Travel Startups and Product-Market Fit
Travel Startups and Product-Market Fit
“The life of any startup can be divided into two parts: before and after Product-Market Fit. When you are before PMF, focus obsessively on getting to PMF. Do whatever it takes. Including changing out people, rewriting your product, moving into a different market” — Marc Andreessen
I reached out to the founders of 11 travel startups and scaleups from Germany, Spain, Colombia, United States and Pakistan to get their response to the following question:
Do you consider that you currently have Product Market Fit? (Y/N). If yes, how long did it take you to find PMF, and what made you realize that you had reached it?
Their answers cover the full time range. And even within the same company, some executives might have drastically different answers. PMF can be elusive and there is also no guarantee that once you reach it (or think you do), you will not lose it.
In the detailed answers below the table, we can see that Product Market Fit shows up generally when you see one or a combination of the following:
Customer retention. Customers find value in your product.
Organic growth.
Profitable growth
CAC < LTV
Customers wanting to build the solution along with you
Price inelastic customers
More detailed answers (edited for brevity, and ordered by founding date):
GetYourGuide
OTA and marketplace for excursions, attractions and experiences.
Headquarters: Berlin, Germany
Founded: 2008
I don't see product market as a singular point in time. When we had our first booking, it felt like a successful lab experiment. When we got to tens of bookings, it felt we were onto something. When we got to hundreds of daily bookings, I probably stopped questioning whether we had a right to exist. Your conviction grows over time but even today I don't think we have the right product for every traveler out there. So we work hard to get there one day. — Tao Tao, Founder & COO
GlampingHub
Online booking platform for camping and outdoor accommodations
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Founded: 2012
About 2 years in, we realized that glamping searches and other outdoor accommodations were growing at an outstanding rate. The category was growing and we were positioned to connect outdoor travelers with places they had never stayed in before. — David Troya, Founder & former CEO
ByHours
Microstays hotel booking platform
Headquarters: Barcelona, Spain
Founded: 2012
Definitely yes!!! In our first 6 months of MVP, we noticed that users were interested in the micro-stay business model but probably the most important signal was the growth of our hotel portfolio to our current 4000 hotels, with only only 1,8% of them deciding to not continue. We follow our KPIs very closely - Repetition, Churn (users and Hotels), CAC, Average Order Value, Lifetime value, and in particular the (high) satisfaction KPIs from the more than 350.000 clients in more than 25 countries in Europe, Latin America and Middle East. — Guillermo Gaspart, Founder & CEO
Pinbus
Ecosystem of products to transform / disrupt the bus transportation business.
Headquarters: Bogotá, Colombia
Founded: 2014
Yes, we consider we have product market fit. It took us around 2-3 years to reach and we knew once we managed to have 1) Positive retention metrics 2) Positive unit economics - (Mainly seeing we were able to acquire customers for a lower price than they were worth for us) and 3) Organic growth. — Sebastian Jaramillo, Founder & CEO
Caravelo
Subscription and revenue optimization solutions for the travel industry.
Headquarters: Barcelona, Spain
Founded: 2015
We do consider that we have PMF. Depending on the product, it took 2-3 years for us to get it or at least to realize it. We knew we had it, when we could confidently raise our fees (x4) without churning logos. Other signs were customer referrals or inbound leads coming from unexpected recommendations. — JoseLuis Vilar, Founder & CPTO
The Hotels Network
Ecosystem of growth tools for hotels direct channel.
Headquarters: Barcelona, Spain
Founded: 2015
Yes, it took 9-12 months. We were working on a B2C app idea which morphed into a B2B product idea. We first realized we reached PMF because the feedback from early adopters was "this is obvious". It made total sense to them; we didn't have to argue for the problem, they only wanted to talk about the solution. Second, the initial product opened up a huge space for future innovation: the next evolution of the product was already clear. — Juanjo Rodriguez, Founder & CEO.
TravelPerk
Business travel and expense management platform.
Headquarters: Barcelona, Spain
Founded: 2015
It took us around 12 months from inception. Once we switched from trying to convince people to use our product, to needing to work 24/7 to support customer requests around using it. If you are solving a real pain point, you won't need to convince people who feel the pain to use the product. — Avi Meir, Founder & CEO
BabyQuip
Baby gear marketplace
Headquarters: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
Founded: 2016
Fairly early, within a few months of our formation. We went against the typical marketplace strategy of focusing on one market and then expanding to others. As a travel brand, we had to go where people were traveling. So our strategy was to recruit the Quality Providers (the independent contractors, mostly moms, who own the gear) wherever we found them while at the same time putting effort into larger family travel markets like Los Angeles. What we observed was that as soon as we had someone in a market, we’d get orders. Also approximately 20 to 25% of the QPs came from customers. — Fran Maier, Founder & CEO
Sastaticket
Largest OTA in Pakistan
Headquarters: Karachi, Pakistan
Founded: 2016
I feel that we have reached product market fit for flights and bus. It took us about 2 years to find PMF for flights and just three months for bus. It was during the early days of Covid-19 when domestic travel reopened in Pakistan and we were routinely selling over 25% of each aircraft that was flying in Pakistan and we were able to do this with a NPS of 60. For bus we were able to go from zero bus tickets to 30,000 tickets per month within 6 months of launch. — Shazil Mehkri, Founder & CEO
Deal Engine
Software company that creates new revenue streams for travel agencies.
Headquarters: San Francisco, USA
Founded: 2017
Yes. We realized that we reached PMF as we started to engage increasingly sophisticated clients. This became clear at the Phocuswright conference in 2021, 3 years after we launched Deal Engine. At that moment, we realized that we addressed an urgent need among travel’s largest and most sophisticated OTAs, but that we were head and shoulders better than any alternative. — Alex Jara, Founder & CEO
Swimply
Marketplace for renting a private swimming pool as a form of staycation
Headquarters: Los Angeles, USA
Founded: 2018
I had the luxury of experiencing product market fit quite early because of how the business was solving a real life issue for me and how immediate the positive response signalled that I wasn't the only one. The market sign that we saw that gave us the confidence it was going to work was mainly the organic word of mouth driven growth we saw so quickly which quickly made us profitable and funded our own growth. — Bunim Lasking, Founder & CEO