A successful serial entrepreneur (Peter Kutis, Onetwotrip CEO) shares his story of growing the business and gives advice to other startup founders.

1. From $0 to $400 million
Case study from
Eduson.tv course
gross sales in 1.5 years
Peter Serial Entrepreneur, founder and
Kutis CEO OneTwoTrip

2. mate oper ations and
Auto
make your business
more effective

3. automate operations and
make your business
more effective
can should be
For internet projects, many operations
helps to
automated. The software on OneTwoTrip
y from staff,
minimize the amount of support necessar
user
ing an automated system to answer many
us
questions.
s of just 15
While the entire operating team consist
y.
people, 5,000 tickets are sold every da

4. Marketing should be effective concentr ate on advertising channels
with maximal conversion rates

5. ctive -
marketing should be effe
g channels
in
concentr ate on advertis
with maximal conversion
rates
ough metaOneTwoTrip advertises itself primarily th
t off, so as
searches. «Ineffective» searches are cu
d prices for
not pay for users who simply want to fin
tickets.
avel to certain destinations, but not buy
tr
site
destinations can only be viewed on the
These
itself.

6. icy
making your pricing pol
intelligible - justify the cost
of the product

7. cy
Making your pricing poli
cost
intelligible - justify the
of the product
possible
OneTwoTrip shows its visitors ratings of
e a number
flights, displaying the ticket price alongsid
lays,
factors (age of aircraft, frequency of de
of
quality of service, etc.).
es choose
After seeing these ratings, users sometim
nt to be
more expensive flights because they wa
certain they’ll arrive on time.

8. our loyalty progr amme
Make y
clear, and clients
will value the simplicity

9. make your loyalty progr
amme
clear, and clients
will value the simplicity
!
equal to 1%
The site offers its clients reward points
ectly on
of the purchase for any booking made dir
buy any
OneTwoTrip. These points can be used to
d April
w ticket at any time. Between March an
ne
nt of
2013, OneTwoTrip paid users the equivale
s
euros, while a major competitor with a les
90,000
ros
clear loyalty programme paid 200,000 eu
mme.
throughout the existence of the progra

10. Expand your audience
through partner programmes

11. Expand your audience
through partner progr am
mes
offline. To
me Russians prefer to buy their tickets
So
da
reach this audience, OneTwoTrip launche
any.
partnership with the «Svyaznoy» comp
ted through
15-17% of OneTwoTrip’s sales are conduc
Svyaznoy’s wide network of retail shops.

12. employees with stock op
Motivate your
tions,
and competitors won’t entice them
with higher salaries

13. stock options,
ate your employees with
motiv
tice them
and competitors won’t en
with higher salaries
e
rs of the OneTwoTrip team care about th
Membe
personal
company’s success because they have a
for
This ensures that key staff won’t leave
share in it.
competitors.

14. set priorities -
profitable features
first and foremost

15. set priorities profitable features
first and foremost
be
in principle guiding your priorities should
The ma
tly
revenue. If a given feature doesn’t direc
impact on
ment.
affect revenue, then set aside its develop

16. think about convenience
for your clients

17. think about convenience
for your clients
e hard to come
During the holiday rush when tickets ar
vital. When
y, booking tickets at different prices id
bu
ip system
purchase multiple tickets, the OneTwoTr
you
re
the sorest fares first, and then adds mo
selects
that
seats. Competitors, however, simply say
expensive
the lower
there aren’t enough tickets available at
leted.
price, and that the order can’t be comp

18. an your competitors be more honest th
show the total price
immediately
$ 50
thousand

19. be more honest than your
competitors -
show the total price
immediately
se to
On the OneTwoTrip site, a user can choo
th taxes or
immediately view either the final price wi
y to know
ly the airline fare. This allows the compan
on
it can
tly how much it earns on each ticket, so
exac
offer discounts to its customers.

20. n online ‘here and now’ A im to ear
time
fits coming some
o
don’t count on pr
e
on the futur

21. Aim to earn online ‘here
and now’ ing sometime
m
don’t count on profits co
in the future
ort itself
A startup should be profitable and supp
work for the
today. Don’t burn investors’ money and
rket share,
future (by trying to capture a larger ma
etc.).

22. take a course
today!