Lauren Sullivan. She’s the co-founder of Flightfox, a site which Nathan recently used to book multi-country travel. Flightfox helped him understand the best way to leverage his points from his Chase Credit Card for travel purposes. Flightfox helps you search flights, manage your trip, and leverage your loyalty points, to help ease your trip planning experience and it is growing fast.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Good to Great
What CEO do you follow? – John Mackey
Favorite online tool? — PocketSmith
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes, currently
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Lauren wished she had stopped working for someone else and started building her own company earlier

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:25 – Nathan introduces Lauren to the show
02:02 – Flightfox is an online and real-time platform that manages travel for individuals, companies and organizations
02:15 – Flightfox’s revenue model is to charge per trip and they make money from commission
02:32 – Flightfox’s expert will help match and plan a trip and they will authorize the credit card you use
03:33 – Flightfox books for companies, too
03:50 – The more complex the trip, the more expensive it is
05:10 – If Flightfox can’t find you a trip, they won’t charge you
05:34 – Flightfox was launched in 2012
- 05:45 – Flightfox was originally launched as a contest based, cloud source system
- 06:10 – There were a small number of the majority winning the contest
- 06:21 – The model was switched to a one-on-one
07:04 – The experts are contactors
- 07:15 – The experts get a fee per trip
- 07:40 – Most of them are full-time
07:50 – Flights metrics
- 08:03 – Flightfox is focused on companies and organizations
08:14 – CAC is a bit high
09:20 – There are at least 50 companies who have booked with Flightfox
- 09:35 – 5-10 companies are booking at least 30 trips per month
- 09:50 – Companies usually have 80 people
10:20 – In 2012, Flightfox has raised $850K
10:50 – Four Team members
11:50 – Flightfox has pivoted a couple of times already
13:19 – Lauren has been through alot with her company thus far, and has chosen to carry on
14:14 – 2016 total revenue
14:40 – Flightfox is close to breaking even
14:53 – Average MRR
15:11 – Raising another round will depend on the things that will happen in the future
17:00 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Changing your business model isn’t easy – but, it’s very normal to have to do so.
Going through the most difficult times will test not just your patience, but your ability to make the best decisions.
If it’s what you really want, just keep going.

Resources Mentioned:

Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Drip – Nathan uses Drip’s email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel
Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal
Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible.
Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books.
The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11” secure even when he left it in the airplane’s back seat pocket
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

EP 584: FlightFox YC Founder: We Talk About When To Quit All The Time, $700k Revenue, Making Travel Way Easier with CEO Lauren Sullivan

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders