The Daily Churn ✈️ Ep 91 - The Story of Seats.aero with Ian Carroll
16 snips
Dec 12, 2025 Ian Carroll, the founder of Seats.aero and former cybersecurity expert, shares his incredible journey of building an award-flight search tool that now boasts 500K monthly users. He dives into his early experiences with bug bounties and how they relate to churning tactics. Ian also discusses the challenges of managing a growing business, including facing a lawsuit from Air Canada. With a passion for travel and innovation, he reveals upcoming features for Seats.aero and the excitement of connecting with a dedicated community of frequent flyers.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Built Seats.Aero To Solve His Own Pain
- Ian built Seats.aero as a side project because searching award space manually was painful and slow.
- He posted it on Reddit and it grew organically as users asked for more programs and features.
Diversify Projects To Prevent Burnout
- Balancing multiple interests prevents founder burnout and preserves creativity.
- Ian keeps hacking and bug-hunting as side projects to avoid obsessing only over Seats.aero.
Solve Your Own Problem First
- Solve your own problem to find early users in the right community.
- Share genuinely helpful posts in niche forums instead of overt self-promotion.
