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.

Episode Transcript

Javier Escribano (00:00):
In order to find product market fit, you
need to get four checks.
The first one is validate thereis a value for the user, that
you are solving a clear pain.
The second one is that theproduct is usable.
The third one is technicallyfeasible to build it.
And the fourth one is that thebusiness is viable.
We can go into detail in allthe four topics and others, but

(00:24):
just to give you the recap foreveryone who is listening, I
think we both agree that thelast one is the one that we
failed, and it's probably wheremost startups fail.

Ariel Camus (00:44):
Welcome everyone.
This is Ariel Camus, and thisis the Only Thing that Matters
the podcast where I interviewsuccessful founders to
deconstruct their path toproduct market fit and extract
the principles and frameworksbehind their success.
My guest today is a veryspecial person to me Javier
Escribano, a seasonedentrepreneur and product leader

(01:07):
with an impressive track record.
Javi and I co-founded TouristEye, a travel planning app that
we grew to over 1 million usersand sold to Lonely Planet in
2013.
Later on, javi co-founded twoother startups, zelt and OnTrack
, and he's currently a CPOadvisor, fractional CPO and

(01:28):
founder of Escuela Escribano,where he develops product
leaders and startups to scalesuccessfully.
In this special episode, javiand I take a trip down memory
lane, sharing the ups and downsof building TouristEye from
scratch.
We dive into the early days ofour naive 22-year-old selves,

(01:49):
the challenges we faced and thelessons we learned along the way
.
This episode offers a uniquebehind-the-scenes look at the
realities of startup life andthe power of perseverance.
Join us as we collaborativelytell the story of tourist die
and reflect on our sharedexperiences.
I had a blast recording thisepisode with Javi.

(02:11):
I hope you enjoy listening toit, javi, thank you so much for
making the time for this.
I'm super excited about thisdifferent type of episode.

Javier Escribano (02:23):
Sure happy to be here with you, Remembering
the times.

Ariel Camus (02:28):
The good old days.
Yeah, we had a lot of fun.
We were so naive.

Javier Escribano (02:34):
You are 22.
You have to be naive.

Ariel Camus (02:37):
Yeah, I always remember that quote, that we
wouldn't have done it if we hadknown that it was impossible.
Right, I don't think we puthumans on Mars, but I think we
accomplished a lot with verylittle experience, very little
capital, a very small team.
I'm really proud of everythingwe did, but also a lot of the

(03:01):
mistakes.
It's been 15 years since westarted I think maybe even 16
for you initially.
13 years since the acquisitionthat's a long time.
It's even scary to think aboutthe number, and I'm pretty sure

(03:21):
we have learned a lot since then.
And I was really curious to usetoday's episode to do a little
bit of group therapy with youarchaeology try to unpack what
we will do differently if wewere to go through this again.

(03:42):
Of course, there's no way forthat to happen, but still I
think how will we applyeverything we've learned to what
we did in the past?
And this podcast is aboutfinding product market fit.
That's the only thing thatmatters.
So I'm going to just cut to thechase here.
Do you think that we foundproduct market fit with

(04:04):
TouristEye, with the app webuilt together, and why?
For me, it's a clear.

Javier Escribano (04:10):
No, I really like this categorization of.
In order to find product marketfit, you need to get four
checks.
The first one is validate thereis a value for the user, that
you are solving a clear pain.
The second one is that theproduct is usable, easy to use,

(04:32):
easy to onboard.
People understand how to use it.
The third one is it'stechnically feasible to build it
.
It's not about a new technologythat you don't know how much
investment you are going to needto make to do it.
And the fourth one is that as abusiness, it's viable.

(04:55):
We can go into detail in allthe four topics and others, but
just to give you the recap foreveryone who is listening, I
think we both agree that thelast one is the one that we
failed, and it's probably wheremost startups fail, but we
didn't beat a business.

Ariel Camus (05:16):
We built an app which was used a lot, but it was
not a business used a lot, butit was not a business, and I
think many businesses for surefail on the, you know, building
a viable business, a sustainablebusiness.
We, weirdly enough, with suchlittle capital and resources, we

(05:38):
got to a lot of people, a lotof users, and we can talk about
the why, which is typically theother thing that a lot of people
struggle with.
Right.
It's, you know, the go-tomarket, the, the growth, the
user acquisition and and I thinkagain, we did a lot there we
grew to like almost a millionusers, if not a little more than
that over yeah over a millionand it's amazing.

(05:59):
and again, we can talk about theusage of that and, of course,
the business side of things.
But I think it's it'sinteresting to think about how
you can build something thatpeople want.
You can get a lot of users, butif there is no business model
behind this, it's not trulyproduct market market fit, and I
completely agree with you there.
But I was also thinking aboutmaybe this is a stretch.

(06:20):
You tell me what you think wedid a paying customer for the
product and we spent like fouryears building it specifically
for that customer.
Do you know who I'm talkingabout?
About the no, not exactly.
I'm talking about Lonely Planet, the company that acquired our
product.
Right, yeah, I know it's astretch.
It's not the typical definitionof product market fit and I

(06:42):
agree with you that we didn'tfind product market fit.
But it's interesting how, youknow, stories take such
different turns and there is noone single definition of success
.
I think, it's a very personalthing, even though the industry
forces upon us one very specificdefinition.
That looks like a lot of growth, a lot of money, a big

(07:05):
fundraising event, a lot ofmoney made on the acquisition.
But do you think that you as aperson found success with what
we did with Tourist Eye?

Javier Escribano (07:17):
For sure, for sure.
I'm really glad that we did it.
I mean, of course, there couldbe another universes of.
Maybe I will have stayed in theUnited States and I will have
worked for years in a startupthat was very successful I don't
know in 2009.
I don't know, if I got intoTwitter or I got into Uber or I

(07:40):
got into, my life will betotally different.
No, but compare that to thetraditional career path of an
engineer in Spain, where you gointo traditional company, maybe
to one of the incumbents, Ithink, the path of starting
something with 22, fighting andlearning a lot.

(08:02):
I would say that 90% of who amI professionally, and even
personally, is because of thatthat's awesome.

Ariel Camus (08:14):
I feel the same way .
I think it's even hard.
Maybe today we can identify afew of those things, but I think
it's hard but like unavoidablethat there is a lot of what we
learned those years, a lot ofwhat we did that completely
shaped our future path and thepeople we are today.
So, yeah, and to me it's also aclear yes to success and I

(08:38):
think that is an importantlesson.
Like, many people listening tothe podcast are like new
founders, new entrepreneurs orpeople who are considering it,
and I think it's important to totalk about the, the spectrum of
success and helping people findthat, that path.
Um, yeah, I was talking about,yeah, that the, the acquisition.

(08:59):
At the end, we worked hard forthat.
We also got lucky, but we endedup finding a company willing to

(09:21):
pay back investors and the teamgetting some money, which, by
the way, we didn't get any newmillionaire you know in the
world, but it was, you know,something like meaningful.
But because of the team that webuilt and where they are today,
like some of them have gone outto start careers at Facebook
and Meta, amazon, totally, I wasthinking about that the other

(09:43):
day, like what happened.

Javier Escribano (09:44):
You know we can Meta Amazon Totally.
I was thinking about that theother day.
What happened we can go intolater in the podcast about that
moment of crisis where we didn'thave any money, we even had
almost to close.
We will go.
And what if we decided to closeand not keep fighting?
The careers of many of us willbe totally different because of
that moment.

Ariel Camus (10:03):
Absolutely, absolutely, of us will be
totally different because ofthat moment, absolutely,
absolutely.
And we have both, each one inour own path, uh gone to find
product market fit with otherthings in life, and typically we
um cover a lot of like, let'ssay, successful uh stories
finding product market fit inthe in the podcast.
But I like also covering someof these stories are not so like

(10:25):
black or white, but somethingin the middle, like most stories
, to be honest.
And I think, well, let's juststart from the beginning, when,
when we started working on this,this was not an idea that I
came up with or that we came upwith together.
It's an idea that you broughtto me and I decided to join.
Tell me, like, do you rememberthe details of what was the

(10:47):
origins of that idea?
Where did the idea come fromand what was that initial idea?

Javier Escribano (10:53):
Sure.
So this was about end of 2008,beginning of 2009.
I was in Chicago, studying amaster's there, and I had some
classes about entrepreneurship.
So as part of the exercisesthat I had to do there at
homework, we had to think aboutbusiness ideas, and one of the

(11:16):
ideas that got into my mind wasfocusing on travel, because I
really like to travel and I wastraveling a lot in the United
States while I was studyingthere, and specifically in 2008
was when iPhone and Android werelaunched I don't know 2008,

(11:37):
2007, but this year and Ispecifically remember that in my
school, and I specificallyremember that in my school,
android was launched, I think inJune 2008, or the first Android
phone, and they organized acourse for Android development
just in some months, which wasamazing, and I got into that

(11:59):
course.
So that was one of the ideasthat I decided.
I started playing with theAndroid phones.
So I realized that, hey, whatif we bring all the content like
the lonely planets of the worldor the tip advisors, reviews,
information about restaurants,maps, all that into a mobile

(12:20):
phone, what this new technologycould enable for travelers, that
we love to plan, we love tohave all the information around,
etc.
So that was the origin of thatputting all the travel
information into a mobile phonewhile you are traveling.

Ariel Camus (12:41):
It was a combination, I guess, of some
new enabling technology, which Ithink answers a common question
for any entrepreneur, which isthe why now?
Yeah, and then something thatyou were passionate about, which
was traveling, which is the whyme, which is the other part.
Then, in my case, I I had alsoexperienced, after living with

(13:02):
my parents as a teenager, as aperson, until that point, when
we were in college, I hadstarted experiencing traveling
around Europe and could alsofeel the bug of wanting to
travel more, so the idea wassuper 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 oneverything that happened after

(13:25):
that, but with the informationwe had at the moment, what else
could have done differently todecide 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 thisidea if it's good or not?
Qualify this idea if it's?

Javier Escribano (13:42):
good or not.
Yeah, I mean looking at thesituation in 2009 or 2010, which
was when we began, I thinkthere was this trend of mobile.
It was really hot, like rightnow with artificial intelligence
.
In 2010, it was mobile.

(14:03):
Everything was about mobile.
Investments were about mobile.
The second trend was aboutconsumer apps.
Like you, grow a lot socialnetworks, you need to grow a lot
your user base and then therevenue will come.
So investors, at the moment,they were just worried about
growth, if you remember.

(14:24):
It seems like nothing haschanged, then Well, I would say
that maybe there are moredifferent types of investors now
, but all the social networkswere about growing.
We were not exactly a socialnetwork.
We had some capabilities thatare similar to a social network
not exactly so.
That was another positive trend.

(14:45):
There was roving all aroundEurope and, of course, in the
rest of the world, somethingthat changed years later.

Ariel Camus (14:52):
It was really expensive back then to use the
internet in other countries.
I think that was right.
Like we always talk about howany good product person will
focus on problems, not onsolutions, and I think maybe, if
I have to pick the one problemthat was the key thing we're
trying to solve, was that partright Not having internet

(15:13):
connection while traveling.

Javier Escribano (15:14):
Yeah, exactly that was a clear value
proposition.
In fact, if you recall thearticles that people wrote about
us about Tourist Eye, it wasmainly, yeah, the first thing.
This is the app that peoplewrote about us about TouristEye
it was mainly the first thing.
This is the app that you canuse when you're traveling and it
works offline, and on that, Ithink we did a good job there,

(15:38):
because there was a clear painfor the users and we did it in a
very simple way.
The problem that we didn'tbuild a business out of it, and
also probably something that wecan also go deeper later, is
like okay, but this is asustainable advantage.
No, how is the market going toevolve?

(16:00):
Okay, you are the only onesdoing this now, but what's going
to happen in five years?

Ariel Camus (16:06):
It's really hard to know that and I often struggle
with that question becausethings change so fast that
almost always you need to assumethat some breakthrough might
happen.
It can completely change yourbusiness.
That Apple or now OpenAI willlaunch something that will, like
you know, kill whatever you'redoing.
An AI will launch somethingthat will, like you know, kill
whatever you're doing.
But at least that big check oflike are we solving a real

(16:28):
problem that we and other peoplehave?
I think that was a clear yes,so I would agree.
I also like the.
I think Reforge has this kind ofcondition for a good insight,
not necessarily a problem tosolve or an idea, but a good
insight in something that isunique, something that is earned

(16:49):
and something that is groundedin one of the elements that will
make this a good businessoverall.
And I think, when it comes toit being unique, we had what now
seems like maybe not so likenow might seem obvious.
Back then it wasn't hey, youcan have all of this in your
phone.
And now it's obvious right,like everyone has all the data

(17:11):
on their phone, but back thenthat was not obvious to everyone
.
It was a wow moment for people.
It was, it was um, and probablywe 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 advantageof this is one way when I think

(17:34):
about it being earned.
Earned meaning you haveexperienced something, worked on
something that exposed you tothe problem, that gave you
insights into the problems.
I think there was an element ofit being earned because we had
experienced the pain whiletraveling.
And when it comes to beinggrounded in whether you know
there is a competitive advantageor a clear distribution channel

(17:55):
that will give you an advantage, or like a very strong
validation for a business modelthere wasn't much about that.
I guess the only thing thatwould like ground this was like
we knew we were not the onlyones who had that problem, and I
guess that's a good place tostart from.
So I would agree that it wasnot a terrible idea, at least if
we just look at that.
How did we end up workingtogether?

(18:17):
That's one that I'm curiousabout your side of the story.

Javier Escribano (18:21):
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 groupsof students, like one.
One group was about sports,another group was about claps.

(18:43):
You know, you can can say thebest word is to use the word
clubs sports club, thejournalism club, the
telecommunications club, and wewere the IEEE club, which was
more about computers,electronics, and we were both
there and we were both there andwhen we were two years before

(19:10):
starting, both of us, you werethe president of the club and I
was the vice president of theclub.

Ariel Camus (19:15):
I was on our third year of college, I think, right.

Javier Escribano (19:17):
The third year ?
Yeah, the third and fourth.
We were two years.

Ariel Camus (19:21):
Well, yeah, something like that.
And, by the way, we ended up onthose roles, kind of president
and vice president, withoutreally knowing each other much
at that point, right?

Javier Escribano (19:30):
And we were, I mean, like it was not like a
big thing we did, but theactivities that we organized and
moving people around andorganizing people like we did a
good job and we worked reallywell together.
And then I moved to the UnitedStates to do my last year and
you stayed in Madrid and I willlet you continue the story.

Ariel Camus (19:54):
Yeah, I mean inevitably, I think that student
club organization was the placethat brought us together For me
.
I think you just said somethingthat we were working really
well together, even though itwas, like you know, like kids'
playgrounds, you know, at theuniversity, the kind of things

(20:15):
we were organizing.
But I mean, I remember youbringing the at that point,
director of Google to talk atthe university, like you had a
better capacity to grab people'sattention than probably any
other teacher in the school,right, and I think you've always
had that capacity.
Yeah, you have a reallysomething around your person

(20:36):
that it's attractive to, to, to,to people that want to like
listen to you, they want to beclose to you and maybe probably
I was also attracted by that,but I think a lot of other
people like this present ofgoogle back then, uh, was also
part of that, and I think thatthere was something that brings
me back to my first memory ofyou.
I think I've told you this one,uh, the nickname salmon.

(20:58):
I hope you don't get offendedthat I shared this in public.
I remember in our first year ofcollege, someone mentioned you
Again.
This was like three yearsbefore we started doing
something together and someonereferred 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 onthe first row of class every

(21:19):
day reading the salmon pages ofthe newspaper.
The salmon pages of thenewspaper in Spain and this one
of the newspaper in Spain andthis is one of the newspapers in
Spain are the pages abouteconomics and finance, and it's
not that common that you findsomeone in their first year of
college.
They're reading every morningthe newspaper on the finance and

(21:39):
economics section.
And, of course, back then, whenI saw that probably stupid me,
young me, not stupid me Ithought what a nerd right.
And much later, I think, Istarted appreciating wow, what a
unique, interesting guy.
He's clearly doing things in adifferent way, he clearly has

(22:01):
other capacities and I thinkthat was very, very, yeah,
attractive.
And I had also taken a verydifferent path, especially the
year you left in our last yearof college, when you left in
Chicago.
I stayed in Madrid, but Istarted working for a company
while I was finishing college,and this is a company that I had

(22:23):
connected with because I hadstarted a project on my own
related to voice over IP, whichwas another kind of trending
technology of the moment, and Ihad started going to
entrepreneurial events andtalking about this project and I
had connected that way withthis person and it was through
networking that I got thisinternship that I think paid

(22:43):
twice as much as any otherinternship that our friends had.
And to me, I started noticing,ok, there are people following
the traditional path and thereare people who are creating
their own path, and I know thatthe traditional path is probably
not for me.
I want to create my own path.
Who else is out there doing thesame?

(23:04):
And, to be honest, I can'tthink of any other person right
now, of course.
I was reflecting on this a fewdays ago with with some other
friends from college that a lotof people from our class went on
to do amazing stuff, but fromin terms of following a very
untraditional path, starting acompany I don't know if you

(23:26):
remember anyone else doing it asearly as we did.

Javier Escribano (23:29):
I remember Eduardo, who went to Chicago.

Ariel Camus (23:31):
Yeah, fair enough, I didn't know him, but that's
another example.
We even organized this event.
There was this startup weekendevent back then, where you spend
the whole weekend building astartup with people.
We decided to build the versionfor universities, called Uni.
Weekend, I think Uni Weekendyeah, uni Weekend and that was
really cool.
I remember that's how we foundthe first member of the team.

(23:52):
By the way, we can get to thatlater yeah totally.
But that was the moment of likeokay, the university is not
going to create this type ofevents for us and we believe
that entrepreneurship is areally cool path.
Why don't we start creatingstuff?
And we organized that in theuniversity and they clearly
attracted people that later onactually became co-founders and

(24:14):
started companies.
But yeah, anyway sorry, I'mgoing back to the main trunk of
the branch here.
I think it was just seeing thisother person that was creating
his own path.
That was like okay, he'ssomeone that, if I have the
chance, I would love to continuedoing things with.

Javier Escribano (24:31):
Yeah, totally, I think I.
I don't know if it happenedthat way, but what I remember is
that you wrote to me one dayand said hey, what are your
thoughts about after you finishthe master's?
Are you going to stay in theUnited States because I want to
start a company with you?
Why don't we start a companywith you together?
And I don't know it happenedthat way, but in my mind you

(24:53):
were the one who proactivelyproposed that to me and you were
like I don't care, let's figureit out, let's think when you
come back, what we have in ourminds and let's choose one thing
I do remember that, by the way,and I'm very glad that I did
that.

Ariel Camus (25:11):
Uh, probably one of the few very smart things I'm
talking about but I do rememberthinking like I don't care that
much what he is working on or ifhe has already an idea, I'm
definitely willing.
It's not about creating my ownideas.
It's about creating, creatingmy own path and doing it with

(25:33):
other people that are super, youknow, into doing that.
Um, you met those two criteriaso I was like okay, javi, what
are we doing together?

Javier Escribano (25:42):
the white, white choice, yeah, so, yeah,
that's how we started.
I came back to Spain and thenwe started.

Ariel Camus (25:50):
You built some version, some prototype I don't
remember to what level of detailwhile you were in Chicago of
the app.
Did we do any kind ofvalidation on the idea?
I don't remember.

Javier Escribano (26:02):
To be honest, before going all in, I mean, in
Chicago, as part of the coursesthat I was taking, I did kind of
a business plan.
I did a prototype with theAndroid course that I took,
because I even lead a team ofstudents.
I mean, that was my firstlesson on managing people and

(26:23):
having different people fromdifferent backgrounds trying to
build an app.
That was like, oh my God, thisis so painful.
First learning is there of whatkind of people I want to work
with and which kind of people Idon't want to work with.
But when we started, I mean itwas kind of what you said before
, like when we were chattingabout this idea with people,
everyone were like oh yes, ofcourse I want that.

(26:45):
I have this pain.

Ariel Camus (26:51):
So it was kind of this obvious pains, obvious,
like yes, of course, and I guessthat's not necessarily a bad
thing.
But I can see also the counterside of that.
It's like we chose somethingthat was kind of like a mass
consumer type of problem.
Something that was kind of likea mass consumer type of problem
.
You know, almost every personin that developed world, you
know and in with with privilegein life, gets to travel, and

(27:13):
back then every person couldtravel internationally, had that
problem, which is.
It's a pretty cool thingbecause if you go around and you
ask a lot of random peoplearound your privilege, you know
situation, you will find a lotof people saying like yeah, I
have that problem, and I thinkthat's an amazing way of at
least getting some validationthat the problem is real.

Javier Escribano (27:32):
And, by the way, for context for everyone, I
believe that around that timealso, there were a lot more free
or almost free, very cheapflights from Ryanair, easyjet,
et cetera, et cetera.
I remember that we took severalflights for one euro, two euros
, when Ryanair was almost givingthem away.

Ariel Camus (27:50):
I flew to Porto for one cent each way with Ryanair.

Javier Escribano (27:55):
30 of you from the university, you got.

Ariel Camus (27:58):
Insane.
I guess that was also.
A lot of people were beingexposed to this problem because
of how cheap internationaltraveling had become.
Now I was thinking the otherside of that is that when you
find a problem that everyone hasat such a massive market, that
probably someone with way moreexperience, way more money, will

(28:21):
come and also try to solve it,and when you're 22, you, you
know, and you have no money, noconnections, no experience, well
, it can be pretty hard tocompete there.
I don't think we did a bad job,but it's a problem of, like you
know, not going with a nichewith that thing.
You know, it's a another bestpractice why?

Javier Escribano (28:39):
me know why we are going to win why are we
going to win?

Ariel Camus (28:42):
yeah, no, not just why us building this?
I guess that made sense.
We're passionate about theproblem, 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, youknow, to your market directly,
it can also be pretty hard tovalidate anything.
It can be a really bad place tostart.

(29:04):
So I guess, if you're veryyoung 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 acertain audience, starting with
an audience that you know makessense, and maybe that could have
been college students, maybe itwas people traveling.
In this case, we went withpeople traveling.

Javier Escribano (29:24):
So yeah, that makes sense.
I think it was Paul Graham whosaid that the best market for
people in their 20s is somethingcloser to them Makes sense,
something that they know thatthey are Because you know that
market.
It's very difficult.
For example, the other day Iwas with one developer who was

(29:44):
doing something very niche itwas like for investment bankers
about energy investments orsomething like that and they
were like he talked he has onlytalked with only one user, but
it's a client and, like man, youhave to talk 20.

Ariel Camus (30:00):
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 someoneyoung 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 processof building the first version

(30:21):
of of this?
I mean, I guess we had had theadvantage of both of us being
telecommunication engineers,which means we are really bad at
electronics.
We're really bad at writingsoftware, but we can do both.
We were able to write code, buthow do you remember the
experience of building the firstversion of the software?

Javier Escribano (30:43):
For me what I love about this how they decided
which was going to be our MVP.

Ariel Camus (30:48):
So tell me more.
I really want to hear yourstory for this.

Javier Escribano (30:51):
I don't remember.
I honestly don't know how wereached that conclusion, but our
decision was to build A website, an iPhone app, an Android app.
Yeah, an MVP Exactly Cover thetop 20 cities of the world.

(31:12):
I believe it was in English andin Spanish.
Great, that was our MVP.
No, I don't know.

Ariel Camus (31:21):
I don't know how we reached that conclusion and I
guess the rest was obvious.
Right, like one had to buildthe website, one had to build at
least one of the apps.
We needed another person tobuild the other app.
So you build the website, Ibuild the iPhone app.
I had no experience whatsoeverbuilding.
We haven't talked about this.

(31:43):
Maybe today's not the day.
We had decided to start somekind of like consulting
incubator before this um, whichgot us a few clients, but we
knew eventually we want to starta company.
I forgot about that it was a wayto make some money that was a
way to make some money which Imean made some money, but
probably not enough to then fundthe other thing.

(32:04):
So we eventually decided to goall in with this, right?
Um, sorry, I digress, um, yeah.
So yeah, it's pretty crazy thatwe decided to build like three
different apps and launch in alot of cities in two languages
at the same time.
What will you do differentlyabout that today?
How, how will you have done it?
I?

Javier Escribano (32:25):
mean here we are supposing that we want to go
into that path of building whatwe built, yes, and at the time,
with it.
At the time, no, because withthe information I have now I
would not have done that, butwith the information that we had
I would have chosen just oneapp.

Ariel Camus (32:45):
No website, not two platforms, because if our value
, proposition was having all theinformation offline.

Javier Escribano (32:51):
It's just about the app and chose just one
Android or iPhone, I don't know.
Probably at that moment theiPhone apps were better, more
traction, and probably alsochoose just English or Spanish.
I think we chose two becauseSpanish was our language,
English is what we want toconquer the world, uh, so

(33:12):
probably we should have chosenmaybe English and maybe cover
one main country or three maincities in Europe.
I don't know, we'll have to dothat, narrowing everything.

Ariel Camus (33:26):
And I think it's a very common mistake, right?
I mean, if people will use thisand some people use this type
of phone, and some people haveused this type of phone, and
some people use a website andsome people try to do this or do
this, or speak this language orthis language, you have to
satisfy them right, andotherwise you're going to lose a
lot of customers.
But we know the problem that bytrying to do all of that at the

(33:46):
same time, each individualpiece either takes much longer
or is of a much lower quality,so you end up wasting time and
precious resources.

Javier Escribano (33:58):
Having said that, I would have done things
differently, but I think we alsogot a lot of press and a lot of
users because we were coveringall platforms, so it was easy
for anyone to try our product.

Ariel Camus (34:13):
That's definitely true.

Javier Escribano (34:14):
I don't know if we would have chosen just
English, just iPhone, just somecountry, we would have grown so
fast.

Ariel Camus (34:24):
The first press we got, which I guess is a typical
example of an unsustainablegrowth channel, by the way.
But we actually used it a lotand I have some theories of how
that helped other types ofgrowth, by the way.
But I guess we could have donejust Spanish media first,
because, as far as I remember,some of the first media we got

(34:44):
was just in Spain andinternational media came a
little bit later.
From that point of view, wecould have done just Spanish,
just Spanish media, if we wantedto still leverage PR.
Yeah, now, I was thinking howmobile played not just a massive
role in the capabilities tosolve the problem well, or where

(35:06):
the problem was, which was youwere traveling outside of the
country with your phone and thephone was the enabler because
now you could have all the dataon a smart device, but it was
also the distribution channel.
Right, I think probably we had alittle hack with the chrome web
store at some point thatbrought us maybe one sixth, one
seventh of the users.

(35:27):
But everything else came mostlyfrom the aso, like app store
search optimization, where weworked a lot, and I do have the
theory that the press allows toget this initial boost on the
app store by, you know,condensing back then.
I don't know on now how itworks anymore, but like having,

(35:47):
uh, the measurement to positionyourself in the in the app was
based on, in a given window oftime, how many downloads you had
.
So, like price was really goodto push the algorithm up, and
the higher you went, the morethat people will find you
organically, which brought moretraffic, which fed the algorithm
even more.
So I think that usage of PR,while unsustainable on its own,

(36:13):
was a really good way to boostthe more sustainable channel
which was the App Store,completely.

Javier Escribano (36:21):
I mean, we were the first ones doing that.
I don't think I recall thatincorrectly, but I think we were
truly the first ones doingoffline maps.

Ariel Camus (36:30):
If not the first yeah among the first three
companies.
Yeah, maybe there's like fortraveling.

Javier Escribano (36:35):
maybe there is someone or open up that was
still launching just thosemonths, but for focusing on
traveling, I think TripWolf wasanother one.

Ariel Camus (36:43):
It was a German company.
At least from our side itlooked like they had way more
money and experience.
But they also went with a verydifferent approach of one app
per country.
It was a whole different thing.

Javier Escribano (36:54):
Yeah, a mess.
So we're the first ones.
Yeah, we got that.
That definitely helped as well.
As a new platform opens, a newmarketplace opens.
If you are the first ones inthat marketplace, if that
marketplace has a lot of users,you are going to receive a lot
of users.
So the same happens withShopify, same happens with any

(37:17):
other marketplace.

Ariel Camus (37:19):
And I think that's definitely the other principle
where timing is important.
What is a problem that has agrowing market right now?
What is a problem that has anenabling technology that
supports a solution?
Why now can?
What is unique about the nowthat can enable a new type of

(37:39):
distribution?
And I think that's where mobilecomes in again.
So I think that timing playssuch a huge role on well
everything in life, butdefinitely for startups is big
and and I guess there is a partof timing you can't control, you
can't guess what's going tohappen.
But you can be always trying tobe connected to whatever is
happening in the tech world andwhat's and trying things and

(38:03):
keep yourself there and and tryto ask yourself what am I doing
with whatever I'm building thatis leveraging, that is tapping
into this stuff, that it's nowthat is happening for the first
time?
Yeah, yeah.

Javier Escribano (38:14):
And you have to move fast.
Oh yeah, for example, with theChrome that you were mentioning,
like Chrome also opened theirmarketplace so people could
install apps in Chrome whichwere just like websites, linked
websites or something like thatwe moved fast.
I don't know.
I don't recall exactly thespecific detail.

(38:35):
I don't know if we werecontacted or we decided to go.
But, as you said, I think wedid something very simple,
because it was just almost alink to our website, but it was
just uploading our icondescription and doing something
very basic.
It got us maybe 200,000 users.

Ariel Camus (38:54):
That's a number that I remember too, but I also
think that it helped that wewere doing.
One thing I would say quitewell, I'm curious about your
opinion and it's something thatI think we both carry with us,
even nowadays and probably weare a pain in the neck for
people because of this and it'sthe attention to detail when it

(39:16):
comes to design, both UI and UX,and I think we both had
probably some innate interest orattention to that type of
detail.
But going back to what I saidbefore of when we organized this
like weekend in the universitycreating startups, one guy came

(39:36):
in, diego.
He was probably what like 19 or18, 18, 19 I don't know how he
found us, we should ask him andhe, you know, came by himself.
He started helping people, youknow, with the designing stuff
over the weekend, and I rememberwe both seen his skills at

(39:58):
design and we were like we needhim to join us and Diego, if
you're listening, he was.

Javier Escribano (40:06):
I mean, he's still pretty good, he's working.

Ariel Camus (40:09):
He's amazing.
No, no, no, but I agree, for an18, 19, 20-year-old he was
amazing.
And the reason I mentionedDiego, well, I'm also super
grateful that we got to workwith him, but also I think he
was the person that taught methe importance of not each
individual detail when it comesto design, but how the aggregate

(40:33):
of the details can make orbreak a user experience.
Right, and I remember, becauseI was building the iOS app, one
day he said the hamburger menuyou know the little three lines
at the top to open the menu.
It's one pixel higher than itshould be.
And I remember looking at himand thinking, really, one pixel,

(40:55):
I'm going to have to go andchange it just because of one
pixel.
And he told me, okay, yeah, butthere's also one pixel here,
one pixel here, one pixel there,one pixel.
And I said, okay, sure, I'll doit.
It.
And I changed all the pixelsone by one, little here, a
little there and the result waslike, oh, wow, this does look
much better.
Right, and I'm a pain in theneck now to people because I do
pay a lot of attention to that,but I do think the connection

(41:18):
here is that I think the reasonwe were also successful at
different levels.
For example, when Chromeselected us to highlight us in
the Chrome web store was becausewe had created something that
was beautiful, that had reallygood presentation, also very
usable but also very beautifullylooking, which they were trying

(41:39):
to highlight and that we did agreat job.

Javier Escribano (41:45):
I wonder if don't you think that maybe we're
too slow or focusing too muchon the details or when we're
building features.

Ariel Camus (41:57):
Yes, for sure, because we're not validating
things.
We were just building ideasthat we had that we thought were
going to work, and we builtthem for iOS, for Android and
for the website, and we launchedthem together and it took us
months.
So, yes, we were slow because Iguess two things one, we were
doing all these platforms at thesame time, when we were still

(42:18):
too, I guess, young or we hadn'tfound really product market fit
, and two, because we were notfollowing best practices that we
know nowadays, like hey, whydon't you interview people, why
don't you do prototypes firstand 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 (42:39):
No, no for sure, that's what we learned the
hard way.

Ariel Camus (42:43):
We learned.
We launched a lot of thingsthat proved not to be the
success that we imagined in ourheads, and we were lucky with
other things.
I think we had good ideas, butI think we could have moved way
faster if we had followed thosebest practices.
We know today that we didn'tknow back then, and not just us.
I think there was not a worldof resources aligned to tell you

(43:08):
what best practices are andwhat they're not.
There were no good books orcourses or incubators or even
articles.

Javier Escribano (43:14):
Or articles.

Ariel Camus (43:16):
Yeah, today there are even podcasts like this one.
So let's talk about the Adlypart, the business model.
What did we miss?
I don't even remember usthinking about this like we're
like okay, let's just grow,let's get a lot of users uh,
there that was everyone was howeveryone was behaving.

Javier Escribano (43:37):
we were like one part of the herd, you know,
like, yeah, behaving likeeveryone, like just that's
insane to one million to 5million users, and then we will
figure it out.
Even investors, I mean, like Idon't want, I will never
complain about the investorstelling me something because
it's my decision.
But almost everyone was tellingus, uh like, uh, focus on

(44:00):
growth, focus on growth.
And then when we startedfocusing on revenue because we
had no money, uh, it was hard toraise.
Yeah, that got the badly we, Ithink.

Ariel Camus (44:15):
Correct me if I'm wrong with some of the numbers.
I I couldn't find all thesespecific numbers, but I think we
raised like 20 25 000 fromfriends and family, that that
was the first funding right,maybe Around that.
I think, just so that we couldgo full time into this and spend
some money on some stuff, yeah.

(44:35):
And then it took us a while toraise our first round of 120K
euros.
Yeah, something like that whichwow how things have changed and
how much we did with that money.
120k euros, yeah, somethinglike that which wow how things
have changed and how much we didWith that money, of course,
paying ourselves.

Javier Escribano (44:53):
On that, I think we did Well or not
spending money.

Ariel Camus (44:59):
Yeah, absolutely, at least.
I think it's very differentwhen you are, you know, on your
early 20s, or if you alreadyhave kids, like it's the case
today, like probably you can'tgo on, I mean, unless you have a
lot of money saved from, like,some exit or something.
So I think in that case, eitheryou if we were, you know where
we are today either you raisesome money from the beginning

(45:23):
because of the track record youhave and use that money to find
product market fit, but you know, or well, you have savings a
lot or build prototype things onthe side while you have a
part-time job.
I think it's hard to do withthe full-time job, but a
part-time job could work, but asas a 21, 22, 23 year old no, no

(45:44):
responsibilities, like you knowyou can live very frugally.
It was amazing, we did it and Imean I had a lot of fun doing
that.

Javier Escribano (45:51):
You know almost, we were cooking in our.

Ariel Camus (45:54):
Yeah well, the first office was the robotics
club in the university.
Funny story I was playingpaddle.
I was in a paddle class thismorning and the trainer who's
working with me, um, is a friendof rosa who is now in miami,
who was the first journalistfrom el pais, you know, one of
the biggest, if not the biggest,newspaper in spain.

(46:15):
I remember coming to therobotics club in the university
to do an interview of us, whichI still think it's somewhere in
youtube, I look very young.

Javier Escribano (46:24):
That was.
That was fun, uh pr worked forus.

Ariel Camus (46:25):
That, uh, that's interesting.
Yeah, anyways, like you knowwhich?
I still think it's somewhere inYouTube, 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 sharedwith these lawyers.
Um, I really have good memoriesof those times.
We had these very tiny officethat used to be used by one
lawyer, where we built this typeof war room where we could fit

(46:47):
six of us Six or seven maybe andcooking together in the kitchen
of the office.
Those were really good times.
And, yes, then we ran out ofmoney.
Of course, we were not makingany money.
We were growing but not makingmoney.
We were really struggling toraise money in Spain I have

(47:10):
written about this recentlysomewhere, about this that I
remember complaining thatinvestors were not willing to
take risks.
We were growing a lot and thiswas going to be a huge business,
and Spanish investors were notwilling to take risks.
I remember this conversationwith one of our investors where

(47:30):
we say, hey, we just have, Ithink, like one or two more
months of money left, uh, whichnow it's crazy to think about it
and um, we're not being able toraise, we're gonna have to shut
down, or what do we do?

Javier Escribano (47:44):
and we were.
By the way, we had a team offour of four people, still small
.

Ariel Camus (47:48):
but yeah, and and I think I don't know if it was
this investor, I think it wasrenee, or maybe you or maybe me,
I don't know who brought up theidea of like what, if we ask
the team to you know, would theybe okay not getting paid for a
few months until we actuallyraised the round, if we raise it
, which is a big if, andeveryone said yes, which I think

(48:12):
was the first time in my lifethat I was well, not the first
time, but it was one of thetimes in my life that I felt the
most grateful to other peoplethat was very generous.

Javier Escribano (48:21):
Full trust in us no.

Ariel Camus (48:22):
Absolutely.

Javier Escribano (48:23):
Full trust that, hey, we don't know if
you're going to make it, but wetrust you guys.
Let's try to do it.
Let's burn the last ticket.

Ariel Camus (48:35):
Let's definitely try.
I think we offered themsomething in exchange for this
risk.

Javier Escribano (48:40):
Yeah, we were going to pay them extra.
I don't know if it was an extramonth.
I don't remember if it was anextra month, something like that
.
I don't remember exactly thedetail, but If and when we
raised money.
If and when they were going toget an extra month.

Ariel Camus (48:53):
I think I don't know if I've told you, but I had
to use this again later on inmy career.
And again another exampleshowing in which many ways this
experience shaped us.
When we were trying to raise ourSeries A with Microverse, there
was a time where we had muchmore confidence than in this

(49:16):
case that it was a matter oftime that we were going to reach
a point with the metrics to beable to raise the Series A, but
we were not there yet and therunway was little and I had to
go to the team and it was a muchlarger 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 ofmonths.
But high confidence doesn'tmean certainty, and this was

(49:37):
right before Christmas.
I was really dreading having totell this to the team and I
said, like the entire exec teamis going to reduce their salary
by half.
We're going to ask everyoneelse to reduce it by 25, but
it's not uh, it's not thatyou're letting go that salary,
it's that you're delaying thatsalary and for every dollar that

(49:58):
you delay when we raise theseries a, we will give you
another I don't know know 25cents for every extra, for every
dollar that you delay.
So the minimum is 25%, but youcan delay more than that, which
gives us more cash.
And not only everyone reactedagain so generously to this, but

(50:22):
a lot of people decided todelay even more.
A lot of people decided todelay even more.
A lot of people decided to helpother people.
There was one personparticularly who was in a very
difficult financial situation.
They knew this and they knewthat this person having to delay
a salary was going to be a bigissue for them.
A lot of people came and said,ariel, I want to delay more so
that this other person doesn'thave to do it.

(50:43):
Man, those moments of verycomplicated challenges, when
people are so generous and socommitted to me, they make it
worth it for sure.

Javier Escribano (50:54):
Yeah, I mean, this is something that happens.
If you have built a goodculture, you have been a good
leader, people can trust you.
They are not there just for thejob.
They are there because theybelieve in the mission.
They trust the exact team,founders, etc.

Ariel Camus (51:15):
So what did we do to build for Tourist Eye ?

Javier Escribano (51:19):
it's more.
No, I don't know.

Ariel Camus (51:21):
I know when I, I promise I'm not gonna edit that
silence, because I think thatsilence is part of the answer.

Javier Escribano (51:29):
I mean, like, if I recall, in next startups, I
did things on purpose.
We were just working, trying tofight, trying to build a great
product, trying to work bettertogether.
I think one thing that we didwell I think it's also our
personality is that we listen.

(51:50):
It was not just this is what webelieve, I don't care about
what you say, let's do that.
No, I believe that we listen.
We were people bringing theirproblems, their proposals, and
in that way, we were that kindof leader.
We had that kind of leadership.

Ariel Camus (52:09):
Yeah, I think it was not a command and execute.
Yeah, no, no, no, it was a veryFirst.
I guess.
Naturally, people werefollowing a lot of our ideas,
but at the same time, I think wenever had to, like you know,
play a card of like authority tomake decisions, or I think it
was a place where everyone couldcontribute to whatever decision

(52:29):
was being made.
And I think the other thing isbeing weird, being an outlier.
This is a theme that has comeup before in the podcast with
other founders.
Doing things in a unique waymeans that a lot of people won't
understand.
You will criticize you, butthose who follow you, you will
have something that no one elsecan offer them.

Javier Escribano (52:50):
Right, and I think, going back to this, idea
of creating our own path.

Ariel Camus (52:55):
We were offering also that path to other people
who also wanted to you knowbuild startups, and there were
not too many.
Options were like a 20, werelike where an 18 year old could
build startup while continuinghis you know studies.

Javier Escribano (53:08):
So that probably helps no, especially
not in spain it's definitely notin spain, probably in silicon
valley.
There was already um, you knowin new york, london, berlin, yes
, but it was a desert absolutelya lot.

Ariel Camus (53:25):
How much has that changed?
It's been fascinating after afew years living in the US and
we can talk about that in amoment like coming back and
seeing how much theentrepreneurial ecosystem had
changed in Spain.

Javier Escribano (53:38):
That was such an amazing surprise to me, which
then takes us to the US, butbefore we go there, what do you
think we should have donedifferently on the business side
?

Ariel Camus (53:49):
Yeah, on the business side.

Javier Escribano (53:51):
What was the hypothesis?
What was our mistake?

Ariel Camus (53:56):
I think we have someone else who told us exactly
what our problem was, and thisis Francois Derbe from Indexa
Capital.
He used to be running Top Ruralback then.
He by the way, he didn't investin Tourist Eye.
He ended up becoming aninvestor in my current company,
Microverse.
And I remember this piece ofadvice so clearly because it was

(54:17):
so sharp, so smart.
He said you guys are too faraway from the transaction.
You're too distant to themoment where the transfer of
value, of money, takes place.
In the travel industry, thetransfer of value, most of it,

(54:37):
gets captured in the momentwhere you make a reservation.
We were an app to inspirepeople and to help people plan
their trips, not the app wherepeople will go, because we were
top of mind to make thereservations, 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 tointegrate some features.

(55:00):
We tried, we integrated withbookingcom.
We did a full onon integrationwithout any validation, With the
idea that, okay, then peoplewill come to plan their trips,
they will see that they can bookthe hotel with us and we're
going to get a commission.
Yes, we made some money withthat, but we were not the place,
the go-to place for people whowanted to book a hotel.

Javier Escribano (55:20):
So to me that was we were late, we were either
too early or too late?

Ariel Camus (55:26):
exactly, yes, and I guess, like we I remember we
were talking about is there anycompany that's trying to solve
the inspiration and planningproblem has been able to create
a successful, sustainablebusiness model?
There are not too many, but Ithink you share one with me.

(55:46):
I would love for you to sharewhy you think this other company
actually made it work.

Javier Escribano (55:52):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I mean I recall that we havemany competitors raising
thousands of millions of dollarscompared to our small budget.
I mean I'm proud of what weachieved with so little budget
compared to others, but it'strue that 10 years later or 12

(56:15):
years later, no one has beensuccessful, like many companies
have closed or they have movedinto the transaction part of the
business.
Yeah, I mean, the only examplethat I can recall that I talked
to the founders was these guyswho were focused on Iceland,

(56:40):
focused on Iceland.
They were focused on inspiringpeople to come to Iceland, to
inspire them, to help themdiscover activities to do there,
but they were close to thetransaction, so they capture
people through inspiration.
Because they were really good atSEO, most of their growth and
volume came from SEO becausethey didn't have many

(57:03):
competitors.
This was probably before thevolcano exploded, before
everyone wanted to go to Iceland, so they were the main ones
creating content for Iceland andthen they did a transaction, so
they got money from thetransaction.
This is where they got moneyand, in fact, if we visit their

(57:24):
website now it's fullytransactional.
It's fully transactional.
I mean, like five years ago itwas a lot of inspiring content,
articles, et cetera.
Now it's full activities.

Ariel Camus (57:35):
What do you think they did?
Because we had our distribution.
For them it was SEO, thedistribution channel, for us it
was ASO, you know, in the appstores.
We both started with theplanning.
They went with a niche, right,they went just island.
We did the whole you know worldin two languages.
But then we also tried tointegrate some transactional
elements, allowing people tobook activities, I think, and

(57:56):
hotels.
Why did they make it work andwhy didn't we?
I mean the niche part.

Javier Escribano (58:02):
I think it helps.
But if we did just Mallorca,ibiza, imagine that we just
focus on Ibiza, mallorca and thetop places of party of people
going in summer, probably it'scloser that you are the best
ones at that.
We were not the best ones inthe content.

Ariel Camus (58:25):
We definitely were not the best ones.

Javier Escribano (58:27):
We weren't good enough in many cases In
other areas we were like poor.
We had content of secondarycities.

Ariel Camus (58:35):
How does that content help you with the
transactional side of things?

Javier Escribano (58:38):
I think one of the key things is that in this
particular case of Iceland, yougo there to do activities.
It's not that you visit amuseum or you visit that street
or you visit that restaurant.
No, worries, because we were, Ibelieve we were really focused
on the main cities in Paris, inRome, and you go for a walk.
You don't do activities onthose places.

(59:00):
Of course you do, but it's notlike Iceland.
In Iceland, you constantly doactivities.
You can do one per day.
I wonder you know like in thatcase, the content-aware
activities was the same.
I was discovering, inspired whyI should go there.
I have everything here.
I believe also that they kindof created the login I think

(59:22):
they were.
If I recall now, they talked tomany people there to create
hosting, like talking to Airbnbof iFly, so they had a unique
thing to offer that you couldn'tfind anywhere else.

Ariel Camus (59:40):
Yeah, okay, I wonder if there is also an
element of accepting where themoney is and allowing yourself
or allowing your product toevolve, to become what it needs
to become in order to be a goodbusiness.
Right, and I think in our headswe were listening to each other
and our team members a lot, butmaybe not necessarily to the

(01:00:03):
market enough, probably nottalking to our users enough.
I think we had a much moreprescriptive well, problem and
solution.
We need planning for our trips.
Let's build a planner thatworks offline, but the market,
from a business point of view,is transactions, so probably we

(01:00:23):
never went truly all in onpositioning the product as, or
trying at least.
It's a difficult market wherethat's where I think the niche
helps you.
Right.
If you will position yourselfas 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 itfor iceland, there might bea way
to compete with bookingcom evenif you're small, right?
Yeah, totally.

Javier Escribano (01:00:44):
I think that was.
I mean one other thing whatcould we have done differently
two years in?
Okay, we started with thatvalue prop, with that pain, yeah
, it was a good start.
But two years in, when wealready knew that it was not
easy to get money out of that,what could we have done

(01:01:05):
differently?
Because, if you recall, we dida full refactor of the backend
and the frontend.
So I think that was three yearsafter and we rebuilt the same
product.
Same product, yeah, With lessfeatures, but simple UX, but
same concept.
And I agree with you, Maybe weshould have chosen exactly.

(01:01:28):
You know, like, hey, focus on Idon't know Visa, Focus on and
go all in with the transactions.

Ariel Camus (01:01:34):
All in on transactions Right and then you
can have, yeah, like featuresthat no one else have on the
maybe some planning.
You know features and stuffExactly.

Javier Escribano (01:01:42):
But not the planning being the first.
Be the best one at something.

Ariel Camus (01:01:45):
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 totake a salary cut and not get a
salary for a while.
We were able to raise some moremoney, and at least the story

(01:02:07):
that I tell myself.
I'm here to hear yours.
Well, actually, what is yourstory?
What happened after that?

Javier Escribano (01:02:12):
If I recall, that's 2012,.
March, April, 2012.
And then we pitched intobecause we were trained to go to
the United States.
We were talking with anaccelerator.
We got rejected in late 2011 orbeginning of 2012.
But then, in June 2012, we gotaccepted by 500 startups.

Ariel Camus (01:02:37):
I think that was a little later, a little later.

Javier Escribano (01:02:40):
We didn't get money.
I think that was a little later.

Ariel Camus (01:02:41):
A little later, we didn't get money.
No, so we raised money from youknow angels in Spain.
After that, and at some pointagain, this is a story that I
tell myself because it makessense, but maybe back then it
was slightly different.
It was like let's not just stayin Spain, where investors are
not willing to give us money.
Let's go where the money is,where all our competitors are

(01:03:02):
racing big rounds.
That's San Francisco, the BayArea.
One of us had to move there.
I don't know how did we decidethat it was going to be me?
I'm, by the way, extremelygrateful for that and for
generosity.
Do you remember?
Why did you decide not to go?
Why me?

Javier Escribano (01:03:21):
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'mnot like super engaged with
being there.
And second, you were alreadystarting to be closer to
business, closer to investors.
That's true.
In a way, you were also morecomfortable talking to investors

(01:03:44):
.
I was more comfortable, likebuilding the project yeah, that
I think.

Ariel Camus (01:03:47):
I think that checks um.
So, because you were going tostay with the rest of the team
in spain, exactly, it made moresense for you to stay closer
with the, the team building theproduct, and for me, because I
had been a little more focusedon fundraising at the end, it
made more sense to go and talkto investors.
I remember landing in SanFrancisco in, I think, august,

(01:04:10):
august, september, 2012.
Going, we had oh okay, so 500startups had no, not 500, plug
Play had invested in our land inSpain, they were opening in
Spain and they had invested inus and they gave us a little
hand.
Going to, you know, getting ourfirst meetings with investors

(01:04:30):
in Silicon Valley.
And I remember getting to thefirst investor meeting.
My English back then was verybad.
It was really difficult.
I had a fever because I hadgotten some vaccines and stuff.
I got there like 15 minuteslate because I didn't know about
the traffic of 101 in SanFrancisco.
And I got there and theinvestor told me sorry, I had

(01:04:51):
half an hour for you and I onlyhave 15 minutes.
I'm going to be very direct.
You are wasting your time here.
You should go back to Spainbecause you're not going to get
money here, and I was like,great, what a great way to start
my journey in Silicon Valley.
But then a person that we hadmet in the previous trip to San
Francisco, joyce.

(01:05:13):
I reconnected with her and shetold me Ariel, you have an
amazing product, an amazing team, a lot of users.
You just need to really getbetter connections here.
You need to believe that youdeserve to be here, and I know
no one better for that than DaveMcClure at 500 Startups.

(01:05:35):
You should apply.
I know him.
I recommend you.
Five days later, or a weeklater, we got into 500 startups.
This was, I think, october,maybe September, october of 2012
.

Javier Escribano (01:05:49):
It was September, because that was when
Frank joined.
We told him welcome, we'removing to San Francisco.

Ariel Camus (01:05:56):
And we moved the entire team well, almost
everyone to do the whole, tomount a mute to the program with
us.
That was an amazing experienceand I repeated that with the
next company while we wentthrough Y Combinator.
I got a house for the entireteam to also be part of the
experience.
It's an amazing bondingopportunity that helped, but not

(01:06:20):
really.
I mean I think it definitelyhelped, but not in the.
I mean it definitely helped,but not in the way that at least
I expected.
I would have expected that tohelp us with fundraising and I
think what we encounteredinstead 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 peopletold us it's because you're not
making any money and we needgrowth and money.

(01:06:42):
But the reality was that wewere not raising money and again
we found ourselves running outof cash and, yeah, and knowing
probably that, asking the teamto do the same thing again, a
slightly larger team, we hadless energy, we had more
dilution.

(01:07:02):
There was nothing that I thinkwe were convinced enough that
was gonna change drastically toand you know, allow us to raise
more money than before and wehad, I guess, two options to
sell, or we stopped believing.
We stopped believing um, I thinkI don't know if if this is true
or not, but it had been maybewhat like four years, maybe even

(01:07:27):
five at that point, which is alot 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 whenfounders run out of energy, and
I think our energy was coming toan end.
How do you remember that time?
How did we decide what to donext?

Javier Escribano (01:07:49):
Yeah, I think that was it.
We're like, hey, we're not offideas or not off energy.
I remember that we talked a lotabout, hey, we need to move
into the transaction side.
But oh my God, this is startingfrom scratch again, like we
have no money.
So it's like what's our bestapproach, what's our next best

(01:08:14):
move?
And we decided to exploreselling the company.

Ariel Camus (01:08:21):
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 monthsin San Francisco talking to like
hundreds of investors and notbeing able to raise.
I think we had had a fewinvestors that were like, yeah,
once you get the lead investor,I'll put some money Exactly we

(01:08:42):
had except this lead had and wecouldn't find.
Luckily because of all themeetings with all the investors
and, I think, also 500 startups,helped in many ways, Like we
had connected with tons ofcompanies and people, and I
remember someone that we hadalso met there told me Ariel,

(01:09:03):
you have very little time, so ifyou want to make this happen
before running out of money, youhave to be very disciplined
about it.
You have to make a list ofevery single company and person
you know who might be interestedin buying your business or any
piece of your business, and youneed to reach out to all of them
.
Tell them very clearly twothings Everything amazing you

(01:09:25):
have to offer and clearly amessage 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 like30 different companies, from
Facebook and Yahoo to much youknow well, like specific travel
companies, like Expedia, smallercompanies, and we I remember

(01:09:50):
sending that email we, you knowsaying hey, you know we've known
each other for a while.
We have been discussing, as youknow, we have this amazing,
small but mighty team with a lotof experience on mobile, a lot
of experience on social and alot of experience on travel.
The intersection of those threethings is rare, even in 2012,

(01:10:10):
2013.
And we have a lot of users.
We have this amazing technologythat we have created.
We also have a lot of contentfor a lot of places.
Probably we didn't say that itwasn't the best quality, but
also have a lot of content for alot of places.
Probably we didn't say that itwasn't the best quality, but we
had a lot of content for a lotof places in two languages.
We're looking for opportunitiesto join efforts with someone

(01:10:31):
else and that got us, I think,16 responses, which was awesome,
yeah the response was good,really good.

Javier Escribano (01:10:38):
It was interesting.

Ariel Camus (01:10:40):
And then out of that I think there were like
eight half of that making somekind of due diligence.
I remember we had to tell theteam hey, this is what it is and
these other companiesinterested in us might want to
interview you because they mightwant to hire the team as part
of the acquisition.
So they did that and we endedup getting offers from two

(01:11:04):
companies.
One company was interested injust our content and the other
one just in our users.
But once they did a deep duediligence in the quality of the
content, they lowered the price.
Once the other one did anaudience on the not the audience
, but the geographical segment,quality of the content they
lowered the price.
Once the other one did anaudience on the not the audience
, but the geographicalsegmentation of the users they

(01:11:25):
were also okay, now we're onlyinterested 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 SiliconValley, like the magic of
Silicon Valley, comes in.
Like an email that I had sentlike three, four months before
to someone that no longer workedat Lonely Planet.
Had given me the email ofanother person and I called

(01:11:51):
email that other person whonever responded to me.
But that person turned out tobe an Argentinian too, who
started following us withouteven responding to my email,
told the CEO of Lonely Planetabout us and one day, when we
had received these two offersand we were kind of like, okay,
this is what it is, it was justa week.

Javier Escribano (01:12:08):
It was just exactly a week, yeah.

Ariel Camus (01:12:10):
Yeah, like timing again.
Right, Timing is so important.
By the way, I had given up on atrip to Tanzania because I had
broken up with my girlfriend atthe time and, instead of going
to Tanzania, I had decided tostay in San Francisco.
The day that I should havelanded in Tanzania, I got the
email from the CEO of LonelyPlanet saying Ariel, you don't
know me, but we have beenfollowing you guys for a while.
I'm in San Francisco today.

(01:12:32):
If you want to have dinner, Iwould love to chat.
And yeah, two weeks later,we're traveling to Nashville,
Tennessee, to negotiate theacquisition for like 10 times
what the other offers had been.

Javier Escribano (01:12:47):
It was time.
Yeah, it was like I mean, itmade so much sense, so it was
like it was a matter of hey, I'mhere, like let's chat, no.

Ariel Camus (01:12:59):
That's what I'm saying, that it made sense to
them.
But we had built a product fora customer.
We just didn't know thecustomer and it was a really bad
way of validating that we weregoing to find the customer.
But we ended up selling thetechnology and the team.
For the most part, I think thosewere the two most valuable
things to a company that neededa team with our expertise and

(01:13:19):
that needed the technologyinstead of building it from
scratch.
You know we were lucky, butalso we were at the right you
know place at the right time andwe survived long enough for
that to happen, which is not alittle accomplishment try to
spend as little as possible.
It's uh, trying trying tosurvive absolutely, um, what
would?
you give yourself a lot ofpossibilities, give yourself a

(01:13:40):
lot of options for sure, and atleast build something that you
know it's creating value.
I mean, of course, validatingthe business model and not
ignoring that part can probablygo a long way too, but sometimes
, even if that's not how it endsup working, the learnings, the
connections and selling you knowthe technology can also be part

(01:14:04):
of the success.
What will you tell your 22 yearold self if you can go back in
time?
Say little heavy.
Let me tell you something.

Javier Escribano (01:14:15):
I mean maybe what I will tell myself on when
I was at age, maybe what I willtell a person now of that age.
I think I would have done itagain, building my own startup.
Of course, I would have said tothose people who want to try

(01:14:36):
and do something by their own Itry to validate that you have
value, usable, technicalfeasibility and business
viability.
So that's really important.
But if not, or if you will havetime to do it, I think most
important, something that maybeyou can learn more like try to
find a startup which is growing,where there are good leaders,

(01:14:57):
and learn a lot from there.
Like do whatever If and learn alot from there.
Like do whatever you know.
If another option in my careerwould have been like joining a
startup in Silicon Valley when Iwas in D2, it was potentially
an option I had options to.
I mean, I had the visa to staythere, united States.
I had options to and, of course, I think it could have been a

(01:15:18):
great experience, and people whodo it also it's a.
For me it's a great experienceand people who do it also it's a
.
For me it's a great option.
Like join a place that you arereally going to learn.
But focus on learning, not juston money.
Focus on a great manager, agreat leader, focus on learning
whatever it takes, and then youwill have advanced much more

(01:15:42):
fast.
And within a startup is a wayto achieve that, because you
have to do lots of things andyou have to learn about
everything, so also you willaccelerate your learning I think
it's a really good piece ofadvice.

Ariel Camus (01:15:55):
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 oflearning a lot at an accelerated
pace.
So for sure it's a really goodone For me.

Javier Escribano (01:16:12):
For you.
What do you think?

Ariel Camus (01:16:14):
Yeah, I think I consider myself very lucky that,
even though things never workedout the way we expected in the
moment, they always worked outin different ways in amazing
ways, but differently.
But throughout the entirejourney, I think I've been able

(01:16:35):
to enjoy every step, regardlessof the destination you know to
go with the cliche right toenjoy the journey, not the
destination.
You know to go with the clicheright to enjoy the journey, not
the destination, and I thinkmaybe that's something I could
tell myself.
It's like you know it's, it'sgonna be even better than you
imagine, it's gonna be how youimagine it, but keep enjoying of
every day, whatever you'redoing, because that's the only

(01:16:55):
thing you can count on.
But you know, don't rush it,it's gonna be pretty epic uh
yeah.
And I wouldn't be surprised if,as long as you're taking care of
yourself, you build yourstartup with a person or a team
that you feel aligned with.
I do think it's a recipe for alot of growth and learning and

(01:17:17):
adventures, and you know your20s, I I mean.
There are other types ofadventures.
You can travel a lot, you'repartying a lot and if you like
that type of adventure, I feellike it's a very safe bet, even
if the business model doesn'twork yeah, totally well I mean,
it's true that people say.

Javier Escribano (01:17:36):
Many people say no, not everyone can afford
to to do that, because you needto have either parents who can
host you you can keep livingwith you or you can be somewhere
which is cheap to live with andyou need a little money, or you
don't.
So there are some people, it'strue, that they cannot afford
that.
So in a way, it's also aprivilege to start a company.

(01:17:57):
It is.
It is, and if you can do it, aprivilege to start a company.

Ariel Camus (01:17:58):
It is, it is.

Javier Escribano (01:17:59):
If you can do it, yeah.
Spend as little as possible andfight.

Ariel Camus (01:18:05):
And, if not, join a startup.
Spend as little as possible andfight Well, Javi, thank you so
much.
I really enjoyed this.
It's been very therapeuticaland insightful to process all of
this shared story and I lookforward to doing more stuff
together in the future.

Javier Escribano (01:18:22):
Looking forward to the next Take care.
Javi Bye.

Ariel Camus (01:18:26):
Eril, thank you so much for tuning in.
Your support means the world tome.
If you enjoyed today's episode,please consider subscribing and
leaving a review.
It's one of the best ways youcan help this podcast get off
the ground and help moreentrepreneurs like you.
Thank you and until the nextepisode.