Tell us about Travis.
Travis is a social network for travel planning that allows travellers to curate moodboards and maps, and plan trips collaboratively – in one place. Think Pinterest for travel planning.
What inspired you to start Travis?
Both Thomas and I love discovering new places and experiences, travel often, and do all of our own trip planning. There was one trip in particular that was the catalyst for all of this – one night in 2018 I was sitting on the floor, at midnight, with 42 Google tabs, Instagram screenshots, group chats and pinned maps open, struggling to pull together this 5-week US trip on spreadsheets. It was overwhelming and time-consuming, but we wanted to put together a trip that we would love.
This was the start of the ‘what if’ moment for us. We started testing out different apps and tools in the market, and learning about how other millennial travellers like us planned their trips. It was crazy that we were seeing so many people face the same frustrations across the entire travel experience and resorting to fragmented workarounds because there was just nothing out there that brought it together in a simple way. It was early 2020 that we left our jobs in consulting and architecture to focus full time on Travis.
Tell us about your career and background.
It’s been an atypical, surprising, and rewarding journey – from classical pianist, to management consultant, and now startup founder.
I graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Music (Honours) – piano was my life. I then did a Master of Management (Marketing), this was back in the early days of social media and digital marketing, and I was always fascinated by the power of branding and marketing in shaping consumer behaviour. This was when my partner Thomas and I co-founded anon. in 2013 – part classical music group, part creative design studio – bringing to life creative collaborations and live events that reimagined the classical music experience. This led to opportunities speaking at TEDx in Washington DC, and curating a 16-week music series at the National Gallery of Victoria! It was also something that we ran for 7 years, alongside our full-time work.
I had a parallel career – where I worked at Deloitte Digital as a strategy and innovation consultant for 5 years. This was a steep learning opportunity working with Australia’s largest organisations – from universities to banks to non-profits. It also gave me crucial foundations for business in a digital world – from strategy to human-centred design, product development to analytics.
I then made the leap to startup, co-founding Travis also with my partner Thomas. This has been my life now for the last year and a bit.
Describe a typical work day for you.
Diverse. It could be any mix of – engaging on Instagram or diving into one of our marketing projects, reviewing user feedback and designs for new product features, speaking with potential travel brand partners for collabs or potential investors.
What advice do you have for those wanting to start a business?
Go for it – start taking small steps that help you test out what you are trying to build, whether speaking with your audience, or designing and prototyping something.
What’s next for you, and Travis?
Grow! Now that we’re lucky enough to be seeing travel return in Australia, we’re also ramping up on the number of users we invite on to our beta weekly. Beta users are usually travel-obsessed early adopters (both in Australia and across the world!) who get early access to try Travis out, and provide feedback to shape how we build for the future of travel!
We’re also doubling down on community building and refining our product in the next 6 months – as we get closer to a public launch.
Want to skip the waitlist to the Travis beta? Sign up here today and use the code ‘ONYA’.