Port
Port enables users to visit destinations or attend
business events or trade shows through live video calls with remote guides.
The user provides instructions to the guide on what
they want to see and who they want to talk to, and the guide can help with
basic translation services and also take photos on the user’s behalf.
What is your 30-second pitch to investors?
2020 has accelerated the world to go remote and
trained a generation to live through video calls for many daily activities.
Port expands this remote world by enabling
professionals and (grounded) business travelers to visit destinations from home
through live video calls with remote guides around the world. We call it remote
travel. You can request and book a guide on Port to help you
visit an event or venue remotely and the guide will follow your instructions,
help with basic translations and interact with the environment on your behalf.
website
www.theportapp.com
Describe both the business and technology aspects of
your startup.
The Port platform is connected to a worldwide
network of guides and allows you to request guides to do a tour or attend
certain events. Guides use the Port video call software that is optimized for
real-time engagement, mobility and travel productivity.
You can take photos using the guide’s camera that we
store in your Port photo album or save the guide’s GPS location if you see
anything interesting to keep for later. You can also remotely control the direction
of the guide’s camera if you need more flexibility.
We act as a remote travel enabler for businesses who
use Port to fulfil their own remote travel needs. And besides that we also
operate a marketplace where guides can offer their own remote tour products.
We are currently bootstrapped but in discussion with
two CVCs for our first round of funding.
Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.
Strengths:
- We are one of the first to
invest in building our own video call software solution optimized to do remote
travel while competitors were running on Zoom and Meets.
- We build Port as an
on-demand service rather than a marketplace, so we are able to offer more
custom services through our guides network.
Weaknesses:
- The team is small
- The brand Port is unknown
- Remote travel is a new
concept
Opportunities:
- Through our remote travel
services we can cater more into the business travel industry. We expect to grow
offerings in that area significantly.
Threats:
- Covid19 gets more severe in
the countries that we operate in resulting in prohibiting guides to go outside
and closing down all offline events and venues.
What are the travel pain points you are trying to
alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspective?
Travel is a resource intensive activity and if you
need to attend events abroad or do on-site visits of venues, you either go or
you don’t go. There’s no middle ground. But with Port, we help you fulfill the
job you need to get done, without actually having to travel there. Saving you
the travel time and cost.
By building this new capability for business
travelers, we help expand the MICE industry and more specifically the
exhibitions and trade shows industry.
Remote travel is a supplement to existing travels
and creates new opportunities to visit places that before were not economically
justified to travel to.
So you've got the product, now how will you get lots
of customers?
We have been partnering with DMOs, travel agencies,
event organizers and venues to be their remote tour enabler in a B2B2C model
where we are either included in the package or are the official partner. It’s a
win-win setup where they benefit through a new way of reaching their customers
and Port gets exposed to the end consumer. We will continue to develop more of
these partnerships.
Tell us what process you've gone through to
establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable
market.
A lot of our current traction now is coming from
facilitating the MICE industry and destination marketing. We validate a need by
getting recurring paying customers. There are no free tiers.
Before COVID-19, there were globally 32,000
exhibitions and 300 million visitors a year with exhibitors and visitors
spending $150 billion annually. We are currently focusing on inbound Korea,
where normally 200,000 foreign visitors attend Korean exhibitions a year. In
just a month, we had customers spending $200 to $300 on remote travel sessions
with Port guides. This gives us an addressable market of over $700 million in
Korea alone.
How and when will you make money?
Guests are charged by the hour if they need a guide
or buy a ticket for a tour and we take a fee from that. With some corporate
clients, we sell the video call software in a SaaS model, charging on usage or
staff accounts. We don’t have any free tiers, so we have been making money
since launch.
What are the backgrounds and previous achievements
of the founding team?
The team does not come from the travel industry, but
just wanted to solve a very basic problem for themselves when suddenly they
couldn’t fly around the world anymore. The backgrounds from both founders are
in building consumer platforms.
Philip Man, co-founder and CEO, has more than 10 years’
experience in building and scaling online consumer platforms. Having been
marketing and product manager for web and mobile applications with over 15
million monthly active users.
William Sjahrial, co-founder and CTO, has two
decades experience in software engineering and mobile development. He has built
his own mobile development business that got acquired by a Japanese
conglomerate.
How have you addressed diversity and inclusion
within your business?
For now we are just three people but as we grow we
plan to address this in our hiring.
What's been the most difficult part of founding the
business so far?
- Explaining to customers what remote travel is and
what to expect. As there is no precedent and comparative service, it’s
difficult for people to imagine what it can do for them.
- Convincing investors that remote travel is not a COVID-19-specific
business and that it will still thrive even when the world goes back to flying
around again.
Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time
making an impact - so why are you going to be one of lucky ones?
Having a founding team that is an outsider from the
industry helps to not be mentally restricted by what the travel industry should
or shouldn’t do. It’s a fine line between being naive and being optimistic but
so far it has been working in our advantage as we were able to have great
partnerships very early on and we think that’s because we come with a
refreshing approach to the problem.
A year from now, what state do you think your
startup will be in?
We will have solidified our remote travel position
in the MICE industry to remotely travel inbound to Korea and Taiwan. And we
will start expanding to a few markets in Asia covering key cities.
What is your end-game? (Going public, acquisition,
growing and staying private, etc.)
We think there is an Uber or Airbnb type of company
to be built in global remote travel. These companies have completely changed
consumer behavior in travel and mobility and we aspire to become as globally
relevant as they are.
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