STARTUP STAGE: HeyCray is a social-selling video app for travel

HeyCray

HeyCray is an app to
help users discover, book and share outdoor adventures and local travel
experiences.

Founded in June 2021,
HeyCray pays a commission to video creators when a booking is made through
their content.

What is your 30-second
pitch to investors? 

HeyCray
is a video-centric online travel company for Gen Z, which enables creators to
directly monetize their short format travel content. The
product is a social-selling video app to discover, book and share travel
experiences (think a cross of Tripadvisor and TikTok). 

The
mobile app (main product) is in development, we are planning the launch in
Miami this coming July. While building the app, we launched
early-marketing efforts, acquired over 100 million views on video content
on social channels, more than 180,000 subscribers and an available audience that
is growing.

Describe
both the business and technology aspects of your startup.

HeyCray
is a video app where you can discover, book and share outdoor adventures and
local travel experiences. In HeyCray one can watch short videos created by
other users and activity operators. Users
make videos using the HeyCray app about their experiences, for other users to
book those experiences straight through the app. HeyCray users make commission
on each booking made through the content they post.

HeyCray
will be available both on mobile and web. We utilize advanced machine-learning
algorithms to match our users with the most inspiring activities that match
their personality and circumstances.

Give
us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the
company.

• Strengths:
  • We speak the language of Gen Z – video-first user
    experience which allows for an immersive and social journey to discover, learn
    about and book local tourist and outdoor activities.
  • Operator-first approach – we give operators a set of
    low-touch tools to highlight uniqueness of their brand and engage HeyCray users
    to promote their offerings, while requiring little time and effort.
  • Game-changing business model that encourages users
    to share content and build communities.
  • Strong technology-driven team
• Weaknesses
  • Early stage, limited funding
  • At this stage, offerings limited to certain U.S. hot
    spots
  • At this stage, limited organic traffic
• Opportunities:
  • High travel demand in domestic U.S. market
  • User shift towards video/audio content
    interactions 
  • User preference for community, values, diversity, more
    personal and more immersive discovery experience
• Threats:
  • COVID restrictions
  • Established well-funded incumbent players in the
    market who may enter in direct competition with us
  • Lack of product-market fit and slow user adoption

What
are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both the customer
and the industry perspective? 

After
attending the Arival Travel conference in San Diego in February we identified
two major pain points: 

• Operators want the chance to build their brands through online travel agencies and don’t have
  that ability because major OTAs are fearful of losing the booking. OTAs rarely
  share logos or branding other than their own. On HeyCray the operators have
  their own profiles, similar to social media profiles, where they have the
  ability to share their logo, branding and personal touch. 
• Operators are looking to generate content at scale. HeyCray is a content
  machine. Our users are already posting their experiences on social media but
  will be incentivized to post on HeyCray for the commission on bookings. This user-generated
  content will then be accessible for operators to use on their HeyCray profiles
  as well. We encourage both users and operators to cross share all content on
  all social media platforms. Our logo is automatically added to any video coming
  out of our platform.

So
you’ve got the product, now how will you get lots of customers?

We are building a community of adventure seekers who
are already creating content for us. We send these creators on experiences and
they generate content. This serves as our initial inventory.

All of our videos have our
branding on it, which creates awareness
and intrigue when creators cross share our
videos on social media. We are building aggressive
influencer campaigns for our launch this summer. We are exploring ways in which we can give back to
the community and contribute in the realms of DEI, education and service. 

Tell
us what process you’ve gone through to establish a genuine need for your
company and the size of the addressable market.

We
conducted a nationwide soft launch last summer in the U.S. with our MVP.
Utilizing the content of our community we post every day on social media. We
found that travel creators are looking for a space to connect with like-minded
individuals and consumers are looking for more immersive ways to make informed
bookings. We have since gone viral on YouTube Shorts with over 100 million
views and growing, and accumulated 180,000+ YouTube subscribers. We engage with
tens of thousands of people daily and have already sent customers to our
operators. Our efforts brought us to the understanding that people are
excitedly engaging and booking through short form video content and from
creators that they see consistently whom they trust.

How
and when will you make money?

HeyCray’s
business model is similar to traditional OTAs where we take a commission on
each booking. We anticipate bookings to occur immediately after launch. We also
share that commission with our creators. 

What
are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team?

Raquella
Raiz – co-founder & CMO. Founder and CEO of Qreative Edge, a video
production and marketing agency. Founder at Battle of the Crews. Travel
vlogger, filmmaker, speaker and hip-hop instructor. 

Denis
Slipets – co-founder & CTO. Co-founder of Stairwaysoft, led 100+
fintech, marketplace, IoT projects. Has a M.S. in computer science, software
architect, big data engineer, senior full-stack developer. Researcher, swimmer,
traveler.

Levy
Raiz – co-founder & СOO; Entrepreneur, venture partner at Digital
Horizon VC, ex-partner at Flint Capital VC, ex-managing partner at JSCapital.
Chef, traveler, gardener.

Dmitriy
Bechutskiy  – co-founder & CEO; Co-founder at Stairwaysoft,
CBDO at Alcor, CTO at LiveGlobal Money. PhD in Economics, computer science.
Mountaineer, diver, skipper.

How
have you addressed diversity and inclusion within your business?

Our
CMO, Raquella is very active in women-led initiatives especially in marketing,
tech and Web3. Raquella is serious about HeyCray representing the diverse
culture. She is especially passionate about instilling confidence and
determination in girls and young women. We look forward to hiring more
diversely across the board as we continue to grow.

What’s
been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?

Raising
our pre-seed had its challenges. It forced us to be more frugal and we found
ways to acquire more content for free while bootstrapping. We definitely value
the dollar. 

Generally,
travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact – so why are you
going to be one of the lucky ones?

There
is a desire for “shop-tainment” – the ability to shop directly from a video you
watch. We are the intersection of peer-to-peer reviews and online booking
platforms. We leverage social selling techniques while delighting the end user
with adventurous user-generated video content. We believe we are going to be
lucky because of the care we have for the operators’ success, the lengths at which
we are going to ensure the end user is entertained and delighted throughout
their booking process and the tenacity and creativity embedded in our team. 

A
year from now, what state do you think your startup will be in? 

In
a year from now we plan to be valued members of the greater Miami travelers’
community with hundreds of thousands of bookings and users. Our community will
include local travelers as well as international travelers who visit the area.
We anticipate our team to grow as necessary to ensure we can serve our
community. 

What
is your end-game? (Going public, acquisition, growing and staying private, etc)

HeyCray
has immense scalability potential. We initially start with experiences in one
region, then grow into other regions organically and then include other
services. In order to actualize these ambitions, we plan to go public.