behavior Outernet now wants its app to encourage.

Syed Karim, Outernet’s founder and chief executive, has spent years promoting the company’s vision of making information and media more accessible beyond the usual scroll. The app extends that idea into a consumer habit: save something online, then go there. For Outernet, the test is not whether the app can collect clicks, but whether it can convert attention into actual foot traffic.