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The Only Thing That Matters
Welcome to "The Only Things That Matters", where we deconstruct the path to product-market fit of successful founders and extract the principles and frameworks behind their success so that you can apply them too.
The Only Thing That Matters
Turning a naive idea into a 7-digit exit with Javier Escribano (Tourist Eye)
How do you build a successful travel app from scratch, grow it to millions of users, and sell it to a big brand in the industry?
Join us as my former co-founder, Javier Escribano, and I recount our journey from naive 22-year-olds to existing to Lonely Planet.
You'll learn the four critical checks for achieving product-market fit, and why validating user value, ensuring usability, confirming technical feasibility, and proving business viability are the cornerstones of any startup.
We share stories of our early days, reflecting on the challenges faced and the importance of perseverance, all while offering practical guidance for aspiring founders.
Explore the nuances of startup life with us as we discuss pivotal moments that defined our entrepreneurial path. From our humble beginnings organizing university events to navigating startup acquisitions in Silicon Valley, we recount the highs and lows that shaped our careers.
We dive into the importance of niche specialization, leveraging press coverage, and the impact of timing and agility in seizing new technology and distribution channels.
Our candid reflections on financial hardships and strategic decisions will provide invaluable insights for anyone looking to make their mark in the startup world.
Finally, discover the lessons we've learned in startup growth and product-market fit through our experiences with Tourist Eye and beyond. We analyze contrasting strategies in the travel industry, the role of early adopters, and the journey of landing in San Francisco to face investor challenges.
Whether you're a young entrepreneur or simply curious about the realities of startup life, our stories of ambition, camaraderie, and resilience will inspire you to enjoy every step of your journey, regardless of the outcome.
Tune in to gain a wealth of practical advice and personal anecdotes that can help light your own entrepreneurial path.
In order to find product market fit, you need to get four checks. The first one is validate there is a value for the user, that you are solving a clear pain. The second one is that the product is usable. The third one is technically feasible to build it. And the fourth one is that the business is viable. We can go into detail in all the four topics and others, but just to give you the recap for everyone who is listening, I think we both agree that the last one is the one that we failed, and it's probably where most startups fail.
Ariel Camus:Welcome everyone. This is Ariel Camus, and this is the Only Thing that Matters the podcast where I interview successful founders to deconstruct their path to product market fit and extract the principles and frameworks behind their success. My guest today is a very special person to me Javier Escribano, a seasoned entrepreneur and product leader with an impressive track record. Javi and I co-founded Tourist Eye, a travel planning app that we grew to over 1 million users and sold to Lonely Planet in 2013. Later on, javi co-founded two other startups, zelt and OnTrack, and he's currently a CPO advisor, fractional CPO and founder of Escuela Escribano, where he develops product leaders and startups to scale successfully.
Ariel Camus:In this special episode, javi and I take a trip down memory lane, sharing the ups and downs of building TouristEye from scratch. We dive into the early days of our naive 22-year-old selves, the challenges we faced and the lessons we learned along the way. This episode offers a unique behind-the-scenes look at the realities of startup life and the power of perseverance. Join us as we collaboratively tell the story of tourist die and reflect on our shared experiences. I had a blast recording this episode with Javi. I hope you enjoy listening to it, javi, thank you so much for making the time for this. I'm super excited about this different type of episode.
Javier Escribano:Sure happy to be here with you, Remembering the times.
Ariel Camus:The good old days. Yeah, we had a lot of fun. We were so naive.
Javier Escribano:You are 22. You have to be naive.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, I always remember that quote, that we wouldn't have done it if we had known that it was impossible. Right, I don't think we put humans on Mars, but I think we accomplished a lot with very little experience, very little capital, a very small team. I'm really proud of everything we did, but also a lot of the mistakes. It's been 15 years since we started I think maybe even 16 for you initially. 13 years since the acquisition that's a long time. It's even scary to think about the number, and I'm pretty sure we have learned a lot since then.
Ariel Camus:And I was really curious to use today's episode to do a little bit of group therapy with you archaeology try to unpack what we will do differently if we were to go through this again. Of course, there's no way for that to happen, but still I think how will we apply everything we've learned to what we did in the past? And this podcast is about finding product market fit. That's the only thing that matters. So I'm going to just cut to the chase here. Do you think that we found product market fit with TouristEye, with the app we built together, and why? For me, it's a clear.
Javier Escribano:No, I really like this categorization of. In order to find product market fit, you need to get four checks. The first one is validate there is a value for the user, that you are solving a clear pain. The second one is that the product is usable, easy to use, easy to onboard. People understand how to use it. The third one is it's technically feasible to build it. It's not about a new technology that you don't know how much investment you are going to need to make to do it. And the fourth one is that as a business, it's viable. We can go into detail in all the four topics and others, but just to give you the recap for everyone who is listening, I think we both agree that the last one is the one that we failed, and it's probably where most startups fail, but we didn't beat a business.
Ariel Camus:We built an app which was used a lot, but it was not a business used a lot, but it was not a business, and I think many businesses for sure fail on the, you know, building a viable business, a sustainable business. We, weirdly enough, with such little capital and resources, we got to a lot of people, a lot of users, and we can talk about the why, which is typically the other thing that a lot of people struggle with. Right. It's, you know, the go-to market, the, the growth, the user acquisition and and I think again, we did a lot there we grew to like almost a million users, if not a little more than that over yeah over a million and it's amazing.
Ariel Camus:and again, we can talk about the usage of that and, of course, the business side of things. But I think it's it's interesting to think about how you can build something that people want. You can get a lot of users, but if there is no business model behind this, it's not truly product market market fit, and I completely agree with you there. But I was also thinking about maybe this is a stretch. You tell me what you think we did a paying customer for the product and we spent like four years building it specifically for that customer. Do you know who I'm talking about? About the no, not exactly. I'm talking about Lonely Planet, the company that acquired our product. Right, yeah, I know it's a stretch. It's not the typical definition of product market fit and I agree with you that we didn't find product market fit. But it's interesting how, you know, stories take such different turns and there is no one single definition of success.
Ariel Camus:I think, it's a very personal thing, even though the industry forces upon us one very specific definition. That looks like a lot of growth, a lot of money, a big fundraising event, a lot of money made on the acquisition. But do you think that you as a person found success with what we did with Tourist Eye?
Javier Escribano:For sure, for sure. I'm really glad that we did it. I mean, of course, there could be another universes of. Maybe I will have stayed in the United States and I will have worked for years in a startup that was very successful I don't know in 2009. I don't know, if I got into Twitter or I got into Uber or I got into, my life will be totally different. No, but compare that to the traditional career path of an engineer in Spain, where you go into traditional company, maybe to one of the incumbents, I think, the path of starting something with 22, fighting and learning a lot. I would say that 90% of who am I professionally, and even personally, is because of that that's awesome.
Ariel Camus:I feel the same way. I think it's even hard. Maybe today we can identify a few of those things, but I think it's hard but like unavoidable that there is a lot of what we learned those years, a lot of what we did that completely shaped our future path and the people we are today. So, yeah, and to me it's also a clear yes to success and I think that is an important lesson. Like, many people listening to the podcast are like new founders, new entrepreneurs or people who are considering it, and I think it's important to to talk about the, the spectrum of success and helping people find that, that path.
Ariel Camus:Um, yeah, I was talking about, yeah, that the, the acquisition. At the end, we worked hard for that. We also got lucky, but we ended up finding a company willing to pay back investors and the team getting some money, which, by the way, we didn't get any new millionaire you know in the world, but it was, you know, something like meaningful. But because of the team that we built and where they are today, like some of them have gone out to start careers at Facebook and Meta, amazon, totally, I was thinking about that the other day, like what happened.
Javier Escribano:You know we can Meta Amazon Totally. I was thinking about that the other day. What happened we can go into later in the podcast about that moment of crisis where we didn't have any money, we even had almost to close. We will go. And what if we decided to close and not keep fighting? The careers of many of us will be totally different because of that moment.
Ariel Camus:Absolutely, absolutely, of us will be totally different because of that moment, absolutely, absolutely. And we have both, each one in our own path, uh gone to find product market fit with other things in life, and typically we um cover a lot of like, let's say, successful uh stories finding product market fit in the in the podcast. But I like also covering some of these stories are not so like black or white, but something in the middle, like most stories, to be honest. And I think, well, let's just start from the beginning, when, when we started working on this, this was not an idea that I came up with or that we came up with together. It's an idea that you brought to me and I decided to join. Tell me, like, do you remember the details of what was the origins of that idea? Where did the idea come from and what was that initial idea?
Javier Escribano:Sure. So this was about end of 2008, beginning of 2009. I was in Chicago, studying a master's there, and I had some classes about entrepreneurship. So as part of the exercises that I had to do there at homework, we had to think about business ideas, and one of the ideas that got into my mind was focusing on travel, because I really like to travel and I was traveling a lot in the United States while I was studying there, and specifically in 2008 was when iPhone and Android were launched I don't know 2008, 2007, but this year and I specifically remember that in my school, and I specifically remember that in my school, android was launched, I think in June 2008, or the first Android phone, and they organized a course for Android development just in some months, which was amazing, and I got into that course.
Javier Escribano:So that was one of the ideas that I decided. I started playing with the Android phones. So I realized that, hey, what if we bring all the content like the lonely planets of the world or the tip advisors, reviews, information about restaurants, maps, all that into a mobile phone, what this new technology could enable for travelers, that we love to plan, we love to have all the information around, etc. So that was the origin of that putting all the travel information into a mobile phone while you are traveling.
Ariel Camus:It was a combination, I guess, of some new enabling technology, which I think answers a common question for any entrepreneur, which is the why now? Yeah, and then something that you were passionate about, which was traveling, which is the why me, which is the other part. Then, in my case, I I had also experienced, after living with my parents as a teenager, as a person, until that point, when we were in college, I had started experiencing traveling around Europe and could also feel the bug of wanting to travel more, so the idea was super appealing. Do you think it was a good idea? Looking back and of course, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying a good idea based on everything that happened after that, but with the information we had at the moment, what else could have done differently to decide if the idea on its own was good enough, or the best one, or like how do you pick that idea and how do we qualify this idea if it's good or not? Qualify this idea if it's?
Javier Escribano:good or not. Yeah, I mean looking at the situation in 2009 or 2010, which was when we began, I think there was this trend of mobile. It was really hot, like right now with artificial intelligence. In 2010, it was mobile. Everything was about mobile. Investments were about mobile. The second trend was about consumer apps. Like you, grow a lot social networks, you need to grow a lot your user base and then the revenue will come. So investors, at the moment, they were just worried about growth, if you remember.
Javier Escribano:It seems like nothing has changed, then Well, I would say that maybe there are more different types of investors now, but all the social networks were about growing. We were not exactly a social network. We had some capabilities that are similar to a social network not exactly so. That was another positive trend. There was roving all around Europe and, of course, in the rest of the world, something that changed years later.
Ariel Camus:It was really expensive back then to use the internet in other countries. I think that was right. Like we always talk about how any good product person will focus on problems, not on solutions, and I think maybe, if I have to pick the one problem that was the key thing we're trying to solve, was that part right Not having internet connection while traveling.
Javier Escribano:Yeah, exactly that was a clear value proposition. In fact, if you recall the articles that people wrote about us about Tourist Eye, it was mainly, yeah, the first thing. This is the app that people wrote about us about TouristEye it was mainly the first thing. This is the app that you can use when you're traveling and it works offline, and on that, I think we did a good job there, because there was a clear pain for the users and we did it in a very simple way. The problem that we didn't build a business out of it, and also probably something that we can also go deeper later, is like okay, but this is a sustainable advantage. No, how is the market going to evolve? Okay, you are the only ones doing this now, but what's going to happen in five years?
Ariel Camus:It's really hard to know that and I often struggle with that question because things change so fast that almost always you need to assume that some breakthrough might happen. It can completely change your business. That Apple or now OpenAI will launch something that will, like you know, kill whatever you're doing. An AI will launch something that will, like you know, kill whatever you're doing. But at least that big check of like are we solving a real problem that we and other people have? I think that was a clear yes, so I would agree. I also like the.
Ariel Camus:I think Reforge has this kind of condition for a good insight, not necessarily a problem to solve or an idea, but a good insight in something that is unique, something that is earned and something that is grounded in one of the elements that will make this a good business overall. And I think, when it comes to it being unique, we had what now seems like maybe not so like now might seem obvious. Back then it wasn't hey, you can have all of this in your phone. And now it's obvious right, like everyone has all the data on their phone, but back then that was not obvious to everyone. It was a wow moment for people. It was, it was um, and probably we were among the first few users to have an android phone, an iphone, in spain I mean not maybe not the first bunch of, but a few thousands in Spain. So I think, in that sense, being connected to technology really gives you that advantage of this is one way when I think about it being earned.
Ariel Camus:Earned meaning you have experienced something, worked on something that exposed you to the problem, that gave you insights into the problems. I think there was an element of it being earned because we had experienced the pain while traveling. And when it comes to being grounded in whether you know there is a competitive advantage or a clear distribution channel that will give you an advantage, or like a very strong validation for a business model there wasn't much about that. I guess the only thing that would like ground this was like we knew we were not the only ones who had that problem, and I guess that's a good place to start from. So I would agree that it was not a terrible idea, at least if we just look at that. How did we end up working together? That's one that I'm curious about your side of the story.
Javier Escribano:I mean as a background for people, we were studying the same university, same degree, uh, not in the same group of friends, right? Uh, so we're not friends there, but we were in the same school organization. Like there was different groups of students, like one. One group was about sports, another group was about claps. You know, you can can say the best word is to use the word clubs sports club, the journalism club, the telecommunications club, and we were the IEEE club, which was more about computers, electronics, and we were both there and we were both there and when we were two years before starting, both of us, you were the president of the club and I was the vice president of the club.
Ariel Camus:I was on our third year of college, I think, right.
Javier Escribano:The third year? Yeah, the third and fourth. We were two years.
Ariel Camus:Well, yeah, something like that. And, by the way, we ended up on those roles, kind of president and vice president, without really knowing each other much at that point, right?
Javier Escribano:And we were, I mean, like it was not like a big thing we did, but the activities that we organized and moving people around and organizing people like we did a good job and we worked really well together. And then I moved to the United States to do my last year and you stayed in Madrid and I will let you continue the story.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, I mean inevitably, I think that student club organization was the place that brought us together For me. I think you just said something that we were working really well together, even though it was, like you know, like kids' playgrounds, you know, at the university, the kind of things we were organizing. But I mean, I remember you bringing the at that point, director of Google to talk at the university, like you had a better capacity to grab people's attention than probably any other teacher in the school, right, and I think you've always had that capacity. Yeah, you have a really something around your person that it's attractive to, to, to, to people that want to like listen to you, they want to be close to you and maybe probably I was also attracted by that, but I think a lot of other people like this present of google back then, uh, was also part of that, and I think that there was something that brings me back to my first memory of you. I think I've told you this one, uh, the nickname salmon. I hope you don't get offended that I shared this in public.
Ariel Camus:I remember in our first year of college, someone mentioned you Again. This was like three years before we started doing something together and someone referred to you as the salmon guy, and I'm like the salmon guy. What is he talking about? Yeah, it's the guy that sits on the first row of class every day reading the salmon pages of the newspaper. The salmon pages of the newspaper in Spain and this one of the newspaper in Spain and this is one of the newspapers in Spain are the pages about economics and finance, and it's not that common that you find someone in their first year of college. They're reading every morning the newspaper on the finance and economics section. And, of course, back then, when I saw that probably stupid me, young me, not stupid me I thought what a nerd right. And much later, I think, I started appreciating wow, what a unique, interesting guy. He's clearly doing things in a different way, he clearly has other capacities and I think that was very, very, yeah, attractive. And I had also taken a very different path, especially the year you left in our last year of college, when you left in Chicago.
Ariel Camus:I stayed in Madrid, but I started working for a company while I was finishing college, and this is a company that I had connected with because I had started a project on my own related to voice over IP, which was another kind of trending technology of the moment, and I had started going to entrepreneurial events and talking about this project and I had connected that way with this person and it was through networking that I got this internship that I think paid twice as much as any other internship that our friends had.
Ariel Camus:And to me, I started noticing, ok, there are people following the traditional path and there are people who are creating their own path, and I know that the traditional path is probably not for me. I want to create my own path. Who else is out there doing the same? And, to be honest, I can't think of any other person right now, of course. I was reflecting on this a few days ago with with some other friends from college that a lot of people from our class went on to do amazing stuff, but from in terms of following a very untraditional path, starting a company I don't know if you remember anyone else doing it as early as we did.
Javier Escribano:I remember Eduardo, who went to Chicago.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, fair enough, I didn't know him, but that's another example. We even organized this event. There was this startup weekend event back then, where you spend the whole weekend building a startup with people. We decided to build the version for universities, called Uni. Weekend, I think Uni Weekend yeah, uni Weekend and that was really cool. I remember that's how we found the first member of the team. By the way, we can get to that later yeah totally.
Ariel Camus:But that was the moment of like okay, the university is not going to create this type of events for us and we believe that entrepreneurship is a really cool path. Why don't we start creating stuff? And we organized that in the university and they clearly attracted people that later on actually became co-founders and started companies. But yeah, anyway sorry, I'm going back to the main trunk of the branch here. I think it was just seeing this other person that was creating his own path. That was like okay, he's someone that, if I have the chance, I would love to continue doing things with.
Javier Escribano:Yeah, totally, I think I. I don't know if it happened that way, but what I remember is that you wrote to me one day and said hey, what are your thoughts about after you finish the master's? Are you going to stay in the United States because I want to start a company with you? Why don't we start a company with you together? And I don't know it happened that way, but in my mind you were the one who proactively proposed that to me and you were like I don't care, let's figure it out, let's think when you come back, what we have in our minds and let's choose one thing I do remember that, by the way, and I'm very glad that I did that.
Ariel Camus:Uh, probably one of the few very smart things I'm talking about but I do remember thinking like I don't care that much what he is working on or if he has already an idea, I'm definitely willing. It's not about creating my own ideas. It's about creating, creating my own path and doing it with other people that are super, you know, into doing that. Um, you met those two criteria so I was like okay, javi, what are we doing together?
Javier Escribano:the white, white choice, yeah, so, yeah, that's how we started. I came back to Spain and then we started.
Ariel Camus:You built some version, some prototype I don't remember to what level of detail while you were in Chicago of the app. Did we do any kind of validation on the idea? I don't remember.
Javier Escribano:To be honest, before going all in, I mean, in Chicago, as part of the courses that I was taking, I did kind of a business plan. I did a prototype with the Android course that I took, because I even lead a team of students. I mean, that was my first lesson on managing people and having different people from different backgrounds trying to build an app. That was like, oh my God, this is so painful. First learning is there of what kind of people I want to work with and which kind of people I don't want to work with. But when we started, I mean it was kind of what you said before, like when we were chatting about this idea with people, everyone were like oh yes, of course I want that. I have this pain.
Ariel Camus:So it was kind of this obvious pains, obvious, like yes, of course, and I guess that's not necessarily a bad thing. But I can see also the counter side of that. It's like we chose something that was kind of like a mass consumer type of problem. Something that was kind of like a mass consumer type of problem. You know, almost every person in that developed world, you know and in with with privilege in life, gets to travel, and back then every person could travel internationally, had that problem, which is. It's a pretty cool thing because if you go around and you ask a lot of random people around your privilege, you know situation, you will find a lot of people saying like yeah, I have that problem, and I think that's an amazing way of at least getting some validation that the problem is real.
Javier Escribano:And, by the way, for context for everyone, I believe that around that time also, there were a lot more free or almost free, very cheap flights from Ryanair, easyjet, et cetera, et cetera. I remember that we took several flights for one euro, two euros, when Ryanair was almost giving them away.
Ariel Camus:I flew to Porto for one cent each way with Ryanair.
Javier Escribano:30 of you from the university, you got.
Ariel Camus:Insane. I guess that was also. A lot of people were being exposed to this problem because of how cheap international traveling had become. Now I was thinking the other side of that is that when you find a problem that everyone has at such a massive market, that probably someone with way more experience, way more money, will come and also try to solve it, and when you're 22, you, you know, and you have no money, no connections, no experience, well, it can be pretty hard to compete there. I don't think we did a bad job, but it's a problem of, like you know, not going with a niche with that thing. You know, it's a another best practice why?
Javier Escribano:me know why we are going to win why are we going to win?
Ariel Camus:yeah, no, not just why us building this? I guess that made sense. We're passionate about the problem, but why will we win this? But I guess, on the other side, sometimes I feel like if you don't have access to a big, you know, to your market directly, it can also be pretty hard to validate anything. It can be a really bad place to start. So I guess, if you're very young and you don't have a track record, you don't have a career, you don't have a network of people or a way to get to a certain audience, starting with an audience that you know makes sense, and maybe that could have been college students, maybe it was people traveling. In this case, we went with people traveling.
Javier Escribano:So yeah, that makes sense. I think it was Paul Graham who said that the best market for people in their 20s is something closer to them Makes sense, something that they know that they are Because you know that market. It's very difficult. For example, the other day I was with one developer who was doing something very niche it was like for investment bankers about energy investments or something like that and they were like he talked he has only talked with only one user, but it's a client and, like man, you have to talk 20.
Ariel Camus:I don't know how you are going to meet them unless he's an expert at that, because he's been working on that for years, but someone young in their early 20s probably hasn't done that. So I think in that case, starting with the problem you have, it's probably a good yeah, um guiding principle to to start from. How do you remember the process of building the first version of of this? I mean, I guess we had had the advantage of both of us being telecommunication engineers, which means we are really bad at electronics. We're really bad at writing software, but we can do both. We were able to write code, but how do you remember the experience of building the first version of the software?
Javier Escribano:For me what I love about this how they decided which was going to be our MVP.
Ariel Camus:So tell me more. I really want to hear your story for this.
Javier Escribano:I don't remember. I honestly don't know how we reached that conclusion, but our decision was to build A website, an iPhone app, an Android app. Yeah, an MVP Exactly Cover the top 20 cities of the world. I believe it was in English and in Spanish. Great, that was our MVP. No, I don't know.
Ariel Camus:I don't know how we reached that conclusion and I guess the rest was obvious. Right, like one had to build the website, one had to build at least one of the apps. We needed another person to build the other app. So you build the website, I build the iPhone app. I had no experience whatsoever building. We haven't talked about this. Maybe today's not the day. We had decided to start some kind of like consulting incubator before this um, which got us a few clients, but we knew eventually we want to start a company.
Ariel Camus:I forgot about that it was a way to make some money that was a way to make some money which I mean made some money, but probably not enough to then fund the other thing. So we eventually decided to go all in with this, right? Um, sorry, I digress, um, yeah. So yeah, it's pretty crazy that we decided to build like three different apps and launch in a lot of cities in two languages at the same time. What will you do differently about that today? How, how will you have done it? I?
Javier Escribano:mean here we are supposing that we want to go into that path of building what we built, yes, and at the time, with it. At the time, no, because with the information I have now I would not have done that, but with the information that we had I would have chosen just one app.
Ariel Camus:No website, not two platforms, because if our value, proposition was having all the information offline.
Javier Escribano:It's just about the app and chose just one Android or iPhone, I don't know. Probably at that moment the iPhone apps were better, more traction, and probably also choose just English or Spanish. I think we chose two because Spanish was our language, English is what we want to conquer the world, uh, so probably we should have chosen maybe English and maybe cover one main country or three main cities in Europe. I don't know, we'll have to do that, narrowing everything.
Ariel Camus:And I think it's a very common mistake, right? I mean, if people will use this and some people use this type of phone, and some people have used this type of phone, and some people use a website and some people try to do this or do this, or speak this language or this language, you have to satisfy them right, and otherwise you're going to lose a lot of customers. But we know the problem that by trying to do all of that at the same time, each individual piece either takes much longer or is of a much lower quality, so you end up wasting time and precious resources.
Javier Escribano:Having said that, I would have done things differently, but I think we also got a lot of press and a lot of users because we were covering all platforms, so it was easy for anyone to try our product.
Ariel Camus:That's definitely true.
Javier Escribano:I don't know if we would have chosen just English, just iPhone, just some country, we would have grown so fast.
Ariel Camus:The first press we got, which I guess is a typical example of an unsustainable growth channel, by the way. But we actually used it a lot and I have some theories of how that helped other types of growth, by the way. But I guess we could have done just Spanish media first, because, as far as I remember, some of the first media we got was just in Spain and international media came a little bit later. From that point of view, we could have done just Spanish, just Spanish media, if we wanted to still leverage PR.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, now, I was thinking how mobile played not just a massive role in the capabilities to solve the problem well, or where the problem was, which was you were traveling outside of the country with your phone and the phone was the enabler because now you could have all the data on a smart device, but it was also the distribution channel.
Ariel Camus:Right, I think probably we had a little hack with the chrome web store at some point that brought us maybe one sixth, one seventh of the users. But everything else came mostly from the aso, like app store search optimization, where we worked a lot, and I do have the theory that the press allows to get this initial boost on the app store by, you know, condensing back then. I don't know on now how it works anymore, but like having, uh, the measurement to position yourself in the in the app was based on, in a given window of time, how many downloads you had. So, like price was really good to push the algorithm up, and the higher you went, the more that people will find you organically, which brought more traffic, which fed the algorithm even more. So I think that usage of PR, while unsustainable on its own, was a really good way to boost the more sustainable channel which was the App Store, completely.
Javier Escribano:I mean, we were the first ones doing that. I don't think I recall that incorrectly, but I think we were truly the first ones doing offline maps.
Ariel Camus:If not the first yeah among the first three companies. Yeah, maybe there's like for traveling.
Javier Escribano:maybe there is someone or open up that was still launching just those months, but for focusing on traveling, I think TripWolf was another one.
Ariel Camus:It was a German company. At least from our side it looked like they had way more money and experience. But they also went with a very different approach of one app per country. It was a whole different thing.
Javier Escribano:Yeah, a mess. So we're the first ones. Yeah, we got that. That definitely helped as well. As a new platform opens, a new marketplace opens. If you are the first ones in that marketplace, if that marketplace has a lot of users, you are going to receive a lot of users. So the same happens with Shopify, same happens with any other marketplace.
Ariel Camus:And I think that's definitely the other principle where timing is important. What is a problem that has a growing market right now? What is a problem that has an enabling technology that supports a solution? Why now can? What is unique about the now that can enable a new type of distribution? And I think that's where mobile comes in again. So I think that timing plays such a huge role on well everything in life, but definitely for startups is big and and I guess there is a part of timing you can't control, you can't guess what's going to happen. But you can be always trying to be connected to whatever is happening in the tech world and what's and trying things and keep yourself there and and try to ask yourself what am I doing with whatever I'm building that is leveraging, that is tapping into this stuff, that it's now that is happening for the first time? Yeah, yeah.
Javier Escribano:And you have to move fast. Oh yeah, for example, with the Chrome that you were mentioning, like Chrome also opened their marketplace so people could install apps in Chrome which were just like websites, linked websites or something like that we moved fast. I don't know. I don't recall exactly the specific detail. I don't know if we were contacted or we decided to go. But, as you said, I think we did something very simple, because it was just almost a link to our website, but it was just uploading our icon description and doing something very basic. It got us maybe 200,000 users.
Ariel Camus:That's a number that I remember too, but I also think that it helped that we were doing. One thing I would say quite well, I'm curious about your opinion and it's something that I think we both carry with us, even nowadays and probably we are a pain in the neck for people because of this and it's the attention to detail when it comes to design, both UI and UX, and I think we both had probably some innate interest or attention to that type of detail. But going back to what I said before of when we organized this like weekend in the university creating startups, one guy came in, diego. He was probably what like 19 or 18, 18, 19 I don't know how he found us, we should ask him and he, you know, came by himself. He started helping people, you know, with the designing stuff over the weekend, and I remember we both seen his skills at design and we were like we need him to join us and Diego, if you're listening, he was.
Javier Escribano:I mean, he's still pretty good, he's working.
Ariel Camus:He's amazing. No, no, no, but I agree, for an 18, 19, 20-year-old he was amazing. And the reason I mentioned Diego, well, I'm also super grateful that we got to work with him, but also I think he was the person that taught me the importance of not each individual detail when it comes to design, but how the aggregate of the details can make or break a user experience. Right, and I remember, because I was building the iOS app, one day he said the hamburger menu you know the little three lines at the top to open the menu. It's one pixel higher than it should be.
Ariel Camus:And I remember looking at him and thinking, really, one pixel, I'm going to have to go and change it just because of one pixel. And he told me, okay, yeah, but there's also one pixel here, one pixel here, one pixel there, one pixel. And I said, okay, sure, I'll do it. It. And I changed all the pixels one by one, little here, a little there and the result was like, oh, wow, this does look much better. Right, and I'm a pain in the neck now to people because I do pay a lot of attention to that, but I do think the connection here is that I think the reason we were also successful at different levels. For example, when Chrome selected us to highlight us in the Chrome web store was because we had created something that was beautiful, that had really good presentation, also very usable but also very beautifully looking, which they were trying to highlight and that we did a great job.
Javier Escribano:I wonder if don't you think that maybe we're too slow or focusing too much on the details or when we're building features.
Ariel Camus:Yes, for sure, because we're not validating things. We were just building ideas that we had that we thought were going to work, and we built them for iOS, for Android and for the website, and we launched them together and it took us months. So, yes, we were slow because I guess two things one, we were doing all these platforms at the same time, when we were still too, I guess, young or we hadn't found really product market fit, and two, because we were not following best practices that we know nowadays, like hey, why don't you interview people, why don't you do prototypes first and show them to people before you actually build the stuff, which takes much longer. So that's my opinion. I don't know what you think.
Javier Escribano:No, no for sure, that's what we learned the hard way.
Ariel Camus:We learned. We launched a lot of things that proved not to be the success that we imagined in our heads, and we were lucky with other things. I think we had good ideas, but I think we could have moved way faster if we had followed those best practices. We know today that we didn't know back then, and not just us. I think there was not a world of resources aligned to tell you what best practices are and what they're not. There were no good books or courses or incubators or even articles.
Javier Escribano:Or articles.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, today there are even podcasts like this one. So let's talk about the Adly part, the business model. What did we miss? I don't even remember us thinking about this like we're like okay, let's just grow, let's get a lot of users uh, there that was everyone was how everyone was behaving.
Javier Escribano:we were like one part of the herd, you know, like, yeah, behaving like everyone, like just that's insane to one million to 5 million users, and then we will figure it out. Even investors, I mean, like I don't want, I will never complain about the investors telling me something because it's my decision. But almost everyone was telling us, uh like, uh, focus on growth, focus on growth. And then when we started focusing on revenue because we had no money, uh, it was hard to raise. Yeah, that got the badly we, I think.
Ariel Camus:Correct me if I'm wrong with some of the numbers. I I couldn't find all these specific numbers, but I think we raised like 20 25 000 from friends and family, that that was the first funding right, maybe Around that. I think, just so that we could go full time into this and spend some money on some stuff, yeah. And then it took us a while to raise our first round of 120K euros.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, something like that which wow how things have changed and how much we did with that money. 120k euros, yeah, something like that which wow how things have changed and how much we did With that money, of course, paying ourselves.
Javier Escribano:On that, I think we did Well or not spending money.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, absolutely, at least. I think it's very different when you are, you know, on your early 20s, or if you already have kids, like it's the case today, like probably you can't go on, I mean, unless you have a lot of money saved from, like, some exit or something. So I think in that case, either you if we were, you know where we are today either you raise some money from the beginning because of the track record you have and use that money to find product market fit, but you know, or well, you have savings a lot or build prototype things on the side while you have a part-time job. I think it's hard to do with the full-time job, but a part-time job could work, but as as a 21, 22, 23 year old no, no responsibilities, like you know you can live very frugally. It was amazing, we did it and I mean I had a lot of fun doing that.
Javier Escribano:You know almost, we were cooking in our.
Ariel Camus:Yeah well, the first office was the robotics club in the university. Funny story I was playing paddle. I was in a paddle class this morning and the trainer who's working with me, um, is a friend of rosa who is now in miami, who was the first journalist from el pais, you know, one of the biggest, if not the biggest, newspaper in spain. I remember coming to the robotics club in the university to do an interview of us, which I still think it's somewhere in youtube, I look very young.
Javier Escribano:That was. That was fun, uh pr worked for us.
Ariel Camus:That, uh, that's interesting. Yeah, anyways, like you know which? I still think it's somewhere in YouTube, I look very young. That was that was fun. Uh, pr worked for us. That's, uh, that's interesting. Yeah, anyways, like you know, we raised 120. We're super frugal. Our second office was shared with these lawyers. Um, I really have good memories of those times. We had these very tiny office that used to be used by one lawyer, where we built this type of war room where we could fit six of us Six or seven maybe and cooking together in the kitchen of the office. Those were really good times.
Ariel Camus:And, yes, then we ran out of money. Of course, we were not making any money. We were growing but not making money. We were really struggling to raise money in Spain I have written about this recently somewhere, about this that I remember complaining that investors were not willing to take risks. We were growing a lot and this was going to be a huge business, and Spanish investors were not willing to take risks. I remember this conversation with one of our investors where we say, hey, we just have, I think, like one or two more months of money left, uh, which now it's crazy to think about it and um, we're not being able to raise, we're gonna have to shut down, or what do we do?
Javier Escribano:and we were. By the way, we had a team of four of four people, still small.
Ariel Camus:but yeah, and and I think I don't know if it was this investor, I think it was renee, or maybe you or maybe me, I don't know who brought up the idea of like what, if we ask the team to you know, would they be okay not getting paid for a few months until we actually raised the round, if we raise it, which is a big if, and everyone said yes, which I think was the first time in my life that I was well, not the first time, but it was one of the times in my life that I felt the most grateful to other people that was very generous.
Javier Escribano:Full trust in us no.
Ariel Camus:Absolutely.
Javier Escribano:Full trust that, hey, we don't know if you're going to make it, but we trust you guys. Let's try to do it. Let's burn the last ticket.
Ariel Camus:Let's definitely try. I think we offered them something in exchange for this risk.
Javier Escribano:Yeah, we were going to pay them extra. I don't know if it was an extra month. I don't remember if it was an extra month, something like that. I don't remember exactly the detail, but If and when we raised money. If and when they were going to get an extra month.
Ariel Camus:I think I don't know if I've told you, but I had to use this again later on in my career. And again another example showing in which many ways this experience shaped us.
Ariel Camus:When we were trying to raise our Series A with Microverse, there was a time where we had much more confidence than in this case that it was a matter of time that we were going to reach a point with the metrics to be able to raise the Series A, but we were not there yet and the runway was little and I had to go to the team and it was a much larger team, of like 25 people, I think and I had to say, hey, I think I have high confidence that it's about this number of months. But high confidence doesn't mean certainty, and this was right before Christmas. I was really dreading having to tell this to the team and I said, like the entire exec team is going to reduce their salary by half. We're going to ask everyone else to reduce it by 25, but it's not uh, it's not that you're letting go that salary, it's that you're delaying that salary and for every dollar that you delay when we raise the series a, we will give you another I don't know know 25 cents for every extra, for every dollar that you delay. So the minimum is 25%, but you can delay more than that, which gives us more cash.
Ariel Camus:And not only everyone reacted again so generously to this, but a lot of people decided to delay even more. A lot of people decided to delay even more. A lot of people decided to help other people. There was one person particularly who was in a very difficult financial situation. They knew this and they knew that this person having to delay a salary was going to be a big issue for them. A lot of people came and said, ariel, I want to delay more so that this other person doesn't have to do it. Man, those moments of very complicated challenges, when people are so generous and so committed to me, they make it worth it for sure.
Javier Escribano:Yeah, I mean, this is something that happens. If you have built a good culture, you have been a good leader, people can trust you. They are not there just for the job. They are there because they believe in the mission. They trust the exact team, founders, etc.
Ariel Camus:So what did we do to build for Tourist Eye ?
Javier Escribano:it's more. No, I don't know.
Ariel Camus:I know when I, I promise I'm not gonna edit that silence, because I think that silence is part of the answer.
Javier Escribano:I mean, like, if I recall, in next startups, I did things on purpose. We were just working, trying to fight, trying to build a great product, trying to work better together. I think one thing that we did well I think it's also our personality is that we listen. It was not just this is what we believe, I don't care about what you say, let's do that. No, I believe that we listen. We were people bringing their problems, their proposals, and in that way, we were that kind of leader. We had that kind of leadership.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, I think it was not a command and execute.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, no, no, no, it was a very First. I guess. Naturally, people were following a lot of our ideas, but at the same time, I think we never had to, like you know, play a card of like authority to make decisions, or I think it was a place where everyone could contribute to whatever decision was being made. And I think the other thing is being weird, being an outlier. This is a theme that has come up before in the podcast with other founders. Doing things in a unique way means that a lot of people won't understand. You will criticize you, but those who follow you, you will have something that no one else can offer them.
Javier Escribano:Right, and I think, going back to this, idea of creating our own path.
Ariel Camus:We were offering also that path to other people who also wanted to you know build startups, and there were not too many. Options were like a 20, were like where an 18 year old could build startup while continuing his you know studies.
Javier Escribano:So that probably helps no, especially not in spain it's definitely not in spain, probably in silicon valley. There was already um, you know in new york, london, berlin, yes, but it was a desert absolutely a lot.
Ariel Camus:How much has that changed? It's been fascinating after a few years living in the US and we can talk about that in a moment like coming back and seeing how much the entrepreneurial ecosystem had changed in Spain.
Javier Escribano:That was such an amazing surprise to me, which then takes us to the US, but before we go there, what do you think we should have done differently on the business side?
Ariel Camus:Yeah, on the business side.
Javier Escribano:What was the hypothesis? What was our mistake?
Ariel Camus:I think we have someone else who told us exactly what our problem was, and this is Francois Derbe from Indexa Capital. He used to be running Top Rural back then. He by the way, he didn't invest in Tourist Eye. He ended up becoming an investor in my current company, Microverse. And I remember this piece of advice so clearly because it was so sharp, so smart. He said you guys are too far away from the transaction. You're too distant to the moment where the transfer of value, of money, takes place.
Ariel Camus:In the travel industry, the transfer of value, most of it, gets captured in the moment where you make a reservation. We were an app to inspire people and to help people plan their trips, not the app where people will go, because we were top of mind to make the reservations, which meant we didn't get to capture the value. Someone else did like, you know, booking, uh, did that? Um, I think we tried to integrate some features. We tried, we integrated with bookingcom. We did a full onon integration without any validation, With the idea that, okay, then people will come to plan their trips, they will see that they can book the hotel with us and we're going to get a commission. Yes, we made some money with that, but we were not the place, the go-to place for people who wanted to book a hotel.
Javier Escribano:So to me that was we were late, we were either too early or too late?
Ariel Camus:exactly, yes, and I guess, like we I remember we were talking about is there any company that's trying to solve the inspiration and planning problem has been able to create a successful, sustainable business model? There are not too many, but I think you share one with me. I would love for you to share why you think this other company actually made it work.
Javier Escribano:Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean I recall that we have many competitors raising thousands of millions of dollars compared to our small budget. I mean I'm proud of what we achieved with so little budget compared to others, but it's true that 10 years later or 12 years later, no one has been successful, like many companies have closed or they have moved into the transaction part of the business. Yeah, I mean, the only example that I can recall that I talked to the founders was these guys who were focused on Iceland, focused on Iceland. They were focused on inspiring people to come to Iceland, to inspire them, to help them discover activities to do there, but they were close to the transaction, so they capture people through inspiration.
Javier Escribano:Because they were really good at SEO, most of their growth and volume came from SEO because they didn't have many competitors. This was probably before the volcano exploded, before everyone wanted to go to Iceland, so they were the main ones creating content for Iceland and then they did a transaction, so they got money from the transaction. This is where they got money and, in fact, if we visit their website now it's fully transactional. It's fully transactional. I mean, like five years ago it was a lot of inspiring content, articles, et cetera. Now it's full activities.
Ariel Camus:What do you think they did? Because we had our distribution. For them it was SEO, the distribution channel, for us it was ASO, you know, in the app stores. We both started with the planning. They went with a niche, right, they went just island. We did the whole you know world in two languages. But then we also tried to integrate some transactional elements, allowing people to book activities, I think, and hotels. Why did they make it work and why didn't we? I mean the niche part.
Javier Escribano:I think it helps. But if we did just Mallorca, ibiza, imagine that we just focus on Ibiza, mallorca and the top places of party of people going in summer, probably it's closer that you are the best ones at that. We were not the best ones in the content.
Ariel Camus:We definitely were not the best ones.
Javier Escribano:We weren't good enough in many cases In other areas we were like poor. We had content of secondary cities.
Ariel Camus:How does that content help you with the transactional side of things?
Javier Escribano:I think one of the key things is that in this particular case of Iceland, you go there to do activities. It's not that you visit a museum or you visit that street or you visit that restaurant. No, worries, because we were, I believe we were really focused on the main cities in Paris, in Rome, and you go for a walk. You don't do activities on those places. Of course you do, but it's not like Iceland. In Iceland, you constantly do activities. You can do one per day. I wonder you know like in that case, the content-aware activities was the same. I was discovering, inspired why I should go there. I have everything here. I believe also that they kind of created the login I think they were. If I recall now, they talked to many people there to create hosting, like talking to Airbnb of iFly, so they had a unique thing to offer that you couldn't find anywhere else.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, okay, I wonder if there is also an element of accepting where the money is and allowing yourself or allowing your product to evolve, to become what it needs to become in order to be a good business. Right, and I think in our heads we were listening to each other and our team members a lot, but maybe not necessarily to the market enough, probably not talking to our users enough. I think we had a much more prescriptive well, problem and solution. We need planning for our trips. Let's build a planner that works offline, but the market, from a business point of view, is transactions, so probably we never went truly all in on positioning the product as, or trying at least. It's a difficult market where that's where I think the niche helps you. Right. If you will position yourself as they go to place to transact and you want to do it globally, you need to be bookingcom. But if you just want to do it for iceland, there might bea way to compete with bookingcom even if you're small, right? Yeah, totally.
Javier Escribano:I think that was. I mean one other thing what could we have done differently two years in? Okay, we started with that value prop, with that pain, yeah, it was a good start. But two years in, when we already knew that it was not easy to get money out of that, what could we have done differently? Because, if you recall, we did a full refactor of the backend and the frontend. So I think that was three years after and we rebuilt the same product. Same product, yeah, With less features, but simple UX, but same concept. And I agree with you, Maybe we should have chosen exactly. You know, like, hey, focus on I don't know Visa, Focus on and go all in with the transactions.
Ariel Camus:All in on transactions Right and then you can have, yeah, like features that no one else have on the maybe some planning. You know features and stuff Exactly.
Javier Escribano:But not the planning being the first. Be the best one at something.
Ariel Camus:Absolutely At something where there is money. For sure there's money, yeah, but I think of course the timing now it's a little bit fuzzy, but I remember when we ran out of money, we asked the team to take a salary cut and not get a salary for a while. We were able to raise some more money, and at least the story that I tell myself. I'm here to hear yours. Well, actually, what is your story? What happened after that?
Javier Escribano:If I recall, that's 2012,. March, April, 2012. And then we pitched into because we were trained to go to the United States. We were talking with an accelerator. We got rejected in late 2011 or beginning of 2012. But then, in June 2012, we got accepted by 500 startups.
Ariel Camus:I think that was a little later, a little later.
Javier Escribano:We didn't get money. I think that was a little later.
Ariel Camus:A little later, we didn't get money. No, so we raised money from you know angels in Spain. After that, and at some point again, this is a story that I tell myself because it makes sense, but maybe back then it was slightly different. It was like let's not just stay in Spain, where investors are not willing to give us money. Let's go where the money is, where all our competitors are racing big rounds. That's San Francisco, the Bay Area. One of us had to move there. I don't know how did we decide that it was going to be me? I'm, by the way, extremely grateful for that and for generosity. Do you remember? Why did you decide not to go? Why me?
Javier Escribano:I mean, I think it's because you wanted it more. No, I think maybe two reasons. One, you wanted it more. I was like I could go, but I'm not like super engaged with being there. And second, you were already starting to be closer to business, closer to investors. That's true. In a way, you were also more comfortable talking to investors. I was more comfortable, like building the project yeah, that I think.
Ariel Camus:I think that checks um. So, because you were going to stay with the rest of the team in spain, exactly, it made more sense for you to stay closer with the, the team building the product, and for me, because I had been a little more focused on fundraising at the end, it made more sense to go and talk to investors. I remember landing in San Francisco in, I think, august, august, september, 2012. Going, we had oh okay, so 500 startups had no, not 500, plug Play had invested in our land in Spain, they were opening in Spain and they had invested in us and they gave us a little hand. Going to, you know, getting our first meetings with investors in Silicon Valley. And I remember getting to the first investor meeting.
Ariel Camus:My English back then was very bad. It was really difficult. I had a fever because I had gotten some vaccines and stuff. I got there like 15 minutes late because I didn't know about the traffic of 101 in San Francisco. And I got there and the investor told me sorry, I had half an hour for you and I only have 15 minutes. I'm going to be very direct. You are wasting your time here. You should go back to Spain because you're not going to get money here, and I was like, great, what a great way to start my journey in Silicon Valley.
Ariel Camus:But then a person that we had met in the previous trip to San Francisco, joyce. I reconnected with her and she told me Ariel, you have an amazing product, an amazing team, a lot of users. You just need to really get better connections here. You need to believe that you deserve to be here, and I know no one better for that than Dave McClure at 500 Startups. You should apply. I know him. I recommend you. Five days later, or a week later, we got into 500 startups. This was, I think, october, maybe September, october of 2012.
Javier Escribano:It was September, because that was when Frank joined. We told him welcome, we're moving to San Francisco.
Ariel Camus:And we moved the entire team well, almost everyone to do the whole, to mount a mute to the program with us. That was an amazing experience and I repeated that with the next company while we went through Y Combinator. I got a house for the entire team to also be part of the experience. It's an amazing bonding opportunity that helped, but not really. I mean I think it definitely helped, but not in the. I mean it definitely helped, but not in the way that at least I expected.
Ariel Camus:I would have expected that to help us with fundraising and I think what we encountered instead was the same answers as in Spain, like, yeah, you know, you have a lot of users, but, sorry, we're going to pass. And I don't know if many people told us it's because you're not making any money and we need growth and money. But the reality was that we were not raising money and again we found ourselves running out of cash and, yeah, and knowing probably that, asking the team to do the same thing again, a slightly larger team, we had less energy, we had more dilution. There was nothing that I think we were convinced enough that was gonna change drastically to and you know, allow us to raise more money than before and we had, I guess, two options to sell, or we stopped believing.
Ariel Camus:We stopped believing um, I think I don't know if if this is true or not, but it had been maybe what like four years, maybe even five at that point, which is a lot of time, and I think we had had a lot of fun, learned a lot, and they were starting to run out of energy. And people say, you know, startups die not when they run out of capital, but when founders run out of energy, and I think our energy was coming to an end. How do you remember that time? How did we decide what to do next?
Javier Escribano:Yeah, I think that was it. We're like, hey, we're not off ideas or not off energy. I remember that we talked a lot about, hey, we need to move into the transaction side. But oh my God, this is starting from scratch again, like we have no money. So it's like what's our best approach, what's our next best move? And we decided to explore selling the company.
Ariel Camus:And we decided to explore selling the company. It was that or shutting down, because we were not very into trying to raise more money. I mean, I had spent six months in San Francisco talking to like hundreds of investors and not being able to raise. I think we had had a few investors that were like, yeah, once you get the lead investor, I'll put some money Exactly we had except this lead had and we couldn't find.
Ariel Camus:Luckily because of all the meetings with all the investors and, I think, also 500 startups, helped in many ways, Like we had connected with tons of companies and people, and I remember someone that we had also met there told me Ariel, you have very little time, so if you want to make this happen before running out of money, you have to be very disciplined about it. You have to make a list of every single company and person you know who might be interested in buying your business or any piece of your business, and you need to reach out to all of them. Tell them very clearly two things Everything amazing you have to offer and clearly a message that you're looking for some kind of, like you know, selling movement. And that's what we did. We put a list together of like 30 different companies, from Facebook and Yahoo to much you know well, like specific travel companies, like Expedia, smaller companies, and we I remember sending that email we, you know saying hey, you know we've known each other for a while.
Ariel Camus:We have been discussing, as you know, we have this amazing, small but mighty team with a lot of experience on mobile, a lot of experience on social and a lot of experience on travel. The intersection of those three things is rare, even in 2012, 2013. And we have a lot of users. We have this amazing technology that we have created. We also have a lot of content for a lot of places. Probably we didn't say that it wasn't the best quality, but also have a lot of content for a lot of places. Probably we didn't say that it wasn't the best quality, but we had a lot of content for a lot of places in two languages. We're looking for opportunities to join efforts with someone else and that got us, I think, 16 responses, which was awesome, yeah the response was good, really good.
Javier Escribano:It was interesting.
Ariel Camus:And then out of that I think there were like eight half of that making some kind of due diligence. I remember we had to tell the team hey, this is what it is and these other companies interested in us might want to interview you because they might want to hire the team as part of the acquisition. So they did that and we ended up getting offers from two companies. One company was interested in just our content and the other one just in our users. But once they did a deep due diligence in the quality of the content, they lowered the price. Once the other one did an audience on the not the audience, but the geographical segment, quality of the content they lowered the price. Once the other one did an audience on the not the audience, but the geographical segmentation of the users they were also okay, now we're only interested in these ones. The offers were like, I mean, an exit is better than nothing, but it wasn't a big deal. And this is where Silicon Valley, like the magic of Silicon Valley, comes in.
Ariel Camus:Like an email that I had sent like three, four months before to someone that no longer worked at Lonely Planet. Had given me the email of another person and I called email that other person who never responded to me. But that person turned out to be an Argentinian too, who started following us without even responding to my email, told the CEO of Lonely Planet about us and one day, when we had received these two offers and we were kind of like, okay, this is what it is, it was just a week.
Javier Escribano:It was just exactly a week, yeah.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, like timing again. Right, Timing is so important. By the way, I had given up on a trip to Tanzania because I had broken up with my girlfriend at the time and, instead of going to Tanzania, I had decided to stay in San Francisco. The day that I should have landed in Tanzania, I got the email from the CEO of Lonely Planet saying Ariel, you don't know me, but we have been following you guys for a while. I'm in San Francisco today. If you want to have dinner, I would love to chat. And yeah, two weeks later, we're traveling to Nashville, Tennessee, to negotiate the acquisition for like 10 times what the other offers had been.
Javier Escribano:It was time. Yeah, it was like I mean, it made so much sense, so it was like it was a matter of hey, I'm here, like let's chat, no.
Ariel Camus:That's what I'm saying, that it made sense to them. But we had built a product for a customer. We just didn't know the customer and it was a really bad way of validating that we were going to find the customer. But we ended up selling the technology and the team.
Ariel Camus:For the most part, I think those were the two most valuable things to a company that needed a team with our expertise and that needed the technology instead of building it from scratch. You know we were lucky, but also we were at the right you know place at the right time and we survived long enough for that to happen, which is not a little accomplishment try to spend as little as possible. It's uh, trying trying to survive absolutely, um, what would?
Ariel Camus:you give yourself a lot of possibilities, give yourself a lot of options for sure, and at least build something that you know it's creating value. I mean, of course, validating the business model and not ignoring that part can probably go a long way too, but sometimes, even if that's not how it ends up working, the learnings, the connections and selling you know the technology can also be part of the success. What will you tell your 22 year old self if you can go back in time? Say little heavy. Let me tell you something.
Javier Escribano:I mean maybe what I will tell myself on when I was at age, maybe what I will tell a person now of that age. I think I would have done it again, building my own startup. Of course, I would have said to those people who want to try and do something by their own I try to validate that you have value, usable, technical feasibility and business viability. So that's really important. But if not, or if you will have time to do it, I think most important, something that maybe you can learn more like try to find a startup which is growing, where there are good leaders, and learn a lot from there. Like do whatever If and learn a lot from there. Like do whatever you know.
Javier Escribano:If another option in my career would have been like joining a startup in Silicon Valley when I was in D2, it was potentially an option I had options to. I mean, I had the visa to stay there, united States. I had options to and, of course, I think it could have been a great experience, and people who do it also it's a. For me it's a great experience and people who do it also it's a. For me it's a great option. Like join a place that you are really going to learn. But focus on learning, not just on money. Focus on a great manager, a great leader, focus on learning whatever it takes, and then you will have advanced much more fast. And within a startup is a way to achieve that, because you have to do lots of things and you have to learn about everything, so also you will accelerate your learning I think it's a really good piece of advice.
Ariel Camus:Um, I don't think it's necessarily better or worse than doing your own thing. I think it has pros and cons, but it's definitely a definitely another guaranteed way of learning a lot at an accelerated pace. So for sure it's a really good one For me.
Javier Escribano:For you. What do you think?
Ariel Camus:Yeah, I think I consider myself very lucky that, even though things never worked out the way we expected in the moment, they always worked out in different ways in amazing ways, but differently. But throughout the entire journey, I think I've been able to enjoy every step, regardless of the destination you know to go with the cliche right to enjoy the journey, not the destination.
Ariel Camus:You know to go with the cliche right to enjoy the journey, not the destination, and I think maybe that's something I could tell myself. It's like you know it's, it's gonna be even better than you imagine, it's gonna be how you imagine it, but keep enjoying of every day, whatever you're doing, because that's the only thing you can count on. But you know, don't rush it, it's gonna be pretty epic uh yeah.
Ariel Camus:And I wouldn't be surprised if, as long as you're taking care of yourself, you build your startup with a person or a team that you feel aligned with. I do think it's a recipe for a lot of growth and learning and adventures, and you know your 20s, I I mean. There are other types of adventures. You can travel a lot, you're partying a lot and if you like that type of adventure, I feel like it's a very safe bet, even if the business model doesn't work yeah, totally well I mean, it's true that people say.
Javier Escribano:Many people say no, not everyone can afford to to do that, because you need to have either parents who can host you you can keep living with you or you can be somewhere which is cheap to live with and you need a little money, or you don't. So there are some people, it's true, that they cannot afford that. So in a way, it's also a privilege to start a company. It is. It is, and if you can do it, a privilege to start a company.
Ariel Camus:It is, it is.
Javier Escribano:If you can do it, yeah. Spend as little as possible and fight.
Ariel Camus:And, if not, join a startup. Spend as little as possible and fight Well, Javi, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. It's been very therapeutical and insightful to process all of this shared story and I look forward to doing more stuff together in the future.
Javier Escribano:Looking forward to the next Take care. Javi Bye.
Ariel Camus:Eril, thank you so much for tuning in. Your support means the world to me. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review. It's one of the best ways you can help this podcast get off the ground and help more entrepreneurs like you. Thank you and until the next episode.
