June 17, 2025 • 40 mins
Socialbnb is a marketplace for responsible travel alternatives. What started as a student initiative has grown into a platform supporting 500+ organizations across 45 countries. Nils Lohmann and Alexander Haufschild proved their marketplace concept through two years of manual operations before hitting the limits of their WordPress setup and bringing their idea to life as a full-scale marketplace with Sharetribe.
What you'll learn:
- The value of validating a marketplace idea by starting with manual operations and one project
- Why launching during COVID-19 taught the founders the value of "positive naivety"
- How they transitioned from a "Frankenstein's monster" WordPress site to a proper marketplace platform
- Why socialbnb chooses to curate hosts rather than allow open listings to maintain impact credibility
- How word-of-mouth and storytelling drive demand for authentic travel experiences
- A business model insight to align monetization with impact: only charge travelers, keep the platform free for communities
- Why starting "niche" often beats starting "big and global" for marketplace founders
Episode transcript: https://www.sharetribe.com/customers/socialbnb/
Where to find Nils Lohmann and socialbnb:
- Nils's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nils-socialbnb/
- socialbnb's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/socialbnb/
- socialbnb: https://socialbnb.org/
Where to find Mira and Sharetribe:
- Mira's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mira-muurinen-2798a851
- Sharetribe's LinkedIn: https://fi.linkedin.com/company/sharetribe-ltd
- Sharetribe: https://www.sharetribe.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What I would do differently is definitely talk
(00:02):
even more and even earlier withour travelers, with our
customers on where they want togo and what would they expect
from a platform like us. I thinkit would have been easier for us
to focus maybe on three, four,five countries in the beginning,
build like a stronger network inthose countries, focus on
marketing these specificcountries, building them up as
like responsible impactdestinations from the get go,
(00:24):
which would have made it easierto market these specific
destinations. So we always loveto start big and start global,
but I think sometimes it's aswell very good to start niche,
get to know your customer, getto know the problem that you're
solving for them, get arecognition for being the
provider for this specific thingor this specific country in our
case, and then grow from therewith an existing customer base.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Hey there,
Speaker 3 (00:52):
and welcome to another ShareTribe founder
story. I'm Mira, and today Iwant to share a conversation I
had with Neil Sloman thathonestly left me feeling really
inspired about the future oftravel. So we all love to
travel, but there's often thisnagging feeling that tourism
doesn't always benefit theplaces we visit. Well, Niels and
(01:13):
his team at Social BNB areworking to change this. Social
BNB started as a student projecthelping one man in Cambodia
build a school.
This experience made Niels andhis co founder realize there's a
real opportunity for tourists tohave a positive impact if only
they could be connected withlocal organizations and
communities. Today, Social BNBis a share trap powered platform
(01:34):
that connects travelers withover 500 social and
environmental projects across 45countries. It offers everything
from home stays to multi dayexperiences and even complete
impact focused round trips. Themission is to leave both sides,
the travelers and the localcommunities, with a long lasting
positive impact. The journeyhasn't always been easy.
(01:57):
Social BNB started with Nielsand his team literally
forwarding emails betweentravelers and hosts. Then the
platform evolved to what Nielscalls a Frankenstein's monster
of a WordPress site beforefinding Sharedrive in 2020. And
talk about timing. They launchedtheir new platform in spring
twenty twenty one, right afterCOVID-nineteen had completely
(02:18):
devastated the travel industry.But these challenges also mean
Niels has some reallyinsightful, hard earned lessons
to share with early stagemarketplace founders about the
importance of stayingoptimistic, talking to your
users, starting with a narrowfocus and building a business
iteratively.
I'm really excited for you tohear the entire conversation. So
let's jump right into the storyof how Social BnB is reimagining
(02:42):
what tourism can be.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Hi, Nils, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Hey, Meera, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
It's pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Could we start off by youtelling us a little bit about
your background and how youdecided to pursue the
entrepreneurial path and becomea marketplace founder?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
For sure, I'd love to. My name is Niels. I'm 31
years old. I'm one of thefounders of Social BNB, a
marketplace for responsibletravel alternatives on your next
trip. And I decided to pursuethe entrepreneurial role or
career because I have mybackground in international
business and internationalrelations.
So we already learned a bitabout the entrepreneurial
(03:30):
career, that this could be anoption. However, my first couple
of experiences were in thecorporate world rather, but
always working like thesustainability department,
because I always found the ideaof how can we use our capacities
to use them for the common good,so more of like a social
entrepreneurship approach,always very interesting and very
(03:52):
appealing. And after first offcorporate experience, I saw that
I could have a much biggerimpact in starting my own
venture and starting my owncompany and really making a
meaningful change with that.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
That sounds really great. So Social BNB is a
marketplace for responsibletravel alternatives. What does
that mean?
Speaker 1 (04:10):
With Social BNB, we enable travellers to find local,
authentic and responsiblealternatives for the next trip.
So on our platform, travelerscan find accommodation,
experiences or entire roundtrips that they can use to, on
the one hand, have a veryauthentic and meaningful
experience on the ground byconnecting with local people,
(04:31):
learning more about localcultures, local customs, and
contributing to projects in theregion that they are visiting,
be it ecological projects,social projects, or animal
welfare projects. While at thesame time, with the money that
they pay for the activity or theovernight stay, they are
directly contributing to theproject and that the money that
(04:51):
they spend is actually stayingin the region that they are
visiting. So we want to usetourism as a force for good.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yes. So like a genuine win win win. So for the
entrepreneurs, the supply andfor the demand and also for
society and the environment as awhole.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Exactly, exactly. That's what we're looking for.
That's what we think tourismshould be like.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yes, yes, I agree. So the demand is just normal
tourists like you and me.Correct? Exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Travellers from all over the world.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
And the supply side, what types of people or
companies does that consist of?
Speaker 1 (05:28):
So our suppliers, our projects, our change makers, as
we call them, or our impacthosts, are from all over the
world. So we are working in 45different countries. We have
around 500 different partnerorganisations, and they come
from all different kinds ofbackgrounds. So they work in the
field of community development,reforestation, rewilding, nature
(05:50):
preservation, fighting climatechange, gender equality,
education, sports, health, andyou name it. So all kinds of
different causes in all of ourpartners are either social
businesses, NGOs, non profits,or local community
organizations.
And we want to give them accessto the global tourism market.
Because right now, the tourismindustry is more exploitive, so
(06:15):
they take resources away fromthe reach that they are
visiting, and we want to reversethat model and actually make
sure that the local communitiesget access to the market and can
showcase their uniqueexperiences because we believe
that's what tourism is all aboutconnecting with the locals,
learning more about the peopleand the places that you are
visiting, and at the same timecontributing to their
(06:37):
well-being.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yes, yes, excellent. I believe many people who love
to travel, they want this, butat the same time, and they're
aware of its positive impacts onthe local economies and the
possible negative impacts on theenvironment and then the society
there. So this sounds like ananswer to what many people
actually want
Speaker 1 (06:58):
look for as well while we were traveling, because
for us it was always super hardto find these meaningful and
authentic alternatives. So howcould we really connect with the
local people and how could wemake it like an experience apart
from mass tourism?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Is that how you came up with the idea also, as
solution to a problem that youwere experiencing?
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Exactly. On the one hand, it was something that we
were experiencing while we werelooking for new trips. Like I
said, looking for moreauthentic, meaningful
interactions. And we see thatthe people are what makes the
country and the region sounique. So if you really want to
learn more about the place thatyou are visiting, connecting
with the locals, learning moreabout their lives, about their
(07:39):
customs, and at the same timemaybe getting some hidden gems
or some ideas for what you cando off the beaten track is so
unique.
And at the same time, I workedin different social and
ecological organisations inSouth America for a long time,
and there I saw the need foractually building a sustainable
business model to be lessreliant on donations, but have a
(08:01):
second source of income, wethink tourism is a great
alternative because there is avery low barrier to entry for
these communities because all ofthem already have projects and a
lot of our partners already haveprojects in place or maybe a
home stay in place. And so thatit's a very low barrier for
entry for them to actuallyaccess the market and generate
some additional income andrevenue so that they can sustain
(08:24):
their projects.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, I definitely want to hear more about how you
find the supply and how do youget them on board. But first, I
really need to ask, like, whenyou got this idea at first,
like, how did you first startmoving forward with it? Like,
what were the first steps thatyou took?
Speaker 1 (08:41):
So the first project that we worked with is a program
in Cambodia, where one of ourformer team members was
traveling to Cambodia and metthis man, Mr. T. And he wanted
to build a school for thechildren in this village to
learn English because that wasnot provided by the public
schools. And his village wasonly like thirty minutes outside
(09:01):
of the capital Phnom Penh, whichis quite touristy and gets a lot
of international visitors. Yetonly thirty minutes outside of
this capital, there was lackingsuch a basic necessity as
education because there was justno income or revenue coming in.
And we thought, how can we usetourism to, on the one hand,
show people and travelers theauthentic, unique Cambodia to
(09:27):
actually be staying with him inhis in his family so that he can
learn more about the culture,learn more about his vision and
why he wanted to change it,maybe learn more about why
education is an issue there, andat the same time helping him to
fulfill his vision of buildingthe school and offering these
English classes. So that's howwe started in, first of all,
(09:47):
just getting his information ona very basic WordPress website
where it was just information.You would send us an email. We
would communicate with himthrough Facebook Messenger. And
getting in touch with him andsaying, Hey, Mr.
T, there's someone who wants tostay with you. First of all, we
just reached out to friends andfamilies. Hey, whenever you're
in Southeast Asia, in Cambodia,make sure to visit him. He will
pick you up from Phnom Penh inhis tuk tuk. You can go to his
(10:10):
village, stay a couple ofnights, make a village walk, a
cooking class, learn more aboutthe local rural life, have a
very authentic experience thatvery few travelers would have,
and at the same time make surethat you really saw where your
money was going and you saw howyou were contributing to
building the school.
And as we saw that this has alot of potential, that we were
(10:34):
able to fund the teacher, we sawthat there was a lot of
potential to use tourism as amean to empower and uplift
communities and at the same timeenable travellers to have a
different experience than theywould usually have or find.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
So that the moment. Like you got the school funded
and you saw your friends andacquaintances really enjoy the
experience. And that's where youwere like, Okay, there's
something here.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Exactly. That's when we started to see like, Okay,
this problem or this opportunitydoesn't only exist in Cambodia,
right? So there's a lot ofcommunities where a lot of
projects are doing amazing workthat could benefit from tourism
as a source of income, and atthe same time, so many different
destinations and regions to bevisited that could deliver this
(11:19):
unique insight into local lifefor travellers.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
So was this also the lightbulb moment like, hey, this
is a market based platform thatwe're thinking about? And that's
how you started thinking abouthow to actually build tech
around your idea.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
It took us one or two more years until we saw, okay,
this has really marketplacepotential because we started
with like two, three morecountries. But in that case, we
were still just forwardingemails back and forth. So it was
still like a low volume. We hadlike five or 10 hosts maybe in
just like one or two, threecountries. And so we're all
(11:54):
keeping it very low key next toour studies.
But as we saw that the platformwas or the website was growing,
we saw, okay, we needed to setup a more professional
structure, how we can onboardhosts and how we can get more
travelers on the platform andhow we can connect them directly
without us having to interferein every transaction, every kind
(12:17):
of communication. That's when wethought, okay, this is actually
potential for building a globalmarketplace where we see on the
one hand the potential that theinterest from travelers is there
to have these kinds ofexperiences. And on the other
hand, that the projects or thecommunities that we've been
working with are actuallycapable of delivering such a
service because it was a verynew idea. And so we had to
(12:38):
validate that these two sitesare actually willing to connect
and capable to connect. Andthat's when we came in and
started building a marketplace.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, that's fantastic. And that's also the
advice that we hear from expertsand experienced founders time
and time again. Is like validateyour idea with a small initial
investment, like doing lots ofmanual work, just like
interacting with your supply anddemand and seeing if that works.
You follow that instruction tothe team.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Exactly. Yeah, there's a lot of learnings in
that process when you talkdirectly to the customers,
directly with the hosts and evenin the email flow with them. So
you learn what kind of questionsthey keep posing. So there's
always a good learning.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Oh, that sounds fantastic. And at what point did
you come across Sharedribe?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Sharedribe was actually a recommendation of a
friend of mine. He was buildinga marketplace for the gig
economy. So he was like forremote workers in 2019, 2020,
when all this gig economy wasstill very early stages and he
was trying to build amarketplace and he looked into
Sharedrive. And when I told himabout our idea, he said, Hey, I
(13:47):
think Sharedrive would besomething for you because we
knew that we had very limitedresources as a student
initiative, as a team. We knewwe didn't have the capacities to
build a full scale ownmarketplace from the get go.
So we thought SharedTrak wouldbe the perfect place to start to
start building right away.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Fantastic. We should send that friend of yours some
flowers.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
He would appreciate that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
At that point, did you consider any alternatives to
Sharedev? Like, I don't know,plugins on top of your WordPress
website or something like that?
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah, we stretched WordPress a lot because we had
one developer who was familiarwith WordPress, so we are very
hesitant on moving away fromWordPress because we didn't have
any other developer and hewasn't aware of Shadow or he
hadn't worked with Shadow yet.So we thought for at least six
(14:43):
to twelve months, Okay, ratherbuild another plugin, build
another adjust ourFrankenstein's monster of
WordPress that we had built atthat point a bit more a bit more
until we saw, Okay, it justdoesn't give us the
functionalities and the featuresthat we need to build a platform
because WordPress is great forwhat it does, but it's not
(15:03):
necessarily built for building amarketplace. That's what our
experience was. And then we wentinto the process to build
Sharedrive in the backgroundwhile still maintaining the
WordPress site for, I think, sixto nine months while we were
building Sharedrive in thebackground and then shifted over
to Sharedrive fully. We decidedto take it out of university in
(15:26):
2020, and that's when we startedworking with Sharedrive as well
in summer twenty twenty, and welaunched in April, May 21.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
So there was the whole COVID pandemic also
COVID-nineteen pandemic also.Did that impact your plans or
discourage you in any way?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Surprisingly, it never really discouraged us. In
hindsight, it's very surprisingbecause we were new founders and
we were super dedicated, superconvinced about our idea. And we
were positively naive, I'd say,because we were always, Okay,
how long is this COVID thinggoing to last? Maybe like six
(16:08):
months. And after six months, wewere like, Okay, then the summer
season started.
We got a couple of bookings. Wewere like, Okay, we see it's
picking up. And then in winter,it started again. We were like,
Okay, that's a couple of monthsagain. So we are always very
naive in thinking it wouldn'tlast as long as it did, finally.
But what I think is a goodthing, because if someone would
have told us in the beginning,Okay, for the next two years,
(16:30):
the tourism industry is going tobe a black hole, basically. You
don't know which country isopen, where you can go, what are
their restrictions. It wouldhave been quite discouraging. So
in that sense, we were luckybeing naive.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yes. Yeah, totally. Thank goodness for some
misplaced optimism.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. I think that's a very
good trade of entrepreneurs aswell as remaining optimistic.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yes. Well said. What was the experience like getting
started with Charitable,building with Charitable? You
mentioned that you weren't verytechnical, didn't have a super
big technical team.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Yeah, and actually neither Alex nor I do have any
technical background. So weworked actually with a designer
who was kind of like a selftaught front end developer, I'd
say. And he was building Shetrawith us in that sense. So he was
taking part of all thetechnological side. So we were
(17:31):
very grateful.
I think now you guys have movedeven more into the no code
solution, so it would have beeneven better for us four years
ago. But we decided very earlythat we wanted to go with Flex
instead of Go because we neededto make some adjustments,
especially in the front end. Sowe kind of draw the platform on
(17:54):
whiteboard, on what we wanted,what kind of functionalities we
wanted. We're doing like usestories and that stuff on how it
could look like. And then hestarted developing it over the
time.
And like I said, yeah, I thinkit took like nine months till we
were satisfied with like a golive because he was doing it on
the side as well. He wasn'tdoing it full time and he was
(18:15):
the only one actually developingand not just putting ideas in.
We were just like, Oh, thiswould be nice. This would be
nice. He was like, Yeah, okay.
Yeah, I think every developerknows that struggle. But yeah,
so it was a very good experiencefor us and getting like being
quite quick in developing amarketplace.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yeah. And that's the thing. That's what many people
mentioned about Go and Flex, ourlegacy products, that the
transition from no code to codewas actually quite time
consuming. The gap was quitesteep, and that's exactly what
we wanted to solve with thatuser.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
And I think you did. It is very cool to see as well
how it developed from being likenow, I think would be a complete
no code solution even possible.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
I'm glad to hear. So glad to hear that. Now let's get
to the real beef of interview.How you grew social BNB. The
first suppliers back when youstill had the WordPress site and
you were doing lots of thingsmanually, the supply side came
(19:25):
through your contacts, in thesedifferent countries and your
sort of connections with thelocal organisations, right?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Exactly, mainly. First so we kind of went through
like three phases, I'd say, inbuilding the supply. The first
was definitely just friends andfamily. People who have been
visiting a community, who havebeen working in a project, who
have been searching for thesekinds of experience. And we
(19:53):
brought them on the platform.
So maybe like 50 the first 50organisations kind of came
through recommendations in thatsense. And I think the next 200
of them came through like activeresearch of ours. So, we were
like, okay, we know what we'relooking for. We're actively
engaging and talking to theseorganisations. And the third
(20:15):
stage, which we're currently aswell working with, is talking as
well to like multipliernetworks, bigger NGO networks or
community based tourismnetworks, which have like maybe
five, ten, 15 or even 100communities at the same time
that we can then screen onboard,show them what we do.
(20:35):
And we still get a lot ofrecommendations so that people
know us, organisations that wantto work with us because we're,
to my knowledge, one of the fewproviders who actually do this
and to give them the access tothe market. And so we get a lot
of requests as well. And all ofthem go through like a detailed
quality check with us on how webring them on the platform, what
(20:57):
they are doing, who's behind theidea, how they're contributing
to the local challenges thatthey're trying to solve, and
obviously how the localcommunity is involved, how it is
locally owned, how they arefunded so that we get a lot of
information, we make sure thatthe impact that we promise our
travellers that is happening andthat they can actually see and
witness and contribute to isactually happening.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Yeah, so there's lots of manual work involved in this,
like selecting, screening,onboarding.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
It was always clear to us that we didn't want to be
a marketplace where the hostscan just upload any profile or
any programme because we want tocurate the hosts and their
ideas. And a lot of our hosts,for them, it's the first time
being on a platform as well. Sowe often develop the programs
jointly with them, especiallywith one of the new programmes
(21:51):
that we have, which is multi dayexperiences where we offer not
only accommodation, but wepackages with activities, food
and transportation into like avery unique package. And for
many of them, it's the firsttime offering such a thing. So
we help them in thebrainstorming, what kind of
activities could they offer,what kind of things could be
explored on-site, how could itbe priced, what would be
(22:13):
interesting experience for ourtarget group.
So we developed these programsjointly with them. So it's still
a lot of manual labor involved,but it's one of the works that I
really enjoy doing with socialmedia, actively working with
them and seeing how we can givethem access to the market and
actually contributing.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
And I can imagine that also being a huge advantage
to your demand side in this eraof greenwashing and aggressive
sort of responsibility washingand marketing to be able to
trust that this is the realdeal, like this is actually as
impactful as is being claimed.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Exactly. That's one of our main targets and main
focus, our credibility in theimpact that we're delivering.
And I mean, the amazing thing isthat the travellers can see the
impact that they are having onthe site firsthand. They see
where the money goes. They seewhat they're contributing or
they might be even activelycontributing to what they're
doing, to what the project isdoing.
(23:10):
And I think that makes it such aunique experience.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
So how you find this demand then?
Speaker 1 (23:17):
So the demand is mainly through social media and
awareness campaigns, publicrelations. So we've had quite
some publications, because wesee there's a lot of interest in
how tourism can work in adifferent way. Because I think
most of the people would agreethat tourism as it is today is
(23:40):
not very fit for the future.Because we see there's a lot of
requests from the localpopulation, be it in European
cities, that they say, 'Okay, wewant our city back. There's too
many tourists coming in.
We are not involved in buildingthese products. We're not
benefiting from people cominghere. So we see that there's a
big movement in trying torethink tourism. That's where we
(24:03):
want to enable and develop andallow a different alternative,
like I said, with social BNB.How can we actually involve the
local communities all over theworld in building a touristic
product that is beneficial forthem because it's actually
contributing to naturepreservation, animal welfare,
gender equality, educationwhatsoever.
(24:25):
And at the same time, it's avery meeting on eye level with
the travelers because thetravellers are actually
interested, curious and want tolearn more about the culture and
the region and not just there tobe entertained. And so I think
that's a different level ofinteraction with the locals as
well. And that's what we get asfeedback from both our partners
and our travelers that it's areally different kind of
(24:46):
experience. So we see back toyour question how we raise the
awareness we see that there werea lot of publications in
magazines, TV shows, podcasts,whatsoever that were interested
in a way, Okay, hey, these guysare really trying something
different. These guys are reallytrying to rethink the system on
how it should be done.
And that's how we got a lot ofinterest and step by step
(25:10):
building our social mediachannels, which is, I think, one
of the best ways on showcasingthe uniqueness of our
experiences and showcasing thelocal changemakers that we work
with. So making interviews withthem, allowing them to share
their story with the travellers,why they chose to fight this
injustice, why they chose totake on this challenge and
(25:31):
really give a face to theproject, to the challenge that
the travellers can visit andcontribute to.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
That sounds amazing. Is word-of-mouth a big factor in
your demand acquisition also orrepeat usage? I assume also that
people who once get toexperience this kind of tourism
don't want to really go back tothe traditional kind.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
For sure. For sure. I think word-of-mouth and as well
like reviews is like one of thebest things to either support us
and at the same time what ourtravelers do as well. I think we
have an average review rating offive stars because the people
see that it's somethingdifferent. They really love what
they are seeing, what they'redoing.
So we see as well thatword-of-mouth is obviously a
(26:19):
very strong recommendationfactor and pull factor because I
mean, how I decide my nexttravel destinations as well,
talking to different people,learning more about what was
their best experience on-siteand what they did, what they
discovered, what they learned,how they liked the destination.
And it's best trust buildingthat you can do because if you
(26:39):
just see a shiny, flashy ad, itmight be one in a million. But
if someone that you trust andthat you know has the same
values or the same interests asyou and says like, hey, this is
a very cool experience. This isa very cool destination and you
should definitely check it out.It grows higher and higher on my
to go, on my bucket list, whichis very long still, but
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I'm sure
Speaker 1 (27:03):
it keeps growing.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
So how do you monetize this? Like, how do make
a profit from these kind ofconnections?
Speaker 1 (27:12):
We decided on the marketplace system as well
because we see that this iswhere we have the main benefit
for the travelers and the hosts.So giving the hosts access to
the global tourism market and atthe same time helping travelers
to find these offers that theymight not find elsewhere. And
that's why we take like atransaction fee because we
connect these two players.That's how we can keep our
(27:36):
service completely free for ourcommunities and our
organizations, our projects, sothey don't pay a listing fee or
subscription fee. But thetravellers pay a transaction fee
for us connecting them withthese projects and finding these
projects.
And that's how we generaterevenue.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Yes, yes. So a commission that only the demand
side pays. Like also quitenicely aligned with your values.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
It does, yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Do you remember the first transaction that happened
on your Sharedrive marketplacewhere you had had more
automation in place?
Speaker 1 (28:12):
The first year was crazy in general when we would
switch to Sharedrive because,like I said, the first ones were
all still like where we wereinvolved or were friends of us
or people found us and then theysent an email to us. We were
always very involved. But all ofa sudden, I think it was
February or no. Yeah, I thinkwhen we launched the platform in
(28:35):
May, July or July, I think. Andwe had the first booking in the
July, August, and there was justsomeone we didn't know.
And it was just like someonebooking through the platform,
which is like, wow, wow. Andyeah, I just wanted to directly
call the person and be like,hey, how did you find us? How
(28:57):
did like the experiencewhatsoever? No, we don't gather
phone numbers. Don't get thephone numbers.
We sent them an email on howthey found and how they liked
the experience. And it wasactually through a
recommendation of a friend. Butit was like a crazy feeling.
(29:19):
That was the first time we werenot involved. And that was the
first time that we actually saw,okay, this marketplace idea of
us just providing themarketplace and the information
and the technology behind it andpeople actually looking by
themselves, finding somethingfor themselves that they like
was a crazy experience.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
I'm So currently, what are your most important
focus areas in terms of businessinitiatives or marketing or
technology or work in thecommunities? What are you
focusing on now?
Speaker 1 (29:51):
We always have three main focus topics that we're
working on. On the one hand,we're always trying to enhance
the technology, talking tousers, what kind of features
would they like, talking to ourhosts, what kind of features
would they like. So we'recurrently, for example,
adjusting the transactionprocess more, allowing more
payment methods, the social signon, giving them more overview of
(30:14):
what is actually included in theprice, for example. So we try to
give them the best optionpossible. We adjust the search
process, for example, because wesaw that people search
differently now than they didlike six months ago.
So we try to accommodate forthat. So we always try to build
very user centric new features.And at the same time, in the
product department, productdevelopment, like I shared a
(30:37):
bit, we developed a new productcalled Multi Day Experiences,
where we shifted from onlyoffering the accommodation like
we did in the beginning andgiving information about the
activities that you can do toactually packaging activities,
accommodation, food,transportation all together to
showcase the uniqueness of theproduct or the project that
you're visiting. Because byoffering the additional
(30:59):
activities, you can really see,Oh, can I do a workshop? Can I
participate in reforestationefforts?
Can I support in the researchand rewiring efforts? Can I
learn more about education,about gender equality in that
sense? So really making thisexperience more immersive
because we saw that thetravellers wanted even more
interaction with their hosts.And that's how we tried to work
(31:23):
with it in building thesepackages so that they stay
longer on the ground and have aneven more special experience by
showcasing the uniqueness of ourprojects even more and as well
enabling the travelers to takemaybe like a bit of a detour
because we also try to divertthe tourism streams that you
don't visit all the time at thesame time, the same regions, but
(31:43):
maybe go to like a more rural orsemi urban area. But it's more
worth it if you go for three orfour nights instead of just
staying for one night.
So we try to accommodate forthat. And as well, we will be
offering our first own designround trip now in Sri Lanka,
where you will be having likefourteen days social BNB
experience. So just visiting,going from one of our partners
(32:06):
to the next and having like anentire impact around which we
are very excited about to belaunching within the next couple
of weeks.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Sounds really cool. I love how I can hear from how you
talk that like how the impactthat you want to make is present
in all these all these decisionsthat you to make, be it
technology, be it businessinitiatives. Can you give a
concrete example of what thiskind of this type of experience
could be like?
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Yes, I would love to. Specifically, these multi day
experiences that we're offeringexperiences where you as a
traveler can even dive deeperinto the local culture and
immerse even more and oftendirectly contribute to what the
project is doing because youstay longer and are more
engaged. So, for example, wehave programs in Europe where
(32:53):
you can participate or see howrewilding efforts are being
done. You can see in Italy, forexample, be part of a research
vessel where you can support theresearchers in finding dolphins,
whales, and with the researchthat you're doing, actually
contribute to them building likea marine life protected area in
the Mediterranean Sea with thedata that you're gathering. So
(33:15):
you're actively contributingwith your work and have a very
unique experience and being onthe sailing vessel, having this
community thought and reallybeing hands on.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
So you mentioned three focus areas, and that was
two, right? Exactly. What's thethird?
Speaker 1 (33:33):
And the last one is always how to since we are a
marketplace, obviously getting anice supply, but on the other
hand as well growing our demand.So how can we use our marketing
channels even better to showcasethis uniqueness of our product?
So we started doing moretargeted ads, doing more video
content, which we saw is workingvery well. So we are trying to
(33:56):
work together with all of ourpartners in developing video
content so that we can createshort reels, video ads for them,
with them, that we can thenpromote to our platform. Because
what we saw is that, like I saidas well a bit earlier, when the
hosts can actually tell a bitmore about their story, have
(34:16):
video about why the experienceis so unique or what the
travellers can experience.
We saw that travellers are muchmore likely to book these kind
of experiences because they geta bit more better touch of the
people and what they could see.And that's what we're actively
promoting as well, building morevideo content, helping our
partners to create this contentor edit it for them, and then
(34:40):
bring it on our social to makemore vanderlust for our
travellers so that they canreally have a good feeling on
where they want to go next, getsome good inspiration.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Sounds great. You rather recently raised funding,
correct? Do you want to sharesomething about that?
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, for sure. Funding is always a very big
topic for young startups, Ithink especially for us, since
we've been working a lot withpublic money in the beginning
with government grants,scholarships, award money, for
example, in that idea. And wesaw that we were kind of
reaching like a glass ceilingbecause we saw, hey, we were
(35:19):
able to build this platform,were able to build this
marketplace, we were able to getthe first customers the first
traction showing that it couldwork. But we as well saw that
especially the marketing effortstake a lot more time than we
expected in the beginningBecause we thought, like you as
well said, there's a lot ofagreement and nodding about,
(35:39):
yes, tourism should be donedifferently. But we saw that
marketing is very priceintensive or money intensive
because in the end, when peopledecide where they go on their
next trip, there are so manyoptions out there and there are
so many big platforms that theycan turn to, that they can find
something wherever they go, theywill find a suitable
alternative.
(36:00):
So we saw that we need to put inmore money into marketing and
actually drive the people andshowcase that Social BnB exists.
Because to everyone I talk toand when I talk to Social BnB
about Social BnB, they'd belike, Hey, wow, I would have
loved to know about this beforemy last trip. And I was like,
Yes, that's exactly what we'reworking on. That's what we're
trying to push with this fundingas well, that more people know
(36:22):
about us and they know about usin the right moment when they're
trying to make the bookingdecision, or we can even be the
inspiration for their next tripwhere they want to go.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Makes sense. Perfect sense. Looking back on your
journey, is there anything thatyou would have done differently
with the wisdom that comes withhindsight?
Speaker 1 (36:41):
A million things. I think I haven't met an
entrepreneur who has done itright from the beginning. I
mean, looking back, I hope I canalways say that we did the best
to our knowledge at a certainpoint, which is comforting in
that sense. And I really lovethat we had been a team since
(37:04):
day one, so we were always likea lot of great minds trying to
find good ideas and involvingeveryone in the decision making.
But what I would try evenearlier, what I would focus even
earlier on is, like I said, nowwe focus very much on user
centric features.
In the beginning, we developedthe platform rather for us
(37:26):
saying like, okay, we would loveto have this, we would love to
have that, until we realizedwhat we expect from a platform
might not be what someone elsewould be expecting from the
platform. And that in the end,if a user would expect this
feature to work in that certainway or the search to work in
that certain way or thetransaction process to work in
(37:47):
that certain way, we need toaccommodate for that if we see
patterns and behaviours. So whatI would do differently is
definitely talk even more andeven earlier with our travelers,
with our customers on where theywant to go and what would they
expect from a platform like us,how we can make it even easier
(38:08):
for them to find these suitablealternatives And as well
developing on the one hand, thetechnological product jointly
with them, but as well thetouristic product jointly with
them. Because in the beginningwe're like, okay, it's super
nice to have a global reach with45 different countries. That's
amazing.
But I think it would have beeneasier for us to focus maybe on
(38:29):
three, four or five countries inthe beginning, build like a
stronger network in thosecountries, focus on marketing
these specific countries,building them up as like
responsible impact destinationsfrom the get go, which would
have made it easier to marketthese specific destinations. So
we always love to start big andstart global. But I think
(38:51):
sometimes it's as well very goodto start niche, get to know your
customer, get to know theproblem that you're solving for
them, get a recognition forbeing the provider for this
specific thing or this specificcountry in our case, and then
grow from there with an existingcustomer base.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
Yes, that's also a very, very good, useful advice
for many people who are just atthe early stages of this
journey, just starting out. It'soften super tempting to start
building the marketplace of yourdreams make it very But very
often it's indeed just like yousaid, start with an MVP and talk
(39:30):
to your users, find out whatthey need and build from there.
So thank you so much, Niels, forthis interview and for sharing
your inspiring story and youradvice with early stage
founders. We're super proud toshare this story with our
audience.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Perfect. Thank you very much for having me. It's
lovely being part of theSharedrive community. And thank
you for so much for theaudience.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Thanks. Thanks so much. And all the best for
Social B and B.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Thank you for listening and watching. If you
enjoyed this episode, you cansubscribe to ShareTrive Founder
Stories on YouTube, ApplePodcasts, Spotify, or wherever
you get your podcasts. Also,please consider leaving us a
rating or review as that reallyhelps other listeners find the
podcast. And if you got inspiredto bring your own marketplace
idea to life, go visitsharetribe.com. That's
(40:19):
sharetribe.com.
It's the fastest way to start anonline marketplace business.
Until next time.
What I would do differently is definitely talk
(00:02):
even more and even earlier withour travelers, with our
customers on where they want togo and what would they expect
from a platform like us. I thinkit would have been easier for us
to focus maybe on three, four,five countries in the beginning,
build like a stronger network inthose countries, focus on
marketing these specificcountries, building them up as
like responsible impactdestinations from the get go,
(00:24):
which would have made it easierto market these specific
destinations. So we always loveto start big and start global,
but I think sometimes it's aswell very good to start niche,
get to know your customer, getto know the problem that you're
solving for them, get arecognition for being the
provider for this specific thingor this specific country in our
case, and then grow from therewith an existing customer base.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Hey there,
Speaker 3 (00:52):
and welcome to another ShareTribe founder
story. I'm Mira, and today Iwant to share a conversation I
had with Neil Sloman thathonestly left me feeling really
inspired about the future oftravel. So we all love to
travel, but there's often thisnagging feeling that tourism
doesn't always benefit theplaces we visit. Well, Niels and
(01:13):
his team at Social BNB areworking to change this. Social
BNB started as a student projecthelping one man in Cambodia
build a school.
This experience made Niels andhis co founder realize there's a
real opportunity for tourists tohave a positive impact if only
they could be connected withlocal organizations and
communities. Today, Social BNBis a share trap powered platform
(01:34):
that connects travelers withover 500 social and
environmental projects across 45countries. It offers everything
from home stays to multi dayexperiences and even complete
impact focused round trips. Themission is to leave both sides,
the travelers and the localcommunities, with a long lasting
positive impact. The journeyhasn't always been easy.
(01:57):
Social BNB started with Nielsand his team literally
forwarding emails betweentravelers and hosts. Then the
platform evolved to what Nielscalls a Frankenstein's monster
of a WordPress site beforefinding Sharedrive in 2020. And
talk about timing. They launchedtheir new platform in spring
twenty twenty one, right afterCOVID-nineteen had completely
(02:18):
devastated the travel industry.But these challenges also mean
Niels has some reallyinsightful, hard earned lessons
to share with early stagemarketplace founders about the
importance of stayingoptimistic, talking to your
users, starting with a narrowfocus and building a business
iteratively.
I'm really excited for you tohear the entire conversation. So
let's jump right into the storyof how Social BnB is reimagining
(02:42):
what tourism can be.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Hi, Nils, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Hey, Meera, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
It's pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Could we start off by youtelling us a little bit about
your background and how youdecided to pursue the
entrepreneurial path and becomea marketplace founder?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
For sure, I'd love to. My name is Niels. I'm 31
years old. I'm one of thefounders of Social BNB, a
marketplace for responsibletravel alternatives on your next
trip. And I decided to pursuethe entrepreneurial role or
career because I have mybackground in international
business and internationalrelations.
So we already learned a bitabout the entrepreneurial
(03:30):
career, that this could be anoption. However, my first couple
of experiences were in thecorporate world rather, but
always working like thesustainability department,
because I always found the ideaof how can we use our capacities
to use them for the common good,so more of like a social
entrepreneurship approach,always very interesting and very
(03:52):
appealing. And after first offcorporate experience, I saw that
I could have a much biggerimpact in starting my own
venture and starting my owncompany and really making a
meaningful change with that.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
That sounds really great. So Social BNB is a
marketplace for responsibletravel alternatives. What does
that mean?
Speaker 1 (04:10):
With Social BNB, we enable travellers to find local,
authentic and responsiblealternatives for the next trip.
So on our platform, travelerscan find accommodation,
experiences or entire roundtrips that they can use to, on
the one hand, have a veryauthentic and meaningful
experience on the ground byconnecting with local people,
(04:31):
learning more about localcultures, local customs, and
contributing to projects in theregion that they are visiting,
be it ecological projects,social projects, or animal
welfare projects. While at thesame time, with the money that
they pay for the activity or theovernight stay, they are
directly contributing to theproject and that the money that
(04:51):
they spend is actually stayingin the region that they are
visiting. So we want to usetourism as a force for good.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yes. So like a genuine win win win. So for the
entrepreneurs, the supply andfor the demand and also for
society and the environment as awhole.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Exactly, exactly. That's what we're looking for.
That's what we think tourismshould be like.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yes, yes, I agree. So the demand is just normal
tourists like you and me.Correct? Exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Travellers from all over the world.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
And the supply side, what types of people or
companies does that consist of?
Speaker 1 (05:28):
So our suppliers, our projects, our change makers, as
we call them, or our impacthosts, are from all over the
world. So we are working in 45different countries. We have
around 500 different partnerorganisations, and they come
from all different kinds ofbackgrounds. So they work in the
field of community development,reforestation, rewilding, nature
(05:50):
preservation, fighting climatechange, gender equality,
education, sports, health, andyou name it. So all kinds of
different causes in all of ourpartners are either social
businesses, NGOs, non profits,or local community
organizations.
And we want to give them accessto the global tourism market.
Because right now, the tourismindustry is more exploitive, so
(06:15):
they take resources away fromthe reach that they are
visiting, and we want to reversethat model and actually make
sure that the local communitiesget access to the market and can
showcase their uniqueexperiences because we believe
that's what tourism is all aboutconnecting with the locals,
learning more about the peopleand the places that you are
visiting, and at the same timecontributing to their
(06:37):
well-being.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yes, yes, excellent. I believe many people who love
to travel, they want this, butat the same time, and they're
aware of its positive impacts onthe local economies and the
possible negative impacts on theenvironment and then the society
there. So this sounds like ananswer to what many people
actually want
Speaker 1 (06:58):
look for as well while we were traveling, because
for us it was always super hardto find these meaningful and
authentic alternatives. So howcould we really connect with the
local people and how could wemake it like an experience apart
from mass tourism?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Is that how you came up with the idea also, as
solution to a problem that youwere experiencing?
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Exactly. On the one hand, it was something that we
were experiencing while we werelooking for new trips. Like I
said, looking for moreauthentic, meaningful
interactions. And we see thatthe people are what makes the
country and the region sounique. So if you really want to
learn more about the place thatyou are visiting, connecting
with the locals, learning moreabout their lives, about their
(07:39):
customs, and at the same timemaybe getting some hidden gems
or some ideas for what you cando off the beaten track is so
unique.
And at the same time, I workedin different social and
ecological organisations inSouth America for a long time,
and there I saw the need foractually building a sustainable
business model to be lessreliant on donations, but have a
(08:01):
second source of income, wethink tourism is a great
alternative because there is avery low barrier to entry for
these communities because all ofthem already have projects and a
lot of our partners already haveprojects in place or maybe a
home stay in place. And so thatit's a very low barrier for
entry for them to actuallyaccess the market and generate
some additional income andrevenue so that they can sustain
(08:24):
their projects.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, I definitely want to hear more about how you
find the supply and how do youget them on board. But first, I
really need to ask, like, whenyou got this idea at first,
like, how did you first startmoving forward with it? Like,
what were the first steps thatyou took?
Speaker 1 (08:41):
So the first project that we worked with is a program
in Cambodia, where one of ourformer team members was
traveling to Cambodia and metthis man, Mr. T. And he wanted
to build a school for thechildren in this village to
learn English because that wasnot provided by the public
schools. And his village wasonly like thirty minutes outside
(09:01):
of the capital Phnom Penh, whichis quite touristy and gets a lot
of international visitors. Yetonly thirty minutes outside of
this capital, there was lackingsuch a basic necessity as
education because there was justno income or revenue coming in.
And we thought, how can we usetourism to, on the one hand,
show people and travelers theauthentic, unique Cambodia to
(09:27):
actually be staying with him inhis in his family so that he can
learn more about the culture,learn more about his vision and
why he wanted to change it,maybe learn more about why
education is an issue there, andat the same time helping him to
fulfill his vision of buildingthe school and offering these
English classes. So that's howwe started in, first of all,
(09:47):
just getting his information ona very basic WordPress website
where it was just information.You would send us an email. We
would communicate with himthrough Facebook Messenger. And
getting in touch with him andsaying, Hey, Mr.
T, there's someone who wants tostay with you. First of all, we
just reached out to friends andfamilies. Hey, whenever you're
in Southeast Asia, in Cambodia,make sure to visit him. He will
pick you up from Phnom Penh inhis tuk tuk. You can go to his
(10:10):
village, stay a couple ofnights, make a village walk, a
cooking class, learn more aboutthe local rural life, have a
very authentic experience thatvery few travelers would have,
and at the same time make surethat you really saw where your
money was going and you saw howyou were contributing to
building the school.
And as we saw that this has alot of potential, that we were
(10:34):
able to fund the teacher, we sawthat there was a lot of
potential to use tourism as amean to empower and uplift
communities and at the same timeenable travellers to have a
different experience than theywould usually have or find.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
So that the moment. Like you got the school funded
and you saw your friends andacquaintances really enjoy the
experience. And that's where youwere like, Okay, there's
something here.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Exactly. That's when we started to see like, Okay,
this problem or this opportunitydoesn't only exist in Cambodia,
right? So there's a lot ofcommunities where a lot of
projects are doing amazing workthat could benefit from tourism
as a source of income, and atthe same time, so many different
destinations and regions to bevisited that could deliver this
(11:19):
unique insight into local lifefor travellers.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
So was this also the lightbulb moment like, hey, this
is a market based platform thatwe're thinking about? And that's
how you started thinking abouthow to actually build tech
around your idea.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
It took us one or two more years until we saw, okay,
this has really marketplacepotential because we started
with like two, three morecountries. But in that case, we
were still just forwardingemails back and forth. So it was
still like a low volume. We hadlike five or 10 hosts maybe in
just like one or two, threecountries. And so we're all
(11:54):
keeping it very low key next toour studies.
But as we saw that the platformwas or the website was growing,
we saw, okay, we needed to setup a more professional
structure, how we can onboardhosts and how we can get more
travelers on the platform andhow we can connect them directly
without us having to interferein every transaction, every kind
(12:17):
of communication. That's when wethought, okay, this is actually
potential for building a globalmarketplace where we see on the
one hand the potential that theinterest from travelers is there
to have these kinds ofexperiences. And on the other
hand, that the projects or thecommunities that we've been
working with are actuallycapable of delivering such a
service because it was a verynew idea. And so we had to
(12:38):
validate that these two sitesare actually willing to connect
and capable to connect. Andthat's when we came in and
started building a marketplace.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, that's fantastic. And that's also the
advice that we hear from expertsand experienced founders time
and time again. Is like validateyour idea with a small initial
investment, like doing lots ofmanual work, just like
interacting with your supply anddemand and seeing if that works.
You follow that instruction tothe team.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Exactly. Yeah, there's a lot of learnings in
that process when you talkdirectly to the customers,
directly with the hosts and evenin the email flow with them. So
you learn what kind of questionsthey keep posing. So there's
always a good learning.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Oh, that sounds fantastic. And at what point did
you come across Sharedribe?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Sharedribe was actually a recommendation of a
friend of mine. He was buildinga marketplace for the gig
economy. So he was like forremote workers in 2019, 2020,
when all this gig economy wasstill very early stages and he
was trying to build amarketplace and he looked into
Sharedrive. And when I told himabout our idea, he said, Hey, I
(13:47):
think Sharedrive would besomething for you because we
knew that we had very limitedresources as a student
initiative, as a team. We knewwe didn't have the capacities to
build a full scale ownmarketplace from the get go.
So we thought SharedTrak wouldbe the perfect place to start to
start building right away.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Fantastic. We should send that friend of yours some
flowers.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
He would appreciate that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
At that point, did you consider any alternatives to
Sharedev? Like, I don't know,plugins on top of your WordPress
website or something like that?
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah, we stretched WordPress a lot because we had
one developer who was familiarwith WordPress, so we are very
hesitant on moving away fromWordPress because we didn't have
any other developer and hewasn't aware of Shadow or he
hadn't worked with Shadow yet.So we thought for at least six
(14:43):
to twelve months, Okay, ratherbuild another plugin, build
another adjust ourFrankenstein's monster of
WordPress that we had built atthat point a bit more a bit more
until we saw, Okay, it justdoesn't give us the
functionalities and the featuresthat we need to build a platform
because WordPress is great forwhat it does, but it's not
(15:03):
necessarily built for building amarketplace. That's what our
experience was. And then we wentinto the process to build
Sharedrive in the backgroundwhile still maintaining the
WordPress site for, I think, sixto nine months while we were
building Sharedrive in thebackground and then shifted over
to Sharedrive fully. We decidedto take it out of university in
(15:26):
2020, and that's when we startedworking with Sharedrive as well
in summer twenty twenty, and welaunched in April, May 21.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
So there was the whole COVID pandemic also
COVID-nineteen pandemic also.Did that impact your plans or
discourage you in any way?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Surprisingly, it never really discouraged us. In
hindsight, it's very surprisingbecause we were new founders and
we were super dedicated, superconvinced about our idea. And we
were positively naive, I'd say,because we were always, Okay,
how long is this COVID thinggoing to last? Maybe like six
(16:08):
months. And after six months, wewere like, Okay, then the summer
season started.
We got a couple of bookings. Wewere like, Okay, we see it's
picking up. And then in winter,it started again. We were like,
Okay, that's a couple of monthsagain. So we are always very
naive in thinking it wouldn'tlast as long as it did, finally.
But what I think is a goodthing, because if someone would
have told us in the beginning,Okay, for the next two years,
(16:30):
the tourism industry is going tobe a black hole, basically. You
don't know which country isopen, where you can go, what are
their restrictions. It wouldhave been quite discouraging. So
in that sense, we were luckybeing naive.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yes. Yeah, totally. Thank goodness for some
misplaced optimism.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. I think that's a very
good trade of entrepreneurs aswell as remaining optimistic.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yes. Well said. What was the experience like getting
started with Charitable,building with Charitable? You
mentioned that you weren't verytechnical, didn't have a super
big technical team.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Yeah, and actually neither Alex nor I do have any
technical background. So weworked actually with a designer
who was kind of like a selftaught front end developer, I'd
say. And he was building Shetrawith us in that sense. So he was
taking part of all thetechnological side. So we were
(17:31):
very grateful.
I think now you guys have movedeven more into the no code
solution, so it would have beeneven better for us four years
ago. But we decided very earlythat we wanted to go with Flex
instead of Go because we neededto make some adjustments,
especially in the front end. Sowe kind of draw the platform on
(17:54):
whiteboard, on what we wanted,what kind of functionalities we
wanted. We're doing like usestories and that stuff on how it
could look like. And then hestarted developing it over the
time.
And like I said, yeah, I thinkit took like nine months till we
were satisfied with like a golive because he was doing it on
the side as well. He wasn'tdoing it full time and he was
(18:15):
the only one actually developingand not just putting ideas in.
We were just like, Oh, thiswould be nice. This would be
nice. He was like, Yeah, okay.
Yeah, I think every developerknows that struggle. But yeah,
so it was a very good experiencefor us and getting like being
quite quick in developing amarketplace.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yeah. And that's the thing. That's what many people
mentioned about Go and Flex, ourlegacy products, that the
transition from no code to codewas actually quite time
consuming. The gap was quitesteep, and that's exactly what
we wanted to solve with thatuser.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
And I think you did. It is very cool to see as well
how it developed from being likenow, I think would be a complete
no code solution even possible.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
I'm glad to hear. So glad to hear that. Now let's get
to the real beef of interview.How you grew social BNB. The
first suppliers back when youstill had the WordPress site and
you were doing lots of thingsmanually, the supply side came
(19:25):
through your contacts, in thesedifferent countries and your
sort of connections with thelocal organisations, right?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Exactly, mainly. First so we kind of went through
like three phases, I'd say, inbuilding the supply. The first
was definitely just friends andfamily. People who have been
visiting a community, who havebeen working in a project, who
have been searching for thesekinds of experience. And we
(19:53):
brought them on the platform.
So maybe like 50 the first 50organisations kind of came
through recommendations in thatsense. And I think the next 200
of them came through like activeresearch of ours. So, we were
like, okay, we know what we'relooking for. We're actively
engaging and talking to theseorganisations. And the third
(20:15):
stage, which we're currently aswell working with, is talking as
well to like multipliernetworks, bigger NGO networks or
community based tourismnetworks, which have like maybe
five, ten, 15 or even 100communities at the same time
that we can then screen onboard,show them what we do.
(20:35):
And we still get a lot ofrecommendations so that people
know us, organisations that wantto work with us because we're,
to my knowledge, one of the fewproviders who actually do this
and to give them the access tothe market. And so we get a lot
of requests as well. And all ofthem go through like a detailed
quality check with us on how webring them on the platform, what
(20:57):
they are doing, who's behind theidea, how they're contributing
to the local challenges thatthey're trying to solve, and
obviously how the localcommunity is involved, how it is
locally owned, how they arefunded so that we get a lot of
information, we make sure thatthe impact that we promise our
travellers that is happening andthat they can actually see and
witness and contribute to isactually happening.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Yeah, so there's lots of manual work involved in this,
like selecting, screening,onboarding.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
It was always clear to us that we didn't want to be
a marketplace where the hostscan just upload any profile or
any programme because we want tocurate the hosts and their
ideas. And a lot of our hosts,for them, it's the first time
being on a platform as well. Sowe often develop the programs
jointly with them, especiallywith one of the new programmes
(21:51):
that we have, which is multi dayexperiences where we offer not
only accommodation, but wepackages with activities, food
and transportation into like avery unique package. And for
many of them, it's the firsttime offering such a thing. So
we help them in thebrainstorming, what kind of
activities could they offer,what kind of things could be
explored on-site, how could itbe priced, what would be
(22:13):
interesting experience for ourtarget group.
So we developed these programsjointly with them. So it's still
a lot of manual labor involved,but it's one of the works that I
really enjoy doing with socialmedia, actively working with
them and seeing how we can givethem access to the market and
actually contributing.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
And I can imagine that also being a huge advantage
to your demand side in this eraof greenwashing and aggressive
sort of responsibility washingand marketing to be able to
trust that this is the realdeal, like this is actually as
impactful as is being claimed.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Exactly. That's one of our main targets and main
focus, our credibility in theimpact that we're delivering.
And I mean, the amazing thing isthat the travellers can see the
impact that they are having onthe site firsthand. They see
where the money goes. They seewhat they're contributing or
they might be even activelycontributing to what they're
doing, to what the project isdoing.
(23:10):
And I think that makes it such aunique experience.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
So how you find this demand then?
Speaker 1 (23:17):
So the demand is mainly through social media and
awareness campaigns, publicrelations. So we've had quite
some publications, because wesee there's a lot of interest in
how tourism can work in adifferent way. Because I think
most of the people would agreethat tourism as it is today is
(23:40):
not very fit for the future.Because we see there's a lot of
requests from the localpopulation, be it in European
cities, that they say, 'Okay, wewant our city back. There's too
many tourists coming in.
We are not involved in buildingthese products. We're not
benefiting from people cominghere. So we see that there's a
big movement in trying torethink tourism. That's where we
(24:03):
want to enable and develop andallow a different alternative,
like I said, with social BNB.How can we actually involve the
local communities all over theworld in building a touristic
product that is beneficial forthem because it's actually
contributing to naturepreservation, animal welfare,
gender equality, educationwhatsoever.
(24:25):
And at the same time, it's avery meeting on eye level with
the travelers because thetravellers are actually
interested, curious and want tolearn more about the culture and
the region and not just there tobe entertained. And so I think
that's a different level ofinteraction with the locals as
well. And that's what we get asfeedback from both our partners
and our travelers that it's areally different kind of
(24:46):
experience. So we see back toyour question how we raise the
awareness we see that there werea lot of publications in
magazines, TV shows, podcasts,whatsoever that were interested
in a way, Okay, hey, these guysare really trying something
different. These guys are reallytrying to rethink the system on
how it should be done.
And that's how we got a lot ofinterest and step by step
(25:10):
building our social mediachannels, which is, I think, one
of the best ways on showcasingthe uniqueness of our
experiences and showcasing thelocal changemakers that we work
with. So making interviews withthem, allowing them to share
their story with the travellers,why they chose to fight this
injustice, why they chose totake on this challenge and
(25:31):
really give a face to theproject, to the challenge that
the travellers can visit andcontribute to.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
That sounds amazing. Is word-of-mouth a big factor in
your demand acquisition also orrepeat usage? I assume also that
people who once get toexperience this kind of tourism
don't want to really go back tothe traditional kind.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
For sure. For sure. I think word-of-mouth and as well
like reviews is like one of thebest things to either support us
and at the same time what ourtravelers do as well. I think we
have an average review rating offive stars because the people
see that it's somethingdifferent. They really love what
they are seeing, what they'redoing.
So we see as well thatword-of-mouth is obviously a
(26:19):
very strong recommendationfactor and pull factor because I
mean, how I decide my nexttravel destinations as well,
talking to different people,learning more about what was
their best experience on-siteand what they did, what they
discovered, what they learned,how they liked the destination.
And it's best trust buildingthat you can do because if you
(26:39):
just see a shiny, flashy ad, itmight be one in a million. But
if someone that you trust andthat you know has the same
values or the same interests asyou and says like, hey, this is
a very cool experience. This isa very cool destination and you
should definitely check it out.It grows higher and higher on my
to go, on my bucket list, whichis very long still, but
Speaker 2 (27:02):
I'm sure
Speaker 1 (27:03):
it keeps growing.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
So how do you monetize this? Like, how do make
a profit from these kind ofconnections?
Speaker 1 (27:12):
We decided on the marketplace system as well
because we see that this iswhere we have the main benefit
for the travelers and the hosts.So giving the hosts access to
the global tourism market and atthe same time helping travelers
to find these offers that theymight not find elsewhere. And
that's why we take like atransaction fee because we
connect these two players.That's how we can keep our
(27:36):
service completely free for ourcommunities and our
organizations, our projects, sothey don't pay a listing fee or
subscription fee. But thetravellers pay a transaction fee
for us connecting them withthese projects and finding these
projects.
And that's how we generaterevenue.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Yes, yes. So a commission that only the demand
side pays. Like also quitenicely aligned with your values.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
It does, yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Do you remember the first transaction that happened
on your Sharedrive marketplacewhere you had had more
automation in place?
Speaker 1 (28:12):
The first year was crazy in general when we would
switch to Sharedrive because,like I said, the first ones were
all still like where we wereinvolved or were friends of us
or people found us and then theysent an email to us. We were
always very involved. But all ofa sudden, I think it was
February or no. Yeah, I thinkwhen we launched the platform in
(28:35):
May, July or July, I think. Andwe had the first booking in the
July, August, and there was justsomeone we didn't know.
And it was just like someonebooking through the platform,
which is like, wow, wow. Andyeah, I just wanted to directly
call the person and be like,hey, how did you find us? How
(28:57):
did like the experiencewhatsoever? No, we don't gather
phone numbers. Don't get thephone numbers.
We sent them an email on howthey found and how they liked
the experience. And it wasactually through a
recommendation of a friend. Butit was like a crazy feeling.
(29:19):
That was the first time we werenot involved. And that was the
first time that we actually saw,okay, this marketplace idea of
us just providing themarketplace and the information
and the technology behind it andpeople actually looking by
themselves, finding somethingfor themselves that they like
was a crazy experience.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
I'm So currently, what are your most important
focus areas in terms of businessinitiatives or marketing or
technology or work in thecommunities? What are you
focusing on now?
Speaker 1 (29:51):
We always have three main focus topics that we're
working on. On the one hand,we're always trying to enhance
the technology, talking tousers, what kind of features
would they like, talking to ourhosts, what kind of features
would they like. So we'recurrently, for example,
adjusting the transactionprocess more, allowing more
payment methods, the social signon, giving them more overview of
(30:14):
what is actually included in theprice, for example. So we try to
give them the best optionpossible. We adjust the search
process, for example, because wesaw that people search
differently now than they didlike six months ago.
So we try to accommodate forthat. So we always try to build
very user centric new features.And at the same time, in the
product department, productdevelopment, like I shared a
(30:37):
bit, we developed a new productcalled Multi Day Experiences,
where we shifted from onlyoffering the accommodation like
we did in the beginning andgiving information about the
activities that you can do toactually packaging activities,
accommodation, food,transportation all together to
showcase the uniqueness of theproduct or the project that
you're visiting. Because byoffering the additional
(30:59):
activities, you can really see,Oh, can I do a workshop? Can I
participate in reforestationefforts?
Can I support in the researchand rewiring efforts? Can I
learn more about education,about gender equality in that
sense? So really making thisexperience more immersive
because we saw that thetravellers wanted even more
interaction with their hosts.And that's how we tried to work
(31:23):
with it in building thesepackages so that they stay
longer on the ground and have aneven more special experience by
showcasing the uniqueness of ourprojects even more and as well
enabling the travelers to takemaybe like a bit of a detour
because we also try to divertthe tourism streams that you
don't visit all the time at thesame time, the same regions, but
(31:43):
maybe go to like a more rural orsemi urban area. But it's more
worth it if you go for three orfour nights instead of just
staying for one night.
So we try to accommodate forthat. And as well, we will be
offering our first own designround trip now in Sri Lanka,
where you will be having likefourteen days social BNB
experience. So just visiting,going from one of our partners
(32:06):
to the next and having like anentire impact around which we
are very excited about to belaunching within the next couple
of weeks.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Sounds really cool. I love how I can hear from how you
talk that like how the impactthat you want to make is present
in all these all these decisionsthat you to make, be it
technology, be it businessinitiatives. Can you give a
concrete example of what thiskind of this type of experience
could be like?
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Yes, I would love to. Specifically, these multi day
experiences that we're offeringexperiences where you as a
traveler can even dive deeperinto the local culture and
immerse even more and oftendirectly contribute to what the
project is doing because youstay longer and are more
engaged. So, for example, wehave programs in Europe where
(32:53):
you can participate or see howrewilding efforts are being
done. You can see in Italy, forexample, be part of a research
vessel where you can support theresearchers in finding dolphins,
whales, and with the researchthat you're doing, actually
contribute to them building likea marine life protected area in
the Mediterranean Sea with thedata that you're gathering. So
(33:15):
you're actively contributingwith your work and have a very
unique experience and being onthe sailing vessel, having this
community thought and reallybeing hands on.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
So you mentioned three focus areas, and that was
two, right? Exactly. What's thethird?
Speaker 1 (33:33):
And the last one is always how to since we are a
marketplace, obviously getting anice supply, but on the other
hand as well growing our demand.So how can we use our marketing
channels even better to showcasethis uniqueness of our product?
So we started doing moretargeted ads, doing more video
content, which we saw is workingvery well. So we are trying to
(33:56):
work together with all of ourpartners in developing video
content so that we can createshort reels, video ads for them,
with them, that we can thenpromote to our platform. Because
what we saw is that, like I saidas well a bit earlier, when the
hosts can actually tell a bitmore about their story, have
(34:16):
video about why the experienceis so unique or what the
travellers can experience.
We saw that travellers are muchmore likely to book these kind
of experiences because they geta bit more better touch of the
people and what they could see.And that's what we're actively
promoting as well, building morevideo content, helping our
partners to create this contentor edit it for them, and then
(34:40):
bring it on our social to makemore vanderlust for our
travellers so that they canreally have a good feeling on
where they want to go next, getsome good inspiration.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Sounds great. You rather recently raised funding,
correct? Do you want to sharesomething about that?
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, for sure. Funding is always a very big
topic for young startups, Ithink especially for us, since
we've been working a lot withpublic money in the beginning
with government grants,scholarships, award money, for
example, in that idea. And wesaw that we were kind of
reaching like a glass ceilingbecause we saw, hey, we were
(35:19):
able to build this platform,were able to build this
marketplace, we were able to getthe first customers the first
traction showing that it couldwork. But we as well saw that
especially the marketing effortstake a lot more time than we
expected in the beginningBecause we thought, like you as
well said, there's a lot ofagreement and nodding about,
(35:39):
yes, tourism should be donedifferently. But we saw that
marketing is very priceintensive or money intensive
because in the end, when peopledecide where they go on their
next trip, there are so manyoptions out there and there are
so many big platforms that theycan turn to, that they can find
something wherever they go, theywill find a suitable
alternative.
(36:00):
So we saw that we need to put inmore money into marketing and
actually drive the people andshowcase that Social BnB exists.
Because to everyone I talk toand when I talk to Social BnB
about Social BnB, they'd belike, Hey, wow, I would have
loved to know about this beforemy last trip. And I was like,
Yes, that's exactly what we'reworking on. That's what we're
trying to push with this fundingas well, that more people know
(36:22):
about us and they know about usin the right moment when they're
trying to make the bookingdecision, or we can even be the
inspiration for their next tripwhere they want to go.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Makes sense. Perfect sense. Looking back on your
journey, is there anything thatyou would have done differently
with the wisdom that comes withhindsight?
Speaker 1 (36:41):
A million things. I think I haven't met an
entrepreneur who has done itright from the beginning. I
mean, looking back, I hope I canalways say that we did the best
to our knowledge at a certainpoint, which is comforting in
that sense. And I really lovethat we had been a team since
(37:04):
day one, so we were always likea lot of great minds trying to
find good ideas and involvingeveryone in the decision making.
But what I would try evenearlier, what I would focus even
earlier on is, like I said, nowwe focus very much on user
centric features.
In the beginning, we developedthe platform rather for us
(37:26):
saying like, okay, we would loveto have this, we would love to
have that, until we realizedwhat we expect from a platform
might not be what someone elsewould be expecting from the
platform. And that in the end,if a user would expect this
feature to work in that certainway or the search to work in
that certain way or thetransaction process to work in
(37:47):
that certain way, we need toaccommodate for that if we see
patterns and behaviours. So whatI would do differently is
definitely talk even more andeven earlier with our travelers,
with our customers on where theywant to go and what would they
expect from a platform like us,how we can make it even easier
(38:08):
for them to find these suitablealternatives And as well
developing on the one hand, thetechnological product jointly
with them, but as well thetouristic product jointly with
them. Because in the beginningwe're like, okay, it's super
nice to have a global reach with45 different countries. That's
amazing.
But I think it would have beeneasier for us to focus maybe on
(38:29):
three, four or five countries inthe beginning, build like a
stronger network in thosecountries, focus on marketing
these specific countries,building them up as like
responsible impact destinationsfrom the get go, which would
have made it easier to marketthese specific destinations. So
we always love to start big andstart global. But I think
(38:51):
sometimes it's as well very goodto start niche, get to know your
customer, get to know theproblem that you're solving for
them, get a recognition forbeing the provider for this
specific thing or this specificcountry in our case, and then
grow from there with an existingcustomer base.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
Yes, that's also a very, very good, useful advice
for many people who are just atthe early stages of this
journey, just starting out. It'soften super tempting to start
building the marketplace of yourdreams make it very But very
often it's indeed just like yousaid, start with an MVP and talk
(39:30):
to your users, find out whatthey need and build from there.
So thank you so much, Niels, forthis interview and for sharing
your inspiring story and youradvice with early stage
founders. We're super proud toshare this story with our
audience.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Perfect. Thank you very much for having me. It's
lovely being part of theSharedrive community. And thank
you for so much for theaudience.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Thanks. Thanks so much. And all the best for
Social B and B.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Thank you for listening and watching. If you
enjoyed this episode, you cansubscribe to ShareTrive Founder
Stories on YouTube, ApplePodcasts, Spotify, or wherever
you get your podcasts. Also,please consider leaving us a
rating or review as that reallyhelps other listeners find the
podcast. And if you got inspiredto bring your own marketplace
idea to life, go visitsharetribe.com. That's
(40:19):
sharetribe.com.
It's the fastest way to start anonline marketplace business.
Until next time.
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