I got tired of "opaque" flight pricing →built anonymous group demand →1,000+ users

In May 2025, I rage quit flight search.

Not because flights were expensive, but because pricing felt opaque, dynamic, and unfair.

Same route, same date, same time window… yet different prices depending on where/how often searched. After checking what felt like a unending OTAs, I was frustrated by what I can only describe as digital discrimination in airfare.

The moment CannyFlyer was born.....
One day, while digging for cheaper fares, we noticed something interesting:
Group bookings can be ~15–35% cheaper.

That triggered a question:
Why is “group intent” rewarded, but individual travelers are stuck playing the refresh-lottery?

So we formed a concept:

1. Travelers should be able to join anonymous travel groups for a specific route + date + time window.
2. Without coordinating friends or joining large tour operators
3. And receive competitive offers driven by real aggregated demand
4. While airlines benefit from predictable demand (instead of guessing demand, blocking inventory, and leaving seats empty)

That day, CannyFlyer got its first heartbeat......

The team
We were three people building from scratch:

1. Madhu Sudan Thakar
2. Priyanshu Tiwari
3. Raghav Khandelwal

May → October 2025: Roadmap → MVP → deployment → first 100 users

In the first 5 months, we did everything end-to-end:

1. research + market mapping
2. roadmap + product decisions
3. building + deployment
4. early onboarding + feedback loops

By October 2025, we reached our first 100 users.
But it was painful. The hardest parts were:

1. tech issues we didn’t predict
2. limited Air ticket marketing knowledge.
3. UI/UX gaps (we underestimated how much trust matters in travel)
4. funnel problems + high drop-off

The turning point: “Learn & Apply” (Oct → Nov 2025)

From October 2025, we stopped guessing and started learning.
We took help from industry experts people who understand airline distribution, demand, incentives, and constraints. We adopted one simple operating system:

Learn → Apply → Iterate.
That single shift sped up everything.

Nov 2025 → Jan 2026: 1,000+ users + airline partnerships
From November 2025 to January 2026, we scaled to:

1. 1,000+ users
2. partnerships with airlines
3. This was the validation we needed not just that people want better prices, but that:
4. aggregated intent is powerful
5. transparency builds trust
6. airlines also value predictable, “real” demand

What we learned (the real lessons)

1. UI/UX is not “design” it’s trust. Especially in travel.
2. Drop-off is usually a clarity problem. Users don’t leave because they’re lazy; they leave when it’s confusing.
3. Expert feedback collapses months into days. We moved faster once we learned the ropes from experts.
4. Motivation helps you start. Coordination helps you survive.

Where I’d love your advice

If you’ve built marketplaces / travel / airline pricing / bidding systems:
How would you design the “supply side” onboarding and incentive model so airlines participate consistently (without harming user trust)?
And what would you track as the one metric that proves real PMF here?