Tech Startups Interview South Africa

#StartupStory: FOMO Travel

With the Barclays Accelerator 2017 Africa programme well underway, we chat to our first startup, FOMO Travel, about how the business is making travel affordable and debt free.
#StartupStory: FOMO Travel

The FOMO concept is pretty simple, yet revolutionary: Choose one of the all-inclusive package deals. Sign up and create a monthly FOMO payments goal that fits your budget. Share your goal and get outside contributions to help lighten the load. Start packing for your trip, debt free and hassle free.

How did you hear about, and what motivated you to apply for the Barclays Accelerator programme?

We have been sponsored and have worked with the Barclays Rise team since 2016 and from the beginning, Techstars was the ultimate goal. We came to understand the importance of an accelerator programme for the betterment of our business and Techstars is one of the best in the world.

We believe in our model, in the ethics and importance of providing client’s debt-free and conscience-free, affordable travel. However, in a world saturated with ideas and half-hearted attempts at entrepreneurism, we needed to understand the barriers in our way and to build something that that could reach the market effectively.

That was our ultimate motivation: to keep our feet on the ground and to learn from the pros and their past mistakes/experience. Finally, we wanted to carry our momentum into the programme and allow ourselves to be more visible to potential investors.

What is the long-term vision for your company?

We have always had a long-term vision in our business strategy. We wanted to provide a B2C, affordable payment solution that allowed the larger scope of potential travellers to be able to see the world.

After the past few months, our concept has certainly been validated and fomo.travel has most certainly hit the ground running!

As the concept has been proven, we want to take it to step two – a B2B payment solution that allows travel suppliers to provide their products to keen travellers without the use of credit or debt.

We hope to move FOMO into this space over Techstars and the year and fundamentally take this solution across the globe.

What do you hope to gain/learn from this programme?

We hope to take our B2B concept from planning, into a final product through the programme – that is our ultimate goal.

We also hope to harness advice from all the mentors and stakeholders of the programme, in order to better understand the risks, barriers and market need.

Finally, we hope to raise funds in order to cover short-term operational/development costs and allow ourselves to gain a better reach in the market in the shortest amount of time possible.

What are you most looking forward to in the 13 weeks of the programme?

As stated before, we hope to learn as much as we can from the mentors and associates of the programme.

We believe our concept is strategic and capable but nothing is perfect in this world. We hope to provide a close-to-perfect solution by week 13.

Finally, we hope to learn and collaborate with the Techstars cohort. Collaboration is definitely one of our core values and we look forward to working with the entire team and grow relationships along the way.

What are you most unsure of/nervous about?

We’re sure most people would say Demo day, but we’re relishing the opportunity to pitch our product at the end of the programme.

As our B2B concept is a concept right now and currently in the planning stage, we are nervous of providing our vision. However, all teams go through this and if not, they should worry about their lack of modesty.

We believe our team is capable of building along our planning and we hope to prove this at the end of the programme.

How do you define the word "success"?

Success is a happy team, a happy client and doing something not to make yourself wealthy, but to help others through your idea.

Follow the FOMO Travel journey on their social media channels: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube.

About Ilse van den Berg

Ilse is a freelance journalist and editor with a passion for people & their stories (check out Passing Stories). She is also the editor of Go & Travel, a platform connecting all the stakeholders in the travel & tourism industry. You can check out her work here and here. Contact Ilse through her website here.
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