Journy · B2C · trip planning service
Use one buyer's offer to pull in rival bids, then return to your favorite
Preferred buyer agreed to pay double its first offer
Workedexit-ma
What they did
To find jobs for her team, reached out to a bunch of companies; 3 days later Hopper made an acqui-hire offer. Used it to get Expedia to offer to buy the whole company for a lot more, then brought in Lonely Planet, which offered more still. Went back to Hopper: 'we'd rather go with you, we're more excited about your vision, but you're going to have to pay double now.' Existing investors then also offered to recap the company and lead a new round.
What happened
Hopper agreed to pay double its original offer and acquired Journy in 2021. Exit price not disclosed.
- Stage
- exit
“so I reached out to a bunch of companies to see who wanted to hire our team, and 3 days later, I got an acqui-hire offer from Hopper. And then I was like, "Okay, I think I can leverage this." Then I took that and I turned it into an offer from Expedia to actually to buy the full company, right?”
“And then I got Lonely Planet in, and they offered to pay even more money for the company. And then I went back to Hopper and I was like, "Hey, guys. Uh we'd rather go with you. We're more excited about your vision, but you're going to have to pay double now." And they were like, "Okay."”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
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: Pivot to business customers, local trips and online experiences during COVIDNothing worked; couldn't raise more money either
- 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