What we learned doing too much while accomplishing too little

Monish Shah and Malhar Gala, co-founders of TraveLibro

Four years ago, my co-founder Malhar Gala and I were together on a trip to London, and we couldn’t remember a few restaurants we’ve tried on our previous trip. We realized that the moments captured were scattered on different social media platforms and devices and were eventually lost. That’s when the first idea for TraveLibro came to be.

We decided to create a portal where travel enthusiasts could document all their moments in an itinerary format and relive them anywhere, anytime. We wanted to provide it all—there were itineraries, a travel planner, travel bookings, and even a portal for travel agents.

We were all geared up to fly, as we both had 10 years of experience (myself in investment banking and Malhar in consumer/retail). Truth be told, we were total neophytes.

Our biggest mistakes

Let me break down some of the biggest mistakes we made.

1. Owning our content and technology

To begin with, everything was outsourced—content, social media, marketing, and, above all, tech. As a tech startup, that was our biggest mistake!

2. Solving several problems

Our product was jack of all trades, master of none. Our very first beta had multiple selling points. This left our customers very confused on what they could do on TraveLibro.

We kept adding features even before we mastered the UI, UX, and analytics of each offering. Our main idea had become a by-product and vice versa, and our core selling proposition was lost.

3. Not paying attention to what the numbers say

We did not understand the numbers. We subscribed to various expensive software but did not truly deep dive into the analytics. We didn’t realize that we needed our numbers as well as our users to talk to us.

4. Spending too much money

We spent too much money on outsourcing, PR, and marketing even before the product was thoroughly tested and was genuinely market-ready. After 18 months, we were burning money at a steady pace and realized we have done too much and accomplished too little.

What we learned

Our advice for young startups