Show HN: Duffel (S18) – The best API to sell flights online
2 comments
I have a feeling your team spent more time making your website look pretty than deeply understand your market, end user and the GTM motion
Not that its bad, but it'll likely kill your startup if you dont fix that. Friendly unsolicited advice! all the best
Not that its bad, but it'll likely kill your startup if you dont fix that. Friendly unsolicited advice! all the best
Have you looked at the API documentation or user guides? It seems like you've commented on marketing aspects without looking at the product itself.
I did, and understand your frustration with my comment (I've been in a similar startup before and I empathize with the denial). Here are a few pointers to help as a litmus test, that I wish I had back then:
- How many self serve customers have built a business on top of your platform? (this is where good documentation helps)
- Is your leadership excessively concerned about the branding and how the company comes across, or do they actually talk to customers and developers?
- Have the founders raised excessive capital relative to business maturity?
- Is there cultish behaviour, where bad decisions are not questioned? how vulnerable is the broader leadership?
- Where do engineers spend their time? Making cool stuff or building towards clear customer outcomes?
As I said, genuinely friendly comment. I really hope I am wrong, but sharing as someone who has gone through something similar who was triggered after I saw this.
All the best, hope this takes off!
- How many self serve customers have built a business on top of your platform? (this is where good documentation helps)
- Is your leadership excessively concerned about the branding and how the company comes across, or do they actually talk to customers and developers?
- Have the founders raised excessive capital relative to business maturity?
- Is there cultish behaviour, where bad decisions are not questioned? how vulnerable is the broader leadership?
- Where do engineers spend their time? Making cool stuff or building towards clear customer outcomes?
As I said, genuinely friendly comment. I really hope I am wrong, but sharing as someone who has gone through something similar who was triggered after I saw this.
All the best, hope this takes off!
Such an awesome company, with great people. Probably one of the most exciting start-ups in Europe right now!
Only negative is they keep taking my great colleagues ;)
Only negative is they keep taking my great colleagues ;)
We're Steve and Tom (YC S18), the co-founders of Duffel (https://duffel.com/), an API-based travel platform. Think of Stripe, but for searching and booking flights.
We built Duffel after running head first into the problem of accessing airline inventory for a side-project that we had. All the providers out there (ever heard of a GDS? Amadeus? Sabre?) felt antiquated, expensive and quite frankly didn't even want to work with us. To top it up, once we started digging the only things we could hear were "PNR", "IATA", "ARC", "RBD" and other wonderful acronyms.
It’s difficult to innovate in travel today. The process is intimidating, time-consuming, and often cost-prohibitive for new startups. The antiquated tech stacks and expensive accreditation processes are enough to keep great travel sellers locked out of the industry.
We built Duffel to remove all the barriers to innovation in travel. With our new self-serve platform, we're making it possible for anyone to sign-up, activate their account, and start selling flights in just minutes – without having to interact with anyone on our team. You also won't need to worry about applying for an IATA - or ARC - accreditation, building relationships with airlines or deciphering the documentation of an EDIFACT (1) service
The Duffel platform is built for the modern developer, offering simple, composable APIs, comprehensive documentation, and a robust testing environment. Check this video to see it in action:
=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMPFL7x0uko
Since our founding, we have grown to an international team of 40+ spread across the UK and US. We're on a mission to make travel effortless by rebuilding the software backbone of the travel industry layer by layer.
We would love any feedback you have on the product and are always keen to discuss with people with deep knowledge of the industry. Looking forward to reading you in the thread below!
Thank you for reading!