Launch early and be ready to run

by Itamar Lesuisse

 

It's been a month since we've launched the Beta of Kukunu, and what an exciting month!

When we made the decision to launch in July, we had very little idea of what to expect. We were launching what Eric Ries would call a Minimum Viable Product. We had just finalized our funding round a few weeks before so we hadn't even had time to hire our first developer, what we were launching was the work of a single man, my co-founder, Gerald Goldstein.

We would have been happy with few hundreds users testing our product, but thanks to the coverage of Techcrunch and TheNextWeb, week 1 stats were pretty nice:

• More than 13,000 visitors
• We passed the bar of 2,000 Kukunauts (registered users)
• 1816 trips created
• Server uptime: 100% (thanks Rackspace)
• Top 5 countries: US, UK, Poland, Spain and France

The real surprise came over the following weeks when we reached 4,000 users and saw a hardcore group of users coming back to the site to plan their vacation, inviting friends to collaborate and even doing some bookings through the site. We had our group of passionate travellers and we could start to iterate and build a better service.

Launching early was a great decision, this gave us valuable information on where to focus our new resources:

• Google analytics tells us how users behave on the site
• Uservoice tells us what users want, what they don't like, what frustrates them
• More than 50 user interviews, through chat, Skype or at the office gave us amazing intelligence on our users and their needs

 

So what's next?

100% of our resources will be dedicated to improving the Kukunu experience. No marketing, no pitching to investors, no more looking for offices, for an accountant... we won't rest until we hear our users say "I can't imagine how I could plan my vacation without Kukunu." So, while we've been doing some tweaking and bug fixes over the past few weeks, we're also working on much bigger projects with several priorities at sight:

• Simplify simplify simplify: there is still too much complexity and sometimes confusion in the way Kukunu works. We're aware of that and you'll see some drastic changes in the comings weeks.
• Social social social: our vision has always been to leverage your social network to make travel planning easier and more collaborative. We're working on it, and it will be awesome!
• Tool tool tool: our vision has always been to create a fantastic tool to organize your vacation, not to be a travel guide. You'll see more planning features coming to Kukunu very soon.

We're heading for great things, but we still need you! Keep sending us valuable feedback or contact me directly on Twitter or by Email.

 

Kukunu is on Thrillist

Plot: Kukunu

Time to get funded? Don't be a Moray!

The past several weeks have been very exciting at Kukunu. We've finalized our round of funding and are now launching a public beta of Kukunu, working with you guys our users, a.k.a. Kukunauts, to improve our product and bring you an awesome travel experience.

But the goal of this post is not to celebrate our funding or our launch, we're planning to do that in a few weeks at a pub in London. Instead I wanted to share some learnings from the recent months of pitching to investors.

I won't start a Pitching 101 talk here since there are people far more experienced than myself that have written great content on the topic. 6 slides by Fred Wilson or The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint by Guy Kawasaki are good starters; or you might enjoy this video, Startup Viagra by Dave McClure.

Dave McClure - How to Pitch a VC (aka Startup Viagra: How to Give a VC a Hard-On) from Chris Hutchins on Vimeo.

So what advice can I give? I though a lot about that in the past weeks. What did we do right, what did we do wrong? What's the one piece of advice I would want to share?

I found my answer 70 feet under water, where I realized there were 2 basic types of startups looking for funding: 

The first one, I call it the Moray; great technology, full of confidence, will stay hidden until it finds the right prey. Many start ups are behaving this way, each with a different excuse. "We don't want someone to copy our idea" or "Our product is not yet good enough to be shared" or "We have a list of 5 good investors in the UK, that should be enough."

 

I always thought that finding an investor was a bit like finding a partner in life. Now that I'm married I can tell you it isn't true, finding an investor can be far more complex; they won't love you for your faults and weaknesses. So waiting quietly for the right investor to find you just won't work, no matter how strong your idea!

But then you have the second style of start up, the clown fish, out there on the reef, talking to everyone with its shiny colors:

 

That tiny fish got it right, darting through his anemone he gets all the divers cheering him. It's by talking to every one, and sharing your projects with investors, industry experts or other entrepreneurs that you will optimize your chances to meet the right partner. During that journey, you are also likely to grab some great advice, fine tune your strategy, and maybe find future business partners.

 

Don't be the Moray, be the Clown fish

 

To prove my point, I'll share how we found investors for Kukunu, only a few know that story.

We started looking for funding in January, with a first prototype ready. Later that month we were heading to New York then the west coast with Seedcamp. We spent a week presenting Kukunu across the valley, at Facebook, Google, Yahoo... It was at the Googleplex that it happened; we presented Kukunu and then broke into small groups with mentors; getting feedback, advice and precious contacts. It was starting to be late and my third mentoring group was missing, so I introduced myself to the first guy I saw and it happened to be Phlippe Jeudy. Philippe was partly listening to me, partly typing on his laptop, and I would discover few hours later that he was tweeting:

Thanks to that tweet I spoke with Jeremie Berrebi a few days later over the phone, and a few weeks later Jeremie would fly from Israel and we would meet in Paris the very first day he announced he would manage Kima Ventures, a seed fund launched by Xavier Niel. A few weeks later Jeremie would contact me with an offer and Jaina Capital (Marc Simoncini) was part of that offer. A few weeks after that Seedcamp was joining the band: the lawyer party could start, we were getting funded.

So it all comes down to a random chat in Mountain View, with a French guy I had never met. That random chat lead to a random tweet to another French guy, in Israel this time, that I had never met. It led to a phone call, which led to a meeting which led to one investor, then two and finally three.

Be the clown fish!

This worked for me in my first round for my first start up. Next round I might want to be the Manta Ray:

 

But that's another story...

So here we are, first blog entry post-launch and I managed to insert three of the videos I shot during my last dive (that means Gerald owes me a pint); that Manta Ray was awesome! 

Kukunu takes over Poland

Kukunu is on the homepage of Gazeta.pl, one the biggest Polish portals: 

Zrób to sam: samodzielne planowanie wakacji w Interneci

Kukunu is on TheNextWeb

Kukunu takes a social approach to travel planning

Kukunu is on Techcrunch

Social travel planning service Kukunu launches, raises funding

Software wizard wanted: If ever, oh ever a wiz there was, the wizard is one becoz becoz...

This role will be key in the development of Kukunu, a well funded London-based web start up, building the next generation travel planning experience.

You’ll be our lead software engineer, working alongside our CTO to build the platform.You’ll own large projects, contribute to product ideas, and help define top-level system architecture, database-level design, coding and testing. Kukunu is a consumer-facing service that will require fast development and short release cycles, and the ability to quickly iterate based on user feedback and behaviour. While your focus will be on the back-end, flexibility to work on some front-end elements is required.

3+ years of development experience for consumer-facing services. Excellent PHP skills including MVC architecture (Zend framework is a plus), mySQL and database administration experience, as well as the ability to code efficient Javascript jQuery & AJAX. Also plenty of experience integrating web services.

Finally, you are fun to work with, you love travel and you are ready to spend long hours in front of your computer and at the pub.

The position is based in London and available immediately. Candidate must posses a valid British or EU passport, or a valid UK work permit.

Email me at itamar@kukunu.com if interested, links to your LinkedIn profile and some of your works would be great.

becoz becoz becoz… Becoz of the wonderful code you write.

Why is it so hard to make great burritos in London?

I just came back from a fantastic trip to the US with the Seedcamp teams. For a detailed summary of our trip, you can read the great posts from Platogo and Shout’Em.

I came back with one question in mind: Why is it so hard to make great burritos in London?

Indeed, everybody keeps telling me that Burritos are much easier to make in Silicon valley. You can easily find a great recipe, the best ingredients and the right skills; while in London you are likely to struggle finding chipotle chilies or even good corn tortillas. It takes a lot of trial and error with very few tools at your disposal to find that elusive combination of flavors you know is just right.

Come to think of it, burritos are a lot like start-ups.

After spending 2 weeks in NY and the Bay Area, I have to agree that the Silicon valley seems to be a fantastic place full of opportunities. Everyone knows were to find the best developers and the best technology, everybody knows someone with the right skills or a good idea. They have the infrastructure to create great new start ups, the echo-system is mature.

So are we doomed to eat average Burritos or to stick with jacket potatoes?

I don’t think so. I’ve met a lot of great entrepreneurs in London and some great technologies are being built across Europe. We have here a strong academic and scientific background and the ability to create fantastic IP but we are facing many obstacles when time comes to bring ideas to market. Saul Klein has written a great post on how Seedcamp is creating a distributed network for European start ups; which highlights some key differences between the US and Europe.

But on a day to day basis, I see one simple lesson for those of us in Europe: We’ll all make much better burritos if we start drinking more coffee.

During these 2 weeks in the US, I met more people than I meet in London in a year. Every single person introduced me to other people, some with great travel experience, some with lots of lessons to share from their previous start up and sometime I’d be the one sharing my thoughts on travel, Amazon or online payment.

I know we have meet ups like OpenCoffee, Minibar, OpenSoho or Mobile Monday. That’s great but not enough, and far from what I witnessed in the US. We have to share lessons learned, now!

We all need to spend more time meeting up around a good coffee, sharing ideas, lessons learned and contacts. That’s one important step towards making London and Europe the best place to build a start up; which is your best chance to succeed with your own business…

So if you want to make great burritos, I know were to find chipotle chilles in London, and I know someone who can find great corn tortillas, I might even introduce you to some great carnitas.

Share your thoughts in a comment or come meet me for coffee: itamar at kukunu.com

And to Alasdair, Reshma and Saul: Thank you! You did a fantastic job building an extremely rewarding experience both on a professional and personal level.

SeedCamp European startups visit NYC and Silicon Valley

http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/01/seedcamp-european-star...

Don Doge has been great during Seedcamp trip to the US, he hosted us in Google NY and Mountain view offices.

The weekly life of a travel startup - Goodbye the web, Hello Le Web

Guest post on Hotel Blogs

This week was a pretty busy week with the 6th iteration of LeWeb in Paris, organised by Geraldine and Loic Lemeur. I arrived in Paris on Sunday and enjoyed the comfort of a lovely Parisian flat and a great office thanks to the fantastic hospitality of Gary (@garycige) from Zilok.
I met several VCs on Monday and Tuesday and quickly discovered that many French investors do get travel and the opportunity for innovation and disruption. Between meetings I could focus on my presentation for LeWeb and enjoy some fantastic food and wine.
The highlights of LeWeb…

* Christopher Sacca (@sacca) on stage (man, you made me want to become a porn-star) check it out here.

* Gary Vaynerchuk on stage, just crush it.

* Many other magic presenters and a great winner for the Startup competition: Stribe, with a really cool product.

* And of course a great presentation of Kukunu, see coverage on Techcrunch here.

I ended the week back in London for a fantastic Seedsummit where, together with the other Seedcamp finalists, I had the opportunity to pitch in front of investors. Being able to discuss Kukunu with people like Brent Hoberman, Martin Varsavsky, Dave McClure and Jeff Clavier was magic.

This is the end of a pretty exciting week, in the meantime Gerald (my co-founder) developed some great new features that we are beta testing right now. Sign up on http://www.kukunu.com to participate in the private beta, we should extend it in the coming weeks.