Remember Joobili, the travel inspiration startup from Europe which had a nifty user interface and the financial backing of high profile tech investor Esther Dyson?
Despite a strong official start in 2009 (it actually started operations during 2008), when the site ranked highly during a SeedCamp Week in London, was a finalist at the EyeforTravel Get Funded competition and generally managed to catch the eye of the mainstream and tech media, Joobili entered a marketplace brimming with other so-called travel inspiration startups.
The proposition was pretty simple: a different way of searching for destination attractions and events, based not on the location but on interests, using some – for the time – interesting web gizmos such as date sliders, etc.
The site was easy to use, rich in content (images, descriptions et al), appeared to have quite an active community of users recommending services.
All appeared to going reasonably well, securing another round of capital in July 2010Â from a group of existing investors (apparently in the six-figures) including Dyson who became a mentor.
Later that year it launched its own version of sponsored listings.
Unfortunately the usual warning signs of problems materialised in the middle in 2011 when the once-reasonably active blog stopped posting articles and the Twitter feed dried up.
CEO and co-founder Jared Salter, an American who ran the company from its base in Hungary alongside co-founder Tamas Gabor, said developments were under way to maintain and grow the business.
Six months on and Joobili will be closed this week after failing to pin down a strategy to secure its long-term future.
Salter is one of startupland’s good guys, a former-Interbrand consultant working with the likes of Intel, eBay and T-Mobile amongst others, who had an idea and an eye for the creative side of web-based brands.
Despite the demise of Joobili, Salter agreed to a short email interview (unlike the curious people behind the hyperbolic TraceMyTrip) to explain what happened to Joobili and what other startups can learn from its experience of building a B2C travel startup.
What led to Joobili’s decision to cease operations?
Startups tend to get in this “survival mode” where all your energy goes toward simply staying alive through next week or month or year until SOMETHING happens and your business becomes suddenly successful.
At a certain point you have to step back and ask yourself, “Am I not failing, or am I actually succeeding?”. There is a big difference. In Joobili’s case, our web traffic steadily increased last year to over 130,000 monthly unique visitors.
Our monthly revenues grew to a break even point. It was easy to convince ourselves we were successful, and there were plenty of travel awards and journalists that reinforced Joobili’s notion of “success”. But in moments of self-reflection and candor, it became clear we were not meeting our own definition of success.
We founded Joobili with lofty aspirations of shifting the travel mindset to an emphasis on when you travel as opposed to where you travel.
And let’s be honest, we founded Joobili to get rich.
At the end of the day we had a lot of very happy customers, we made small waves in the travel inspiration community, and we made enough money to support a decent lifestyle.
But again, we were probably “not failing” more than we were succeeding in achieving our original aspirations. Some entrepreneurs are satisfied with a “lifestyle business”, and I think that’s admirable, but it’s just not the path my co-founder and I wanted take.
What happens to Joobili’s assets?
Our most valuable asset, without a doubt, is our 5,000+ events database. These events were curated and written by our global network of writers. With so many content aggregators out there I think people appreciate quality original content.
Google’s search algorithm certainly does. Joobili also has a solid user base. We would like to see our content and our users find a nice new home on the web.
We are currently accepting offers for Joobili’s assets. The ideal buyer will have both the right amount of money and a compelling vision for integrating our assets into their business.
The process of selling our assets is just beginning, but I expect it to move quickly. Anyone interested in making an offer should contact me at jared@joobili.com.
Advice you would give to other startups, especially those in the same kind of space as Joobili?
Be careful where you get your advice. Everyone has different expertise and motives. The really helpful advice can sometimes be drowned out by the sheer volume of “advice” thrown at new entrepreneurs.
With that warning out of the way, my best advice is to build a product that can make money from the moment it’s launched, even if it’s a small amount of revenue.
My second piece of advice is have the founding team trinity of Marketing, Operations, Technical. Not having a technical co-founder on our team was a monumental mistake.
Lastly, for companies in the travel inspiration space, my advice is to find a way to focus less on the two to three trips your users actually take each year, and focus more on the 20 to 30 trips they vicariously take each year. It’s the only way to crack the repeat visitor problem in our industry segment.
We couldn’t solve it, but someone else will.
What are you going to do next?
Don’t know. We have been riding the startup roller-coaster for long enough I think we’re looking forward to a break from all the stress-excitement-disappointment that goes along with being an entrepreneur.
Personally, I don’t carry many regrets. If I had to do it all over again, even knowing the final outcome of Joobili, I’d still go for it. Succeed or fail, I will always respect the person who jumps in the arena more than the person observing from the sidelines.
When problems first surfaced did you seek any help from others in the industry?
We did reach out to mentors and friends in the travel industry for advice. Everyone was incredibly supportive and generous with their time.
But more than solutions to our problems, we came away with the reassurance that everyone else was struggling with similar problems. In a weird way it was helpful to know we weren’t the only ones having difficulty.
I imagine the ones who have it all figured out either don’t exist, or they are too busy to fiddle around with giving advice to struggling startups.
Can inspiration sites such a Joobili “make it” without huge levels of investment?
Yes, I still think travel inspiration sites can “make it” without large VC investment. I believe the right team can execute a good idea using a relatively small amount of money.
A large VC investment is validation of your early execution more than it is pre-requisite for “making it”. Joobili’s problem was not a lack of early investment. And we did not lack a compelling idea.
What we lacked was execution.
What was the single biggest issue (most complex?) which hit Joobili?
Our biggest challenge was deciding where to focus our limited resources. As entrepreneurs we had a specific vision for Joobili. Our investors had a slightly different set of expectations.
Our users had other priorities for Joobili’s progression. And potential investors had yet another direction for our company. We tried to placate all stakeholders and it was simply an impossible endeavor.
Did Joobili ever come close to its goal of VC investment or acquisition?
On at least four occasions Joobili came painfully close to receiving a large VC investment or selling out to a large online travel company. In two of those cases paperwork was on the table and the only thing missing was a final signature.
It was frustrating to be so close and see it slip away. But I think it’s all part of the startup experience. Most entrepreneurs I speak with admit the line between success and failure is very thin and a little luck goes a long way.
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About Kevin May
Real shame! Met Jared and Tamas around two years ago and they’re really nice, smart guys who had a good idea. Bit of a lesson to travel inspiration startups though, it’s not that easy to make money from them. Given the saturation of the market with new travel inspiration startups we’ll see a lot more failing…
Wish Jared and Tamas the best of luck for their next ventures!!
Excellent interview and valuable insights from Jared. Sharing these experiences so transparently really means a lot for us in a related field. Best on luck in the next endeavor Jared and Tamas!
@facundo – it’s not a big startup love-in on tnooz, but we do like to think there’s value in sharing experiences.
thx for the kinds words.
This is a huge shame. Joobili is one of the startups that I’ve most admired over the past few years.
Martin.
@martin – i think this is a classic case of a site/brand that was universally liked in the “industry” for its new formatting and design and all that, but as many startups (esp on West Coast of US) are finding out – it takes more than the gushing of the press to give it REAL GROWTH by way of flocks of consumers.
Kevin, it might be even a good idea to create a full section in Tnooz for travel companies that fail and for the founders to share their learnings with the community, in a respectful and honest environment.
@Diego great idea!
As a first time founder I have learnt a lot from watching the Failcon lectures. I really respect guys like Jarad who can openly talk about the mistakes they made. Certainly here in Chile the culture is extremely averse to failure and it’s almost a taboo topic – as a result no-one learns from others’ past mistakes.
It could be incredibly interesting to read a ‘fail forward’ series of interviews with travel startup founders talking about their past failures and key learnings from those failures, regardless of whether their current projects are going strong.
Cracking idea, great execution. Brave decision and for the right buyer, that traffic, content and seo presence will be invaluable.
Best of luck for the future.
Would love to hear you expand on “Great Execution,” especially considering Joobili didn’t think they had that?
The front end was / is a good single minded execution of solution to a customer need. I guess that is what I am referring to, but the essence of the comment was more ‘Hi Jared, look forward to catching up over a beer someday”
Congratulation guys, you’ve marked the industry and you’ve learnt a lot.
All good assets to get on to the next big thing now.
Thank you very much for honestly sharing your experiences with Joobili. I’m quite sure very many entrepreneurs faced similar issues and facts, and learned a lot on their journey.
I surely found a lot of pieces that are somewhat familiar looking at my own experiences. Very refreshing …
Good luck for the future guys and thanks again !
Such a shame, totally agree Jared was and I’m sure still is (!) one of the “good guys”. Best of luck for the future.
Agree with previous comments. Very insightful interview.
I don’t share Jared’s opinion about cracking the inspiration condundrum without a lot of cash. I think you need scale to be successful now. And for that you need big pockets and… as Jared makes clear absolutely fantastic technology. So many of the inspiration sites I’ve seen come and go just didn’t ‘work’. The functionality behind the idea/promise was just really clunky and slow.
I think these guys nailed the challenges dead-on. The part about the infrequent nature of travel is a common theme these days (Gtrot just mentioned it as a reason for their pivot yesterday) and hard to say if it’s a solvable problem. Finding clever ways to drive junk traffic volumes that don’t convert end up diluting your value proposition to your core customers.
Paul Graham from Y Combinator fame has this great chart he’s created on the life of a startup, most of which is spent in something he calls the Trough of Sorrow. There’s a good reason it’s named that, and most startups never come out of it. Sorry to hear Joobili is among them.
nice job covering this Tnooz.
@jim – no prob. It’s an interesting tale and we do like to keep an eye on how startups are doing, thus the TLabs Reprise thing we do…
…which interestingly is not universally popular with some of the startups we originally featured on TLabs Showcase
sometimes the truth hurts
great that jared has now taken the time to share his insights, i especially appreciated his final advice “my advice is to find a way to focus less on the two to three trips your users actually take each year, and focus more on the 20 to 30 trips they vicariously take each year.” which as jim already noted should sound well for gtrot.
Thanks Jared for the open and candid testimony, and thanks Kevin and Tnooz for covering it with such respect. The travel industry is one of the hardest to pass the “Trough of Sorrow”, because of the ‘episodic’ nature of the transaction, and the consolidation of the verticals. And in any industry, success comes from sharp execution but also luck always helps. Best wishes Jared in you next endeavors!
As many have said great article and great that Jared shared his views so openly.
The one thing that caught my ear is that he felt that he put the lack of technical co-founder as a monumental mistake. It didn’t seem that technical failings were the challenge. Seems like the core issue of a lot of these travel inspiration startups is how to actually make money at this.
I realize that a strong technical team is the key to many start up successes, but I’m not quite sure how a hot tech guy solves that particular problem, but I was never sure what the monetization strategy was and therefore can’t draw the straight line between technology and revenue in this case.
Having a technical co-founder who lives and breathes the product every day is absolutely vital for several reasons, including:
1) You’ll never find a way to outsource your complete vision. Someone who doesn’t share your hunger and vision for the project is never going to be able to bring it to life.
2) A web startup’s only real asset in its early days is its technology and ability to drive growth using that technology. Growth in a startup often requires rapid change, something you can’t ever get from being on someone else’s schedule.
Like Jared said, it’s all about execution. Having a technical co-founder is essential for that.
Seriously? I feel this is an oft quoted & potentially misguided myth.
You absolutely need the technical savvy to understand and communicate with developers, and great developers within the team are a huge asset, but certainly not essential.
Time and again we see start-ups with great technical skill, whose team devote 100% of their time to development and chasing funds and woefully under-invest their $ and time in sales and marketing. (this doesn’t apply to joobili)
If you are an entrepreneur reading this, don’t be put off if you don’t have technical skills, but do devote your time to finding people who do have those skills to work with you, whether as a fellow founder, employee, freelancer.
Seriously. See data from the Startup Genome project. How many successful startups can you name that didn’t have a technical co-founder? How many of those got funding?
Also, the point about under-investing in sales & marketing is a complete red herring. The point was that you need a technical co-founder in addition to a business/marketing side, not in place of it.
There is a time and a place for everything, and blog comments is no place for opinion substantiated with hard data
On a more serious note, Jared’s point “I’m not talking about having a good developer, I’m saying you need a true CTO, someone who understands the system in totality and is creative enough to find the best technical solutions.” hits the nail on the head for me.
As a business owner, you’ve got to be always looking to outsource those things that someone else can do better or cheaper than you. Hiring in a developer might fit that bill, hiring in a CTO doesn’t.
(Sorry, hit the threading limit, so responding to own post)
Ben: On all of that, I agree.
To clarify, of course outsourcing is a good option for tech, but it shouldn’t be the sole source of technical output and direction in a young startup.
You don’t always need a technical cofounder, for example to open a sushi bar.
In the same way that you don’t need a sushi chef to do a technology startup.
As the most valuable goods of a startup come from the very own abilities of it’s founders, talents and skills in organisation, management and technology should be included to build a solid ground for a startup.
Also it will provide the necessary flexibility to adjust direction for development just when it happens, which is probably a key benefit right at the beginning of your business …
Sad story, and some decent insights here. Challenging industry conditions, poor execution, and undefined revenue models will do in any startup. Agree with the challenges around tapping into the infrequency of travel, but the commonality and open source accessibility of event content does not make for valuable assets. Plus, Tnooz would do better to stick solely to company learnings than trying to help a defunct company peddle those failed assets. There are far too many industry deadpool stories out there.
@Tim J (sorry to see you won’t comment openly, but fair enough)…
We are not “trying to help a defunct company peddle those failed assets”… Behave.
We think asking about a company’s assets is a genuine and worthwhile question, especially when it is about to close down.
If the company is selling them, then that’s an answer to the question and can and should be disclosed here.
We would outline the same again, if another company was in a similar position.
But thanks for the editorial tip.
Definitely agree with you Kevin. This is very interesting content!
Tamas and I really appreciate the kind words and encouragement.
I’ve received a lot of emails already inquiring about our assets and I’ll be responding to everyone soon.
@GlennGruber- A strong technical lead would have saved us thousands of Euros in wasted expenses. We had a dozen different “strategies” for monetizing the site, but without a technical person we could trust we failed to properly execute on those ideas. I’m not talking about having a good developer, I’m saying you need a true CTO, someone who understands the system in totality and is creative enough to find the best technical solutions.
Great article. I’m curious to know more about the references to differing expectations of investors and company founders — what were those differences?
I also note that Esther Dyson is mentioned once again as an investor. I know she also invested in (defunct) Dopplr. I’m not sure if she has other travel investments, but maybe it’s time to stop referring to her as some kind of investor celebrity. Maybe founders take her money and get all excited that they must be on to something good since she invested, and that causes them to ignore early signs of trouble in the business. I don’t say this to offend Esther, but I just think it might be a lesson for other founders, especially in these days when celebs are getting more and more involved in startups (is there anything Ashton Kutcher isn’t invested in?!).
Interesting article and great looking site. I’m sad that I discovered it too late. I think the idea is sound. Many people just want to go somewhere – especially those of us with kids who have a school break and need desperately to find something to do. We don’t have an idea – don’t care where. The approach is perfect. Would be amazing to be able to put in your location and kind of see a version of “the most bang for my buck” taking into account the cost of getting there.
You wrote that you had up to about 130,000 unique visitors a month. That’s a damn respectable amount, and yet I’d never heard of you (and I’m also based in Europe). I’m curious to know how you were getting this traffic. How were people finding out about you? And of course, why you didn’t cross my field of vision before.
Steve
It is sad to hear about Joobili. It’s a great looking website, but generating revenue from event / inspirational content alone is difficult, unless you are selling a product along side it. It is a huge shame that the sales didn’t go through because it would be a good match with an online travel agency.
Having met Jared a few times at Travel BlogCamp you could tell that he had the passion to make it a success. It is a shame that nowadays passion alone does not equal success.
All the best for the future Jared.
SADLY – winner in events will be eventbrite, ticketmaster……… etc……. so you start at one end (say supply) then work towards Google (who owns the customer search)…… i.e do inspiration AFTER you have fixed supply…
Starting in the middle – you then have to reach towards suppliers AND reach towards customers – both at the same time……. and that is just too much for a startup – even one with founders as able as Joobili.
Only met Jared once…. am sure will bounce back!
Alex
Thanks for sharing Jared; you truly are one of the good guys.
Back in 2009 this was probably my top pick of the travel start-ups. Dealing with Jared a number of times back then he was a complete professional with a great vision. Always a pity to see something so promising go under.
Travel start ups are like mobile payments start ups 5 years ago – you can have a ful blown conference filled with failed attempts. That being said, travel is ripe ripe for innovation, it took tens if not hundreds of failed mobile payments before a company like Square came to be.
@jared – thanks for sharing. I suggest you take a breather and get back into the game. Get a technical co founder, throw in a great designer and I look forward to hearing about your next travel start up
Really well written response, didn’t sense any blaming of others, which tells me Jared will dust himself off and take his learning forward in prep for the next inspiration. (no pun intended)
Also shows is that a non-transaction model can be sexy in comparison to booking engines – but hard to generate predictable and sustainable revenue per visit. Which is a tough road unless you tap into a vein and the user base explodes.
However the flip side of such models are billion dollar acquisitions such as Instagram; hence when the settings are right (plus a bit of luck) profits are ‘not necessarily necessary’ for a high valuation. (but admittedly that space is a bit of a lottery
“To make money form the moment it is launched” was the bit of advice that jumped out at me. We all know the 0.01% of startups who have made it big without revenues but for the vast majority revenue is everything.
Even if they do not succeed to the level of the original objectives if they are producing revenue straight away it is like oxygen to the company. It keeps things spinning, gets more investors interested etc. It can also be sold, maybe not for what the founders hoped for but maybe enough to start the next one.
Well done for having a go with a great looking site although I never got the concept. I always look for where I want to go do and then make the dates happen rather than the other way round.
The journey will have been invaluable. More of these please editor, lessons for us all.
Wow. This is like attending your own funeral. All these people you haven’t spoken to in years come out of nowhere and say really kind things about you
Seriously though, I appreciate the positive comments and encouragement.
great interview, i really admire his honesty. I think he hit the nail on the head regarding revenue. Somehow you need to bring in sales to keep operations going if investment dries out or doesnt happen.
Really a shame to hear that. We had interesting e-mail conversations when both of us were in the start-up phase. Good luck Jared with your next ventures – it’s obvious you learned a lot!