5 tips for a startup pitch: How a fish burger in Paris inspired an app

My first trip abroad alone was to Paris. I had just turned 20 and was excited about discovering a new city all on my own. I had read up about Paris before I left home and my dog-eared Paris guide book was going to be my companion. I took a bus tour of the city and when we reached the Arc de Triumph I remember being distracted by the golden arches. I had spotted a McDonald’s. I was hungry and was not sure where I could find Halal food in Paris. After the tour ended I went there to have a fish burger.

I was in Paris to see the Mona Lisa and the Eiffel Tower, I was in the gastronomical capital of the world and I was attracted by a fish burger!

Since then I have visited many cities with my family and always felt the need to have a travel guide that caters to both my needs as a tourist and my needs as a practicing Muslim.

Fast forward to 2010, that memory of me peering out of a bus and looking at the golden arches triggered the launch of an Arabic/English website with city guides that include Halal restaurants, mosques and prayer timings. With Irhal.com a Muslim visitor to Paris or Beijing or Sydney can easily discover the important tourist attractions and shopping places of each city while knowing where the closest Halal restaurant is located.

Fast forward to 2014, websites are so yesterday. As a traveler I need a city guide on my smartphone. And now Alhamdolillah we have the Irhal app.

While the app is available for download in both the Apple iTunes store and the Google Play Store, we have not officially “launched” the Irhal app yet. We wanted to update the city guides before making a formal launch announcement. Our team has a number of perfectionists in it. My designer, Sehyr, wants to make sure that every curved shape in the app is identical. The angle has to be exact. I wanted to make sure we updated every city before we launched. I do not want to promote an app with outdated content. But two things made me jump the gun and release the app with all cities even though only London has been updated. First, I read a book called “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries and he suggests that you should let your audience guide you. We are hoping that users will help us improve. Second, looking at it from an Islamic perspective, even if we have just one Halal restaurant or mosque listed in a city, if we are able to help one Muslim have a Halal meal or find a masjid, we are adding value. That realization sealed it. We had to release the app. We just placed a “Beta” tag on all cities and pushed it out the door in November 2014.

Pre-formal launch we have about 25,000 downloads and the general response has been overwhelmingly positive. Alhamdolillah! The Irhal app fills the need for Arabic travel content. Our website was visited by 1 million unique visitors in 2014 – more than 70% went to the Arabic section of Irhal. In the first half of 2015 we saw a 60% growth in user numbers.

Irhal has been a labor of love. It needed a tremendous amount of passion and dedication. And resources. Passion is fueled by the fire within. Our team has plenty of that to keep going. Winning the Dubai Startup Weekend award and more recently the Best Islamic Economy Startup Award given by Dubai Silicon Oasis keeps the adrenaline flowing.

Resources are a whole new story. I have invested my personal resources to keep this project afloat. When my wife asked me if she could buy a designer handbag I told her, “Honey, patience, Inshallah I will get you a Berkin bag soon.” We are now seeking investment (not just for the Berkin bag!). We need funds so that we can hire a team, update the content and launch a proper marketing campaign to promote Irhal. Unfortunately, most investors in the Middle East are only willing to invest $20,000 to $50,000 for 20% to 30% equity. We received a $100K offer from a Dubai Government entity in Feb 2015 and refused. We have already spent multiple times that amount and we are looking for over $1million in funding.

In May 2015 Irhal was selected by MassChallenge – the world’s largest startup accelerator for their June-October 2015 program. Inshallah, we are expecting to raise funds from US investors to help speed up our work.

The Islamic travel market is growing faster than the global average – even faster than Chinese tourism. We have plans of adding new cities and eventually becoming the must-have resource for the 108 million Muslim tourists who spend $140 billion every year on travel. Besides the app we plan to provide our content to airlines from the Muslim world so that Irhal city guides can be seen on the Inflight Entertainment monitors on the back of every seat in an aircraft. Fasten your seat belts – the Irhal journey has just begun.

The 5 tips in this story

So you read this story and you thought that it was just a good read. Well, think again. That was a startup’s pitch. And it had all 5 elements that are essential in a pitch.