"I love the concept behind your app and I can already see how useful it is, but it's really hard to use. There is an influx of information and your homepage really confuses me"

This was probably the second time we were hearing this from our users. As a first time founder, I was having a hard time. We were on a very tight budget, building an travel app in a red market, and still figuring out which revenue models would work best. But we were optimistically on a mission to create a travel app where journeys, trips, travel plans and history could be plotted on map and shared.

Right about then Michelle (my co-founder) and I went back to the drawing board to approach the entire problem from a different angle. We decided to go back to first principles. Fast forward three months from then, we rebranded ExploreMaps, got an entirely new logo, new brand colours and complete redesign of the web application. Our private beta launch was successful. People resonated with our mission and the number of trails created on our platform doubled. All was well and we were just getting geared up for our public beta launch. The GTM strategy was - well almost - in place when Singapore announced lock down.

Everything came to a standstill. Nature had just hit the brakes hard and we found ourselves dealing with cancellations and grappling with the happenings around the world that completely put a hard stop to travel. We didn't lose hope.

We continued working on the full version of ExploreMaps thinking "this too shall pass".This version of the product had blogs, tickets hosted by travel partners, multi-day itineraries and a really cool "real-time" collaboration feature that made us almost synonymous to a Google docs or Figma where multiple people could be working on the same itinerary. Our research also suggested that this product would work great in the business travel space. So we started implementing an enterprise plan.

As months rolled by our cash reserves started depleting. Our bold plans seemed well and sound but we did need external funding to support us. We were following the news closely and news of airlines shutting down was very discouraging. Investors looked at our product and loved it, but were vary of the uncertainty in the market. We left almost every stone turned. If I made a list of the things we tried, it could possibly fill up a 30 page book.

One of our key steps to gaining some runway was starting ExploreMaps gift shop. The concept was very close to our mission. Since people couldn't travel anymore, we thought why not bring the world to them in a gift box. Our boxes were themed "a little something from all over the world" and yes we did do quite a bit of research in selecting each and every product and eventually finding, negotiated with the vendors to supply them and created our gift boxes with the utmost of care. We got all the required licenses and spun up a wordpress e-commerce site all in three weeks. All of this while finding solutions to the new challenges that circuit breaker (a.k.a Lock down) in Singapore had brought.

The Gift Shop launch was great! Orders started pouring! I remember at one point in time Michelle and I were delivering 10 or 12 boxes a night. That was the very first time ExploreMaps saw revenue coming into the bank account and oh the joy of seeing positive transactions in your bank account is just so sweet. We understood so much about starting an e-commerce business, the logistics, the "unit" economics - only to realise that it was a labour intensive field of work without too much margin to play with.

During this phase we put in the longest hours. At one point in time I was coding in the wee hours of the morning, working with the team during the day on the travel product and gift shop and delivering at night.

As Singapore came out of Circuit Breaker, people were meeting again, the competition in the e-commerce space was still as competitive as ever and gift shops went back to being seasonal. This amplified by our non-competitiveness in the space (we were still focussing on our main product - the ExploreMaps platform!) caused our pipeline to dry up. We still have inventory but now we just drink our Macallans and wines in celebration (ping me if you'd like to buy some. I'll give them to you at unbelievable rates).

Once again with no revenue stream, an increasingly uncertain travel market and numerous rejections from investors we found ourselves back at square one. One fine day, Michelle and I met at our usual coffee shop and had a frank discussion about our next steps. We needed to do something different, and this time we needed to think about sustaining the business before thinking of users or product (I know it not really the "YC" way but hey, first principles!). We gave everyone at work including ourselves paid time off for a week followed by training sessions that we conducted for each other. While we figured out what to do next, we picked up so many different tech skills, we sharpened our design skills and most importantly perfected the way we implemented lean methodology. We had two new problem spaces to work on until suddenly, one day a friend who was closely following us met up with me and said

"Hey priya, my company needs some software design and development work. I remember the first MVP of ExploreMaps and now it looks so much better. Can you help us with it?"

This wasn't the first time someone had asked us to help them out. At that point in time, while we were still analysing our new problem spaces, we thought why not? We had nothing to lose! Let's give it a shot. Saying "yes" launched things in a completely new direction and at a ferocious speed. Michelle and I brainstormed and deep-dived into what we were going to be and came up with the name "Inovatyv" in about four hours. In a week we changed the name of our official entity to Inovatyv and parked ExploreMaps as a brand under it. In other words we gave birth to a "parent" company - paradoxical hehe.

October 2nd, 2020 we launched Inovatyv and since then we've been very grateful to have already worked with so many companies. In just two months we started working with startups, SME's, Scale-ups from various industries, on a whole variety of problems that they are facing. At this point I have to do a shout out to Fewcents, who became our very first client. They are an e-wallet company and their wallet lets you unlock premium content without the need for subscriptions. Watch out for new releases and updates on their product here and if you love to read good articles make sure you sign up!

2020 didn't turn out the way any of us expected it to. It surely was a test of our resilience, grit, "Inovatyv"-ness and survival instincts. For a travel tech startups like ours it was even more of a roller coaster. What is next? What about ExploreMaps? It's still very much alive but just sleeping and getting some much needed rest at the moment. When the time is right we will fuel up our engines and support the newer versions of the product. Until then Inovatyv has a consulting arm that solves problems, develops digital solutions and creates memorable brands for other companies and a product arm where we test out hypotheses and launch products iteratively. Do follow us on LinkedIn to keep updated on our launches and until then, wishing you all the best to 2021!