Comment by danielpetrica
15 hours ago
Thank you for the information. If you have any other advice please tell me I'm very grateful for any advice
We're aware that the small validation we were able to do during the weekeend so now we are trying to validate it really by organising a real trip in September.
We are trying to bootstrap it at the moment and count on our network of friends, Clients (the main founder is a personal trainer) and people that expressed interest initially. we count on organizing the first 2-3 trips to be understand if the idea makes sense to continue or not. we also aim to understand the difficulties with this 2 initial trips to perfect the formula for the trip and find difficulties.
We are not building a tool, but are trying to organize group trips to sell to clients.
We are aware of the high cost of user acquisition too so we have a marketing person in the team. And we aim to try building a community long term with old trip participants and interested people.
We also want to give a healthy/fitness spin to the trip so people will be able to attend the gym or do athletic activities (not my knowledge domain, I bring the outside view to the team by not being in the fitness niche).
If you want my personal opinion, it is too a niche for being a successful "startup" business.
Like imagine if I add to your pitch "trips for people that like ... And to have a bottle of ketchup on lunch tables and that like hotels name starting with b or k".
Probably ok for a small modest local travel agency but not more.
I would see more success as a "sport and leisure group trips travel" agency but I guess that there are few other competitors in the field.
Probably I explained myself badly due to English not being my first language. >sport and leisure group trips travel This is basically what we want to build. Organize trips that let you do sport, visit new places and if needed continue your specific implementation (for example finding your supplements and incredients in the apartment already). all of this while being with 8 or 7 strangers and 1 or 2 coordinators for the group
> are trying to organize group trips to sell to clients.
You might as well be saying "we are trying to make movies to sell tickets".
Organising group tours as such is easy, but the value is in the creative input that engages and inspires possible clients. Destination, people - both guides and participants, activities, materials are all part of this. It can't be "tested" just as two movies with the same synopsis can be completely different.
You can totally see my english is not the best.
> Organising group tours as such is easy, but the value is in the creative input that engages and inspires possible clients. Destination, people - both guides and participants, activities, materials are all part of this. It can't be "tested" just as two movies with the same synopsis can be completely different.
Thank you for this input. I agree with you that the experience is the most important part. We are preparing the first trip and will try to keep this in mind too. We want people to go back home at the end with great memories and having met new friends. We know we can't guarantee this to all but we'll try to insert activities and occasions to create community (probably not the best term to describe it). The biggest success for us will be if people go back home with 7/8 new friends.
The best case scenario is you succeed after 10 years. The second best case scenario is you fail after a month. The worst case scenario is you fail after 10 years for a thing you could have figured out in the first month.
There's a very basic funnel you can define and the validation is inserting numbers into the funnel to figure out where (if anywhere), the business is. The artistry is figuring out where the rules are and where you can break the rules in surprising ways to make the funnel work.
eg: You can do customer validation on your users and ask them the following Qs:
* Have you ever gone on a group tour with strangers before, how many times? Under what circumstances?
* Show me your calendar for the last 3 months, black out all the dates you definitely couldn't have been open to a tour, what are the dates that remain as a percentage?
* How much have you spent on travel over the last 12 months? What percentage of that was the destination non-negotiable (ie: visiting parents) vs negotiable on a shortlist vs totally open to suggestion?
* How many tools that you used only once 3/6/12 months ago can you name right now? How many under the right prompting? How many did you totally forget unless you got the "oh yeah, I did use that thing a while back".
Start with the end result of how many people before a trip breaks even and work backwards to understand how many people need to fill a cohort before you can reach that breakeven number. Many people who are in your theoretical target market just can't do any trip for totally understandable reasons and you have to be realistic about the cohort you need to reach per trip at scale.
The art is figuring out which sub groups the numbers get weird in your benefit. eg: Parents with young children will always cluster their travel around the school calendar so you get a particular density you can build on but this is also not a group classically associated with fitness. Retirees have a more flexible schedule but also not associated with fitness. Are there other cohorts this might be viable with? I have no idea, it's your job to find out!
But rather than taking 3/6/12/120 months to figure out the answer, there's Qs you can ask that disvalidate your hypothesis in the first month! Figure out what those Qs are and ask those!
PS: I work as a founder coach, feel free to msg me from my bio if you're interested in talking more. Always happy to chat for free for motivated founders.