TravelRank

The first 50 - acquired via closed invite-only beta, next 100 - acquired in 2 via the PH launch. The rest were acquired organically, through the reddit, BetaList, IH and other sources. Growth has significantly slowed down after the global lockdown domino effect hit the major travel nations and destinations again this winter.

It was a completely non-binding offer for a 51% majority stake in the company. And it didn't felt right. Usually, such things happen with underperforming and desperate companies who are searching for an exit opportunity and don't feel they have any options left on the table. Though the travel industry is a deep slumber we didn't exhaust all the opportunities to reach the revenue target.

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/travelrank
PH: We got some quite an average number of upvotes by the end of day 1 (<200). Ended up in the lower 10th in ratings. We didn't manage to get to the newsletter either. 800+ people visited the landing, we've got 150+ registration and 20+ people performed the key action. We saw some light traffic and registration within 3 days afterward (+40 registrations).

HN: post was ignored entirely by the community, some very light traffic (+20) came from HN.

It wasn't a total disaster (PH launch at least), but it's hard to consider as positive market validation.

We definitely missed the moment to build the audience before launching the MVP. 50+ Beta testers are too small to move the needle in our PH campaign.

Wrong timing (COVID travel restrictions) or wrong product? Maybe both...?

We spent the entire winter building the checking import functionality, ML service configuration and integration, flight pricing integration and tweaking the UI.

When summer came we decided to rush with the Beta launch.
We completed the Ranks (leaderboard) section and Profile.

At the beginning of August, from Carpathian hut, I sent the email invitation to all the 57 Beta subscribers.

We spent the rest of August and September on fixing bugs surfaced during the Beta test, interviewing testers, making some last moment improvements.

We launched the Landing Page where users could start applying for Beta access and get into the queue.

Fast forward to Aug 2020. We managed to collect 57 emails, which was mainly from our friends and colleagues.

We tried personal social networks for promotion: FB, twitter, LI. But it didn't bring us any significant amount of Beta subscribers.

We were missing lots of the key elements in our application for getting into the YC bandwagon, e.g.:

• working MVP
• real users
• early traction
• early revenue
• product validation that people want our thing
• solid financial model
• GTM and channels

There is no surprise we didn't make it.

Right after I returned from the strategic session in London, we all got this news. The iconic 200 years old travel brand is no more.

We were about to graduate from YC SUS.

It's clearly looked like a sign. Should I double down on my own thing? Should I get back to corp life?

My brother in the law was visiting the town and generously agreed to help me out with coding the TravelRank. He became a full-stack senior JS developer while I wasn't touching any code for the past 5+ years. Later on, he helped me out not just with the coding, but with the JS refresher and React basics.

So far I got only an interactive prototype in Framer and vision.

We decided to spin it out to a real web-app and try our luck with the YC application.

I just signed... without knowing what would be an exact product idea.

I didn't even anticipate I will focus on what later became the TravelRank for the next 16 months. Just wanted to elevate my product/company building knowledge a bit.

Other ideas I considered:

• habit tracking app
• app for kids education
• car specs comparison tool

But I felt sick of planning my frequent travel each other month. Updating my Airtable DB, finding the best flight price and date. I talked to my wife and we mutually agreed that travel recommendation and automation app has more market potential. Considering the fact that I was the PM at Thomas Cook back then and the travel market grew steadily each year up to a staggering $2.9 trillion in 2019.

So we decided to give it a try this as a working/practice idea just for the SUS course.