Journi, a Vienna, Austria-based startup that offers a travel journal app for iOS and Android, has raised €400,000 in seed funding, having been largely bootstrapped since launching around a year ago.
The app offers an easy way to document your travel experience using text and images, and, optionally, share the resulting timeline with other Journi users or via social media.
Backing comes from Austrian Federal Promotional Bank (AWS) and will be used to further develop the app.
I’m told that upcoming features include an “explore feed” where you can browse through featured public journis, and also the ability to search based on location (e.g. show me all trips to Bali). These should go live by the end of the month.
Journi is also disclosing that Armin Strbac (CEO of Shpock) and Andreas Klinger (CTO of Product Hunt), both of whom are Austrian, are advising the young company.
It also says the app — which might be thought of as ‘Evernote for travel’ — is strongest in the German and U.S. markets, followed by the U.K. and other European countries. To further grow internationally, Journi says it plans to localize in at least 20 additional languages.
“What makes us really proud about our growth is the fact that it was and still is 100 percent organic,” Andreas Roettl, co-founder and CEO of Journi, tells me. “We spent zero on marketing and yet we saw a 900 per cent increase [in growth] over the last 24 months. The daily sign-ups are constantly increasing but we still have a lot of uncovered growth potential”.
Asked how the company plans to turn early growth into revenue, considering that the app is free and will remain so, Roettl says he sees a number of digital and non-digital services that could be offered in addition to the basic app.
This year a premium subscription for Journi will be introduced with features such as unlimited journis, higher resolution image uploads, and an easy way to quickly add photos from other devices like a DSLR camera.