Troop Travel Founders on the Startup Journey and Relationships That Matter
Oct 4, 2023
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Troop Travel founders Dennis Vilovic and Leonard Cremer discuss the startup journey, including finding the right problem to solve, when to bring on experts, identifying the right investors, and the importance of working closely with customers. They also touch on strategic meeting location selection, the benefits of cloud native technologies in the travel industry, integrating data providers, building a global team, and their vision for the future of Troop Travel.
Troop Travel was created to solve the challenges of manual processes in the corporate travel meeting management market.
Troop Travel leveraged the data they had gathered during the pandemic to expand their business and position themselves for future success.
Deep dives
Identifying a New Opportunity in the Market
Troop Travel co-founders Dennis Villavic and Leonard Kramer created a corporate travel meeting management platform to solve the challenge of manual processes in the market segment. They realized the need for a technology solution in 2014 when they couldn't find a service that would suggest meeting locations based on their starting locations. Another frustration arose when they observed companies repeatedly choosing inconvenient meeting locations. Recognizing the untapped market potential, they decided to create Troop Travel.
Seizing the Opportunity Amidst the Pandemic
While the global pandemic affected the travel industry, Troop Travel saw it as an opportunity. They leveraged the data they had gathered from planning meetings to incorporate COVID-related restrictions and entry requirements, providing extra value to their customers. As companies began reevaluating their travel strategies, Troop Travel expanded their business, tripled their customer base, and continued to grow. Insights gained during the pandemic allowed them to position themselves for future success.
Building a Comprehensive Meeting Planning Platform
Troop Travel's vision extends beyond just determining meeting locations. They aim to develop a full suite of meeting planning tools that cover the entire meeting journey, from planning to booking, managing expenses, and itinerary management. By integrating various data providers and collaborating with local experts in each destination, Troop Travel ensures comprehensive and efficient meeting planning experiences for their customers. They prioritize bringing together all the necessary components to make meetings successful, such as meeting rooms, activities, restaurants, and local transport.
The Advantages of Remote Work and the Distributed Team
Troop Travel operates as a fully distributed organization, capitalizing on the benefits of remote work. The team is spread across different locations, allowing them to hire talent globally and take advantage of diverse perspectives. They bring the entire team together at least once a year, fostering personal connections and enabling in-person collaboration. However, they emphasize that the use of technology and their own platform helps facilitate remote work and maintain effective communication. Trust and shared core values are key factors in building a cohesive team and driving success.
Today, managing director Steve Singh sits down with Troop Travel Co-founders Dennis Vilovic and Leonard Cremer. Madrona invested in Troop and its corporate travel meeting management platform in 2021. These three talk about looking for the right problem to solve, to launch a company, and how you decide if it's the right time. They also discuss when you need to switch from bringing on generalists to bringing on experts, how to identify the right investors to work with, why working closely with customers and potential customers is so important, and so much more. So I'll go ahead and hand it over to Steve to take it away.
You can read the transcript of this conversation here: https://www.madrona.com/troop-travel-founded-funded/
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