GoMiles is a US-based travel loyalty scheme management tool, which first featured on Tnooz in April 2010 [TLabs Showcase - GoMiles].
So what happened in the intervening 12 months?
Are you making money yet?
Yes!
What has been the biggest problem - building the product/service or marketing it to consumers/travel industry?
Our biggest challenge has been bringing in users to use GoMiles. Users who try it tell us they love it, so revamping our marketing strategies is a key activity for this year.
Biggest assumption in the business plan that was wrong?
The biggest assumption that was wrong was our view of what the customer need was. We envisioned a more narrow solution only around management of miles.
Over the last 12 months, we realized that we needed to expand the solution to be more comprehensive – and so we’ve added those features to the site – so that users can now Manage, Protect, Earn, and Redeem with GoMiles.
Is your current customer base as predicted?
Slower than we expected… but two facts encourage us. First, we get appreciative emails from a variety of customer segments (eg retirees, road-warrior-management-consultants, young families), which says our product resonates with different segments we are targeting.
And second, that our internal metrics show that users who sign up are highly engaged – our product is inherently "sticky" so once users sign up, they’re likely to come back, again and again.
Did you achieve your 12 month goals? If not, why not?
The biggest goal we failed to achieve was overall user base, as above.
Has the problem you were trying to solve changed?
Nope. There’s still trillions of miles out there that are effectively unamanged assets, held by millions of consumers who don’t have any tools to take control of them.
Which startup that has launched in the past 12 months did you think “Ah, wish we had done that!”?
Color.com, I think. $43 milion in the bank is the way to go! ;-)
If you could go back in time and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?
I would go back and tell our team to keep executing every single day. I firmly believe that’s the key differentiator for any business – the ability to rapidly execute and deliver outputs that grow the business.
NB: Tnooz launched TLab Showcase in March 2010, a dedicated channel to give startups in the travel, tourism and hospitality sector an opportunity to explain their vision, company background and strategy to a wider audience.
As well as publishing an elevator pitch-type questionnaire for each business, Tnooz committed to following up with each startup after 12 months or so to see how well (or not) each performed.
NB2: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.