FlashTryp

We will build an iOS/Android app that provides immediate, free, personalized and unbiased suggestions of activities and live events to our users based on their psychographic profile. The critical portion of our business is our ability to take users' social media data and predict what activities and live events an individual will enjoy with no user input other than them logging in via Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Netflix etc.

We have completed a study where we can convert FB likes into site suggestions. On top of that, we have built an alpha version of mobile our application that provides users with a completely personalized feed of results.

To pair with our suggestions, we built a database of SF activities including twitter length descriptions, images, interest tags, weather, price, student pricing, neighborhood, hours, website and purchase links of over 130 activities in SF. These activities range from Fisherman's Wharf to Yoga at Baker Beach. As well, we have a partnership with PredictHQ to power the live events section of our application with similar data.

We are awaiting approval from Facebook to utilize the Graph API. When approved we will be able to immediately give suggestions to users when they decide to connect their Facebook data. As well, we can begin to gather real user feedback.

When traveling I experienced many moments that clearly demonstrated that there was no good way to decide what to do. There were three options, ask locals, ask friends or look on the internet. Locals did not know me so they could not give personalized suggestions, friends were not experts in the cities so they could not give high quality suggestions, and the internet was impersonal and took way too much time to verify quality. Instead of simply relying on my word for it, we surveyed 125 individuals. 13% said they got suggestions from locals, 46% said friends/family, 39% said the internet and just 2% got suggestions from elsewhere. As well, 90% of people surveyed said they have participated in spontaneous activities while traveling. This test was administered to college-age potential users representative of many demographic groups.

To take a secondary data source to predict what sites, activities and live events individuals want to participate in. This will give people personalized, immediate, free and unbiased suggestions.

Utrip

FlashTryp’s main competition is Utrip. Utrip requires users to disclose input interests and gives suggestions based on that. Utrip’s biggest weakness is that they do not have a functional app. As well, it is hard to tell what order suggestions are in. Most importantly, Utrip does not take into account personality nor user’s social media data. As a result, their suggestions are not optimal and will not get better. As well, Utrip is not geared toward group travel, instead they focus on individual itineraries.

Develop an Android App
Acquire 10,000 unique visitors growing at least 10% monthly by September 30 2019
Create a San Francisco 2019 Travel Report
Integrate Two New Data Sources
Integrate PredictHQ for live events
Raise a seed round

Negotiable

We are a part of two startup communities, The Shoebox incubator and Voyager HQ. The incubators provide free legal advice, mentors and a community of entrepreneurs. We utilize the communities for free consulting fr om professionals (we would not be able to afford them) as well as structure in the form of a designated area wh ere FlashTryp work is completed. The mentors have helped motivate us as a team as well as provided relevant and actionable suggestions. Seeing other entrepreneurs try to disrupt industries close to ours as well as completely different ones provides a diversity of thought that encourages us to look at problems from many angles and to continue our perseverance.

-Background on the communities-

Voyager HQ is a community of travel startups and corporate sponsors based in NYC.
The Shoebox is an incubator run by Indiana University that provides FlashTryp with an office, free legal advice and mentors.