I'll ride now
NowBoarding was founded by Christopher Moss, who previously founded travel management tool Psngr1, which was acquired by travel technology company Snowfall in 2022.
Founded in 2023, NowBoarding provides travel brands with a commission-free marketplace to deliver personalized offers in real-time without going through an intermediary.
What is your 30 second pitch to investors?
NowBoarding unifies the travel ecosystem by connecting suppliers and travelers directly. Our integrated marketplace and platform enables suppliers to leverage search terms and other user consent data in real-time to create unique, personalized offers to travelers. One to One Marketing delivers a 200% return on invested marketing capital and allows suppliers to avoid expensive distribution and customer acquisition channels, increasing customer loyalty, connections, and, of course, sales. I can.
Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.
NowBoarding is a differentiated business model. We charge suppliers a nominal subscription to be able to create listings on our platform and sell to the marketplace. This will reduce the total cost of goods sold for each accommodation facility by approximately 97%. Essentially, he is enabling suppliers to redeploy more than $70 billion into the ecosystem through personalized offers (current online travel agency fees are $75 billion annually).
Our software brings low-latency power to an ecosystem that has been dominated by legacy platforms for the past 30 years. All data is hosted on NowBoarding servers, allowing for a unique and efficient end-to-end experience for both users and suppliers. The entire platform is managed by our proprietary machine learning models, helping our supplier partners better understand buying trends and delivering the right offer to the right customer at the right time.
Please give us your company's SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis.
Strength – Fresh technology that allows us to offer a differentiated product and potentially move away from the commission-based model that is so disruptive to today's largest travel agencies. The team is very complete, disrupting his Concur trip on Psngr1 and winning Tesla and other big companies as customers before the sale. Weaknesses – The need to capture both sides of the market can slow adoption of subscription models. Opportunity – Provides a much-needed home for travelers. Friends and connections have his FaceBook/Instagram, work has his LinkedIn, travel has enabled an interconnected network of travel suppliers with the ability to dynamically bundle products and services, and brand level We need a comprehensive platform that individuals can access. You also need the customer (that is, the brand's customer service representatives who can engage directly with the customer) and, of course, the ability to create the perfect trip with a click or two. Threats – There will be an unknown amount of new technology coming out that we can't speculate on, but we understand that we need to stay agile and continue to push the boundaries of the user experience so we can retain our customers. Masu. I don't see any legitimate threats from his existing OTAs or Google. Because our differentiated model makes it very difficult for OTAs and Google to change by cannibalizing the golden goose.
What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both a customer and industry perspective?
Suppliers pay a lot of money to acquire customers. Therefore, users indirectly end up paying higher fees.
You have a product, but how can you get more customers?
Our products are coming soon. We have two features of his that we think will grab your attention. PMF or Price Match Fusion. Let a traveler who has already purchased a hotel stay at one of the major OTAs come in and display that information in her user interface. We will then broadcast to that property to see if they would like to stay with you. Personalized offers to avoid OTAs.
WMA or Whisk Me Away allows users to create a trip and choose the specific destinations they want to travel to, but only go if the deal is so good that they can't say no. This puts NowBoarding directly at the top of your funnel, allowing you to connect both sides of your marketplace very efficiently. Yes, I think users will get used to future sales.
Please tell us about the process you went through to establish your company's true needs and addressable market size.
Our team is full of travel veterans with unique and essential experience in both the technical and commercial sides of the business. We know that personalized offers are the holy grail and that the aviation category is truly challenged at NDC. We also understand the desire to reduce sales and distribution costs in low-margin industries. As Jeff Bezos said about Amazon, he didn't have to worry about customers wanting to delay the arrival of their packages. The same can be said of our travel agency customers. If you win supplies, you win travel.
When and how do you make money?
We charge our suppliers a nominal subscription. The amounts range from free for unverified individual suppliers to $5,000 per year for corporate suppliers who require integration with a PMS/payment facilitator. To be clear, each hotel property is considered a corporate supplier and will be billed $499 per month. This is a small fraction compared to what is currently being paid.
What is the background and track record of the founding team?
Chris Moss – JetBlue and British Airlines alumnus, founder of PSNGR1. In 2016, he founded the company from PowerPoint and acquired one of the world's largest companies, Tesla, as a customer. Pascal Patry – PSNGR1, GENAIZ, his CTO of Talos Digital (acquired by Perficient) Maxime Fafard – Frontend Architect PNGR1, founding CTO of Sofdesk (acquired by Enphase)
How have you approached diversity and inclusion within your business?
We hire the best people, and they're often women, people of color, and people from diverse backgrounds. We fully support all efforts to provide equal opportunity to participate in the industry we all know and love.
What has been the most challenging part of founding your business so far?
The funding environment remained difficult, but the situation is now starting to ease. Of course, leveraging both sides of the market will prove to be a challenge as we move towards launch, but we are confident in our plans going forward.
Travel startups typically face a pretty tough time making an impact, so why can you be one of the lucky ones?
I think the core opportunity for us to be very successful here is timing. Forget about generative AI and look at the critical need to bring travel into the home, both from a platform and market perspective. Add in the unique ability for brands to personalize their products while reducing costs, and this becomes a must-have feature for any category of travel. Combining that with our highly experienced team not only allows us to cover considerable ground product-wise, but also allows us to design the entire picture and destination even from scratch, which is almost impossible for newcomers to the travel field. can do. The core of our activities has always been differentiated products in a homogenized business. Yet we offer something smart, simple and always as personalized as possible.
Where do you think your startup will be a year from now?
There are more than 5 categories. We will start with lodging and work quickly to expand our offering to both suppliers and consumers. There is a huge opportunity in the travel industry to cut out the middleman, so we are excited to bring tools to the market and help make the travel industry more efficient.
what is your end game? (Listing, acquisition, growth, remaining private, etc.)
Our goal is to bring this to the public market, but in the process work with as many suppliers as possible who want a non-voting position on the cap table. It's a marketplace for suppliers, built by suppliers, and should be the smartest, most efficient and personal way to plan, book and manage your travels.
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