most proud of
I was recently asked “what are you most proud of shipping?”. I thought I’d put down some thoughts.
Over the past 3 years and 7 months, I've been building Blinctrip.
It’s been quite a journey. Together with Nikhil, our CEO and 10 others, we founded Blinc. I joined the company, before the company even existed. It was tough. We spent sleepless nights trying to get the company off the ground, while doing other part-time work to keep the lights on.
The rest of the team had extensive experience in air travel, being involved in the depths of airline technology for the better part of 2 decades with India’s most beloved airline - Jet Airways.
My role early on was to discover the gap in the market, and the product we would build. A blank canvas. We explored different ideas - ranging from payments, cab aggregation, rewards and travel. The more we spoke to customers we realised there was a fundamental gap in the travel space. The travel experience is very fragmented. You book a flight ticket on Expedia, a cab on Uber and stay in an Airbnb. None of these services spoke to each other. When things went wrong, as they inevitably do, the entire trip falls apart. Your Uber came late? Now you’re worried that you might not make it to the airport on time. Your flight is delayed? You might miss your meeting, and your entire schedule is affected. So many factors that can affect the quality of the experience.
We doubled down on our strengths, and set out to build a personal travel assistant - a product that would truly be aligned with customer needs, and look after people while they travel. It would be designed to reduce friction, and bring peace of mind.
In June 2019, we finally had a break and the company was born. We worked relentlessly in those early days. I was the lead designer, having previously held design roles, I took to it like a fish to water.
It was hard. Together with another design partner, we built the entire Blinctrip product - from concept, to fully functional web, and mobile products. To be very candid, I was on the verge of a mental breakdown. The CEO would tell me “Rishabh, just bring someone in”. You see, we were running out of runway, and I was afraid a bad hire could cost us far more. So I bit the bullet and persevered. Slowly we hired more designers. People whom I had the pleasure of working with before. Talented people who would propel us further. I remember the day they joined, it was 10th December. I was so overwhelmed, I cried. They had put their faith in me, they took a punt because of me, and I wouldn’t let them down.
We rushed to March 2020, the product was more buggy than what we would have liked, but we were running out of runway. We had to launch. Then the pandemic happened.
Imagine launching a travel product when the global travel industry came to a halt. Our odds of success had just reduced significantly, but I don’t even think we acknowledged it.
The first wave. We’re scared, the world seems to be falling apart, but we need to block it out or we won’t survive. Ok, we buckle down, fix the product. It’s the only thing that matters. The pandemic should be over in a few months. It wasn’t. Then came the second wave. We had salary cuts, layoffs. We did what we had to, all the while we worked. We launched side bets, contingencies, new products that we believed would work better if the travel winter continued. We survived.
Finally, in June 2021, we launched the product. In the 12 months that followed, we’ve seen the product grow and have been overwhelmed by the response. With a small 25-30 member team, and a fraction of their funding, we’ve taken on competitors 100 times our size. We’ve shifted course to a more compelling vision, narrowed our field of focus, and are preparing for another sprint. We introduced “product” to a classic “project management” organisation. We’ve grown the Product Experience & Design Team team from 0 to 8. It’s a lean, dedicated, high-performance, self-organising unit that implicitly trusts and looks after each other. There can be no other way.
Today we’ve got to product-market fit, hit over 1.2 M USD in gross monthly revenue and have 500K monthly active users. All in 12 months.
The past few years have been gruelling to say the least, but it’s shaped me as a leader, as a person.
I look at the product and see numerous things that I’d love to improve about it. But it’s hard not to be proud of the team and the work we’ve done together. Blinctrip is not perfect, but it is just 1 year into what I hope and believe will be a long life.
If you’ve read till the end, I must thank you for taking out your precious time to go over this note. You’ve peeked into my world for the last few years, and I couldn’t be more grateful.