On the TechTO stage ×7
Demo of the Month: SnapTravel
Watch on YouTube ↗TechTO Raise of the Month: Hussein Fazal of SnapTravel
Watch on YouTube ↗The rebound of the travel industry
Watch on YouTube ↗Super booked its first 100 customers without writing any code
Watch on YouTube ↗Hussein Fazal of AdParlor presents Bootstrapping to Success
Watch on YouTube ↗Hussein Fazal of Snaptravel presents Detecting Intent. Beyond SEM.
Watch on YouTube ↗The Founders Journey (LIVE) ft. Hussein Fazal of Super
Listen to the episode ↗First seen on the TechTO stage in 2015. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Hussein ↗
In their words
The best way to look like you don't need the money is to actually not need the money.
We booked our first 100 hotels completely manually, without a single line of code, on our personal cell phones and our personal laptops.
The advice I give to every single entrepreneur, regardless of what business they're trying to break into — and it's the most obvious thing ever — is talk to customers. The number one thing you can always do is talk to customers and try and fill a gap.
we would buy ads and specifically target Facebook employees so on facebook you can target by employer so we would buy ad on facebook to target Facebook employees
there's always small pockets where you can win — these guys are going for a lot of scale a lot of volume they're bidding super high so what a lower volume or in certain pockets we can win on Adwords
a lot of it was just the right business at the right time
once I kind of decided on that, then it was not what do I do? It's like, who do I do it with? Because I think a co-founder is so key and critical.
I just knew I wanted to go through the journey one more time and I wanted to be an entrepreneur one more time, way too early to retire.
once people start using it and they see they get you know the best price they can find online they see they get great customer service our human agents call in and get you a free up and message you to say you got an upgrade the recommendations are spot-on
you can sit on your couch you can use Alexa or Google to initiate the search and then when you have some time you can pick up your phone look at pictures look up reviews and then complete the transaction
More from TechTO ×2
Around the web ×3
Quick answers
How did SnapTravel become Super.com?
SnapTravel began as hotel booking over messaging. The data showed customers booking 2.5–3-star hotels, ~60% paying with debit cards — people who needed to save. So it rebranded as Super.com, a savings super app: travel deals, shopping savings, and the Super Cash MasterCard for cash back and credit building. By April 2023: ~250 people and over $1B in sales.
How did he get his first 100 customers without writing code?
He and his co-founder put up a landing page, bought ads, and had interested users text Hussein's personal cell phone. They manually hunted deals, sent pictures and prices, and booked the rooms themselves — the first 100 hotels booked entirely by hand before a single line of code.
What did he do before Super, and who invested?
A Waterloo computer science grad, he founded AdParlor — a bootstrapped Facebook ad-optimization company — and sold it to Adknowledge. SnapTravel raised an $8M US Series A in 2017 and over $20M by late 2019, from investors including iNovia, Telstra Ventures, and Steph Curry.






