AN ADVENTUROUS PAIR
The founders of Taranaki’s newest virtual venture speak to Brittany Baker about how technology has let them break free of traditional brick and mortar constraints.
When James Donald hit ‘‘launch’’ on August 2 to officially unveil an online adventure tourism booking site, he was overseas on a family holiday.
But Donald happily admits Leap Booking is a Taranaki-based business.
‘‘My (Google) AdWord count is stuck in Euro though, so that’s kind of funny,’’ he says.
The online venture is most similar to Booking.com but instead of accommodation, Leap Booking lists ‘‘adventure sports’’ businesses offering equipment for hire, tours and lessons.
The site currently has five sport activities including kayaking and cycling, and hosts about 45 businesses across the country.
Though it is too early to predict the startup’s success, it’s poised to help smaller businesses tap into the tourism market.
And co-founders Donald and Letitia Stevenson expect it to become a global solution.
The garage-born business is actually an unintended venture launched by a pair of two (one time) strangers.
Stevenson and Donald met last year at Startup Weekend Taranaki – an event that teaches teams of strangers with varying skills how to build a business.
Stevenson, who had been a stayat-home mum for the last eight years, was heavily involved in the early childhood sector.
The Inglewood woman tutored and facilitated play centres, and had previous experience as a secondary teacher.
But Stevenson was imaginative and ‘‘always thinking up new ideas’’, so her husband encouraged her to attend the event.
‘‘I didn’t expect to get something tangible, actually,’’ she admits.
And Donald, who had moved to the region at the start of that year, was looking to network.
He had grown up in Auckland and then lived overseas for a decade before an engineering career in oil and gas pulled him and his young family to Taranaki.
But Donald was also wanting to branch out and start up something new.
‘‘I got to a point where motivations took me different directions,’’ he says.
Donald’s business pitch had been born from his time abroad, when he found it difficult to find outdoor equipment for hire.
And the idea ‘‘jived with a lot of people’’, he says.
As soon as Stevenson heard it, ‘‘I was like ‘yes that’s what we need’,’’ she says.
Initially their team comprised six people with varying skills – two dropped out during the weekend, one left after the event concluded, and the last couldn’t commit the time.
Donald and Stevenson, who had placed second at the event, carried on.
‘‘It was bloody hard work,’’ Donald says.
‘‘I was still working and I had an intense job.’’
Donald put in his three month notice but he was also planning a three month family holiday overseas, expecting his second child and working out of a garage while his house underwent renovations.
‘‘It was back and forth between ‘this is going to work’ versus ‘I need to give my notice to be able to go overseas’,’’ he says.
Stevenson was also under her own pressures as her family awaited the completion of their new home.
‘‘We sold early and lived in a shed for four months with very limited internet and three young girls,’’ she says.
‘‘It pretty much left nights and weekends (free).’’
The two set up headquarters in a corner of a garage at the back of Donald’s Westown home, where a whiteboard, a stack of papers
‘‘We can open ourselves up to people around the country or even the world ... We’ve actually always designed ourselves to be global from day one.’’ James Donald
depicting early designs and a wardrobe with several thick coats still in it.
‘‘We worked all through winter and it was so cold,’’ Donald says.
‘‘Every night pretty much 8pm to midnight, 1am, 2am – bloody exhausting.
‘‘We’d do a bit of prep to utilise the time we had together because it was quite precious.’’
It started with wire framing – a visual guide that represents the skeletal framework of a website.
‘‘We started with literally pen and paper – a piece of paper of every screen,’’ Donald says.
‘‘Then we built workflows, like how the payment system is going to work and how people are going to use it.’’
When they had a map of the site, they started using a tool called InVision, which stitches pictures together to mimic the look of a finished product.
‘‘It felt like a website – it was like a prototype that we were able to show people,’’ Stevenson says.
‘‘The first businesses that I went and saw, I’d take the prototype and from there we tweaked it based on their feedback.’’
This then became their specifications to take to developers.
The pair hired a small development company in Auckland to build the website, which Donald explains is a better bargain for a startup.
‘‘It’s three guys who do different things whereas if we were employing, we’d only be able to afford one jack of all trades.
‘‘But they’re really hard to find or attract to us as a startup.’’
Stevenson and Donald then took on an Auckland-based business developer and a marketer based in Rotorua.
It’s one of the major drawcards of the industry, they say, no boundaries in terms of staff location.
‘‘We can open ourselves up to people around the country or even the world,’’ Donald says.
And the business model is intended for a global market, he says.
‘‘We’ve actually always designed ourselves to be global from day one. We almost need to create a recipe. If we can work out how to solve it efficiently in New Zealand, then we can almost franchise it to other areas.’’