ResortsGate

Rebranded the old startup to a more applicable name for a booking platform. ResortsGate - your gateway to the best resorts and vacation rentals in the world.

And it's no longer just limited to Philippines; I was able to grab the -.com domain. We're launching https://www.resortsgate.com

It was a shame that even if we had good traction, I failed as the Founder & CEO to raise funds to pay salary for my dev team. It was a painful lesson about fundraising and finding your co-founders. We did not have the funds to survive until we get to revenue stage. I realized the value of raising seed funding and having at least seed money for product development to build and finish the prototype at least to just 75% of our desired core functionalities. We may have failed, but I knew I'd do it again.

ResortsGuide Philippines was the first online search and booking platform for all types of resorts all over the country. Through our site, you could find the perfect resort accommodation that suits your group size, your budget and all your requirements and book it conveniently.

Our platform was based on the best and newest real-time technology and business intelligence tools, offering a fast and convenient solution to the problem that we were trying to solve.

We got the business model validation when we won YES Philippines Startup Summit 2016 National Youth Entrepreneur Award.

We launched the first phase of the project: the sign-up or registration page and listing submission of resort owners. It was awesome! We had a database of over 3,000 resorts in the Philippines, and on our first 3 months after launch we were able to acquire and onboard over 200 resort partners and got booking requests organically with the platform built with SEO in mind.

A previous colleague reached out to me for a potential collaboration for a real estate platform he is building. Later on as we progressed our discussions, he agreed to partner with me instead for my resorts booking idea named ResortsGuide. He has 2 brothers who could also code, and they, together, formed ResortsGuide's first full-stack development team.

I started out my career as a writer and content specialist focused on content production and management. I later on found my passion and interest in the power of the Internet as an ever-growing marketing channel. With this, I delved into the wonders of SEO, and while studying and learning, put up a website that marketed local private resorts in Laguna, Philippines. I bootstrapped it as a one-man team, from business development, SEO, web architecture and development up to the day-to-day business operations. It got top rankings and closed full bookings every weekend for my partner resorts in our hometown. Getting tired as a one-man team I eventually sold it. After a year, the guy who bought the website told me he was able to buy his first car through that business. I got motivated to do it all over again, but on a larger scale and a more automated business model.