Nikoloz and his co-founders wanted a platform that could let them plan their budget-tight trips with the precision of a Swiss watch. They didn’t find any, so they created one.
Ice-breakers ❄️
If you were writing a book about your life, what would the title be?
Well, I guess it’s a tough question for someone who has never wrote a book. I guess I would name it “How not to be a rolling stone which catches moss in your twenties”
What does entrepreneurship means to you?
Entrepreneurship means a lot for me. Entrepreneurship means a way of life where you reach your goals through very precise steps. It is very risky, but entrepreneurship is a lot of knowledge and it teaches you how to be good at your business.
Who are you and what business did you start?
My name is Nikoloz Tsakadze, I’m the representative and the CEO of my team and my company is called Tripify.co
About the business 💼
How did you come up with your business idea?
Since we’re young and we’re budget travelers, we have to plan our trips in order to stick to the plan and have the least money and time excess in our trip, because every single minute, every single wrong step costs a lot of money. So we started looking for a platform that would plan our trips and fill all the needs we had. But it turned out that there were no platforms on the market, so one of our co-founders, Sandro, had an idea to create this product, the product of Tripify.co which is on prototype stage, and we’re creating it not only for ourselves but as well for you, for the travelers.
Can you tell us a story about a customer using your product?
I can assure you that the product we’re creating is for the people from the East to the West. Everyone who is traveling around the world, and not only who is traveling inside of their countries, who are willing to from place A to place C and they don’t know how much they’re going to spend and who don’t know where to stay and who wants to manage everything from one page are our customers. So I think from young ages to elderly people, so our product is worldwide and our customers are the people of the world.
What makes a good business opportunity?
I can say that…
the best business opportunity is where the product is loved by the people
…the product is scalable, a product that people need, and a product that you’re willing to create, and the team who wants to make the product and the business valuable. That’s the best business opportunity.
Personal 💁♂️
What do you do on a daily basis to grow as an entrepreneur?
Well, I think that you have to work on yourself on a daily basis, read some books, try to communicate with your partners, with the people, with the customers, as well as with your co-workers to be a great manager and to be an entrepreneur who will do something good for the world and for himself as well, for the people and others.
How do you define success?
Well, success is defined with a couple of factors. For example, on a social basis it’s defined with an impact that your product has to see the market. On a personal level it’s defined with a positive impact that it has on your own life, how it makes your life better sort of
What’s your greatest entrepreneurial achievement to be proud of?
For man, as a manager and an entrepreneur the greatest achievement is that I, with my partner, created a team, which is the driving force of our company, so happy that we could manage the best team possible in the market, to reach our goals.
What’s your least favorite part about being an entrepreneur?
The least favorite factor of being an entrepreneur is that you have to always convince people that your product is desirable on the market and that is actually not something fake and you’re not trying to fool people. The point that people don’t believe in you is the most challenging and the least favorite thing for me as an entrepreneur. But we’re accepting challenges, we’re dealing with them.
Resources & Creative Process 💡
Who do you talk to about your business?
We talk about our business with everyone…
…in the smallest, most precise details possible to know more about what people think, what businessmen think about our product, what coaches think about our product. And we talk with family, friends, relatives, we talk with children about our product, everyone who will be our future customer.
What entrepreneurs do you admire and why?
There are many people in the world to whom I sympathize, who I think are the key driving forces of the world, for example, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, but actually, I’d say that I admire the most Elon Musk because he’s into the future, he’s discovering new worlds, colonization, as well as… he’s an inventor with his nature.
How do you generate new ideas?
Every single business idea that comes to the mind is starting from the problem, and we’re looking into the root of the problem to find the decision, solve the problem, and I guess, everyday asking yourself, what is your comfort zone and (inaudible) to find the business opportunity and you’re gonna find an entrepreneur yourself.
How long do you stick with an idea before giving up?
You have to stick to an idea about a year maximum, until you’re gonna fail, fail fast, fail big and you’re gonna be the winner, the best winner, because you’re gonna know where you had the problem and you’re gonna give up and idea and start generating and working on another one
Don’t be scared and don’t be shy to fail.
What was the most valuable business advice you got?
I can’t say that it was a business advice, I can say that it changed my perception a lot. There was a person who told me that Rome wasn’t built in a day, so at the stage of making an MVP you want to make everything faster, so this just stopped me for a while and made me think about every simple step which I’m making for now and our team started working on every single step precisely, longer and better.
When everything fails, what keeps you going?
There’s a beautiful word for the driving-force which keeps you going when you fail. It’s called motivation, which is built on the common understanding of the people around you who give you power to stand up and make everything again and again. And if you’re trying every time, you’re gonna reach your goal, so the people around us are keeping us going.
Growing your business 🌱
How did you land your first customer?
Since we’re a company that is in early-stage process, on a prototype stage and moving forward, an MVP stage we don’t have the customer yet. But we went through validation process, really important people on the traveling market and they told us that they wanted to be our future clients.
Name one thing you did absolutely right for you business
I think the best thing I and my co-founder did in the company was that we gathered the best team for ourselves around the idea and we started executing it so everything follows the first step, we started from the team.
What was the worst mistake you made while growing your business?
I can say that we did nothing wrong with this business. But before, when I was doing the startup, we chose the market, which was very futuristic. So we had an idea to create a locker company with which you could rent a locker around the world, but while going through the validation process we discovered that it was very futuristic and that the world would need around 5 to 10 years to get used to what we were offering, so running ahead of time isn’t always that good for the consumer sector.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Fully jump into your work, jump into your startup, be there with your startup. You have to just marry your business, your partners, the people who is investing in you.
What sacrifices have you had to make to be a successful entrepreneur?
Saying no to your personal life is the biggest sacrifice you can make to reach your destination, reach your goal. Just fully jump into your world, jump into your startup, be there with your startup. You have to just marry your business, your partners, people who are in this thing with you, you have to give your time and energy to reach your destination.
