Drifter Expeditions, Inc.

We are the "Airbnb/Uber for global expeditions". We are building a social marketplace for millennial adventurers based on the "share economy" model (i.e. Airbnb, Uber). Millennials and Gen Z want to meet new people and have meaningful travel experiences more than they want to own a home. This segment of the US market is approximately 72 million people which spent $200B on travel in 2018 and planned 4 trips on average. People spend weeks researching trips and visit dozens of sites before making a selection. Millennials are more likely to book a trip after getting social proof on social media that the trip seems like it would be a great experience.

The team: 

Founder, CEO, CFO - Jared Lovelace
Jared is a 2nd time founder, MBA, and veteran infantry officer who has built and led teams of 40-120 people. His expertise is in finance, project management, and team building. He is also an avid world traveler who speaks German and Arabic and has lived overseas as a student for a total of 27 months in 3 different countries. Jared has personally invested $6,100 into building this company.

Cofounder, CTO - Brandon Wolf
Brandon is a Marine veteran and an experienced technology executive with over 25 years of leadership and software experience. He has significant experience as a CTO, full-stack developer, and enterprise architecture. Brandon is a strategic technology executive with experience leading startup companies along the path from Seed to IPO.

Cofounder, CBD - Chad Marx
Chad is an Army NCO with experience in public affairs, marketing, social media strategy in both the private sector at Ten Thousand and the public sector as an Army public affairs professional. He has a bachelor's degree in Business from James Madison University and was the president of the Kappa Delta Rho fraternity. 

CMO - Coming Soon!
We are currently interviewing C-suite marketing executives to join our team. We had many highly qualified applicants and will fill the role by January 1st.

Our marketplace allows anyone to plan a trip and become a trip leader. Marketing to the supply side of the marketplace will focus on people who are well traveled and interested in funding their travel hobby by leading highly customized and unscripted trips with strangers who have similar interests as them. We are lowering the barriers to entry for all those aspiring travel bloggers out there who want to monetize their travel hobby. These trip leaders plan trips and offer a certain number of spots on the trip to the marketplace for the price that they set. We provide the planning tools and platform to seamlessly create interesting trips within our platform. 

Another problem for our customers that our platform solves is not having travel companions to go on adventurous and spontaneous trips with. Finances, calendars, and appetites for adventure are difficult to match up with people in your inner circle. So on our platform, users can swipe left or right on travel companions that you want to travel with. Guides can swipe left or right on people who apply to join their trips. Within the platform, people with have travel profiles expressing their interests and bios while imbedding other social media accounts into their page as well. People will be able to connect with each other similar to LinkedIn and view the content and trips that others are taking. 

Our revenue model is based on transaction fees and premium subscriptions. The standard transaction fee levied on transactions is 15% added onto a travelers booking. Premium profiles are offered to travel leaders who want more marketing analytics, financial tools, and recruiting tools than what a basic profile has to offer. This is targeted at people who plan trips regularly and want greater insights into how customers are interacting on our marketplace. We are giving travel leaders the tools to build their own travel businesses.

We are raising $25,000 to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and start attracting user traffic by the end of February. Our target is to raise a priced Seed round with Venture Capital in the Spring.