Flash update - Tripl of Stockholm, ready to launch in 2 weeks!

Recommending people, not places, for travel.

A Scandinavian Startups exclusive with the CTO of Tripl Nicolas Grasset blogged live from the Stockholm Night Owls at Stockholm Hub

A great idea for the socially connected mindset of the now generation, Tripl aims to allow people to enjoy other people while traveling. We wrote about this startup at it's very founding, but now there are more exciting news afoot!

Tripl has been gaining attention in the US, the company will be moving to New York but the engineering department will be based in Sweden.

It is easier to hire in Sweden - we find more people. There is less competition, and frankly, less cool places. People are a lot more choosy in the US. Here it is all about stealing people from the companies that are boring them. We are hoping to get the best talent in Sweden and part of our pitch to them is that they will be able to work part-time in New York, probably six months of the year.

We have been doing a lot of productive meetings in NY with investors and have a huge backlog of ideas to implement. We met some VCs who were bouncing us off other VCs and introduced us to a lot of interesting people that gave us a lot of valuable feedback. Meeting successful enterpreneurs is essential. We got so much helpful feedback. We know we need to open up even though the product will change drastically in the next few months, but everyone wants us to get some traction.

This is a key lesson for startups - launch early, launch raw, be ready to break things. Peter Sullivan, our founder, met with Eric Ries of http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/. He came back with a lot of lessons on lean startups. I think the old adage of "the journey is the destination" still applies to any early stage startup.

The travel industry is not that sexy, and when you look at things like couchsurfing etc, it is very much transforming how people travel. There is so much more to do! Whenever a friend of mine travels to a city I am at, we have such a great time, just meeting the right people makes or breaks the trip. Our idea is about making that biggest impact that the social aspect makes on travel. And of course we know what a huge deal travel makes on our life.

The great thing about the American perspective, for example, is we thought we were in our A funding, but after talking to VCs in New York, they convinced us we are still in our seed stage. So this is of course a huge opportunity, but also puts a lot of pressure on us for launching as early as possible.

We are looking at ways to grow our network organically without abusing the trust of our users, but also making sure we have a fast, effective and organic growth. The way you can communicate with users is changing all the time and we are confident Tripl will change the way you communicate when you travel. Change that, we are re-defining travel and making it social.