I recently got an email from a big shot CEO in Ro & UK market (or at least they act as if) telling me that their pet travel project wants to implement “something similar to TrippyDoo UI”, and as our project doesn’t have traction, they offered to rescue by buying our UI.
The project I’m referring is Explorra, an online travel-guide that took 3-4 years to develop, design and launch, that though it’s suppose to use so much technology to offer value to the average traveler, it only has several hotel reviews (that I don’t know who’s written) and very little info about the main European cities – try it yourself, I looked up Madrid.
While I don’t want to pick a fight, I do not see what a traveler’s value would be from going to a place like Explorra – want a hotel reviews? We got to Tripadviser! Want some great travel guides? There’s Lonely Planet and so many other free travel guides out there.
What TrippyDoo has, even if we’re small, is relevant user experiences added by real travelers, by your friends. They may not be professionally written, but at least they’re real. Explorra might create a similar UI like ours but it sure misses the meaning of human interaction. TrippyDoo is the result our vision about how online traveling should be to make it easier for people to find, meet others and in the end travel better.
Of course, there’s always the option of creating content no matter how, investing in SEO and advertising, and selling to Expedia. But that’s not our strategy. We don’t have a large team of developers, and we certainly don’t have 1 mil dollars.
And you know what? We’re better without. Scarcity is what keeps us creative. Scarcity keeps us investing in customer development to make sure we have the right product. Scarcity keeps us trying harder, everyday.
A final advise to Explorra: don’t copy us. I’m sure your army of people will eventually find a product/market fit. As for us - TrippyDoo is not for sale!