This is the fun part… at least for me
My name is Austin Veith and I am the co-founder of TravelFli. I handle most of our financial matters, legal work, infrastructure, and human resources. This is my first post on our company blog because I haven’t had too much to write about until just recently. Fortunately, my co-founder Krista Paul has done a great job of updating our blog with current industry events and valuable frequent flyer news. From here on out I am going to interject occasionally and attempt to give a little insight into the business side of TravelFli and try not to bore anyone too much.
Early this summer, as we were just starting TechStars, we went through a phase where it seemed as though everyone else in our company had way more to do than me. Not that I was bored, there is always plenty to do. It was just that everyone’s to-do list was a little longer than mine. We had slightly changed the focus of our company and we were going through a restructuring period where our old product was being reshaped to address a different demographic. In short, we were rebuilding a lot of things (or building things from scratch) and it required a lot of coding, which is not exactly my specialty. I found myself with a little more time to sit around and dream up even more things for our already busy developers to build. They were not that entertained by it at all.
Now, we are through that phase and the roles have pretty much reversed. Our development team has been able to take a breath for the first time in months and take a minute to sit down and really focus on our product development plan moving forward. In the meantime, my days have been slammed meeting with investor after investor, returning inquiries, reviewing financials, going through due diligence, and e-mails… endless, endless e-mails.
IT’S GREAT. I realize how fortunate TravelFli is with the response we’ve had to the product and more importantly, to the team. The feedback we’re getting from investors and all of our mentors has been incredibly positive and has energized us to keep working at the frenzied TechStars’ pace. Although, I think our development team may actually be enjoying it more than me because I’m too busy to come up with more work to pile on to their already long hit-list.
I have to say that my tone (and this blog) may have had a slightly different ring to it if the rest of my team had not done such a great job over the past year. It is way more fun to be working with investors who WANT TO WORK WITH YOU because your team is executing and building something really exciting that they want to be a part of. So, thanks guys.
We just finished another big TechStars’ demo day in San Francisco on the 23rd of September. It was great to get exposure to a whole new group of investors. We’ve already met so many great investors/VC’s/mentors from the Bay Area that have been a great help to our company and have stepped up to offer their time or resources to help TravelFli execute its’ goals. We’ll be returning the second week of October to talk to all of the people we weren’t able to fit in this trip.
If you have any questions or feedback for TravelFli, feel free to contact me via e-mail at: Austin{at}TravelFli.com and keep an eye out for my future posts! I’ll do my best to keep everyone up to date about what I’m up to here at TravelFli.
