Underdog Founders - Ricardo's solution for a travel headache survived the pandemic.
How do you build a tech company that seamlessly takes care of your luggage before you check-in and after you check out?
Growing up, Ricardo was a national champion with FC Porto.
Business was his second passion, but with it he could live in the driver’s seat instead of praying to get scouted and stay injury-free.
So Ricardo graduated and started thinking about a business he could build without upfront capital.
“At a micro scale, I helped my parents run their small café, then I joined Decathlon to see how giants build systems and streamline ops across stores.”
One night, while grabbing beers with friends, one of them tells him about a renovated house for rent at a crazy good price.
They joked about running a small hostel.
Then they booked a visit, and it was a joke no more.
The first guests started booking their stays, and asked him where they could leave their luggage before and after their stay.
Ricardo searched around and thought it was crazy how there wasn’t an easy solution for this.
So he literally started collecting their luggage and filling his mom’s house with them (thanks Carla!).
One day, two guests asked him why he was handling their luggage himself. Ricardo told them he was dreaming of building a tech startup around it.
They smiled and gave him a 3€ tip.
“I took a picture of that tip and told my team: remember this, because we just might turn these 3€ into a global company.”
He invited 3 friends to become his co-founders: Diogo was getting a PhD in logistics, Hugo was a CS engineer, João had a masters in IT.
In Jan 2019, everyone quit their jobs and built LUGGit:
A platform and mobile app that allows you to request seamless luggage pickup and delivery, so you can just enjoy your stay.
They partnered with fleets of professional drivers, resulting in a Trustpilot rating of 4.9 out of 5 with no headcount.
Launched in Lisbon and Porto, raising a 400k pre-seed.
In Jan 2020 they win UNWTO’s “2nd most innovative company in the world”.
Then covid hits, and slaps their hype into oblivion.
By the time lockdowns were lifted, they lost part of the team and one co-founder. But they lived to fight another day.
From June 2021 onwards, everything got back on track.
Past pressure on cash-flow pushed them to optimize spend, resulting in a new go-to-market strategy:
- “Airbnb managers get hounded by clients asking about what to do with their luggage.”
- “Let's give them a branded landing page they can share with guests, and those that need pickup and delivery book it with us in a few clicks.”
Property managers pay zero and save time, so they converted.
LUGGit unlocked free distribution at scale.
2022 looked better than ever:
CAC - 3x cheaper.
Price - up 50%.
Revenue - up 347%.
Barcelona launched with the same strategy and it worked.
They're Europe ready.
LUGGit is closing a 1.7M seed and has 500k left for smart money.
Because Ricardo dared his friends over beers and didn’t give up when covid shut down his market.
PS - We’re now on X! Follow us there @Joao_F_Santos.
Underdog Founders 09 - Ricardo Figueiredo from LUGGit.
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