TLabs Showcase on travel startups featuring Holland-based destination advice platform powered by residents, LocalCrowd.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
LocalCrowd.com is a platform for locals and travelers from all around the world. It gives travelers and locals tools to easily share information.
LocalCrowd is founded by Jorrit Baerends en Tim van Asch. We both like to travel, but every time we had the same problem: how to discover a city like a local?
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
The startup is personally funded.
What problem are you trying to solve?
The biggest problem during a stay in a foreign city is that you can't find the nice, local place where you can be among the citizens instead of hundred other tourists.
The tourist guides aren't filling that gap. LocalCrowd gives travellers the opportunity to directly get in contact with locals.
Describe the business, core products and services?
Travellers can ask locals their question. Question and answers can be plugged on Google Maps, which makes it visible what to do and where to go. Furthermore, the connection with Facebook makes it easy to get your Facebook-friends involved.
Locals are encouraged by earning points and badges for giving the most valuable answers. For example, locals can become a Dining expert, a Culture expert or even a general Local Expert of their city.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
We aim on travellers, not tourists. LocalCrowd launched today.
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
Yes, we have had feedback from our users during beta-launch. Based on this feedback we've improved our site.
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
The site is interesting for advertisers, because users are in their exploring phase and advertisers can target on destinations to optimize their campaigns.
SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
- The useful tools to interact, the simplicity of the site, and the connection with social media
Weaknesses:
- We don't have a sufficient userbase yet, it takes time to build up a network
Opportunities:
- The enormous travel market, whereby more and more travellers prefer the local experience.
Threats:
- There are many established websites and brands in the travel market.
Who advised you your idea isn't going to be successful and why didn't you listen to them?A lot of people warned me for the number of competitors in this market. But I believe the direct contact between travellers and locals is a unique selling point.
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
We don't focus on numbers yet. Our main goal is to create as many as possible valuable user experiences. If that will work, 100,000 users within 12 months will be feasible.
NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.