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Oceania, Travel Startups, Travel Tech

Chat With Travellers Nearby With HerePin

HerePin allows travellers to talk to others nearby using the simplicity of an app. Co-founder Mark Bardi has answered a few questions on how he helps travelers stay connected to each other, anywhere in the world.

HerePin is a community of travellers sharing the best places to go and things to do. Here and now. Mark’s primary  responsibilities revolve around communicating the vision, rallying a passionate group of people around a common set of goals, and making sure they’re all marching to the same beat.

Mark Bardi - Motorcycle Trip India

Who is your startup for?

HerePin is for the person who loves to travel and meet people because it keeps them young at heart. Those who may or may not have traveled much in the past, but their hearts are filled with a wild sense of adventure and promise to live deliberately by seeing and doing as much as they possibly can in their lifetimes.

What inspired you to create this startup? 

A few years ago, I embarked on a solo backpacking trip around the world. For over a year, I carried everything I owned in a 44 litre pack. No smartphone. No computer. No iPod. Without any technology to consume my attention, I finally had the time to take notice of how much the world had changed. Almost every traveler these days is carrying a smartphone, SIM cards are free, data plans are cheap, and WiFi is available everywhere. Yet despite all of these modern conveniences there are some obvious gaps in the tourism market.

  1. There aren’t many easy ways for travelers to connect with each other in the same geographic area. 
  1. There aren’t many reliable sources of local information. 

Generally speaking, there is no platform allowing all of the travelers in a specific location to communicate when word-of-mouth still reigns supreme. 

How did you build your startup?

There are four of us on the team working hard every single day to make HerePin into something travelers love. There are many days when I think we all wish someone would just hand us a playbook and say “follow this and you’ll succeed.” Initially, we had to take care of the fundamentals like raising seed money to build the app, designating roles/responsibilities, implementing marketing strategies, developing partnerships, etc. Some of the “softer” areas we focused on (because we believe they are equally important in the early days of a startup) was building the right team with complementary skill sets, having a shared sense of purpose, and communicating early and often.

How is your startup disrupting the travel scene today?

We are offering something a little more dynamic that caters to the diverse needs and wants of the modern day traveler. Whether you want to meet up, ask a question, find a recommendation, or anything else; you’ve got a friendly, supportive, and informed group of people right there in your pocket.

How did you get your startup off the ground and gaining traction?

In the early days, we agreed to spend less time doing the things that traditional businesses do and more time doing the stuff that mattered to us (working on the product and talking to prospective users). During that time we built our website, shared content across social media, talked to travel bloggers, met with tour operators, and printed brochures. Our approach is to run a series of small “experiments” with the goal of determining what product features we need to build and what distribution channels are most effective.

Do you have any tips for new entrepreneurs who want to create a successful startup?

Stop thinking about being successful and just get started on something that excites you. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how you’re going to do it yet, what your friends or family say about the idea, whether you’re by yourself, or if you don’t have time and money. The secret is to think of a few small tasks (I mean really small) that you could do right now to move the ball forward and just get started. Wake up tomorrow and do it again. Do not focus on the end result, focus on completing those daily tasks. 

What benefits have you seen from being a part of the Travel Massive meet-ups?

The benefits of the Travel Massive meetups in Auckland have been tremendous. Not only have I increased the size and quality of my professional network, but a few of the best partnerships we’ve landed at HerePin have been a direct result of introductions made through this group. I’m a huge fan.  

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Travel Start-Up is a monthly series that profiles unique online travel start-ups in the Travel Massive community around the world. Connect with Herepin and Mark Bardi on Travel Massive, Facebook and Twitter.


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