STARTUP STAGE: RemoteDream helps travelers find and book work-friendly hotels and hostels

RemoteDream

RemoteDream helps people find and book hotels and hostels suitable for remote work.

Founded in 2021, the startup caters to remote workers, travelers on workations and digital nomads, according to co-founder Joeri Nano. 

What is your 30-second pitch to investors?

I am a millennial, and I want to travel and work remotely. There are many platforms that I use like Airbnb, Hostelworld, WeWork, Booking.com, but the downside is that they don't offer me a range of co-working-ready hotels and hostels.

RemoteDream helps me get inspired, find and book the best remote-work-suitable hotels and hostels. We offer a qualified network of locations that are ideal for remote work, workations and digital nomads.

Locations qualify based on

- Quality work spots

- Co-working

- Community of likeminded people

- Excellent Wi-Fi

- Extras such as surf spots/beachfront, rooftop bars, other surprising good stuff

Additionally, there will be no minimum stay and you will be able to choose locations based on reviews from professionals. Additionally, the intuitive filter system helps you find your ultimate location with filters for °C in winter/ a chosen timezone, bar and more.

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.

We are bringing together the people that can work remotely from abroad and the growing niche of hotels and hostels that are tailored and targeted specifically to this audience.

The users of the platform can get inspired, book their locations and customize their experience.

The platform, built with best-in-class technologies available, makes it possible to filter your way through the most amazing locations.

Everything has been developed with scalability, performance and security in mind, in a way that makes it easy to add new features quickly.

Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.

Strengths:

- We are a fast-moving small team and therefore are very agile

- The founder team has both commercial, startup, entrepreneurial and development skills and has worked together for five years already in the past

- There is no one in the market offering what we offer

- We are launching in a fast-growing market -

There are clear benefits for the users (demand side)

- There are clear benefits for the supply side (more bookings, lower fees, guests that have a good income)

Weaknesses:

- At starting stage of investment

- Limited experience and network in the travel industry

Opportunities:

- Working remote becomes the normal in many places very rapidly

- Growing segment of hotels and hostels, which are still hard to find

Threats:

- Large, well-funded companies joining the niche

What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspective?

Customer perspective: Avoid remote working from unsuitable locations. Avoid remote working with WI-FI that is poor/not good enough Avoiding feeling lonely as a remote worker having a clearer understanding of the locations from the perspective of professionals based on the reviews, written by professionals and connected to their job title.

Industry perspective: Avoiding high commission rates that the big OTAs ask. Making remote work from hotels and hostels a lot easier and have lower entry barrier for many people.

So you've got the product, now how will you get lots of customers?

Performance marketing; PR; organic reach via content influencer marketing; activating communities; B2B approach, offering the platform to employers who can offer it to their employees as a perk with the guarantee that their people will work on quality work spots.

Tell us what process you've gone through to establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable market.

Initially as founders we have experienced the pain points ourselves of not finding the right remote work locations. We have established focus groups of remote workers in our network to test our assumptions, ideas and possible solutions. We have engaged on forums like Reddit where similar problems were discussed.

How and when will you make money?

A booking fee is part of the business model. Other possible models will be added in the future

What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team?

Co-founder and CTO Salvatore Tipaldi: principal solutions architect at Nike; former chief architect at Virtuagym (SaaS company); MSc Informatics engineering

CO-founder and CEO Joeri Nanov: former VP marketing at Virtuagym (SaaS company); founder at Duurzame Zonnepanelen; Msc Marketing

How have you addressed diversity and inclusion within your business?

We are too early stage to hire yet but when we start hiring, we will follow "The ultimate guide to diversity hiring."

As we believe in "eat your own dog food," we will start hiring globally, and will have a fully remote policy, which should contribute to inclusion and diversity.

When further establishing our company culture and values, we will give diversity and inclusion a central part, based on papers like this.

What's been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?

Finding a good work-life balance. Entering a new sector with a limited network.

Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact - so why are you going to be one of the lucky ones?

- We are the first mover in the niche of short- mid-stays for remote workers

- We are fixing a real problem

- There are benefits on both the supply and demand side

- There are plenty of services we could add in order to lower the barrier for people to work remotely from anywhere

- Working remote becomes the normal in many places very rapidly

- We are extremely fast and agile and have experienced building and scaling software

A year from now, what state do you think your startup will be in?

We aim to have more than 500 remote work spots listed, have sourced a Series A investment round and hit a good bookings ratio per month

What is your end-game? (Going public, acquisition, growing and staying private, etc.)

Our end game is to become the go-to platform for everyone who wants to work remotely from abroad. Both B2B and B2C.