• 
  

• 
  

• UPLIFTING SUSTAINABLITY WITHIN CITIES AND COMMUNITIES

  Skipit is on a mission to allow everyone to ‘travel like a local’. Their belief is that if we are to create more sustainable cities and communities, we need to make it easier for everyone to use more environmental-friendly transportation, whilst exploring the different areas of a city.
  
  

  To achieve their mission of allowing everyone to ‘travel like a local’, they have developed two key services:
  
   1) ‘Skipit Travel’- A cross-border digital card that facilitates the payment of public transport in multiple cities. Combined with a city-based journey planner, transport maps, and added information.
  
  2) ‘Skipit Local’- A personalized inspiration feed that connects the community with local businesses and neighborhoods based on the interest of the members.

  They are still in early development and therefore, needed sparring on their business model. They attempted to find the product-market fit that allows them to upscale and generate revenue that will entice investment.

   

  KEEPING FOCUS DURING EARLY DAYS OF DEVELOPMENT

  The panel session made it clear that SkipIt needs to understand its’ core priorities. When establishing a company, it can be challenging for founders to identify their focus and priorities. Many topics are new and many questions unanswered. Therefore, founders will often think about finding solutions to everything at the same time. The panel recommended to figure out, what issues will add the most value to be fixed first.

   

  “It is important that you firstly figure out your current priorities. What are the competitive advantages you offer and focus on those. Also, you need to be able to show a demo of the app in order to be able to attract investors, therefore, you need to focus on delivering a demo to showcase,” Mads Middelboe from Leadmore.

   

  Focus is also essential in order to get the branding right from the beginning. Communicating your product and explaining what value it adds will make it easier to appeal to both investors and new customers. Conor Clancy, co-founder of SkipIt, was happy to get feedback on the product and receive ideas for possible opportunities for the future.

   

  "It was so great to get advice from such experienced individuals within various industries, we really valued the input," Conor Clancy, CEO and co-founder of SkipIt.

• 
  

• KEY TAKEAWAYS

• 
  

- In terms of branding, it is important to get the story right. Keep the focus on the added value to customers and the product advantages compared to competitors

- When offering an app, it is critical to minimize the process from downloading the app to being able to use it. A lot of potential customers leave during the registration process

- Think about partnerships. In this context, it makes sense to partner with local tourist information offices or local transportation companies in every city. That will offer more suitable solutions and further options

- Consider advertising strategically. In this app, tourist attractions could pay for advertisement, as it is shown to tourists who are looking for places to visit. In this way, the advertising will be more relevant for customers entering the app