Came up with my idea

As the prompt says, "I've read so many times that you should solve your own problem." So true!

Pre-covid - I ran a small customer service company (a boutique call center) that only worked with travel companies (tour and activity providers). For 5 years we answered phones and emails for about 60 companies across the US. It was highly labor-intensive and waaaay too much work for I was taking home. PRO TIP: don't start a company that's open 20 hours a day year-round if you value your time in any way.

During that time - I jumped from different call center platforms and SaaS products to try and make my team efficient. I also saw a growing trend in using messaging (live chat, SMS, etc.) as a support channel. We tried and it was immediately obvious that responding to a text message was so much faster and easier than answering a phone. Agents could talk to 5 people at once and it was so much cheaper to handle.

Fast forward - my company was starting to sink. Sales were struggling, I got burned by a large client, and my labor costs weren't getting any smaller. Oh - the business was insanely seasonal so winter time (when tourism drops) was always a struggle. Then Covid hit. Travel came to a halt - all my clients shut down and we quickly followed.

Fast forward even more - I was in Hawaii chatting with an old client (now my co-founder) saying, "wouldn't it be nice if customers could text you, but you weren't forced to have a cell phone to respond? "

Lightbulb moment. Yes, there are TONS of other business text messaging apps out there. But there were NONE that focused on the travel industry. They usually catered to insurance companies or retail stores. I knew the industry. I had personally talked to thousands of travelers. I knew what questions they asked, why they called companies, and how businesses get bogged down doing customer support. And I knew that if more companies had a tool to be able to use text messaging, that it would save them a ton of time and money.

And that's where the journey began.