Losing things is bad. It’s even more frustrating when something isn’t really lost, but rather left somewhere, like an airport or sports stadium, making it difficult to recover. My friend Caitlin knows this all too well; She has yet to be reunited with the phone she lost at Oktoberfest on September 27, despite confirming in November that they were in their possession.
While Oktoberfest is a more extreme example, people leave a lot of stuff behind in hotels, on transportation, and at events. For example, New York’s MTA transit system has collected more than 18,000 pieces missing From 2018 to 2023 – including when people were sheltering in place due to the pandemic. Boomerang believes that artificial intelligence can repair and find lost objects.
The Miami-based startup has built software that uses machine learning to match photos and descriptions of missing items. Customers, from gyms to amusement parks, upload photos and descriptions of lost and found items while consumers do the same for an item they lost. If there is a match, consumers can choose to have their items picked up or shipped.
This model hopes to return consumers’ products faster while replacing the current system of people frequently calling customer service desk phone lines to get updates on their items, according to Boomerang co-founder and CEO Skyler Logsdon.