[USA][TECH][7] Seeking Tech cofounders for travel buddy app.

Before we introduce our company, we’d like to quickly introduce ourselves. We’re currently two co-founders:

1. Female based in the USA with an M.B.A in Finance and B.E. in Computer Science & Engineering. Outside of the startup, currently works as a Senior Software Engineering Manager for a tech firm, with over 15 years’ experience in the industry.
2. Male based in the UK with a B.A. in Economics & Neuroscience from Harvard University (Class of 2020). Outside of the startup, worked as a management consultant in London for M.B.B. and currently works as a Strategy Analyst for a finance firm.

So, what is our company?

Tripsido Inc. is a formally incorporated company (USA) – we have spent the last 10 months working on our app, successfully launching the MVP on both the App Store and Google Play Store. Our app is a platform designed to connect like-minded people traveling to the same destination(s) over the same dates. Whether someone is backpacking solo throughout Europe for months-on-end, or they’re just going on a short vacation with some friends – Tripsido aims to help them meet others to travel with. Users can search the map for existing trips to join (through sending a “Join Request”) or they can create their own trip and post it for others to join instead. Each user has a “Messages” tab, “My Trips” tab, “Explore” tab, and a “Profile” tab populated with their interests / traveling history.

Right now, there are no free, easy-to-use apps which address the growing need for such an app. There’s an incredible amount of evidence that a simple solution is needed (e.g., "travelpartners" subreddit, or travel-buddy Facebook groups) and we want to be the app that helps fix this problem. We’ve had downloads in over 50 countries despite our limited marketing efforts, and we’re super excited to see where this could go. We have big plans for the app; we’ve established our future revenue models in detail, we have a long list of new features we hope to introduce, and we’re working on new partnerships we hope to establish. (We are currently in contact with hostels all over the world, working together for mutually beneficial relationships.)

We understand that the biggest hurdle to overcome with this app is user verification / safety. Before we can truly expand, users need to feel comfortable connecting with one another. We’ve conducted multiple focus-groups and had incredible feedback from our early users, with a number of great suggestions. We have a long list of potential verification methods, and hope to begin rolling these out ASAP, and scale them up as we begin to scale ourselves. We’ve also seen interest from investors, who hope to see increased traction (understandably) – their response has been overwhelmingly positive. Our app faces the common “chicken-and-the-egg” style problem, where users will only benefit from the app once there are multiple trips posted which are relevant to them, which in turn – of course – require users to post those trips in the first place. We've made it through the first round of applications for a couple of accelerators, and are interviewing soon.

Our third technical co-founder has unfortunately had to part ways with the company due to ongoing political / financial crisis in his home country. This has happened on good-terms, and we will be staying in contact. We hope to find a technical co-founder to replace him, who has experience with: iOS & Android development (React Native), MongoDB, and AWS. He’s currently preparing some handover documentation and is happy to run through the technical details behind what we have currently built with the new co-founder.

Whilst a technical co-founder is our primary (and essential) concern, we are open to hearing from anyone with marketing / relevant business experience who would also like to join our team. As we look to gain traction with our app, we hope to implement innovative tactics that can help us achieve this goal (we then aim to attract investment and continue expansion).

Thank you all in advance for your time, and we look forward to hearing from any of you! Happy to connect on LinkedIn / schedule a Zoom chat for an informal introduction if you’d prefer.

Best wishes,
- The Tripsido Team