TLabs Showcase on travel startups featuring UK-base WhosWhereWhen, an amazing new smartphone app to make travel conferences more productive than ever.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
Avril Fisher, Hector Payasadas and Fred Sciocco - we met at university in Luxembourg and between us we have over four years experience in the travel industrry!
We have walked the aisles of travel conferences and trade fairs worldwide.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
The company has been funded by Sciocco Ventures for an amount I am not at liberty to disclose.
What problem are you trying to solve?
We got frustrated that so much of our business at travel conferences seemed to be generated at random, by who we ran into or what conversations we had at the bar.
So we formed WhosWhereWhen, a way to figure out who was at a conference who would be useful for us to meet, so we could maximise networking opportunities.
It's all about productivity!
It's certainly true that lists of delegates are always available, and sometimes you are able to pre-book appointments.
But so often there is no room in a busy executive's diary, and reading badges on a conference floor in the hope of getting two minutes with your prospect is a fruitless task.
WhosWhereWhen cuts through all of the clutter and provides users with the best contact options within two price plans.
Describe the business, core products and services?
For a simple monthly fee, users can sign up to register their interest in being "found" at a conference. We have signed deals with a number of conference organisers, who have given us access to their guest data, both before the conference and as badges are scanned in.
We will also have "roving scanners" at certain conferences - like TV vans if you like - that can scan badges from ten metres away without delegates even knowing!
For a larger fee, delegates can sign up and pay *not* to be visible to certain people - for example you might not want to be hustled outside of your crammed meeting schedule, or you might not want to visible to PRs, or journalists.
The system can alert you when a journalist (like yourself, Mr Tnooz editor!) is nearby.This of course can be a good or a bad thing - the information can be used how the user likes. In both price models you are able to access data on other executives who are "findable", at least to you.
Some factors that we take into account:
- Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles.
- Mobile phone numbers, and where you are located at any time within the hall.
- Face recognition for our new augmented reality app - of course, this can be fooled.
- Klout score.
- A secret sauce - STIR - our travel industry rating. We rank travel industry executives by their relative 'importance' within the industry, using a range of factors and influence indicators.
- Approachability - we rate how executives react to being approached in this way. Users of our app get a chance to rate the contact after it has taken place.
We believe that every travel industry executive is looking for the same thing: The right contact to do business with, in the right location, in the most efficient time frame.
We think our service is awesome.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
At launch, we found many people who, surprisingly, did not want to be tracked this way, and so this is the reason we have this two tiered approach.
At the same time these people were still keen to find other people - so our key customer is the busy executive who wants total visibility of others behind a mask of invisibility as far as they are concerned, as well as those who are happy to be approached.
Incidentally, the more approachable you are, the higher we rank you in our "secret sauce" industry ranking.
We are also considering a "no claims bonus" to protect industry rankings - for example you may get fired, but want to maintain your ranking for a period of time to help you get another job.
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
Yes, we had some very satisfied customers at a recent industry conference who were not approached at all.
Conversely we had others who did some great business by being able to shortcut their introductions in a seemingly random way - for example hanging out at the bar in the precise spot that they know that a major CEO is standing.
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
The business model relies on people paying what is, relatively, a very modest fee to set their visibility options in just the way they like them.
To be honest, no executive at a travel conference can afford to be without our app, otherwise they risk getting left behind the curve.
A further revenue stream will come from those who are happy to pay for alerts to pop up on their screens when certain people are "nearby".
This push strategy is expected to be very popular amongst the "want-to-be-invisible-but-keep-my-options-open" group.
We'll also be maintaining a very low overhead.
SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
- Executives will just have to sign up to one or other of our programmes. Especially with the deals in the pipeline with conference organisers, few will be truly invisible unless they join our programme. Our 'secret sauce' industry rankings also rely heavily on executives' interactions with each other via our app.
Weaknesses:
- To be frank, we have had a few technical teething problems, with people being identified incorrectly. It is also true that people can trick the face recognition software we have by, for example, wearing a false moustache or a hairpiece. People can also switch off their mobile phones - but we are working on an awesome new technology that can switch them on again.
Opportunities:
- Massive. Clearly once we have the travel industry sown up we can move on to other verticals.
Threats:
Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?We all thought initially it was a mad idea but luckily we dismissed our initial concerns.
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
We expect to have at least 10,000 travel executives signed up on one or other of our programmes.
To find out more, how to opt out, and where to check your (preliminary) secret sauce travel industry ranking, please check WhosWhereWhen, and notify us URGENTLY if you think you have been misclassified.
NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.