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Interviews with founders building successful online marketplaces with Sharetribe. Discover how founders identified opportunities, overcame challenges, and scaled their platforms—from their first transaction to millions in GMV. Each episode dives into both the strategies that worked and the mistakes that taught valuable lessons.
Whether you're launching a marketplace, scaling one, or just fascinated by two-sided business models, you'll gain practical insights from founders who've walked the path.
What I would do differently is definitely talk even more and even earlier with our travelers, with our customers on where they want to go and what would they expect from a platform like us. I think it would have been easier for us to focus maybe on three, four, five countries in the beginning, build like a stronger network in those countries, focus on marketing these specific countries, building them up as like responsible impact destinations from the get go, which would have made it easier to market these specific destinations. So we always love to start big and start global, but I think sometimes it's as well very good to start niche, get to know your customer, get to know the problem that you're solving for them, get a recognition for being the provider for this specific thing or this specific country in our case, and then grow from there with an existing customer base.
Speaker 2:Hey there,
Speaker 3:and welcome to another ShareTribe founder story. I'm Mira, and today I want to share a conversation I had with Neil Sloman that honestly left me feeling really inspired about the future of travel. So we all love to travel, but there's often this nagging feeling that tourism doesn't always benefit the places we visit. Well, Niels and his team at Social BNB are working to change this. Social BNB started as a student project helping one man in Cambodia build a school.
Speaker 3:This experience made Niels and his co founder realize there's a real opportunity for tourists to have a positive impact if only they could be connected with local organizations and communities. Today, Social BNB is a share trap powered platform that connects travelers with over 500 social and environmental projects across 45 countries. It offers everything from home stays to multi day experiences and even complete impact focused round trips. The mission is to leave both sides, the travelers and the local communities, with a long lasting positive impact. The journey hasn't always been easy.
Speaker 3:Social BNB started with Niels and his team literally forwarding emails between travelers and hosts. Then the platform evolved to what Niels calls a Frankenstein's monster of a WordPress site before finding Sharedrive in 2020. And talk about timing. They launched their new platform in spring twenty twenty one, right after COVID-nineteen had completely devastated the travel industry. But these challenges also mean Niels has some really insightful, hard earned lessons to share with early stage marketplace founders about the importance of staying optimistic, talking to your users, starting with a narrow focus and building a business iteratively.
Speaker 3:I'm really excited for you to hear the entire conversation. So let's jump right into the story of how Social BnB is reimagining what tourism can be.
Speaker 2:Hi, Nils, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1:Hey, Meera, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2:It's pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time. Could we start off by you telling us a little bit about your background and how you decided to pursue the entrepreneurial path and become a marketplace founder?
Speaker 1:For sure, I'd love to. My name is Niels. I'm 31 years old. I'm one of the founders of Social BNB, a marketplace for responsible travel alternatives on your next trip. And I decided to pursue the entrepreneurial role or career because I have my background in international business and international relations.
Speaker 1:So we already learned a bit about the entrepreneurial career, that this could be an option. However, my first couple of experiences were in the corporate world rather, but always working like the sustainability department, because I always found the idea of how can we use our capacities to use them for the common good, so more of like a social entrepreneurship approach, always very interesting and very appealing. And after first off corporate experience, I saw that I could have a much bigger impact in starting my own venture and starting my own company and really making a meaningful change with that.
Speaker 2:That sounds really great. So Social BNB is a marketplace for responsible travel alternatives. What does that mean?
Speaker 1:With Social BNB, we enable travellers to find local, authentic and responsible alternatives for the next trip. So on our platform, travelers can find accommodation, experiences or entire round trips that they can use to, on the one hand, have a very authentic and meaningful experience on the ground by connecting with local people, learning more about local cultures, local customs, and contributing to projects in the region that they are visiting, be it ecological projects, social projects, or animal welfare projects. While at the same time, with the money that they pay for the activity or the overnight stay, they are directly contributing to the project and that the money that they spend is actually staying in the region that they are visiting. So we want to use tourism as a force for good.
Speaker 2:Yes. So like a genuine win win win. So for the entrepreneurs, the supply and for the demand and also for society and the environment as a whole.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. That's what we're looking for. That's what we think tourism should be like.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I agree. So the demand is just normal tourists like you and me. Correct? Exactly.
Speaker 1:Travellers from all over the world.
Speaker 2:And the supply side, what types of people or companies does that consist of?
Speaker 1:So our suppliers, our projects, our change makers, as we call them, or our impact hosts, are from all over the world. So we are working in 45 different countries. We have around 500 different partner organisations, and they come from all different kinds of backgrounds. So they work in the field of community development, reforestation, rewilding, nature preservation, fighting climate change, gender equality, education, sports, health, and you name it. So all kinds of different causes in all of our partners are either social businesses, NGOs, non profits, or local community organizations.
Speaker 1:And we want to give them access to the global tourism market. Because right now, the tourism industry is more exploitive, so they take resources away from the reach that they are visiting, and we want to reverse that model and actually make sure that the local communities get access to the market and can showcase their unique experiences because we believe that's what tourism is all about connecting with the locals, learning more about the people and the places that you are visiting, and at the same time contributing to their well-being.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, excellent. I believe many people who love to travel, they want this, but at the same time, and they're aware of its positive impacts on the local economies and the possible negative impacts on the environment and then the society there. So this sounds like an answer to what many people actually want
Speaker 1:look for as well while we were traveling, because for us it was always super hard to find these meaningful and authentic alternatives. So how could we really connect with the local people and how could we make it like an experience apart from mass tourism?
Speaker 2:Is that how you came up with the idea also, as solution to a problem that you were experiencing?
Speaker 1:Exactly. On the one hand, it was something that we were experiencing while we were looking for new trips. Like I said, looking for more authentic, meaningful interactions. And we see that the people are what makes the country and the region so unique. So if you really want to learn more about the place that you are visiting, connecting with the locals, learning more about their lives, about their customs, and at the same time maybe getting some hidden gems or some ideas for what you can do off the beaten track is so unique.
Speaker 1:And at the same time, I worked in different social and ecological organisations in South America for a long time, and there I saw the need for actually building a sustainable business model to be less reliant on donations, but have a second source of income, we think tourism is a great alternative because there is a very low barrier to entry for these communities because all of them already have projects and a lot of our partners already have projects in place or maybe a home stay in place. And so that it's a very low barrier for entry for them to actually access the market and generate some additional income and revenue so that they can sustain their projects.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely want to hear more about how you find the supply and how do you get them on board. But first, I really need to ask, like, when you got this idea at first, like, how did you first start moving forward with it? Like, what were the first steps that you took?
Speaker 1:So the first project that we worked with is a program in Cambodia, where one of our former team members was traveling to Cambodia and met this man, Mr. T. And he wanted to build a school for the children in this village to learn English because that was not provided by the public schools. And his village was only like thirty minutes outside of the capital Phnom Penh, which is quite touristy and gets a lot of international visitors. Yet only thirty minutes outside of this capital, there was lacking such a basic necessity as education because there was just no income or revenue coming in.
Speaker 1:And we thought, how can we use tourism to, on the one hand, show people and travelers the authentic, unique Cambodia to actually be staying with him in his in his family so that he can learn more about the culture, learn more about his vision and why he wanted to change it, maybe learn more about why education is an issue there, and at the same time helping him to fulfill his vision of building the school and offering these English classes. So that's how we started in, first of all, just getting his information on a very basic WordPress website where it was just information. You would send us an email. We would communicate with him through Facebook Messenger. And getting in touch with him and saying, Hey, Mr.
Speaker 1:T, there's someone who wants to stay with you. First of all, we just reached out to friends and families. Hey, whenever you're in Southeast Asia, in Cambodia, make sure to visit him. He will pick you up from Phnom Penh in his tuk tuk. You can go to his village, stay a couple of nights, make a village walk, a cooking class, learn more about the local rural life, have a very authentic experience that very few travelers would have, and at the same time make sure that you really saw where your money was going and you saw how you were contributing to building the school.
Speaker 1:And as we saw that this has a lot of potential, that we were able to fund the teacher, we saw that there was a lot of potential to use tourism as a mean to empower and uplift communities and at the same time enable travellers to have a different experience than they would usually have or find.
Speaker 2:So that the moment. Like you got the school funded and you saw your friends and acquaintances really enjoy the experience. And that's where you were like, Okay, there's something here.
Speaker 1:Exactly. That's when we started to see like, Okay, this problem or this opportunity doesn't only exist in Cambodia, right? So there's a lot of communities where a lot of projects are doing amazing work that could benefit from tourism as a source of income, and at the same time, so many different destinations and regions to be visited that could deliver this unique insight into local life for travellers.
Speaker 2:So was this also the lightbulb moment like, hey, this is a market based platform that we're thinking about? And that's how you started thinking about how to actually build tech around your idea.
Speaker 1:It took us one or two more years until we saw, okay, this has really marketplace potential because we started with like two, three more countries. But in that case, we were still just forwarding emails back and forth. So it was still like a low volume. We had like five or 10 hosts maybe in just like one or two, three countries. And so we're all keeping it very low key next to our studies.
Speaker 1:But as we saw that the platform was or the website was growing, we saw, okay, we needed to set up a more professional structure, how we can onboard hosts and how we can get more travelers on the platform and how we can connect them directly without us having to interfere in every transaction, every kind of communication. That's when we thought, okay, this is actually potential for building a global marketplace where we see on the one hand the potential that the interest from travelers is there to have these kinds of experiences. And on the other hand, that the projects or the communities that we've been working with are actually capable of delivering such a service because it was a very new idea. And so we had to validate that these two sites are actually willing to connect and capable to connect. And that's when we came in and started building a marketplace.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's fantastic. And that's also the advice that we hear from experts and experienced founders time and time again. Is like validate your idea with a small initial investment, like doing lots of manual work, just like interacting with your supply and demand and seeing if that works. You follow that instruction to the team.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Yeah, there's a lot of learnings in that process when you talk directly to the customers, directly with the hosts and even in the email flow with them. So you learn what kind of questions they keep posing. So there's always a good learning.
Speaker 2:Oh, that sounds fantastic. And at what point did you come across Sharedribe?
Speaker 1:Sharedribe was actually a recommendation of a friend of mine. He was building a marketplace for the gig economy. So he was like for remote workers in 2019, 2020, when all this gig economy was still very early stages and he was trying to build a marketplace and he looked into Sharedrive. And when I told him about our idea, he said, Hey, I think Sharedrive would be something for you because we knew that we had very limited resources as a student initiative, as a team. We knew we didn't have the capacities to build a full scale own marketplace from the get go.
Speaker 1:So we thought SharedTrak would be the perfect place to start to start building right away.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. We should send that friend of yours some flowers.
Speaker 1:He would appreciate that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:At that point, did you consider any alternatives to Sharedev? Like, I don't know, plugins on top of your WordPress website or something like that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we stretched WordPress a lot because we had one developer who was familiar with WordPress, so we are very hesitant on moving away from WordPress because we didn't have any other developer and he wasn't aware of Shadow or he hadn't worked with Shadow yet. So we thought for at least six to twelve months, Okay, rather build another plugin, build another adjust our Frankenstein's monster of WordPress that we had built at that point a bit more a bit more until we saw, Okay, it just doesn't give us the functionalities and the features that we need to build a platform because WordPress is great for what it does, but it's not necessarily built for building a marketplace. That's what our experience was. And then we went into the process to build Sharedrive in the background while still maintaining the WordPress site for, I think, six to nine months while we were building Sharedrive in the background and then shifted over to Sharedrive fully. We decided to take it out of university in 2020, and that's when we started working with Sharedrive as well in summer twenty twenty, and we launched in April, May 21.
Speaker 2:So there was the whole COVID pandemic also COVID-nineteen pandemic also. Did that impact your plans or discourage you in any way?
Speaker 1:Surprisingly, it never really discouraged us. In hindsight, it's very surprising because we were new founders and we were super dedicated, super convinced about our idea. And we were positively naive, I'd say, because we were always, Okay, how long is this COVID thing going to last? Maybe like six months. And after six months, we were like, Okay, then the summer season started.
Speaker 1:We got a couple of bookings. We were like, Okay, we see it's picking up. And then in winter, it started again. We were like, Okay, that's a couple of months again. So we are always very naive in thinking it wouldn't last as long as it did, finally.
Speaker 1:But what I think is a good thing, because if someone would have told us in the beginning, Okay, for the next two years, the tourism industry is going to be a black hole, basically. You don't know which country is open, where you can go, what are their restrictions. It would have been quite discouraging. So in that sense, we were lucky being naive.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yeah, totally. Thank goodness for some misplaced optimism.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. I think that's a very good trade of entrepreneurs as well as remaining optimistic.
Speaker 2:Yes. Well said. What was the experience like getting started with Charitable, building with Charitable? You mentioned that you weren't very technical, didn't have a super big technical team.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and actually neither Alex nor I do have any technical background. So we worked actually with a designer who was kind of like a self taught front end developer, I'd say. And he was building Shetra with us in that sense. So he was taking part of all the technological side. So we were very grateful.
Speaker 1:I think now you guys have moved even more into the no code solution, so it would have been even better for us four years ago. But we decided very early that we wanted to go with Flex instead of Go because we needed to make some adjustments, especially in the front end. So we kind of draw the platform on whiteboard, on what we wanted, what kind of functionalities we wanted. We're doing like use stories and that stuff on how it could look like. And then he started developing it over the time.
Speaker 1:And like I said, yeah, I think it took like nine months till we were satisfied with like a go live because he was doing it on the side as well. He wasn't doing it full time and he was the only one actually developing and not just putting ideas in. We were just like, Oh, this would be nice. This would be nice. He was like, Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think every developer knows that struggle. But yeah, so it was a very good experience for us and getting like being quite quick in developing a marketplace.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And that's the thing. That's what many people mentioned about Go and Flex, our legacy products, that the transition from no code to code was actually quite time consuming. The gap was quite steep, and that's exactly what we wanted to solve with that user.
Speaker 1:And I think you did. It is very cool to see as well how it developed from being like now, I think would be a complete no code solution even possible.
Speaker 2:I'm glad to hear. So glad to hear that. Now let's get to the real beef of interview. How you grew social BNB. The first suppliers back when you still had the WordPress site and you were doing lots of things manually, the supply side came through your contacts, in these different countries and your sort of connections with the local organisations, right?
Speaker 1:Exactly, mainly. First so we kind of went through like three phases, I'd say, in building the supply. The first was definitely just friends and family. People who have been visiting a community, who have been working in a project, who have been searching for these kinds of experience. And we brought them on the platform.
Speaker 1:So maybe like 50 the first 50 organisations kind of came through recommendations in that sense. And I think the next 200 of them came through like active research of ours. So, we were like, okay, we know what we're looking for. We're actively engaging and talking to these organisations. And the third stage, which we're currently as well working with, is talking as well to like multiplier networks, bigger NGO networks or community based tourism networks, which have like maybe five, ten, 15 or even 100 communities at the same time that we can then screen onboard, show them what we do.
Speaker 1:And we still get a lot of recommendations so that people know us, organisations that want to work with us because we're, to my knowledge, one of the few providers who actually do this and to give them the access to the market. And so we get a lot of requests as well. And all of them go through like a detailed quality check with us on how we bring them on the platform, what they are doing, who's behind the idea, how they're contributing to the local challenges that they're trying to solve, and obviously how the local community is involved, how it is locally owned, how they are funded so that we get a lot of information, we make sure that the impact that we promise our travellers that is happening and that they can actually see and witness and contribute to is actually happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's lots of manual work involved in this, like selecting, screening, onboarding.
Speaker 1:It was always clear to us that we didn't want to be a marketplace where the hosts can just upload any profile or any programme because we want to curate the hosts and their ideas. And a lot of our hosts, for them, it's the first time being on a platform as well. So we often develop the programs jointly with them, especially with one of the new programmes that we have, which is multi day experiences where we offer not only accommodation, but we packages with activities, food and transportation into like a very unique package. And for many of them, it's the first time offering such a thing. So we help them in the brainstorming, what kind of activities could they offer, what kind of things could be explored on-site, how could it be priced, what would be interesting experience for our target group.
Speaker 1:So we developed these programs jointly with them. So it's still a lot of manual labor involved, but it's one of the works that I really enjoy doing with social media, actively working with them and seeing how we can give them access to the market and actually contributing.
Speaker 2:And I can imagine that also being a huge advantage to your demand side in this era of greenwashing and aggressive sort of responsibility washing and marketing to be able to trust that this is the real deal, like this is actually as impactful as is being claimed.
Speaker 1:Exactly. That's one of our main targets and main focus, our credibility in the impact that we're delivering. And I mean, the amazing thing is that the travellers can see the impact that they are having on the site firsthand. They see where the money goes. They see what they're contributing or they might be even actively contributing to what they're doing, to what the project is doing.
Speaker 1:And I think that makes it such a unique experience.
Speaker 2:So how you find this demand then?
Speaker 1:So the demand is mainly through social media and awareness campaigns, public relations. So we've had quite some publications, because we see there's a lot of interest in how tourism can work in a different way. Because I think most of the people would agree that tourism as it is today is not very fit for the future. Because we see there's a lot of requests from the local population, be it in European cities, that they say, 'Okay, we want our city back. There's too many tourists coming in.
Speaker 1:We are not involved in building these products. We're not benefiting from people coming here. So we see that there's a big movement in trying to rethink tourism. That's where we want to enable and develop and allow a different alternative, like I said, with social BNB. How can we actually involve the local communities all over the world in building a touristic product that is beneficial for them because it's actually contributing to nature preservation, animal welfare, gender equality, education whatsoever.
Speaker 1:And at the same time, it's a very meeting on eye level with the travelers because the travellers are actually interested, curious and want to learn more about the culture and the region and not just there to be entertained. And so I think that's a different level of interaction with the locals as well. And that's what we get as feedback from both our partners and our travelers that it's a really different kind of experience. So we see back to your question how we raise the awareness we see that there were a lot of publications in magazines, TV shows, podcasts, whatsoever that were interested in a way, Okay, hey, these guys are really trying something different. These guys are really trying to rethink the system on how it should be done.
Speaker 1:And that's how we got a lot of interest and step by step building our social media channels, which is, I think, one of the best ways on showcasing the uniqueness of our experiences and showcasing the local changemakers that we work with. So making interviews with them, allowing them to share their story with the travellers, why they chose to fight this injustice, why they chose to take on this challenge and really give a face to the project, to the challenge that the travellers can visit and contribute to.
Speaker 2:That sounds amazing. Is word-of-mouth a big factor in your demand acquisition also or repeat usage? I assume also that people who once get to experience this kind of tourism don't want to really go back to the traditional kind.
Speaker 1:For sure. For sure. I think word-of-mouth and as well like reviews is like one of the best things to either support us and at the same time what our travelers do as well. I think we have an average review rating of five stars because the people see that it's something different. They really love what they are seeing, what they're doing.
Speaker 1:So we see as well that word-of-mouth is obviously a very strong recommendation factor and pull factor because I mean, how I decide my next travel destinations as well, talking to different people, learning more about what was their best experience on-site and what they did, what they discovered, what they learned, how they liked the destination. And it's best trust building that you can do because if you just see a shiny, flashy ad, it might be one in a million. But if someone that you trust and that you know has the same values or the same interests as you and says like, hey, this is a very cool experience. This is a very cool destination and you should definitely check it out. It grows higher and higher on my to go, on my bucket list, which is very long still, but
Speaker 2:I'm sure
Speaker 1:it keeps growing.
Speaker 2:So how do you monetize this? Like, how do make a profit from these kind of connections?
Speaker 1:We decided on the marketplace system as well because we see that this is where we have the main benefit for the travelers and the hosts. So giving the hosts access to the global tourism market and at the same time helping travelers to find these offers that they might not find elsewhere. And that's why we take like a transaction fee because we connect these two players. That's how we can keep our service completely free for our communities and our organizations, our projects, so they don't pay a listing fee or subscription fee. But the travellers pay a transaction fee for us connecting them with these projects and finding these projects.
Speaker 1:And that's how we generate revenue.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. So a commission that only the demand side pays. Like also quite nicely aligned with your values.
Speaker 1:It does, yeah.
Speaker 2:Do you remember the first transaction that happened on your Sharedrive marketplace where you had had more automation in place?
Speaker 1:The first year was crazy in general when we would switch to Sharedrive because, like I said, the first ones were all still like where we were involved or were friends of us or people found us and then they sent an email to us. We were always very involved. But all of a sudden, I think it was February or no. Yeah, I think when we launched the platform in May, July or July, I think. And we had the first booking in the July, August, and there was just someone we didn't know.
Speaker 1:And it was just like someone booking through the platform, which is like, wow, wow. And yeah, I just wanted to directly call the person and be like, hey, how did you find us? How did like the experience whatsoever? No, we don't gather phone numbers. Don't get the phone numbers.
Speaker 1:We sent them an email on how they found and how they liked the experience. And it was actually through a recommendation of a friend. But it was like a crazy feeling. That was the first time we were not involved. And that was the first time that we actually saw, okay, this marketplace idea of us just providing the marketplace and the information and the technology behind it and people actually looking by themselves, finding something for themselves that they like was a crazy experience.
Speaker 2:I'm So currently, what are your most important focus areas in terms of business initiatives or marketing or technology or work in the communities? What are you focusing on now?
Speaker 1:We always have three main focus topics that we're working on. On the one hand, we're always trying to enhance the technology, talking to users, what kind of features would they like, talking to our hosts, what kind of features would they like. So we're currently, for example, adjusting the transaction process more, allowing more payment methods, the social sign on, giving them more overview of what is actually included in the price, for example. So we try to give them the best option possible. We adjust the search process, for example, because we saw that people search differently now than they did like six months ago.
Speaker 1:So we try to accommodate for that. So we always try to build very user centric new features. And at the same time, in the product department, product development, like I shared a bit, we developed a new product called Multi Day Experiences, where we shifted from only offering the accommodation like we did in the beginning and giving information about the activities that you can do to actually packaging activities, accommodation, food, transportation all together to showcase the uniqueness of the product or the project that you're visiting. Because by offering the additional activities, you can really see, Oh, can I do a workshop? Can I participate in reforestation efforts?
Speaker 1:Can I support in the research and rewiring efforts? Can I learn more about education, about gender equality in that sense? So really making this experience more immersive because we saw that the travellers wanted even more interaction with their hosts. And that's how we tried to work with it in building these packages so that they stay longer on the ground and have an even more special experience by showcasing the uniqueness of our projects even more and as well enabling the travelers to take maybe like a bit of a detour because we also try to divert the tourism streams that you don't visit all the time at the same time, the same regions, but maybe go to like a more rural or semi urban area. But it's more worth it if you go for three or four nights instead of just staying for one night.
Speaker 1:So we try to accommodate for that. And as well, we will be offering our first own design round trip now in Sri Lanka, where you will be having like fourteen days social BNB experience. So just visiting, going from one of our partners to the next and having like an entire impact around which we are very excited about to be launching within the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 2:Sounds really cool. I love how I can hear from how you talk that like how the impact that you want to make is present in all these all these decisions that you to make, be it technology, be it business initiatives. Can you give a concrete example of what this kind of this type of experience could be like?
Speaker 1:Yes, I would love to. Specifically, these multi day experiences that we're offering experiences where you as a traveler can even dive deeper into the local culture and immerse even more and often directly contribute to what the project is doing because you stay longer and are more engaged. So, for example, we have programs in Europe where you can participate or see how rewilding efforts are being done. You can see in Italy, for example, be part of a research vessel where you can support the researchers in finding dolphins, whales, and with the research that you're doing, actually contribute to them building like a marine life protected area in the Mediterranean Sea with the data that you're gathering. So you're actively contributing with your work and have a very unique experience and being on the sailing vessel, having this community thought and really being hands on.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned three focus areas, and that was two, right? Exactly. What's the third?
Speaker 1:And the last one is always how to since we are a marketplace, obviously getting a nice supply, but on the other hand as well growing our demand. So how can we use our marketing channels even better to showcase this uniqueness of our product? So we started doing more targeted ads, doing more video content, which we saw is working very well. So we are trying to work together with all of our partners in developing video content so that we can create short reels, video ads for them, with them, that we can then promote to our platform. Because what we saw is that, like I said as well a bit earlier, when the hosts can actually tell a bit more about their story, have video about why the experience is so unique or what the travellers can experience.
Speaker 1:We saw that travellers are much more likely to book these kind of experiences because they get a bit more better touch of the people and what they could see. And that's what we're actively promoting as well, building more video content, helping our partners to create this content or edit it for them, and then bring it on our social to make more vanderlust for our travellers so that they can really have a good feeling on where they want to go next, get some good inspiration.
Speaker 2:Sounds great. You rather recently raised funding, correct? Do you want to share something about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. Funding is always a very big topic for young startups, I think especially for us, since we've been working a lot with public money in the beginning with government grants, scholarships, award money, for example, in that idea. And we saw that we were kind of reaching like a glass ceiling because we saw, hey, we were able to build this platform, were able to build this marketplace, we were able to get the first customers the first traction showing that it could work. But we as well saw that especially the marketing efforts take a lot more time than we expected in the beginning Because we thought, like you as well said, there's a lot of agreement and nodding about, yes, tourism should be done differently. But we saw that marketing is very price intensive or money intensive because in the end, when people decide where they go on their next trip, there are so many options out there and there are so many big platforms that they can turn to, that they can find something wherever they go, they will find a suitable alternative.
Speaker 1:So we saw that we need to put in more money into marketing and actually drive the people and showcase that Social BnB exists. Because to everyone I talk to and when I talk to Social BnB about Social BnB, they'd be like, Hey, wow, I would have loved to know about this before my last trip. And I was like, Yes, that's exactly what we're working on. That's what we're trying to push with this funding as well, that more people know about us and they know about us in the right moment when they're trying to make the booking decision, or we can even be the inspiration for their next trip where they want to go.
Speaker 2:Makes sense. Perfect sense. Looking back on your journey, is there anything that you would have done differently with the wisdom that comes with hindsight?
Speaker 1:A million things. I think I haven't met an entrepreneur who has done it right from the beginning. I mean, looking back, I hope I can always say that we did the best to our knowledge at a certain point, which is comforting in that sense. And I really love that we had been a team since day one, so we were always like a lot of great minds trying to find good ideas and involving everyone in the decision making. But what I would try even earlier, what I would focus even earlier on is, like I said, now we focus very much on user centric features.
Speaker 1:In the beginning, we developed the platform rather for us saying like, okay, we would love to have this, we would love to have that, until we realized what we expect from a platform might not be what someone else would be expecting from the platform. And that in the end, if a user would expect this feature to work in that certain way or the search to work in that certain way or the transaction process to work in that certain way, we need to accommodate for that if we see patterns and behaviours. So what I would do differently is definitely talk even more and even earlier with our travelers, with our customers on where they want to go and what would they expect from a platform like us, how we can make it even easier for them to find these suitable alternatives And as well developing on the one hand, the technological product jointly with them, but as well the touristic product jointly with them. Because in the beginning we're like, okay, it's super nice to have a global reach with 45 different countries. That's amazing.
Speaker 1:But I think it would have been easier for us to focus maybe on three, four or five countries in the beginning, build like a stronger network in those countries, focus on marketing these specific countries, building them up as like responsible impact destinations from the get go, which would have made it easier to market these specific destinations. So we always love to start big and start global. But I think sometimes it's as well very good to start niche, get to know your customer, get to know the problem that you're solving for them, get a recognition for being the provider for this specific thing or this specific country in our case, and then grow from there with an existing customer base.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's also a very, very good, useful advice for many people who are just at the early stages of this journey, just starting out. It's often super tempting to start building the marketplace of your dreams make it very But very often it's indeed just like you said, start with an MVP and talk to your users, find out what they need and build from there. So thank you so much, Niels, for this interview and for sharing your inspiring story and your advice with early stage founders. We're super proud to share this story with our audience.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Thank you very much for having me. It's lovely being part of the Sharedrive community. And thank you for so much for the audience.
Speaker 2:Thanks. Thanks so much. And all the best for Social B and B.
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