[INTERVIEW] Who is Flightdrop?
Today, we are interviewing Jack Kim (top), Founder and Aaron Tian (bottom), Head of Growth, of Flightdrop, which is an App that’s making flight hacking easier and more seamless!
1. What inspired you to start Flightdrop?
Jack: I come from a unique Product Design and Software Engineering background, so I love building intuitive products for everyone. I kept seeing all these great flight deals on blogs, groups, mailing lists; I knew that if I wrapped it all into one delightful mobile experience, I could help anyone unlock low airfare and start exploring the world like so many “travel hackers” already do.
Aaron: I joined the team here because I love traveling and I hate spending money. There’s an attitude among people (especially Millennials) that vacations are a luxury most can’t afford. I want to show my friends, students, and people everywhere that’s really not the case.
2. Please tell us about Flightdrop.
Aaron: Flightdrop makes the process of finding, researching, and booking amazing flight deals easier than ever. We send hugely discounted airfare (usually 50 to 70% off) right to your phone and let you know how long these prices will probably last. Basically, we take all the work out of cheap travel hacking and make it easy enough for any regular Joe to do.
3. What makes your app different from others out there?
Jack: From a technology standpoint there are a lot of unique things that Flightdrop does: Updating flight prices in real time, letting you know if a deal is about to expire, only showing deals in your area, letting you “watch” a city for new deals, etc.
But what really brings the product to life for me is the ease of use and the hand-curated, human touch. Although a lot of the deals are sourced by our algorithms, every flight is manually reviewed, edited, and sent out by our team. We make things crystal clear, and we’re always here to answer questions or recommend things to do at the destinations.
I think that’s something that was always missing for me from the whole flight booking process. I really encourage everyone to give our app a try, since it’s free anyway!
4. What can we look forward to from Flightdrop?
Aaron: Our focus is and will always be finding super cheap flights for you. That being said, we’re also big on building a strong community around our users. We recently announced a Flightdrop Ambassador Program that allows our top users to earn rewards and even free
flights by sharing our deals with friends. Besides that, we have a ton of new community announcements coming soon (like local Flightdrop meetups) so stay tuned!
5. What is your favorite place that you have travelled to so far?
Jack: I’ve got to say Tokyo. I love the hectic nature of it all, the advanced technology, bright lights, and of course the FOOD. I could eat ramen for breakfast lunch and dinner for the rest of my life.
Aaron: This is a tough one, but I’m going to say Valle de Cocora near Salento, Colombia. The tall wax trees, cows grazing in the valley, hiking up the mountains, and sipping the world’s best coffee at the top. Can’t beat that.
6. What advice would you give travelers and “Pointshoggers” out there?
Aaron: Usually, I tell people to get out there and see more places. But I’m going to give the opposite advice to the Pointshoggers: Travel slow and enjoy the journey!
Jack: Yeah, the world will still be there tomorrow, don’t rush through destinations for the sake of doing it. You’ll enjoy yourself more and get more out of it if you spend more time in each place you go and really get to know it. That’s something I’ve learned after years of FOMO.
7. Do you have any closing comments?
Jack: Always keep yourself inspired. Creativity spawns from seeing a lot of different things so try to travel and put yourself in new environments as much as you can!
Aaron: Live, laugh, love. Just kidding: Make vacation a priority! Stand up for yourself when professors, bosses, or even your own parents tell you that working 365 days a year is the only way to live. In America we have a culture of overworking. I firmly believe in everyone’s right to vacation, and it’s our goal at Flightdrop to help make that a reality for more and more people!
No Android app? Come on!
Hey Ed, we’re already hard at work on an Android version and it should be ready soon! Please stay tuned with us, everybody has to start somewhere 🙂
After reading your article, downloaded the app… tried it out.. meh… deleted it. no thanks.
I have to share the app with others to ‘unlock’ more options? more I share.. better my service gets?
Then you can’t really search for flights for specific dates? While this may be great for kid-less, spouse-less millenial types but not really good for trip planning in real world. I don’t want to mention another popular app’s name but that app allows you to put in the dates you want to travel and it’ll track the prices and give you notification when the price changes. and also estimates how the ticket price will move in the future. Sorry. not sold.
Hey Juno, really appreciate you giving us a try and sorry it didn’t go as well as we’d hope. Also really appreciate the criticism, honest feedback is so essential to our growth, so we love it.
The “share to unlock” style we chose for Flightdrop is because we think most people will be quite satisfied with the regular level of deals. For most, 1-2 deals a day is enough and more would be overwhelming. We just created the higher level tiers for the more serious users, and made it ‘share to unlock’ because we thought making people pay seemed a bit unfair.
As for not being able to pick specific dates, that’s the trade-off for seeking the absolute cheapest flights. Having specific dates in mind and tracking them is a great way to save a bit of money and we definitely encourage it, but Flightdrop is more geared towards people who are flexible in timing and less flexible with budget. We understand that’s not everyone’s lifestyle, but we hope that seeing these amazing prices can at least inspire some to really dig around for the best prices and not just take the more convenient, mediocre deal.
Once again, thank you so much for the constructive criticism. We’re always working on ways to improve our app and hope that you give us another shot down the line!
-Aaron, The Flightdrop Team
Seems that it cannot be used in Canada yet… When I choose, North East, for example, it only shows me US based airports.
Hey Shawn, we actually do have flights from Canada! There a small bug where you can’t select “Canada” during sign-up (we’re fixing that now), but you can choose any departure region and when you see a flight you like, just scroll down to “More Departure Cities” for Canadian airports. Hope this helps – Aaron, The Flightdrop Team
Jack and Aaron,
Well done on creating an innovative app. Don’t listen to the nay-sayers who look for reasons to complain about anything. It is obvious you have spent a great deal of time and effort to do this. I salute you.
God bless
Max, thank you so much for these words of encouragement. And don’t worry about us getting discouraged, the criticism is necessary and welcome! If you have any specific feedback, good or bad, about Flightdrop, please do send it over to us at hello@flightdrop.co or find us on social media. We love keeping in touch with those who are kind enough to give us a chance 🙂 – Aaron, The Flightdrop Team
How do you guys make money from this app? I don’t see any ads, affialite links or subscriptions.