The evolution of Vado: An interview with the co-founder

This week we are excited to announce the Vado app is now available for Android and iOS. Those signed up online now have first access, helping us with feedback and ongoing development to ensure a solution completely suited to your travel planning needs.

It’s what Vado is all about, born from the experience of its founders when planning and executing a lifetime trip of their own. To explain, co-founder Uno Gomes answers questions on the journey so far…

What inspired you to create Vado?

The idea of Vado was born out of necessity, following the experiences of myself and fellow co-founders on our round the world tour back in 2007, a once in a lifetime trip for us that we were excited to make the most of. It’s a simple concept; an app where you can save, sort and share all kinds of places you like to visit or that you like so much you want to share them with your friends and family.

From our own experiences, and those since, we found it difficult to figure out the best way of locating the most amazing locations in the countries we were visiting, and to store and verify the recommendations we were finding online or receiving from friends and family. We were finding the information on existing websites was mostly biased, influenced by booking sites that have their own agendas, something that is increasingly coming to light and becoming more and more complex with the role of social media, bloggers and influencers.

That’s what inspired us to create Vado — to help share and save ideas from the people we trust. To make it easier for those looking for recommendations and the people doing the recommending, and to help ensure information is authentic and reliable for a better travel experience and the best use of holiday time.

So, here it is. Vado. An app to save, sort and share your favourite places.

What happened next? What steps were taken to make the idea a reality?

We started to create and develop the app about two years ago, establishing the right name, branding, functionality. At the same time, blockchain was emerging as a major trend with some very interesting benefits for introducing transactions with independent travel companies and ensuring the authenticity of content, which we were of course keen to explore.

By designing and developing the app in this way, there was the opportunity for ratings and recommendations to also be recorded via blockchain-based technology, something there is now the potential to incorporate in a future version as we continue to closely monitor the technology’s development.

The branding, app design and sheer momentum of Vado kept us on track for first perfecting the underlying idea and very basis of the app — keeping it simple. Save, sort, share.

Have you experienced any challenges along the way?

There have certainly been some challenges along the way; for example, a year into the project we found out the developer had underestimated the complexity of the project and therefore the technology in use, which brought us to a crossroads. Kill or revive? We chose revive and the developer committed to rewriting the app in React Native. Meanwhile we had the chance to test drive the app and learn from any mistakes we might have made in the first run. A new design and new technology will do it, we thought, and here we are right now — with the latest version now available for both iOS and Android. It’s invitation only for the first two to three months, which can be subscribed to via the website.

Do you have any messages for those interested in testing the app?

Please do it, we are so keen to receive your feedback. I hope you can feel the struggle we went through, but in just how much we believe in the idea. Having spoken with so many people during all the time we have been developing the app, their comments have always been overly positive and constructive, which has driven the project forward.

Bringing an idea to life is like raising a child; it can go so quickly, there are foreseen challenges ahead, but also those that are unforeseen and that you have to be prepared for and to react to. It can be difficult but very rewarding if that idea is to grow and succeed.

If you want to become part of the journey and test the app, please go to vado.app and sign up. We will send you an invite and instructions to come aboard!