On the TechTO stage ×4
Demo of the Month: SnapTravel
Watch on YouTube ↗
TechTO Raise of the Month: Hussein Fazal of SnapTravel
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The rebound of the travel industry
Watch on YouTube ↗Super booked its first 100 customers without writing any code
Watch on YouTube ↗First seen on a TechTO stage in 2017. Every TechTO 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.
Around the web ×1
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.