Travel app hopper just raised big wads of cash to build out their social commerce app.
👉 Background: Hopper is a travel booking startup that started back in 2007 but actually stayed in stealth mode for 6 years. At the time, they said they were building the “world's largest structured database of travel information”.
👉 What happened: After going live in 2014 and getting immediate customer feedback, they decided to pivot the business into a pretty traditional travel app - flights, hotels, rental homes and rental cars.
👉 What else: 80 million downloads later, Hopper has just raised $96 million USD to build out their social commerce app. Not bad for a company that started in stealth..
💡During the initial stages of a company’s product development, there is a strong temptation for companies to build behind closed doors (ie stealth). Think: Zoox or Nest.
💡But over the last 10 years, the upside of getting your product out to market as soon as possible has been shown to outweigh this stealth approach. Case in point: Hopper. Building-in-stealth model meant they weren't able to learn from their customers.
💡So not only are companies able to gain valuable customer feedback but it can also become a really powerful marketing strategy as your customers come along for the ride.
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