Startup Spotlight: Journey Driven automates travel journaling

Inspired by an eight month adventure around the world, Journey Driven is an offline GPS tracker and automatic travel journal.

Steven Fortunato, founder of Journey Driven and member of Travel Massive Colorado, is a travel addict and product designer currently focused on growing his startup. His love for surfing has taken him to more than 25 countries.

We ask Steven about his journey, startup experience and plans for the future.

How did you get into the travel industry?

Two years ago I left my job as an architectural designer in Denver for an 8-month solo adventure around the world to explore and volunteer. It was the most inspirational experience of my life.

The trip naturally directed me toward a career change into UX/UI (user experience/user interface) to start building a dream travel app idea I had while traveling.

This shift also lined me up with companies like Remote Year, Mighway and WeJourney along the way, helping to design and produce content while traveling.

Describe Journey Driven in 50 words…

Journey Driven (www.journey-driven.com) is an offline GPS tracker and automatic travel journal app.

Without using any data plan or needing any cell coverage or SIM card, Journey Driven tracks your traveled path, current location, mapped photos, and travel stats, while automatically updating family along the way.

It has full privacy control, generates an effortless digital blog, and helps keep your phone out of the picture while you travel.

What is unique about your product or service?

The ability to automatically log travels via a mobile device, even without needing a data plan, SIM card, or cell coverage, as well as effortlessly updating your loved ones along the way.

This allows for a “social map” feature, which visually maps out when and where your paths actually cross with any travel buddies you make along your adventure.

How is your startup changing the future of travel?

On a consumer side, the whole purpose is to help travelers disconnect from their phones, so they can fully embrace the moment and establish meaningful connections with the people and places around them.

Journey Driven generates seamless route documentation that can help inform other travelers of desirable destinations, and travel organizations of valuable location-based behavior trends.

For the reported 200+ million young travelers passionate about road tripping, backpacking, and any kind of international adventure traveling, a lot of the experience happens offline, in most cases without cell service or international data plans, resulting in poor route documentation.

What’s another travel company you admire and why?

There’s two actually:

Airbnb because they brought the focus of their mission to connecting people around the world to create better levels of understanding and empathy face to face. They encourage experiences and exploration with lean, efficient, and relatively sustainable practices.

WeJourney for promoting social “voluntourism” or “impact travel” to help groups of travelers develop personally, as well as make a positive impact on the places we all love to travel to.

Thanks Steven for the interview!

Check out Journey Driven’s video overview:

Connect with Steven on Travel Massive and learn more about Journey Driven.