Les Voyages d'Emma

• My revenue melted after the pandemic started (-95% in one month)
• Sold the company for a "symbolic euro"
• I was fed-up with selling CO2 emissions, although I still believe travel should be accessible to everyone. Flight tickets aren't a solution in my opinion.

LVDE is now www.theoffline.fr

I wanted to create a Chrome extension for myself, in order to get travel inspiration quickly. I finally published it to the Firefox Addon Store so that other people can benefit from it.

The browser addon is quite simple: every time you open a new time, it shows you an idea for a cheap flight from the nearest airport.

Everything has been done using Javascript and calling to Skyscanner, Lufthansa, Google Geocode and Unsplash APIs. I still have some work to do but it's already a good first step!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/your-next-trip/

First day after setting up Stripe payments and premium subscriptions for Les Voyages d'Emma, I got my first customer (and did a victory dance, obviously!)

The subscriber took a monthly subscription and is still subscribed as of now, which is to me a real accomplishment!

After starting out and improving for two months, we wrote a press release and got a few features in French publications dedicated to tourism or general lifestyle.

March, 14th : Tom Travel
March, 22nd: Quotidien du Tourisme
April, 3rd: L'ADN
April, 10th: Cocy
April, 16th: Le blog Tourisme Institutionnel
June, 12th: COSMOPOLITAN

After less than a month in business, we had our first 500 users. I don't have the exact figures but it was something like 534.

Seeing this was a real adrenaline shot and a good indication that we were on the right path with Les Voyages d'Emma.

I would say that we knew about 30% of the users beforehand, and the rest was mostly organic growth thanks to Facebook Messenger's "Discover" function.

After four days of intense work, the MVP was out.

It sure wasn't perfect, but it brought me about 500 users in the first month, as well as a lot of feedback and room for improvement. I also started working with a friend of mine who also happened to quit his job at the same time as me.

I figured out Les Voyages d'Emma would be a chatbot helping people find cheap flights from Paris to anywhere in the world.

I started working on a chatbot using the Chatfuel platform and created the identify of the bot. I wanted it to feel human and personal, this is why I chose to impersonate a traveler called Emma.

After wondering when to launch my side-project, I figured out I'd need to be more focused on it and that my full-time job would not allow me to be dedicated enough.

In September 2017, I decided to quit my job with about 0 savings and a big student loan to refund. I've never regretted it since!

I've had a few friends ask me to find them cheap flights for the past years, and it had been quite a while I wondered how I could translate that skill into an actual company.

This is how I came up with "Les Voyages d'Emma" and decided that would be my next side project.