#NewTravel is My Future — It’s Also Yours
How do you set out to reinvent and disrupt the world’s biggest industry? Well, sometimes it happens by accident, and that’s the backstory for travel & on-demand startup, Guidrr, that I’d like to share today.
My story starts when I left a rewarding CMO role at a #futureofwork growth company, because I had that itch again — the desire to start and scale something. I had one clear flight plan: travel.
I knew that I wanted to connect 3 ideas worth exploring
- A world in which 1 in 2 of us will be employer independent, location independent and more than a little bit nomad — on the go all the time, all over the world
- A world in which we collectively prioritize experiences over things
- And a world rapidly becoming more urban, more dense and complicated to navigate
My journey started in Paris
I arrived, newly jobless, to Paris in the spring of 2014. I was participating in the annual May #collcons conference from @Ouishare — OuishareFest — entering a circus tent of dialogue around the emergence of the so-called #sharingeconomy, having conversations with amazing thinkers and creators from around the world. I spoke that year on coworking and future of work, given my own background helping to create and co-author the first national study on independent work. But I also listened hard, asked lots of questions and walked lots of back streets, taking photos for my own little travel passion experiment: an Instagram on travel. I would go back again to Ouishare Fest the next year, to present the business I was destined to build, though I didn’t know it yet.
Come that October, I was awash with startup ideas, narrowing the list, but still a little lost.
I ended up getting further lost in the back streets of Florence, a city where many years ago, I had first fallen in love with the idea of travel. I stayed 5 days in a little @Airbnb with a quiet pigeon and very loud neighbors for company, seeking something more authentic, some DaVinci-like moment of synthesis between data and creation.
I discovered it’s hard to navigate places without knowing the things that those who really know a place can tell you
So I reached out online to a local blogger, someone I had followed, to try and unearth the real city beyond the Duomo. We met in a little street called Via Santo Spirito, down the road from where I was staying, for apertivos.
I shared an idea with her
Could I build a product that would allow Nardia, and influencers like her, to house her knowledge of local experiences, so she could help others navigate places? And could this experience be viewed from a mobile phone, in a way that allowed her, as a peer-to-peer influencer, to earn both income and engagement from her own follower community? Could I help others walk the back streets of Florence (the topic of her blog) as if her shoes?
Her answer: Yes, that’s a problem worth solving
I brought it home, and decided the project should grow roots in my own city’s nascent startup scene. I had built, funded and launched a startup before (Alumrise), played C-Level roles at growth companies (MBO), championed the changing workforce at a national & international level — but could I be that sole #femalefounder bootstrapping a business again?
Like any good starter-upper, the diligence began. How could I do this efficiently, with whom and in what timeframe?
By April of 2015, less than a year after I first lost myself in the intersection of the collaborative and #sharingeconomy, urbanization and the future of work, I decided on a local accelerator that approached me with a new on-demand model suited to my goals and timeline. After a winding journey that had taken me to multiple countries and down many dark side streets, I had a #SWLH plan.
Guidrr, Inc. was incorporated May 8, 2015, with a vision, a site, and a product mandate — build a platform for peer influencers to share and monetize on-demand experiences.
Almost immediately, influencers began to apply from around the world, and to follow us online. In the initial months of customer development, something amazing happened. Not just our core audience of bloggers, but others with all sorts of titles, applied, and began to experiment with creating beautiful content. After digging, we realized while on the surface they looked different, they all had one thing in common. They sought to share and create because they cared — about their city, their interest area, their own way of experiencing places. While I had set out to solve a problem for travel bloggers and nomad solo travelers like myself, I had found something that reached even deeper, and further.
I had found a limitless influencer market: serving — but not always in — the travel industry. I had found #NewTravel
We rapidly prepared, tested and launched a platform and app for on-demand experiences. Our deliberately simple and swift ioS app enables peer influencers to offer their knowledge as a product, downloadable and useable on the go, by anyone in the global market with a iPhone. Our work with our initial pool of creators— co-builders of our model and approach — was based on our common belief in a simple, but far-reaching vision.
This is the vision: Peer to peer influencers can become the new gatekeepers to the $1.4 trillion travel industry, the world’s largest.
This vision — and its supporting mission — has drawn tremendous interest, both from strategics inside the industry — and also from influencers themselves who see their well-earned ascent inside our messaging and brand. We’re proud of being picked up by Product Hunt Global within 24 hours of our soft launch as a #femalefounder tech product to watch (thank you Corley, Ryan Hoover and team). And also thankful to those who advised, or provided a platform, and in doing so, supported our #traveltech startup along the way — people like Joshua Henderson, Robin Chase, Cristian Santibanez, Jennifer Conley, Cristiano B. M. Oliveira, @ChicagoGupta, Arlo Gilbert, Amy Millman, Michael Sitarzewski, Varelie Croes, Sydney Martinie, Rafat Ali, Dev Gupta, Francesca Pick, Antonin Léonard, georgette, Bentley Davis, Melissa Larson Youngblood, Baiju Thakkar, Brad Bush, urvib, Jeff at Thayer Ventures, Nick, Katie, Trey, Nardia, Christy, Morgan and all of those on our DFW Startup advisory team. To those reading as aspiring or current founders of startups, whether in traveltech or beyond, I hope this post shows that any potentially great product is the result of long, hard work — persistent exploration — and a lot of help from friends. Thanks also to Shalissa and Harley and the team at Downtown Dallas Inc., who within weeks of our soft launch, signed a partnership with Guidrr to promote peer-to-peer exploration of cities.
Today, I’m inviting you to nominate someone whose wanderlust, life hacking, and perspective inspires you — for our #NewTravel Awards 2016.
Who should you nominate? Maybe they have an inspiring @Instagram, Snapchat, @Pinterest page, or a blog. Maybe they take the best photos and have the coolest recommendations on Facebook — they are the ones you always call when you want to decide on a fun experience, at home or elsewhere. They inspire where you eat, shop, play, dance, skate, climb or simply go. Maybe they tweet about things, have a YouTube channel, or have an awesome tumblr — and you’d like their help navigating new experiences. They are someone you like, trust — a peer online or off. Personally, I can’t wait to see each nominee’s inspiration, walk the world in their shoes, understand their perspective, share in their secrets, drink their coffee, eat their food, see their passions like fashion, street art, adventure and photography come to life, on my phone, on the go. It takes just one step to make the nomination and in doing so, move beyond the freemium to actually value and reward peer influence.
And, if you’re curious about our product, which just soft launched, download our ioS app, so you can see for yourself how our peer to peer on-demand experiences are displayed and used.
You can also ask to join our curated creation platform, if you see yourself as an influencer with trip inspiration and guidance to share.
So, Here’s to #NewTravel. Let’s seek experiences over things. Let’s reward peer influencers directly by valuing their knowledge and recommendations — and let’s together hack a life well traveled.
ps: This is my first Medium post, but it won’t be my last. Follow me at Aassia Haroon Haq on Medium to share in my #travel #leanstartup, #wanderlust & #lifehacking journey to reward peer influencers— support, ideas & post amping always welcome! Gene Zaino, Kay Koplovitz, 500 Startups, Lean Startup Digest, Dave McClure World Travel & Tourism Council Sallie Krawcheck, Pedro Jardim, Tomás de Lara, Simone Cicero, Arun Sundararajan Gillian Morris, LFlanagan Steve King, Megan Claire, Nomadic Matt, bluesmart, Hitlist NewCitiesFoundation, Juan Cartagena, Alexander Muse, Molly Cain, Bettina Bennett, Gabriella Draney, Sara Horowitz, Paul O'Brien
