Tripscout, an artificial intelligence-powered platform
for travel inspiration and planning, has raised $2.3 million in a seed-plus
round led by Corazon Capital. Additional investors include Accomplice, New
Stack Ventures, MATH Ventures, M25 and more.
This brings the startup’s total funding to
$4.6 million, with the last seed round
coming in 2019.
With Tripscout, users input details such as destination,
budget, timing and whether they are traveling with others, and the
platform analyzes millions of articles, videos and tips from local experts to
provide personalized recommendations that match those inputs. Users can save ideas
to their itinerary and to a map.
Subscribe to our newsletter below
The company says in 2020 it grew from two
million to more than 200 million views per month on social media and surpassed
one million app users.
“Our
generation thinks about travel every single day. Even when we’re not on the
road, we spend much of our free time dreaming and learning about the world,
anticipating our next trip and planning our next moves in great detail,” says Konrad Waliszewski, co-founder
and CEO of Tripscout.
“Yet because the
industry incumbents have been so singularly obsessed with transactions, they’ve
ignored this deep relationship we have with why and how we travel. Tripscout steps
in as the solution: we’re revolutionizing the future of travel planning by
offering a personalized discovery platform for all the places and topics you
care about.”
Says Corazon
Capital principal Phil Schwarz, “Travel is a $3
trillion industry, but there’s a graveyard of travel startups that haven’t been
able to figure out customer acquisition because they’ve tried to play the same
game as the incumbents. We doubled down on Konrad, Andy [Acs, co-founder and chief product officer] and the team at
Tripscout not only because they are travel experts, but also because they’ve
cracked the code on leveraging social media for scalable, cost-effective and
organic customer acquisition, leading to nearly 1,000% year-over-year active
user growth despite being in the middle of a pandemic.
"When you combine that
with the industry-leading engagement metrics on the Tripscout platform - over
400% higher monthly retention rates compared to industry averages - we believe
they’re well positioned to build a large, lasting company that creates the
experience travelers should expect in the modern era."
Along
with the funding news, Tripscout says it has hired Dorth Raphaely is its new
chief marketing officer.