It started with a bachelor party.
David Chait became frustrated with never-ending e-mail threads, being stuck with bills and the disorganization surrounding the whole trip. Mostly, he was frustrated that there were no tools available to relieve him from a group travel nightmare.
The result of that nightmare was Travefy, an online and mobile group travel planner headquartered in Lincoln. In 2012, Chait, the CEO and co-founder of Travefy, began working alongside co-founder and CTO Chris Davis to create the business. Today, Travefy has eight full-time employees and two interns, located both in Lincoln and in their Omaha office. Their mission: “To bring people joy in the way they plan, experience, and remember their trips together.”
Downtown Lincoln sat down with Chait to discuss the growth and history of Travefy, and why failure and success work hand in hand.
DLA: Have you run into any apps similar to yours or have you found yours is unique in what it does?
Chait: I think Travefy is wholly unique. Currently with travel, you have a lot of single dimensional tools that solve problems that are great. If you need to book a hotel room, there’s Expedia, Priceline, pick your favorite, they’re fantastic. If you need to talk to people, there’s SMS, Facebook. If you need to pay money to one person, there’s Dwolla or Venmo. But there actually was no universal application for all of the communications for planning a trip. So that I think is one of our key differentiators. There’s a bunch of great individual tools out there, but we wanted them all together.
DLA: Do you feel like you’re still building on what Travefy is?
Chait: Absolutely. It’s really cool and you know that you’re still innovating when every time you look at a snapshot, whether it’s user data in terms of size or literally a screenshot of the site from six months ago, you say, “Oh my god, that’s Travefy?” The second you close that feedback and you’re not trying to build new features or innovate or improve, I think that’s when your company dies.
DLA: Since Travefy is free, how do you guys make money off the app and site? Do you guys pair up with certain sites that show rates?
Chait: We make money in two ways. Number one, if you buy something – which you don’t have to – through our discover section, which allows you to identify restaurants, hotels or activities, we get paid from those companies. Secondly is our expense manager, which is one of our most popular features, where we help to track and take care of shared expenses. If you use the actual collections, we take a small percentage fee as well.
Travefy is currently available for free on mobile devices and on its website, travefy.com.
Follow Travefy online at: Twitter: @travefy | Facebook: Travefy Instagram: @travefy
by Terry Uland, President
402-434-6900
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