Foresyte

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Q4 Newsletter | Year in Review. The brand behind the vision. Building a consumer app is hard. Of the 5M apps on the market, only 1 in 10,000 become sustainable. After two long years of battling its way through countless obstacles, Foresyte decisively became one of those apps; driving a record $500K in November sales. Arriving at this remarkable milestone, however, was made only possible by our brand partners at Heinrich. Foresyte partnered with Heinrich in late 2022 to lead its brand strategy before going to market. Yielding to the brand strategy to smarter people may have been the wisest decision I made as a young CEO, as their capable team went on to invent a distinguished crystal ball that now beams community travel vibrancy to the world. This premium branding was a beacon of hope during our product's less formidable days, a redeeming trait that built community around an early app with (former)shortcomings, and a source of inertia that propelled a young founder along an unlikely journey to change travel. As consumers, we rely on small signals to assess the reputability of a product before deciding to engage. That means consumer brands must emit strong signals of credibility during the critical first moment. This preconceived sentiment can influence the entire journey of an app user and dictate confidence around completing high-trust actions, such as booking a hotel on an unfamiliar app. In many ways, the first impression can determine the effectiveness of a business model. Heinrich has always made Foresyte's first impression count. From stunning new websites: https://foresyteapp.com/ ... to attention-grabbing ad creatives, their team shaped a mobile brand personality that strikes people as familiar upon first sight. These initiatives drove our CAC from $6 to $0.72 in a matter of six months, eventually capturing the interest of advertising partners who amplified our reach far beyond our own capacity. Combined with the expertise of Foresyte's CMO, Matthew Bell, Heinrich's brand strategy helped champion the app's inflection and blistering revenue growth of 83% MoM in Q3. Great stories always start with a strong brand, and strong brands start with Heinrich. It's special to reflect on the talented people behind the brand. On behalf of my team, we're truly grateful. *** Up Next. While Matt continues to amass and mobilize an outsized network of global advertisers, Foresyte prepares to embark on a blitz-scaling year '25 that will grow a community to 2M users and generate an estimated $40M in gross annual sales based on last 6-month traction actuals. Progress seemingly moves at a glacial pace, until one day you wake up to realize: 'yes, that did just happen'

I'm pleased to announce that Foresyte's financing round has been a terrific success. Deal flow has accelerated over the?past 10 days to reach 80%?of our $500K target. With capital entering a smooth state, my focus will be shifting back to operating a smooth business and leading a great product. Acclimating to sudden market fit following our pivot has reminded me of when I was a young athlete acclimating to my new legs after a successful growth spurt. And in the spirit of self-reflection, what is Foresyte's biggest weakness as a mobile product embarking on this exciting stage of high growth? *silent consensus* Perhaps the fact that our UI was designed by a time-deprived CEO; who, while gifted at many things, is not a stylish artist with a trained eye for blending hues and shades. While I may have been enough to ramp our?community to 100K, market leading apps need to fit the part when emerging from their chrysalis. That's why?torch has been?passed to my duo of talented designers in Balint Bogdan (Chief Design) and Dan Hiester (Design Ops), who have a combined decade?of experience designing consumer products. Over the next 21 days, Foresyte is blitzing a slew of rapid app refurbishments to usher this product into its next era. October will end with the finale of an electric new feature launch:?Itinerary Albums.? (like?Spotify playlists, except for exchanging epic trip?itineraries among peers and content creators) Our runway is replenished, our?tech team is reenergized, and our CEO is refocussed on product strategy for the first time in a long time. That's a good place to be.

Crossing the Chasm | A Foresyte Story No journey is more humbling than crossing the proverbial chasm to reach product-market fit. A mysterious realm only 1 in 10,000 mobile apps reach. As a consumer app, finding market fit is about as critical to the business model as gravity is to the earth. Without gravity, the world of monetization simply can't spin and no law of physics will ever defy that reality. Foresyte performed the miracle of turning water into revenue wine. Monthly sales over six-figures?certainly warrants a toast, but it's important to appreciate the story behind this miracle. Because miracles don't happen by accident. While the journey to market fit is a daunting one, it can be done with a healthy dose of self-awareness.?Many founders are too proud to wake up when reality sets in that their product doesn't solve a real problem. This leads to?a fast and decisive death when 5M other apps are competing for consumer attention. Selective ignorance is the comfortable choice. I was that founder for a time when Foresyte launched its group travel budget concept in 2022. Terrific amount of hype that amounted to a glorious flop. Foresyte's GTM involved a wildly?unconventional field marketing strategy, grassroots promotion at?Chicago bars and venues, driving 5,000 organic installs in under five months.?If you ever need to overcome a fear of presentation, I suggest you interrupt?an inebriated group of friends at the bar and ask them to download your awkward beta app. Reality sank in fast that Foresyte's first product wasn't jiving. But instead of scaring away more bar patrons with a bad app, I swallowed my pride and embraced the false start. Bar promotions were replaced by happy hour focus groups. No?amount of market research can replace 5,000 raw user journeys unfolding from six inches away. That's when momentum accelerated. These feedback loops created a gravitational pull that led to a problem travel didn't even know it had. By the time I hit the pivot button in?January 2023, Foresyte had a 12-month, meticulously prepped roadmap informed by months of raw market data. With three engineers to lead the charge, Foresyte blitzed the most decisive pivot since Slack shifted away from video games. Three days after Christmas '23,?Foresyte took its final step across the chasm. I woke up to find a couple email alerts that arrived from an uncommon sender: Google Cloud. The app was experiencing a rare engagement anomaly; a siren controlled by Google when 10x fluctuations overwhelm 30-day KPIs.?Session time had exploded to 12 minute, retention had stabilized, and Foresyte had done what the world said it couldn't do. Following the act by growing monthly sales?from $0 to $150K in under 180 days. Miracles don't happen by accident. Foresyte made it because the CEO has a brain wired to do everything backward to convention. Hard child to raise, intriguing child to observe. Think different. Be different. Frame problems different.?That's Foresyte.

I'd like to give a special thanks to my lead advisor, Randall Tavierne, for being such a positive?force in my growth as a young executive. Having led the Global Business Leader team at Ernst & Young, Randy's seen enough moments of revenue inflection to appreciate the gravity of what's unfolding at Foresyte. I'm fortunate to be under the guidance of such an accomplished leader. Thank you for everything you do.

September Newsletter. During the market's slowest booking month of the year, Foresyte drove a record $152K in monthly sales. Customer acquisition fell 6X under market average. This punctuates a big finish to Q3: - Quadrupled DAU (daily) to 1,550; MAU to 17.5K - Drove $152K in gross monthly booking sales - Dropped CAC to $0.60 – 6X lower than mkt avg - Converted hotel bookings at 6.5% – 3.5X higher than mkt avg Raise. Foresyte is 55% subscribed on a $500K target. Seats are filling up and the check size will increase to $25K on October 1. Contact Stephen if you'd like to be penciled in for the round. More info about financials, cap table and terms of the round can be found in our data room. https://lnkd.in/e3JmdUDX *** Case Study: Painkiller or Vitamin? There's a business metaphor used to categorize products based on the severity of the market problem they solve. - Painkiller:?a product that solves a clear problem and/or addresses a pain point - Vitamin:?a product that?holistically adds value or satisfies?an area of interest. Gary Vaynerchuk is famous for passing on Uber. Twice. Gary was friends Travis Kalanick, and he was in the room when Uber wrote its first line of code. When Travis asked him to invest in their seed, Gary couldn't see past the solutions that worked today. He thought Uber was a vitamin product competing against a commodity business in yellow cabs. He was semi-correct about the vitamin comparison, but only when looking at their problem through the perspective of shuttling people from "Point A" to "Point B". He couldn't see the perspective that people pay for convenience. Travis explained and validated his point through a model based on real traction in San Francisco. Gary dismissed it and reverted to his assumption that only rich people in other cities would see this pain.?He passed. Gary turned away a $300M return on an investment that would've cost a nickel. He then passed a second time during their final pre-series round the following year. That's an expensive way to stand behind an opinion. Products that reframe the problem are often misunderstood as vitamins.?People can't always see the problem that sits one layer deeper when the existing way to do something clouds our perspective, like explaining cars to a horse village. Here are a few market examples. We don't always see the problems at first. - Uber: overpaying for an Uber while standing in the cold?vs.?fighting someone over a taxi iPhone: upgrading to a superior touchscreen?experience?vs.?tolerating a Blackberry because it gets does the job done - Snapchat: building relationships by sharing?candid moments?vs.?texting each other because it gets does the job done Foresyte?- sharing the experience of planning trips together?vs.?getting it over with because planning together is a chore These are the painkillers that go one layer deeper. These are the painkillers that tip industries.?

We had a chat with Foresyte's CEO, Stephen Eddy, about their exciting product-led growth journey. Turns out, offering a freemium model was a game-changer for their success! With insights from Appcues data and Modals, they nailed down exactly which premium features to gate. ?? https://lnkd.in/gasWQ22A

Foresyte reached full market fit this spring and booking revenue has climbed steadily as a result. Here are a few highlights from our summer of growth: - Surpassed 80K app downloads and 50K registered users - Scaled booking revenue from $1K to $10K MRR - Offloaded CAC onto rev-share acquisition partners - Saw our?positive App Store ratings?double We’ve nailed down our booking model, proven we can scale efficiently, and attracted the interest of several enterprise partners who are sending us quality traffic on rev-share arrangements. Our business priorities at the moment are focussed on raising $500K?to fund 24 months of run. One-third of this round has been filled. More details available in our newsletter deck. https://lnkd.in/eDxEbZRU Interested in giving this round a closer look? Let's?schedule?a time to connect. Any warm intros to connections you deem as a strong fit are also kindly appreciated. P.S. I'd like to give a special thanks to Heinrich for their terrific work on our brand creatives. Your branding excellence has helped our acquisition partners thrive, and we value your support.

Two years can feel like a lifetime when you live through a product pivot like Foresyte's. I'm lucky to have patient family and friends who held their trust through it all. Year three has something special in store.

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