STARTUP STAGE: Around Us wants to transform exploration through its travel companion app

What is your 30-second pitch to investors?

Around Us is the ultimate travel companion that transforms how you explore the world around you. Unlike traditional maps filled with irrelevant locations, Around Us highlights only what matters: iconic landmarks, hidden gems and unique experiences. With more than 10 million tourist spots and 16,000 specific filters - from "suspended bridges" to "monasteries" - the app lets you create personalized journeys with ease. Whether you’re planning a detailed itinerary or discovering something new near your home, Around Us brings the world’s wonders to your fingertips, making every adventure truly unforgettable

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.

Around Us is an app (Android, iOS and AppleTV) and website built on a lightning-fast, proprietary geographic information system, developed on a Go-based backend to ensure efficiency and scalability. From a technology standpoint, our goal is to provide the most optimized platform - both in-app and on the web - for users to seamlessly plan and experience their travels.

On the business side, we are committed to keeping Around Us 100% free for users, focusing on offering an enriched experience that includes not just discovering and planning a trip, but also managing logistics. Our app aims to simplify booking accommodations, activities and other essentials, ensuring that everything users need for their journey is available within a few clicks, making travel planning both accessible and effortless. 

Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.

• Strengths: Our core strength lies in our robust geographic database technology, featuring more than 10 million points of interest stored as structured data. This allows us to provide highly relevant answers to users in a fraction of a second with a visually engaging interface, delivering an experience that stands apart from anything available today. Additionally, we are building a strong community of local experts, allowing users to interact with those who have firsthand knowledge of each location, thus creating richer, more authentic travel experiences. This focus on community-driven content strengthens our platform and differentiates us from competitors.
• Weaknesses: Currently, we are a small team of just two employees - CEO and platform developer Jean-François Pillou and Stéphane Renard, an expert in tourism and travel, focusing on brand development and partnerships with key players in the travel industry. While this structure allows us to maintain great agility and a very low breakeven point, it also limits our capacity for rapid expansion and development in areas such as marketing, customer support and technical features, which may require more manpower as we grow.
• Opportunities: There is a gap in the market for what we offer. On one side, major travel players focus on transportation, accommodation and food, often overlooking what is at the core of travel — sightseeing. On the other, existing map applications have around 200 million points of interest, yet only 1% are truly meaningful at the moment they are needed. Around Us directly addresses this gap by focusing on the genuine interests of travelers.
• Threats: As always, there is the possibility that a major player may replicate our approach. However, this is why we are building a strong community day by day, as that is ultimately what makes the difference. Before founding Around Us, I created CommentCaMarche, the largest IT community in France, and later CCM Benchmark, which gathered more than 23 million visitors per month. I am well-versed in the strategies needed to build a thriving community and audience.

What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspective?

Around Us aims to simplify the often complex process of end-to-end travel planning. For travelers, planning a trip typically involves jumping between different tools—guidebooks or digital travel guides for tourist attractions, maps to locate these spots, separate searches for practical, up-to-date information and booking systems to coordinate everything. This fragmented experience can be overwhelming and inefficient.

From an industry perspective, the lack of a unified, user-friendly platform that brings together all these aspects makes it challenging to serve travelers effectively. Around Us addresses these pain points by providing an integrated experience that unifies all these components into one simple, engaging interface. It allows users to seamlessly explore destinations, gather practical information, and manage logistics, all in a way that is intuitive and enjoyable.

So you've got the product, now how will you get lots of customers?

Word of mouth has worked very effectively for us, amplified by press coverage in several countries — the app is available in eight languages - which helped us reach the first million downloads quite quickly. Now, our growing community is adding new points of interest daily, generating content on our website that ranks well on Google. This organic traffic encourages new users to download the app, creating a virtuous growth loop.

Tell us what process you've gone through to establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable market.

I observed that major travel platforms tend to prioritize booking logistics like accommodation and transportation, while the core motivation for many travelers — exploring unique destinations — remains underserved. Traditional maps are cluttered with irrelevant points, and existing tourist guides are fragmented, making the entire planning experience cumbersome. This insight revealed a clear need for a solution that would help users effortlessly discover interesting places and plan their trips comprehensively in one interface. With over one million downloads and users from around the world, we see substantial interest, validating the need for an intuitive, centralized platform for destination exploration.

In terms of market size, the global travel and tourism market is worth trillions, with a substantial portion of travelers seeking cultural and experiential activities. Around Us targets this segment directly by making exploration and planning seamless. Our addressable market includes not only travelers seeking new experiences but also local experts and tourism boards wanting to promote their destinations.

How and when will you make money? 

We aim to keep the core app experience free for users to maximize growth and engagement. Revenue will be generated through partnerships with tourism boards and through integration with booking platforms, allowing users to book accommodations, activities or restaurants directly through the app. Each transaction will involve a commission-based revenue stream. Additionally, white-label opportunities and collaborations with travel industry players like Booking.com or Airbnb could be explored to diversify revenue sources.

What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team?

The founding team of Around Us brings a unique combination of technological expertise and deep industry knowledge. Jean-François Pillou, an engineer by training, created CommentCaMarche and acquired CCM Benchmark in 2010. Today, CCM Benchmark generates €60 million in annual revenue with €20 million in net profit. Jean-François has a proven track record of building strong communities and impactful digital platforms, as demonstrated by the success of CommentCaMarche and CCM Benchmark, which reached 23 million monthly visitors in France before being acquired by Le Figaro Group for over €100 million in 2015. His technical expertise is the foundation behind the highly efficient geographic information system that powers Around Us.

Stéphane Renard, director of development at Around Us, joined in 2024, bringing more than 25 years of experience in the travel industry. With a dual background in geography and publishing, Stéphane has worked with notable companies such as Le Guide du Routard, Travelzoo, Holiday Pirates and Webedia Travel. His career has been dedicated to making travel accessible and affordable, with a passion for delivering the best value for consumers. Stéphane’s mission at Around Us is to drive brand development, increase app visibility and create strategic partnerships across the travel sector. His extensive experience and enthusiasm for the project make him an invaluable asset in building Around Us into a go-to solution for travelers worldwide.

How have you addressed diversity and inclusion within your business?

As our team currently consists of just two people, it is still early to address diversity and inclusion from an internal staffing perspective. However, we have prioritized these principles within our product itself. Around Us provides information on accessible locations for people with disabilities, ensuring inclusivity in travel planning. Additionally, we are actively developing free audio guides for each destination, leveraging our structured database to make the app usable for visually impaired and blind travelers, promoting a more inclusive travel experience for everyone. Furthermore, our app helps communities organize their trips based on their preferences, such as finding the best LGBT-friendly hotels in Berlin, allowing for personalized and inclusive travel experiences.

What's been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?

There haven’t been any major difficulties so far. The main focus has been on developing the platform with a strong emphasis on performance, scalability and maintainability. We’ve invested considerable effort in ensuring that the system is highly scalable — leveraging Kubernetes to maintain a minimal footprint during low-traffic periods while scaling efficiently during high-traffic peaks, such as when the app is mentioned on the radio, TV or by an influencer. This approach allows us to provide a consistent and reliable experience regardless of demand.

Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact - so why are you going to be one of lucky ones? 

Creating impactful projects takes time — a lot of time. When I started CommentCaMarche, it took me five years before I could make a living from it. Many startups trigger a ticking clock by raising funds too early and hiring aggressively, racing against time to achieve success.

I take the opposite approach: I start lean, needing very little. The infrastructure for Around Us, for example, costs less than $2,000 per month, all included. I operate with the mindset that it will take three to four years for the product to truly take off. With a million app downloads across most countries worldwide in just over a year, I already consider us among the lucky ones — though we still have the next few years to establish a more dominant presence.

A year from now, what state do you think your startup will be in?

A year from now, we aim to focus heavily on building and empowering our community by enabling greater interaction with the content — such as adding reviews, and Q&A features. Similar to how Amazon allows users to find everything they need, add items to their cart, and consult reviews and responses from other buyers, we want Around Us to provide a rich, interactive experience. The ultimate goal is to create a community of local experts who know the secrets of each location, enhancing the value for all users by sharing insider knowledge.

What is your end-game? (Going public, acquisition, growing and staying private, etc.)

The goal is to establish Around Us as the leader in travel by building the largest community and becoming a true “love brand.” In terms of valuation, our aim is, of course, to surpass what I achieved with CommentCaMarche and CCM Benchmark, especially now that we have a global footprint targeting everyone of traveling age. Our focus is on long-term growth, community development and creating a product that travelers genuinely love, with an open mind about future possibilities, whether that involves going public, acquisition or continued private growth.