Understanding the project

Initial Strategic Challenges

1. Finding an outsourcing company capable of integrating with the existing misterb&b team to scale technology production cost-effectively as a startup.
2. Create working protocols with the Alternative Spaces and Onix team and the operations team at misterb&b, led by Francois de Landes, VP of IT and Operations.
3. Alternative Spaces to evaluate the technology needs and assemble a top-notch team for misterb&b, highly experienced and able to absorb the needs of the existing technology.
4. Resolve many small existing issues rapidly and introduce new technology upgrades at the same time.
5. Program a mobile-first application that would enhance the quality of service and social connections between hosts and guests.

This was their first mobile-first application

Initial Strategic Solutions:

1. The misterb&b team established a relationship with Alternative Spaces, during a featured outsourcing StartOut event in San Francisco. Alternative Spaces tasked Onix to present a team to meet clearly defined needs.
2. Anthony Bazhuhin, an expert project manager and programmer, was assigned to worked with Francois at misterb&b to fully understand the scope of work.
3. Anthony assembled an expert team of Ruby, IOS and Android developers. He traveled to Paris, met the existing developers, and cemented their working relationship.
4. With protocols in place, the Onix team replaced the developers in France, and quickly worked through a backlog of issues, and simultaneously brought new technologies to market.
5. Native IOS and Android mobile applications were produced and introduced to be fast, responsive, and easy-to-use for guests and hosts alike.

Stabilization and growth

• Anthony, misterbandb's project manager, won a lottery to move his family to the U.S. On the advice of Andy Cramer, CEO of Alternative Spaces, he flew to Los Angeles, met with Francois, and became misterb&b’s CTO.
• The new project manager at Onix, Alex Belous, was a veteran expert, and continues to lead the Onix team to this day. The daily contact between the U.S. and Ukraine evolved into a highly efficient process with protocols.
• The executive team at misterb&b was able to focus on marketing, finance, and refining customer experience to prepare the business to scale, with technology moving forward smoothly.
• Over the next several years, misterb&b grew their business by triple digits year-over-year, using metrics to successfully micro-focus on targeted growth.
• Misterb&b successfully closed an oversubscribed Series A financing and were on a path to greatly expand and grow profitably.

Growing the company while surviving Covid

• Including Series A financing, misterb&b raised a total of $13.5 million from institutional and angel investors.
• Alternative Spaces was intricately involved daily in ensuring misterb&b had the resources they needed. When a problem occurred regarding staffing or performance, Alternative Spaces worked with Onix to immediately replace non-performers and assign a project manager to correct any issues so the Company’s growth would continue unimpeded.
• The demand from the Company’s clients outpaced the supply of available properties, so in 2019, misterb&b’s editorial team selected LGBTQ+ friendly hotels worldwide. Misterb&b went to Wefunder to crowdfund and finance the expansion into hotels worldwide. After successfully closing the Wefunder round, the growth accelerated. More developers were hired to work on implementing misterb&b’s LGBTQ+ friendly hotel offering.
• Misterb&b added a social layer allowing hosts and guests to connect and discover who would be staying in the hotel/city to explore the city together. That technical project took 6 months to complete. By February 2020, misterb&b was growing bookings 20% month-over-month until the global pandemic hit.
• In 2020, the world was overrun with Covid. People stopped traveling as they were initially locked down. Misterb&b scaled down by 4x and remained ready to scale up when travel bounced back. During this time, Alternative Spaces helped misterb&b form a relationship with another customer that allowed their call center to continue bringing in additional income. Andy Cramer and Francois de Landes worked together daily to find other opportunities.
• In 2021, misterb&b launched its second successful Wefunder campaign to adapt to Covid and invest in more technology. The campaign was a success and gave the misterb&b community, including their guests, hosts and LGBTQ+ allies an opportunity to financially benefit and support the misterb&b community.

Refining the technology and social expansion

• In 2022, travel has rebounded, and misterb&b is growing rapidly again. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has not stopped Alternative Spaces or misterb&b from moving ahead with Onix and expanding the Company’s offerings. Onix is remotely located away from the war and works daily to complete their tasks.
• To begin, misterb&b had a conversion rate of 45%. After the data project manager performed a customer journey analysis, they found out many users were dropping off during a three-step booking process. To understand what was happening, the team eliminated one of the steps. Then they conducted A/B tests on the newly designed funnel, including the streamlined two-step reservation process. These changes resulted in a 20% jump in customer conversions. The number of users that entered the booking funnel and paid for their reservation skyrocketed to more than 65%.
• The misterb&b team used Mixpanel to analyze the customer journey, increase conversions, engage more people in the flow, and create a better user interface for its travelers and hosts. Having achieved many of its customer conversion goals, next on the agenda was to focus on channel acquisition. The executive team believes there is an enormous amount of growth potential. misterb&b product and technology managers are identifying more channel acquisition prospects.
• Misterb&b recently launched a new social solution named “Weere” with over 900,000 LGBTQ+ members already included. “Weere” helps travelers find an adventure companion to explore together. As a social networking service, misterb&b helps people share similar interests and real-life connections.

Alternative Spaces is proud of misterb&b and their close association and looks forward to many more years of strategic support and misterb&b’s growth.

Site page: www.misterbandb.com