Turning the tables: 5,500 users have already joined the Ambl pre-signup
(Picture: ES composite)In about a month’s time, an app is launching that wants to forever change the way that London has a night out — and then do the same for New York, LA, Miami, Dubai, and the rest of the world to boot. The story starts with a pair of 13-year-old lads from Southend being banned from selling ice cream in their local comp. But it also starts with a boss making his junior find the team somewhere for lunch. And somewhere along the line, the brother of a Noughties rock star gets involved. Welcome to Ambl.
If Ambl’s aspirations are world-changing, its origin feels insignificant. “I’d come into work and my boss asked me to find us a table for seven,” remembers the app’s 27-year-old co-founder Aaron Solomon. “Obviously I’d drawn the short straw. And I’m there looking at all the restaurant booking apps, going on all these websites, and nothing. And then I just said: ‘why can’t I broadcast that seven of us need a table and restaurants could just see that?’ Clearly, if somewhere had space, they’d go: here we are, come here. And someone said, ‘mate, that’s a really, really good idea’.”
