BellHop

During the year that was 2020, my co-founder and I found the project stagnating due to different priorities.

I decided to take on learning the API (Lumen/Laravel) side of the project and develop both front and back end myself from scratch.

This turned out to be the right decision.

At this stage, I have completed the following on Bellhop.

• Market research
• Learned the basics of python and built a web crawler to crawl all of my potential clients sites verifying their information and checking for broken links.
• Developed the API and database
• Developed the front end
• Set up our cloud infrastructure
• Continued developing ideas and documenting as I go

I am getting very close to what I feel is the MVP of Bellhop and am keen to start onboarding.

I love the approach Superhuman have to onboarding and at this stage in the game the word of mouth from offering quality service is important to the long term success of this.

Back to it.

After a quick product split and refactor we are nearing the completion of our client facing website.

This shows our value proposition in copy that is familiar with the language used in the industry.

Our clients can also log into their account now.

We knew with BookDownUnder we were pidgeon holing ourselves. We decided to split up the public booking site and the accommodation providers portal into two products. That way we have the scope down the track to provide other products under the BellHop banner as well as doing market specific spin-offs of BookDownUnder.

BellHop was born with the idea of providing management of accommodation providers listings on BookDownUnder but it might also grow into other things in the future.
This could be front of house software, a channel manager, an accommodation specific marketing tool, etc.

Here's to founders optimism!!