Chapter one: on the way to broaden new horizons
Hi there! Despite the fact that we are still just planning KickYourCompass, we’ve decided to start writing our blog which is pretty unusual — mostly blogs are created after at least some kind of product is launched. However, KYC (that’s what we call KickYourCompass) is an unusual product. We’ve chosen quite a hard mission for ourselves. We want to change travelling completely. This mission can’t be accomplished without the community itself.
Even before project development began, when KYC was just an idea, we started communicating with regular travelers. It is impossible to express how happy we are to meet so many people from all over the world. Firstly, it was our friends, then our friends’ friends and so it went on and on. We’ve been told hundreds of stories about people who have an indomitable spirit of sea and sky conquerors. And you know what? We want to support these people.
Part of the community is already on our Facebook page where we are going to spread all the news. On our blog the story is going to be more detailed. We will tell you how we came to this idea; how we survived hard times; who stands behind this project; what are we doing so that you can start your trip. Also, we want to know more about you!
The starting point
In the middle of 2014 I was a member of the Ostrovok.ru team. It’s a hotel booking service which is competing with Booking.com. I enjoyed working for this startup but there was a little something I didn’t like — I didn’t feel that it was going to the right direction. No offense, Ostrovok.ru did a lot of interesting things but it was just an evolution for me.
I was raised by Jules Verne books, so I have an understanding of travelling which is different from travel agencies. They have only two kinds of approach. You either buy the whole tour where you are treated like a small child and told what to do, left to hang out with some random guys near the Eiffel Tower. Or you waste hours and days to construct the journey by yourself: to buy the tickets, book the hotel and so on.
The first type reminds me of Google Maps — you are placed in some sort of a capsule and shown what’s on the left and what’s on the right. The second one is not that bad but nowadays you know what is waiting for you even before arriving at your destination (thank you, internet). And yes, it is exhausting — grabbing information from 50 tabs in your browser, reading plenty of posts… There is also couchsurfing of course, but what if I want to be all by myself? I don’t always feel the need for warm welcomes or long conversations about living in Russia.
So, I started exploring. In September I left Ostrovok.ru and focused on the way people from all over the world travel — I was interested — Can I find anyone out there, who is still waiting for something unusual and has a passion for adventure? And, surprisingly, there were a lot!
Eventually I thought, ”Why do you need to know where you are going? I mean, what if it is a surprise? Yes, I won’t be able to spend ages on looking for a hotel and will stay at the first hotel I see, but that’s not a big deal, to be honest.”
At that moment I was working for a web-studio which created startup companies so that I could be closer to people who can give me some good advice. One of their clients asked to come up with a name for a travel project. In a couple of days I came up with the name KickYourCompass. I thought it was hilarious, so I immediately felt upset — according to the contract I had to give it to the studio. However, it was not accepted, which surprised me! I asked the client and the studio’s CEO if I can keep this name for my own project and they both agreed. In 15 minutes I was registering the domain name.
It was a very important moment for me — I believe that the right name can unite people, and deliver the brand concept and help the company’s development. KYC is exactly what is needed. Our project is not just me or technologies. KYC are the people who go to the airport and buy any random ticket. And this name totally describes what these people do when they dare to take such a risk. So, it was absolutely fortunate! The studio could’ve said “No” and put this into their intellectual property luggage, but they didn’t do it.
Ladies and gentlemen, Faraway!
In November I built a team. It was a business developer and a project developer. After a couple of discussions we came to a conclusion — KYC has to have a huge trust-credit from travelers. Success stories and help from well-known brands are needed. Yet nobody from the travel industry wanted to collaborate with this kind of product. It is understandable — if something goes wrong it would affect their reputation.
We immediately found the solution: “Guys, let’s create a free app for travels which can solve some of their problems and introduce KYC to the users via this product!”
I rushed off to read my old conversations with travelers and I pretty quickly found what bothered them — it is hard to share their travel experience with friends. A couple of weeks after my survey I got results: during the journey the traveler makes about 50 pictures, but you can see only 4 on social networks. The reason is pretty obvious: if you download them all at once on Facebook no one would look at them if the author doesn’t add something from him/herself. And posting the pics on blogs or sorting them takes too much time.
We quickly developed a sketch of the application — I could upload photos in it, the system took the geographic data and built the route out of the photos. That’s how it was supposed to look like.
On these route the photos were exposed and it was possible to tweet, Facebook or choose_any_social_network_you_use it. The problem was that at that point we needed investments — I could not afford the photos’ storage and downloading.
However, we did not want to take the money from someone random. We needed an investor who is passionate about travelling. I decided to find this person in an unusual way — I made a post on a Facebook travel community of business professionals. I offered this project to anyone who is ready to pay 10000$ for it. There was a lot of trolling but I met Yan Balayan there — one of the business-angels who was interested in our project.
When we first met we immediately liked each other — Yan turned out to be a passionate traveler with a huge experience in travel industry. He liked our concept, our idea and our team.
Due to the fact that we already knew that our project should be created for the Western European market we needed to think where we should register our project and open our office. Sergey Klimov immediately came to my mind.
He is a famous Russian businessman who opened a studio in Lithuania which produces, develops and supports video games and has recommended Vilnius as a good environment for entrepreneurs.
To make sure the choice was right our analyst studied the audit firms’ reports and created a table where taxes, the business climate, the average costs and many other things were listed. This table showed that even if Lithuania is not the champion of tax rates the market conditions are best there.
And here we are, the finish line — it seemed like buying tickets to Vilnius and beginning the clearance were the only things left. Alas, one Sunday afternoon Yan wrote us a letter the essence of which was the following: the project was criticized by almost all his colleagues so he refused to invest. Looking ahead, I would say that it was luck — if we took the money at that point, then I am almost certain nothing good would not have happened.
Back to the start
It was already December, so it was late to start negotiations. The meetings I arranged at that time had the same results as before: Faraway was not interesting on it’s own. When combined with KYC it created a cocktail of high risks and uncertain profit.The people whose money we wanted didn’t make an offer and the people who did make an offer didn’t attract us — there were to many examples where investors from other fields was not the best decision.
Inside the team everything was also not going smooth. My co-founders lost their faith and within a few weeks left the project. I was trying to figure out what went wrong. I thought I found a stumbling block — in the first place I chose a team that was easy to reach instead of those who were passionate about the project. I took the business developer because I didn’t want to deal with the operating problems myself. I took a project developer because I didn’t know a damn thing about how the product’s development is going to work.
In January I decided to build a team one more time. This time I called and messaged everyone whose oDesk profile looked impressive. I didn’t care we didn’t know each other — I was only concerned with their competence. I hired the people I wanted to. From that moment I had an CTO and an iOS developer.
The second attempt looked very promising: we got rid of a few crutches pretty quickly, cut the product to an absolute minimum, and our costs of storing the photos decreased. Also we redeveloped all our benchmarks and KPI.
With new strength, I decided to look for investments in Lithuania. I exchanged letters with several venture capital funds, as well as several business angels, prepared materials and bought a plane ticket.
It was a busy month — while everything was developing, I crossed the language barrier to find all possible contacts. In the end, I realized that we could attract a start-up accelerator StartupHighway, so I arranged a meeting there.
However, nothing’s changed — they were not ready to make an offer.
A new twist
To understand what went wrong, I explored my own and others’ experiences. A few weeks later I found out our main mistake:
We did not do what we needed. Faraway which was originally conceived as a means of attracting people to KYC, completely destroyed us. When people asked us to do KYC, we were focused on other things.
Basically, we went the wrong way. I gathered the team and announced — we stop working on Faraway and focus on the KYC. The beauty of this story is that we did not need to borrow money for that! Since we no longer needed investments we were able to expand the team — now we have an art director and a content manager.
In a month of working we have accomplished more than all of our previous attempts. I have studied demand, found service providers and built a new financial model. And, last but not least, I realized that KYC is never going to be a behind-the-doors project. From now on, we will tell you everything that we have going on: how everything is arranged, how we earn money and why being with us is safe. And, the most important, who we are.
Another advantage of working with my own money — due to the fact that there are not a lot of funds, I’m spending them accurately. I should immediately discard the dream that the founder can give someone the entire bureaucracy. Now I’m going back to the financial model from November and I am really terrified because we had almost burned other people’s money.
Epilogue
This story may seem boring but if you read it you may see our product from another perspective. KYC is not a corporation’s work result. KYC is made by fans for the fans. For people who have an inner hero looking for adventurous and journeys.
