TLabs Showcase on travel startups featuring US-based social travel planning service Gtrot.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
Gtrot improves your trip by making it easy to share travel plans, experiences and advice with friends. We are looking to connect the dots between travel plans and your social network to offer a personalized experience planning and taking trips.
Zach Smith and Robery Corty launched gtrot in the run-up to Spring Break 2010 after winning the Harvard I3 competition for undergraduate entrepreneurs. Not limited just to college students, Gtrot is currently in public beta with over 40,000 cities shared to date.
Zach, cum-laude Harvard graduate and Brittany Laughlin, travel-fanatic, joined forces to build gtrot into the go-to social travel site for trip sharing. The team is five-strong with the addition of top design and developer talent and is currently hiring to grow the team.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
Initial seed capital was won in the Harvard i3 competition and additional capital was raised through friends and family. Bootstrapped from there.
What problem are you trying to solve?
There are tons of travel sites that offer recommendations, reviews, or travel Q&A. But we think the most trusted advice comes from people you know.
Sharing your trip on Gtrot makes it easy to collect advice from Facebook friends by showing you who has been to your destination before and who will be there when you get there.
Describe the business, core products and services?
Gtrot organizes data shared by users’ Facebook friends – like education history and check-ins – to map their current locations and places they’ve been.
Then, when you share a trip to London, for example, we can help you collect the best advice by connecting you with friends who live there and friends who have traveled there before.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
We launched on four top Ivy campuses in 2010 in anticipation of one of the largest social travel holidays: spring break. We’ve since expanded to all Facebook users.
We’ve seen the highest adoption among 18-30 people who regularly use Facebook. Whether they are taking 1 or 10 trips a year, gtrot members are commenting and sharing plans with each other.
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
Yes - we started in the college market and immediately saw wide adoption. We’ve since launched the public beta to a wider audience and plan to push new site improvements live before summer travel season.
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
We know where you’re going and when before you get there. By simply sharing upcoming trips, gtrot users will see friends with overlapping plans, friends who live in the destination, and friends who have been there before.
We then have the opportunity to provide relevant offers for your destination or place suggestions based on what we already know about you - what you like, where you typically travel and who else is on your trip.
SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
- High quality team
- Technology
- Tested concept
- Market awareness
- Social
Weaknesses:
Opportunities:
- Travel industry is currently being disrupted
- Social travel is poorly defined
- People are sharing more travel data than ever
Threats:
- Other competitors in the travel and social space
Who advised you your idea isn't going to be successful and why didn't you listen to them?There have been a few reactions that suggested that travel is not an industry worth investing. We believe that trip planning is still a hassle and that there should be a better way.
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
Hundreds of thousands of people sharing their trips on Gtrot.
NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.