Tripscout, a travel recommendation platform that uses personalized AI to revolutionize trip planning, announced today a $2.3M Seed+ round led by Corazon Capital (Rocketmiles, Bonobos, Remote Year), with significant investment from Accomplice (Hopper, Secret Escapes, DraftKings) as well as participation from New Stack Ventures, MATH Ventures, M25, and more. With this recent funding round, Tripscout also welcomes Dorth Raphaely as its new Chief Content and Marketing officer, bringing his 20+ years of experience leading content and marketing, efforts for leading consumer brands spanning Bleacher Report, Fandom, and more. Alongside Raphaely’s new position, the recent Seed+ funding follows the previous year’s round of $2.1M, supported by Village Global, bringing Tripscout to $4.6M in total funding to-date.
Travel booking sites have minimal context about a traveler’s actual trip, while user review sites often have skewed results or are full of anecdotes from users that are irrelevant to most travelers. Tripscout is building something totally different: a radically personalized digital escape for the modern traveler powered by insights and recommendations from thousands of local experts around the world. By turning its social media network of over 6 million followers into a go-to source for travel inspiration, Tripscout has also pioneered the science of “SEO for Instagram” and has helped drive massive views to traditional travel media organizations and local bloggers (over 1 million visits to travel publishers in the past few months alone). On its platform, Tripscout continues its meteoric rise in both users and engagement, climbing from 2 million to over 200 million views per month on social media in 2020, and surpassing more than 1 million app users.
“Our generation thinks about travel every single day. Even when we’re not on the road, we spend much of our free time dreaming and learning about the world, anticipating our next trip, and planning our next moves in great detail,” said Konrad Waliszewski, Co-founder and CEO of Tripscout. “Yet because the industry incumbents have been so singularly obsessed with transactions, they’ve ignored this deep relationship we have with why and how we travel. Tripscout steps in as the solution: we’re revolutionizing the future of travel planning by offering a personalized discovery platform for all the places and topics you care about.”
“Travel is a $3 trillion industry, but there’s a graveyard of travel startups that haven’t been able to figure out customer acquisition because they’ve tried to play the same game as the incumbents,” said Phil Schwarz, Principal at Corazon Capital, who prior to Corazon was the CMO at Tinder. “We doubled down on Konrad, Andy, and the team at Tripscout not only because they are travel experts, but also because they’ve cracked the code on leveraging social media for scalable, cost-effective, and organic customer acquisition, leading to nearly 1,000% year-over-year active user growth despite being in the middle of a pandemic. When you combine that with the industry-leading engagement metrics on the Tripscout platform—over 400% higher monthly retention rates compared to industry averages—we believe they’re well positioned to build a large, lasting company that creates the experience travelers should expect in the modern era.”
Dorth Raphaely joins Tripscout at a momentous time for the brand’s growth. With the new capital from the Seed+ funding, the content and marketing veteran officially steps into his new role in March 2021. Raphaely acutely knows how to scale brands beyond just content, having led the content distribution operations for Bleacher Report (BR) and then as General Manager after its reported $175M+ acquisition by Turner. After BR, Raphaely became the Chief Content Officer & SVP of Marketing at Fandom, helping lead the company to a majority-control exit to TPG Capital at a valuation over $200M. Dorth is a uniquely strategic and skilled addition that will further propel Tripscout as an expert not only in travel planning and wanderlust, but also as a finely tuned content marketplace primed for even more growth in 2021.
“I’m so excited to join such a talented team to scale and help bring this unique travel platform to life during this momentous time in the travel industry,” said Dorth Raphaely, Chief Content and Marketing Officer at Tripscout. “Tripscout’s scalable content technology model, built-in organic growth channels, and highly engaged customer base greatly sets our platform apart from industry incumbents.”
For more information, please visit the website https://tripscout.co.
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ABOUT TRIPSCOUT
Tripscout is a travel inspirational and planning platform that helps travelers turn their wanderlust into their next trip. The app provides a portal for visual discovery by featuring the best articles and videos from top publishers and local influencers for each destination. Travelers can then turn their inspiration into action as every recommendation featured within the content is mapped to one of Tripscout’s 100 million+ points of interest. With one tap, travelers can easily save any place they discover, allowing them to magically stitch together their perfect trip into a full, personalized itinerary. For more information, please visit https://tripscout.co.
ABOUT CORAZON
Born out of a love for building startups and a passion for backing entrepreneurs with heart, Corazon Capital (spanish for “heart”), a leading Chicago-based venture fund, brings a coastal approach to Seed and Series A investing. With a rare blend of investing experience and operating expertise, Corazon provides unusually pragmatic, actionable counsel to the entrepreneurs it supports. Corazon believes that the best entrepreneurs and the smartest VCs will intentionally solicit both financial and operating investors in their syndicates, with Corazon recognized across geographies for its deep operating knowledge and reach inside and outside of Chicago.
ABOUT ACCOMPLICE
Accomplice is a seed-led venture capital firm that embraces risk, and is the most determined, patient capital partner for entrepreneurs building things that matter. We have been part of the origin story of AngelList, Carbon Black, DraftKings, Integral Ad Science, Hopper, PillPack, Plastiq, Recorded Future, Skillz, Veracode, WHOOP, and Zoopla. Accomplice has pioneered a community approach through platforms like Spearhead, BOSS, Rev, and TUGG. Based in Boston.
