So Long BAX…

Three Possible Exit Scenarios for BAX Startup

1. Shutting Down

As newbies in the startup world, the founders of BAX found themselves in a lot of trouble when finding and dedicating time to execute all the activities necessary for building and growing a startup. Lack of task management and prioritization of personal life over BAX made it difficult for the founders to continue growing their baby that had only been half born. Six months in their BAX journey, on a cold rainy Thursday night, the founders decided it would be best to break off and continue their other life-long passions they had pushed aside because of their side-project that eventually turned into a half-baked bake.

2. Acquired by Tripadvisor

After BAX pitched their partnership proposal to TripAdvisor, it would’t take long for TripAdvisor’s board of directors to see the value in marketing at students involved in study abroad. Students are often overlooked in the travel market due to a common pattern of lack of financial stability, hindering them to get involved in traveling activities. However, with study abroad students already having the passion, willingness, and economic possibility of traveling than the average student, the value we offered of providing a platform where study-abroad groups could discover each other’s travel bucket-lists, and form groups to perform and visit their bucket-list wishes together, it only made sense for TripAdvisor to acquire BAX, where they would combine the features they already excel at of organizing trips with BAX.

3. Bright Future Ahead

It didn’t take long after BAX’s pitch to investors for them to grant the seed round of $300,000 BAX asked for that would allow the founders to finally have the funds to cover their $100,000 annual costs of their three-year expansion plan from study-abroad travel to general group travel. After taking care of the two costs that would help them grow and move forward faster — hiring an iOS developer, an engineer and acquiring their own server hosting — their popularity with study abroad-students in seventeen different universities in California exploded. It would only take less than a year for BAX to expand to all colleges and universities in the U.S. and twenty-three around the world. Currently BAX is at the beginning of their last year of their three-year expansion — BAX is in the beta phase of bucket-list group forming with anyone around you — whether is is with friends, or strangers.