Love is (hopefully) in the air for WeMetOnAPlane social platform

TLabs Showcase on travel startups featuring Australia-based WeMetOnAPlane, a network to help travellers locate fellow air passengers.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Have you ever met that special someone on a plane but for whatever reason you didn’t end up exchanging your contact details with each other and later regretted it?

Without their name, how are you going to find them on Facebook? So if you're looking for them, and they're looking for you WeMetOnAPlane is your opportunity to search, find and connect with that special someone!

WeMetOnAPlane was founded in early 2011, by 31 year old Australian internet entrepreneur Will Scully-Power who launched the site after meeting his girlfriend on a plane.

Day-to-day, Will is the managing director of Datarati and also chairman of the Sydney Data Miners, a group of over 600 data mining industry professionals.

In 2010, Will was selected by B&T Weekly magazine and profiled as one of Australia's 30 under 30 industry leaders of tomorrow.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

WeMetOnAPlane was launched with angel funding of $10,000. There are plans to raise additional capital to further fund the development of the site, mobile apps, marketing and business development.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Billions of people fly on planes each year. Hundreds of millions of people meet each other on flights every day. Hundreds of thousands meet that special someone but for whatever reason don't exchange contact details and later regret it.

Without knowing their name, how can they connect with them on Facebook? They can't. WeMetOnAPlane is your opportunity to search, find and connect with that special someone.

Connecting people who meet each other on flights but don't exchange contact details.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Visitors go to WeMetOnAPlane and search for that memorable passenger using flight number, year, month, date, origin or destination.

Our advanced search algorithm, will display search results of all stories from that specific flight that have been shared by other passengers. Recognise a story?

Simply post a reply to their story and they will be emailed immediately.

Don’t recognise any of the stories? Simply click "Share Your Story" and tell us your story about how you met that special someone. Was it love at first sight?

Then share your story via Facebook and Twitter and help us help you find them! The more people who know, the more chance you have of finding and connecting with that special someone.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

The millions of people who travel each and every day around the world meeting other people on planes but for whatever reason dont exchange contact details and later regret it.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Yes. It happened to me. Then I looked at the Google search data and found 4,400 people search for "met on a plane" every month. This made me realise their was a problem that hadn't until now been solved.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Grow the database of travellers. Online advertising. Database advertising. We also plan on doing partnerships with airlines for mystery flights, whereby we are effectively clipping the ticket on flights.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

Strong brand with first mover advantage.

Weaknesses:

New brand to market, unproven business model.

Opportunities:

Airlines, online dating, TV shows, games.

Threats:

Facebook's database.

Who advised you your idea isn't going to be successful and why didn't you listen to them?

My internal demon. I knew when after a few weeks of launching the site when we had our first post that we were onto something... it was then that confirmed to me that this idea had legs.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

To measure success of this idea, we are looking at the following initial metrics to help judge success. We will then look at more formal metrics specific to revenue generation.