Last week we had the pleasure to interview Daniel of Free Guides for the Bondi Innovation Forum 2022.
Daniel is the founder of Free Guides, a platform that allows for anyone to create self guided experiences, which can be led using your phone. FreeGuides was co-founded in 2018 with a vision of creating a travel app that redefines the way you travel across the world. Since then, they have grown to a team of 9 passionate individuals that delivers experiences to over 1k+ explorers across the globe. Everyday, guides create one of a kind experiences to ensure that anyone can explore the world in a more authentic and unique way.
In this interview he discusses this along with how he sees Bondi’s future growth for professionals and individuals.
Reach out to Daniel on the BIA platform or on Slack to discuss about exploring new places.
Transcript
I started Free guides. So Free guides is essentially a platform mobile and web app that allows for anyone, any local organisation and government to create self guided experiences, which can be led using your phone. And here we live all over the world. I’ve always loved travelling, I hired people that are passionate about travelling. So when I was travelling, Post University, I fell in love with free walking tours. And I realised that it was unregulated that people didn’t have the ability to make the money that they would like to. And most importantly, COVID affected the way that that was actually going to be run from now until the future. So I created free guides to actually create a platform for those people to make revenue inside of a post pandemic world. And it allowed me to ultimately travel for a living now. So we’ve had lots of great successes. So we close two rounds of funding through both a Sydney based venture capitalists and angels and also international. From that we were able to launch our phone app and also a web app. And that ultimately enabled over 400 guides around the world and organisations to create over 1100 experiences that can be run at any time. But our biggest win is definitely in the last month, we closed a partnership with tech Central and the New South Wales Government to create experiences for them. So their ambitions are we in the middle of our capital raise right now. And that’s really going to allow us to expedite our growth internationally to help get our product in the hands of the people that really need it and want it. Second is to build a robust toolkit for organisations, governments right now, we need to handhold them and really help them through the process. But by building out a robust software so that it’s self service, then it will allow for botanical gardens, and outdoor adventure companies to start using our platform to find new adventures.
Unlimited, I think that the opportunities of being able to work near the beach, and also to be able to really have collaborative, innovative group of individuals is really exciting. But I think the opportunity for both free guides and also other organisations is to really connect with those passionate people. And I think having an organisation that brings those people together is extremely valuable. For free guides ourselves. It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. So if our app is to ultimately bring people outside and explore places they haven’t otherwise, or discover places that they knew already, but just be seen through a different lens, then I think there’s no better place to be operating.
That’s a good question. I think it’s ultimately about finding the right people, which is sometimes difficult, but I think that with the right team and the right tools in place, those people will get to know the organisation as best as possible. So I think it’s very much about informing the people making sure that they are in a place that can they can collaborate and also work together.
