Journy · B2C · trip planning service
Pivot to business customers, local trips and online experiences during COVID
Nothing worked; couldn't raise more money either
Failedpositioning-nichemarket-selection
What they did
When COVID killed travel, tried pivoting Journy to B2B, from international to domestic travel, and to virtual online experiences, while trying to raise more money from existing and new investors.
What happened
Nothing worked and fundraising stalled; she prepared to shut down and find jobs for the team, which led to the acquisition.
- Stage
- crisis
“I tried everything I could. I was pivoting the business to B2B. We were going from international travel to domestic travel, like all of these these things. Like we did virtual online experiences. Like nothing Nothing was working, right?”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Journy: Charge $6 a day for trip planning aimed at tech-savvy millennialsToo cheap to live on or to trust; 80% of revenue came from boomers
- Journy: Pitch investors before you have a working growth engine180 rejections over about 6 months
- Journy: Pack nine investor meetings into two days in one citySeed round closed in 2 days with three term sheets
- Journy: Spend heavily on marketing and press coverage early onDidn't work; founder calls it wasted money, no details given
- Journy: Use one buyer's offer to pull in rival bids, then return to your favoritePreferred buyer agreed to pay double its first offer
- Sell $19 PDF travel guides from a landing page before building the app$3,000 in sales in the first month
- The Evolved Founder: Post founder videos on Instagram about your journey and expertise20K+ followers from 26 posts; one video drove 500K views, 2,000+ sign-ups
- The Evolved Founder: Test two hooks as Instagram trial reels, then post the winner to your feedWinning hook hit ~50K views vs 500; ~3,000 new followers in a day
- The Evolved Founder: Have Claude interview you to write scripts, then film five videos at onceLets her post alongside a full-time job with no editor; no numbers
- Use round prices like $19.99 or $29.99, not $22.99Round prices won in a community member's A/B test; no numbers
- Label the paywall button 'Start free trial' on Android and 'Continue' on iPhoneBeat 'Subscribe' in a community member's A/B test; no numbers
- Offer phone cleaner apps as a weekly plan with a 3-day trialHost says weekly tends to win across cleaner apps he's worked with; no numbers
- Put the year, 'New' and a clean-up message on an Android cleaner iconHost says these icon tricks have worked before; no numbers