Fresh from winning the LAUNCH Festival Contest “You Dream It, We Build” app design contest and HBS Venture Corporation’s “Most Innovative” Award, Flyr has landed their equity crowdfunding campaign on Wefunder. To date, their campaign has raised $123,000 of its targeted $450K. Minimum investment booking is $100.
Most travelers can relate to Co-Founder and CTO Alexander Mans’ air travel quandary:
“The more time we spend trying to get a great deal, the more airfares go up,” he says. “But if I book today, I might miss out on a better deal tomorrow.”
Leading the next generation of travel reservation apps, Flyr strives to jettison price instability in flight reservations by protecting users from rising airfares for seven days and notifies them of even better deals. Adjusting or canceling flight would not incur penalty.
According to Wefunder, Flyr customers will be tapped “through direct mobile app sales by utilizing social media and context marketing, as well existing customer funnels from travel industry partners through [Flyr’s] API.” A $20-$30 fee will be charged for Flyr’s service.
On Wefunder, Flyr answers other pertinent campaign and product questions:
How does Flyr solve this frustrating and financially draining conundrum:
“FLYR charges a small fee for its service, guaranteeing today’s airfares for 7 days or longer, while finding better deals. In case we find a better deal within the 7 day period and the customer chooses to purchase said deal in favor of the originally protected/guaranteed flight, our gross margin is at 100%. The same is the case when a customer abandons his/her plans.”
How does Flyr work?
“We believe technology and methods for gathering and analyzing the relevant data are now achievable and scalable. We have developed algorithms and machine learning techniques to reverse engineer how airline tickets are priced and more importantly how such airfare pricing. Based on the risk profile of a specific combination of flights, we will price a product very similar to insurance.”
Are there other applications for your technology?
“We have developed our technology to predict the fare and price insurance against price volatility for any yield managed, perishable product or service. Therefore, we could apply our platform to other industries such as car rental, hotels, cruises, rail, etc.”
Is seven days the only guaranteed period you offer?
“Because the average cost of guaranteeing airfares for 7 days is $22, we believe these are the perfect product characteristics to start with as they are only 5% of the average US domestic airfare. At a later stage, we will offer guaranteed airfares for up to 3 months, depending on the time left until departure.”
What is Flyr’s next milestone?
“Flyr will be launching it’s iOS app and aims to get to 100,000 downloads within the first 3 months after launch.”
Flyr’s team also includes 20 year high tech vet and Harvard MBA – CEO Jean Tripper, former CEO of WorldMate, which sold to Carlson Wagonlit in 2012. Tripper has amassed several million miles of air travel in his career as COO of Good Technology and Visto, COO of Vodaphone Romania and SVP Vodaphone.
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