Design a travel startup built on local experiences

You are building a new travel startup. Design a platform centred on discovering local itineraries and unique experiences.

Context

Big platforms surface the same top-10 attractions. Locals and small guides offer great experiences but are hard to find and trust. A startup has little money and no brand.

Clarifying questions to ask first

One city or many?
Who are the experience providers?
Funding and team size?

How to approach it

Clarify the business goal and tie the product to the company's mission before touching solutions
Segment users by behaviour or need (not just age), cover the whole ecosystem, and pick one segment with explicit criteria
Walk the end-to-end journey and separate real pain points from feature requests
Brainstorm a range of solutions (quick fix, data/ML, moonshot) and prioritise with impact vs effort
Define a North Star, funnel metrics and guardrails, then call out risks, edge cases and mitigations

Framework: Goal & mission -> Ecosystem & segment choice -> Journey & pain points -> Solutions & prioritisation -> Metrics & guardrails -> Risks & edge cases

Sample answer

Travellers wanting authentic experiences; local hosts and guides
Cold start: supply quality must come first
Trust is the main reason travellers stick to big platforms

Solutions: curated hosts in one city, local-made itineraries, verified reviews, instant booking
Metrics: North Star = experiences completed with 5-star ratings; guardrails = cancellation rate, host churn

Start with one city and hand-curated local hosts and itineraries. Measure highly rated completed experiences.

What interviewers look for

Startup constraints and wedge
Supply vs demand cold start
Trust and quality control
Differentiation from incumbents