My June.

As a young founder and CEO, most things I do at the moment are a ‘first time’, I’m learning on the job, making mistakes and learning a lot. I’m going to start recapping my months on here. One day I want to help young founders just like me, but with a bit on my plate for now all i’ve got is a blog… apologies for any typos.

THE PROBLEM WE’RE FIXING IS VERY REAL

People have had some crap experiences with their money while overseas and most weeks we have between 3 or 4 messages from Aussie travellers in our inbox telling us their story. We know the problem we’re fixing because we’ve experienced it ourselves but it’s still cool to hear from people who are on the same level… and who are on or waitlist… feel free to jump on it too ;)

NAILING A BUSINESS MODEL IS TOUGH WORK.

Our goal is to remove the big and murky fees from using your money overseas… we’ve done this, but it wasn’t easy. I’ve never pulled together a pricing model before (my backgrounds not finance) but I quickly learnt that it’s not easy. I spoke to a lot of people, played with a lot of spreadsheets, spoke to some more people and played with even more spreadsheets, but finally seem to have gotten it right.

We’re a young startup, so it was crucial to make sure our exposure early on was limited whilst making sure we deliver on our promise to our followers (aka future customers). A free and transparent travel and banking app.

We’re going to make this all public next month & a quick shout out to one of my advisors Duncan… the man knows a thing or two about the payments and travel markets! I’d encourage every young founder to find advisors ASAP…I’ve got 2 but I wish I had more!

I SUCK AT SAVING MONEY.

I’m trying to go to New York for Christmas with my family (with my Pelikin Card of course) and we’re all in savings mode to make it happen. We’re pre revenue, so I’m not on a huge wicket, but with long days leading to a taste for a beer, a growing golf addiction and the existence of Afterpay means that I’m well behind. What motivates me is the amazing progress my partner, my siblings and parents are making with their savings, my FOMO is kicking and forcing me to sort my sh*t out.

This is exactly what we’re building for young travellers in our mobile app. An open forum to save money with the people your travelling with, your accountable for yourself and no one else but you help your mates, track their progress and make sure you’re keeping up to avoid those 4 little words…F.O.M.O

LINKEDIN SUCKS (AT THE MOMENT)

The flow of software sales people and offshore dev companies coming at me of late is full on. It’s a cool platform with great content, but thank god for that ‘No, thanks’ button in their DMs!

FIND BALANCE.

Being a lean team (for now) we’re all wearing many hats at the moment especially as we’re on the cusp of launching to the market. I urge the team to work from home or even take a day off when they can in a effort to avoid ‘burnout’. They’re a passionate and pumped up group and so pushing this is hard… I took last Monday off and logged out of Slack to try set the tone… let’s see how this plays out.

That’s all I’ve got for June… I’ll let you know how July goes.

Sam.

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