Mindtrip is a generative AI-native company building a new way to plan and book trips, incorporating photos, maps, pricing and availability data. Jenny Southan reports
Available in public beta before the end of 2023, Mindtrip is a generative AI-native company building a new way to plan and book trips. What’s more, it has announced it has closed a US$7 million seed round led by Costanoa Ventures, meaning it will be a big step closer to coming to life.
“Watching the evolution of who is traveling and how they plan – from TikTok-inspired GenZers to Superbooker Moms to the Planner Adventurer – we saw an opportunity to create one place where people could combine the ability to discover, plan and book,” says Andy Moss, co-founder and CEO of Mindtrip.
“Where ChatGPT stops at text suggestions, Mindtrip incorporates photos, maps, pricing and availability data that lets someone actually plan and book their complete travel itinerary leveraging generative AI.”
At the moment, trip planning is a “series of disjointed self-serve transactions”, says Mindtrip. It says: “Busy travellers are missing access to a more curated discovery-based trip planning process leading to more authentic travel experiences. They want to make quick and easy booking decisions without visiting 10 different websites and apps to plan a vacation. They also want to be able to share and learn from where their friends have travelled.”
Built on top of the most current large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Mindtrip allows travelers to ask literally any question in natural language that’s travel-related – whether asking about destinations, flights, hotels, restaurants or tours – all in one place.
The platform is “gen AI-native”, which means that the AI assistant is the foundation of the entire user experience, but the assistant is tightly integrated with accurate real-time travel data, including photography, maps of new locations and suggested places to visit.
Founded in 2023, Mindtrip is backed by an experienced team of seasoned tech leaders. Led (unusually) by 12 co-founders, its team includes serial entrepreneurs Andy Moss and Trey Matteson, Roadster co-founders who are on the heels of a successful exit to CDK Global in 2021.
The team is joined by Garrick Toubassi, who previously led the Gmail engineering team at Google, where he was an early implementer of AI and applying LLMs at scale.
“We couldn’t imagine a better team to create an app to improve how every person we know makes their travel plans,” says Greg Sands, managing partner at Costanoa Ventures. “The team hit the ground running and has already created an impressive platform for partners and the customers they want to serve.”