We Launched A Travel Startup Right Before A Global Pandemic

Investors agreed. We raised our first $100,000 in less than 2 weeks. We targeted Spring 2020 for ticket sales, and Spring 2021 for travel.

You know the rest of the story.

As the numbers climbed, interest in our venture (understandably) plummeted. For a while, we didn’t let it stop us.

We continued to court investors. We launched a new website. We grew (and grew) our email list. We explored digital executions of the concept.

By April, the writing was on the wall.

We were confident world travel would surge on the other side of the pandemic. But we also knew recovery would not be instantaneous, predictable, or linear.

So, we found ourselves at a crossroads. We could keep our listless funding round going indefinitely, or we could return investors’ money in an act of goodwill, at a time of great economic anxiety.

The decision was unanimous.

It is often said that travel is about the journey, not the destination. The same is true for entrepreneurship, I think. In any case, I don’t believe this is the end of our story.

Not even close.

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