Today we’d like to introduce you to Yulia Vasilyeva.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today. You can include as little or as much detail as you’d like.
A few years ago, my friends and I were looking for a fun place to visit during Labor Day weekend. We wanted to visit St Catalina Island and had to book each outdoor activity separately. We spent around 4 hours researching and group chatting, only to find out that the ferry was not available on the day of the trip.
“Fine, let’s go to Yellowstone! We can hike around and stay at the First Come First Serve camp” – said my friend Dmitry. And we drove 13 hours from Vegas to beautiful Yellowstone. Finding FCFS camping was another challenge that took us 2 hours driving around the park after sunset.
While driving, I was thinking about how awesome it would be to have a mobile app where you can add your budget, travel radius, and people count to see all the outdoor activities available and curated to your needs. I got so excited about this app idea I went to Vegas Developers Club upon my return.
Vegas Developers Club recommended I bring this idea to Startup Weekend. Startup Weekend is a competition for fresh ideas, that allows presenters to recruit their team on the spot and work on the startup idea for 54 hrs. Seven people joined my team at the Startup Weekend and we end up winning the competition with the idea of ExplorOff (exploring on your time off).
After the competition my friend who was a software engineer got interested and we’ve actually built the mobile app in a month. Our MVP had trails and camps around Utah, Nevada, and California and allowed users to select activities based on their location. To incentivize the app installs we’ve offered badges that can be collected at certain locations and saved under the account. We’ve had 70 app installs, and we’ve built a community of 5K social followers. And then the pandemic hit.
The response we’ve received from most investors was: “We can’t fund travel startups during the pandemic.” The team got discouraged. We’ve learned that it’s expensive to maintain the app on the App Store and it’s hard to convince somebody to install it and even harder to keep the app. An interactive website was a great alternative, that’s why we removed an app from the AppStore but kept the website https://exploroff.com/.
It took me two years to get back to ExplorOff. It was just mentally hard to start working on it after I lost my enthusiasm. I’ve kept posting outdoor inspirations on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/exploroff/) but have not updated the site until late 2021.
In 2021, I’ve started actively posting travel itineraries for outdoor enthusiasts who have full-time jobs and are looking for short fun getaways. Road Trip Through Utah National Parks (https://exploroff.com/utah-national-parks-road-trip) was my first itinerary. I’ve always thought that Utah is one of the most beautiful spots I’ve visited.
Today I slowly but surely build itinerary ideas for outdoor activities in the states. If you have any requests or feedback please let me know!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Building ExplorOff has never been a smooth road. The pandemic hit when we were just about to launch our app, the team got discouraged when I needed the most support, and I’ve lost interest for about two years.
I think startups require a huge amount of self-discipline and true passion for what you do. It’s always better to have a team and keep each other going even during the hardest times.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
ExplorOff is an itinerary hub for your short outdoor getaways.
Find fun ideas and book everything through one site. We offer hiking, kayaking, ATV-riding, hot springs, and scenic viewpoints curated into trips! There are no extra fees charged, we operate on the small affiliate fees from the most popular outdoor activities listed on Fareharbour and TripAdvisor.
I am proud of a strong outdoor community of 10K followers on social channels.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
I want to give a credit to two of my friends, who’ve been my biggest supporters on this ExplorOff journey. Aigera Marat and Dmitry Bakcheev.
Contact Info:
- Email: yuliavasilyeva1993@gmail.com
- Website: https://exploroff.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exploroff/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/exploroff
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/exploroff
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvQRYlDmwB5M2RVOYEnRJMg
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@exploroff
Image Credits:
Exploroff
