Software accelerator company Nevermaps co-founder Vishnu Kammari traveled often with his full-time job as a digital strategy consultant for Deloitte. He was certainly no stranger to the frustrations of trying to make plans in various locations around the world. One day, while traveling for work, he and his wife were sitting on a beach in Belize, trying to figure out where to have lunch. Two hours of searching and an idea was born to build an AI solution (think text conversations and website chats) for travelers trying to find accommodations on the fly using their smartphone.
A year and a half later, and in spite of a global pandemic that decimated the travel industry temporarily, Nevermaps is in full customer discovery and fundraising mode, with a new B2B focus on tourism boards. Kammari attributes software accelerator advisor Jack Hilton with helping the team focus. “We made the decision to change to B2B before we joined the accelerator, but we were all over the place, looking at sub-industries and gathering feedback,” he explained. “Jack recognized that we needed focus and helped us narrow down our value proposition. He helped us synthesize the feedback we were getting. He was extremely helpful.”
Kammari left his full-time job with Deloitte in January 2020 and, along with co-founder Krishna Machiraju, they’ve made huge steps forward forming an important partnership with the Signature Travel Network and landing their first major customer, the Los Cabos Tourism Board with two more in their sights. Eventually, the plan is to expand to other industries as well.
“I love my job, I love being an entrepreneur,” said Kammari. “We’ve had our challenges; finding product market fit is like running an experiment. If it fails, you just look to the next experiment. Our success has been the relationships we’ve formed along the way. Once we partnered with Signature Travel Network, we knew this was the right decision; it was a great signal for us to go full-time with this.”
For more information on how to get startup assistance for your software product, visit bouncehub.org/accelerator.