loclpal

loclpal has been a journey for sure. A rollercoaster I should say. Unfortunately, for all the hard work that I put in it, it never really picked up. I guess it was mainly because I ignored the most important thing. Validate my hypothesis around the model, and gather some early feedback, rather than jumping straight into engineering. I certainly learned that lesson. Having said that, even though I would have loved for loclpal to have been successful, I feel that I learned way more than I would if it had become an accidental success. And I'm applying all these lessons to my new venture :-)

After months of deliberation and feedback from the community, I decided to make loclpal free. The monetization model that I had in place (paying for messaging packages, according to the number of messages) didn't work well. It was good for locals as they were collecting payments for the messages that were sent to them, but it was also clunky and complicated. So, I decided to make it free and help the community grow organically, and then revisit monetization when there was critical mass.

After months of (over) engineering, I finally launched our blog and website, where people could apply to become locals for their city, and travelers could discover like-minded locals to chat with and find unique things to do. I definitely should have launched earlier, with something simpler, but that's what you get for being an engineer solo-Founder. You double down on what you're comfortable with - building that is. Lesson learned.

After an exciting but overwhelming trip to Japan, I got really frustrated with how difficult it was to find really unique, non-touristy things to do. And I just thought of how much easier it is for my friends visiting Dubai, or event Athens, or Berlin (I lived there for a year) to have me via chat giving them tips and ideas on things to do. Hence loclpal was born!