Flystein’s Ready to Beat Your Flight Price

With years of experience in travel hacking, the Flystein team has used creative strategies to create an online platform offering flight tickets that offer some of the cheapest and most optimal flights.

Vlad, Travel Massive Milan chapter member, is the Co-Founder of Flystein and helps travellers find some of the best prices on flights for leisure or business, he’ll even try and beat the price you’ve found. Really?!

That’s why we’ve asked Vlad to answer a few questions about how their team got Flystein up and running.

What inspired you to create this startup? 

To be honest, it started out from pure egoism. Both flight hackers, me and my co-founder Roman, have traveled to over 100 countries in a pretty short amount of time for a fraction of the normal cost. As our friends started catching on, they wanted in on it as well. Over time, more and more people started approaching us for advice. That’s how Flystein was born.                         

How did you build your startup?

Our goal was to develop a system that would automate most of our expert’s work and also be a great tool for the customer. We’ve built the system from the ground up and automated a lot of their work. Though, bear in mind that we are not your traditional meta-search flight engine. We are a human-powered flight search and aim to stay that way.

What makes your startup different from other similar startups out there?

The airline industry is a maze of rules, fare classes and what not, and often so complicated that it’s almost impossible for an average traveler to know if they actually are getting their money’s worth.

Some people have asked us how Flystein is different from other on-demand flight expert services. For starters, when picking the ‘Beat My Price’ option, you pay the fee only when we are able to get you a lower fare to your desired destination. We don’t charge a monthly or yearly subscription fee either because not everyone flies every month.

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

We actually started by being an ‘invitation only’ platform. We both had helped numerous people with their flights, and they were our first customers at Flystein too. Of course, we shared the news with all of our friends who then again shared it onwards.

We didn’t shy away from social media either. Facebook, Twitter, and the list goes on, are all incredible tools to use on your path to world domination.  

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

This might sound like a cliché, but it’s true. If you have an idea – validate it with a couple of people you can trust first. Then put together your vision and plan of attack. If you have an idea on how to take over the world, build a core team of like-minded people that will accompany you. After that – it’s all hard work. 

As a startup, what benefits have you seen from being a part of Travel Massive meetups?

Travel Massive meetups have been a huge source of inspiration and validation. I’ve been to meetups in Milan, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. I’ve met a lot of like-minded industry experts who have all somehow contributed to what Flystein is today and what it will grow to be in the future.

We’re incredibly thankful for the support Travel Massive has given us, so we are paying it back in the form of a special perk. We welcome all chapter leaders to try out our service for free, and all other members get a 15% discount on our service fee. All information on how to secure the deal can be found here.
  

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