![]() ![]() Now, on looking back on that, there were two really vital things we got out of that, and it's why again, to this date, we still push that way. In fact, we still run our consumer site, even though it's not our core focus for those same reasons of accruing that data. And ultimately move into the business to business space. Where they went through the product leverage of flows, and we were able to really learn all of those things, accrue that data. Well, we spent a small budget that allowed us to get statistically significant sample of hundreds of thousands of active users. Very expensive to build a consumer brand. Now, if we were going to be a pure consumer brand, we would have raised and spent ginormous sums on advertising. ![]() And so for the first year of Travefy's life, even though we were going to be in that business and business space, we pushed the consumer product out there. What are their conversion rates? So even knowing that we were going to be a business to business to consumer product distributed, we had to release our products direct to consumers to actually accrue that data. They want to see data around how do those end customers actually engage with it. But to get there, we very, very quickly realized in discussions during that customer discovery phase that people don't want to buy your license or product until they've seen what it can do. Ranging from your small independent agencies and advisors all the way up to your mega vacation rental companies and online travel agencies, think Expedia and Priceline. > Yeah, so very early on during our research phase as we were building up really the business case for Travify and itinerary and collaboration tools, we very quickly realized that our preferred distribution model and frankly what we found to be the most sustainable distribution model was by licensing this software to travel businesses. Can you talk a little bit about that decision and observations and learnings you were able to accrue from that. > And you decided to run your own travel brand, retail brand online, even though it wasn't your intention to run a travel site. ![]() That went from an idea to product, to ultimately a business. From there we did lots of research to discover that there was actually was a use case and a market and actually a business market for distributing the product. And from there the idea for Travefy was born, from that consumer pain point I felt. And frankly, if you're solving a coordination problem, you need a comprehensive tool to actually get to that. But there wasn't really a comprehensive tool. Settle some payment with PayPal or Venmo. Very quickly, I found that there were lots of single dimension tools that solve problems, you could go to an online travel agency like Expedia or Priceline and book a hotel. And so, I started looking around to say, are there solutions that solve these group travel planning headaches. Fast forward to the end of that bachelor party, and I still have friends who still owe me money for the weekend, and it was a problem. And one guy said, I got it and he booked a hotel room in Atlantic City and it didn't even work for the guy that was getting married. ![]() We were 78 emails into this thread figuring out where we were going to go and what we were going to do. And on this particular bachelor party, I literally have a screenshot of it in some of our early presentation decks. The awkwardness collecting money from others. The endless threads of emails, the frustrating lack of transparency. That really exhibited all of those coordination headaches that one faces when planning group travel. And the specific genesis of Travefy actually goes to one particular bachelor party that I was a part of organizing. Getting people organized for bachelor parties, destination weddings, and other things. And, I was having frustrations in terms of group travel in my own life. And so for me it goes back to my time in business school which was also around the time lots of my friends were getting engaged and married. The phrase necessity is the mother of all inventions really exists for a reason. > Can you talk a little bit about how you initially became interested in the problem of group travel? And how you started to learn about it? > Absolutely, so the real genesis of travefy came from experiences within my own life. And these are embedded components that other travel sites will use to enhance their travel experiences. I'm here with David Chait, CEO and founder of Travefy, which builds digital solutions for group travel. ![]()
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