It's been a busy month for Charlie Turner of GWIG: completion of development of his company's platform by SPARC, a soft launch at one of the Charleston Battery home games and acceptance into the SC Launch program.

GWIG is a responsive social media application for smart phone users and small business owners. The application enables users to refer friends to their favorite businesses, 50 million of which have been pre-loaded onto the application using Google Places. The app also provides businesses with analytics on their referrals.

GWIG – which stands for "Go Where I Go" – provides a platform for users to refer businesses directly to others while offering businesses the opportunity to see and track those word-of-mouth referrals.

Turner said that prior to the launch of GWIG, there were no digital platforms that allowed for referrals, only those that included ratings and reviews.

"The problem is, ratings and reviews, like those on Yelp and Angie's List are subjective and are anonymous," Turner said. "What we're doing is allow people to make referrals for products and services. And they're done by real people with real names, so there's a level of trust."

Starting a software company was the last thing Turner saw himself doing. An optometrist with a practice on Daniel Island for eight years, he found himself looking for a tool that would help with referrals. In a quintessential necessity-is-the-mother-of-invention moment, he ended up creating the tool he was seeking.

"We discovered that it didn't exist, so I decided to go ahead and build it," he said. "I realized that how business grew was by word of mouth. It's vital to the growth of not just our business but quite a few industries."

He took his idea to SPARC, which creates digital products for the government and private sector companies.

And he found investors willing to pay $600,000 to build the business – all from individual investors, "no formal angel or investment companies," he said. "And almost all of them are small business owners, so they understand the value."

The app itself is free in both iOS and Andriod app stores and pulls information from Google Places. The company makes money by providing a dashboard for $49 per month that shows analytics on the referrals.

"It keeps track of who's referring you, so you can be aware and maybe thank them," Turner said.

Turner has a business partner in Memphis, so they're doing a dual launch, focusing on Charleston and Memphis and targeting specific professions.