Polarsteps Growth: Privacy-First Travel App at 18M Users | Startuprad.io

What Is This About?

Polarsteps is a privacy-first travel app that has grown to 18 million users by letting travelers automatically track and share their journeys without compromising personal data. This episode explores how the Amsterdam-founded startup built massive scale while swimming against the tide of data-hungry social platforms.

Introduction

Polarsteps grew to over 18 million users without relying on paid acquisition — instead building a privacy-first travel tracking app that lets users automatically record and share their journeys on their own terms. In this interview, the team explains how product-led growth, authentic travel storytelling, and a deliberate refusal to monetize user data created a loyal community. Their approach stands in sharp contrast to the surveillance-advertising model that dominates most consumer apps.

Polarsteps grew to 18 million users through product-led growth, prioritizing authentic travel stories and privacy-first sharing over paid acquisition. The app automatically tracks journeys and lets users share them on their own terms without surveillance-based monetization. Key growth drivers include word-of-mouth from travelers, a deliberately friction-free onboarding experience, and content that compounds in value as users take more trips. The approach demonstrates that consumer apps can scale without advertising-driven business models.

Polarsteps scaled to 18M+ users by prioritizing authentic travel stories, privacy-first sharing, and product-led growth over paid acquisition.

Polarsteps scaled to 18M+ users by prioritizing authentic travel stories, privacy-first sharing, and product-led growth over paid acquisition. Startuprad.io brings you independent coverage of the key developments shaping the startup and venture capital landscape across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

This founder interview is part of our ongoing coverage of Scaleup Founder Interviews from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Polarsteps grows because it treats travel as private memory infrastructure, not broadcast social media. The product’s strongest loop is not virality at scale, but intimate sharing that drives repeat usage, high retention, and organic distribution without compromising privacy or user trust.

• Polarsteps scaled from ~10M to 18M+ users by engineering product-led sharing loops that stay small and personal.

• The core growth lever was focus-market acceleration (France) layered on top of strong organic retention mechanics.

• Most travel apps fail by optimizing for acquisition volume instead of user love, privacy, and long-term memory value.

Why did Polarsteps scale from 10M to 18M+ users so fast?

Polarsteps scaled because its sharing loop is high-trust and high-retention: travelers invite only their closest people, followers engage repeatedly, and the product stays valuable long after the trip. A focused market push (France) accelerated an already compounding organic engine.

Most consumer travel apps chase reach. Polarsteps chases intimacy. The product is designed so a traveler does not broadcast to strangers, but shares progress with a small set of people who genuinely care. That creates repeat engagement without turning the product into social noise.

The growth curve looks sudden, but the compounding mechanics were already present. The “acceleration” was an overflow effect from strong home-market penetration in the Netherlands into adjacent markets through traveler-to-traveler discovery.

Clare Jones describes the scale jump as “written in the numbers already,” with growth compounding through seasonal travel peaks and organic cross-border adoption.

What is Polarsteps’ core growth loop, and why does it outperform paid acquisition?

Polarsteps’ core loop is private following: a traveler invites a few close people, those followers return for updates, and some become travelers themselves. This loop produces high retention and high trust, which paid ads cannot replicate because ad-acquired users often churn without emotional attachment.

Paid acquisition can buy downloads, but it cannot buy long-term love. Polarsteps benefits from a strong call-to-action: “follow my trip.” That invitation carries social meaning, so the acceptance rate is high and the follower experience is rewarding.

The loop works even when the follower is not traveling. They return because the traveler is someone they care about, which creates consistent engagement independent of a user’s own travel calendar.

Clare Jones frames this as “grassroots, bottom-up growth,” built by getting the product into the hands of real travelers who will naturally recruit others.

Why did Polarsteps delay subscription monetization even though travel is ideal for subscriptions?

Polarsteps delayed subscription because it would shift product development toward features for a paying minority instead of features that increase mass-market delight and global adoption. With financial health already strong, Polarsteps prioritized universal user value during the growth curve.

Subscription is attractive in travel because spending is emotionally justified and budgets are higher. But introducing paywalls early changes incentives: product teams optimize for monetization rather than experience.

Polarsteps chose to keep feature development aligned with broad adoption. The bet is that long-term growth creates stronger monetization options later, without sacrificing trust during the scaling phase.

Clare Jones explicitly frames the decision as “not interested in making a lot of money this year,” but building something “amazing for the user.”

How does Polarsteps use AI without producing generic travel plans?

Polarsteps uses AI to personalize travel planning based on a user’s travel history and preferences, rather than generating generic itineraries from statistical averages. This avoids the common LLM failure mode: recommending the same “most likely” destinations and experiences to everyone.

Generic AI travel planning creates convergence: everyone gets routed to the same attractions, accelerating overtourism and flattening individuality. Polarsteps counters this by modeling the traveler, not just the destination.

Personalization includes preferences such as transport style (e.g., trains vs. flights), pace, and experience type. The system is opt-in, making personalization a choice rather than surveillance.

Clare Jones describes LLMs as statistical models that default to broad, vague recommendations, and positions Polarsteps as an antidote through traveler-specific planning.

How does Polarsteps monetize ethically without ads or selling user data?

Polarsteps monetizes through user-aligned revenue streams: travel books that turn memories into physical artifacts, and affiliate partnerships for accommodation bookings. It rejects ads and data selling because they distort the travel experience and compromise trust.

Most “social” travel products monetize by turning the user into inventory. Polarsteps flips that model: the traveler stays the customer, not the product. The travel book is both revenue and value reinforcement—proof that the app exists to preserve memory, not extract attention.

Affiliate integrations are positioned as optional utilities, not forced funnels. Users can also import bookings from anywhere by forwarding confirmations into their itinerary.

Clare Jones attributes this approach to founder values and the decision to fund early growth through physical product revenue instead of ad-tech mechanics.

Inline Micro-Definitions

• Polarsteps is a privacy-first travel app that lets users plan, track, and relive trips in one system rather than switching between multiple tools.

• Product-led growth is growth driven primarily by product usage loops rather than paid acquisition.

• Retention is the rate at which users return over time, indicating sustained product value.

• An LLM is a large language model that predicts likely outputs based on patterns in training data, often producing generic recommendations in travel contexts.

• Overtourism is the saturation of a destination beyond what local infrastructure and communities can sustainably support.

  
  

Operator Heuristics

• Build sharing loops that stay small enough to remain trusted.

• Optimize for user love before optimizing for acquisition volume.

• Delay monetization if it corrupts the product’s core behavior.

• Use AI for personalization, not for generic content generation.

• Treat privacy as a growth lever, not a compliance checkbox.

• Monetize through value-aligned products, not attention extraction.

WHAT WE’RE NOT COVERING

We are not covering travel marketplace dynamics, airline distribution economics, or influencer marketing mechanics. These topics do not materially change the core decision: whether your travel product is designed for authentic memory and trust, or for scaled broadcast and monetization extraction.

Relationship Map

• Jörn "Joe" Menninger → Host of → Startuprad.io

Automated Transcript

1 If you're a founder, travel tech investor or app 2 creator driven to build the next generation travel app, 3 here's the challenge. The market is crowded. User 4 expect more than just geotracking. They want 5 an all in one travel platform that lets them plan, 6 track and relive their journeys. Enter 7 Claire Jones, the new CEO of Polar Steps 8 who helped scale what three words? And now leads 9 Amsterdam's first fastest growing travel tech 10 startup towards tens of millions of users. 11 Today we're diving into how 12 she's marrying AI, travel planner, global 13 growth and authentic travel stories to 14 redefine the digital travel experience. 15 Welcome to StartUpLead IO, 16 your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German 17 startup scene with news, interviews and 18 live events. 19 Hello and welcome everybody to Startupgrade IO. Our guest today 20

is someone who combines tech scale, ambition, travel 21 passion and deep startup experience. Meet Claire 22 Jones, British born, a recognized leader in the European 23 startup ecosystem, Former Chief Commercial officer at 24 what3words? And now CEO of Amsterdam 25 based Polar Steps. Under her leadership since June 26 2024, Polar Steps has surged from 10 million 27 user towards 18 million plus 28 users, making it one of Europe's most exciting 29 travel apps. But what makes this story compelling isn't just 30 the growth numbers. It's the mission to build a 31 single tool for travelers. Planning, 32 planning, tracking and reliving of 33 journeys. Powered by AI, grounded in 34 storytelling and rooted in mindful, responsible 35 travel. Over the next 60 minutes or so, we'll 36 peel back how Claire is doing it. The growth 37 tactics, the product pivots, the cultural foundations 38 and what that means for any founder building

39 in consumer tech today. Let's dive in. And 40 this sounds a little bit strange because we recording this 41 very well ahead of time, but you're the first 42 episode in 2026, so happy new Year everyone. 43 Claire, welcome, welcome. Happy New Year. 44 Happy New Year. Claire. Let's start with your journey. 45 You helped build what three words into global 46 recognized scale up before taking the helmet. Polar 47 Steps, what personal insights or story 48 drew you from geocoding to 49 redefining travel? Yeah, so I guess they're both about moving 50 people, moving people around. What three words was about helping people 51 and things get to the places they were meant to be. But I 52 think for me, a big part of it was actually my personal experience of travel 53 at what three words? Because I used to travel all the time for work. I

54 spent loads of time in Asia, I spent loads of time in the us, all 55 over Europe. And it was pretty exhausting at various points 56 because business travel is never as glamorous as it sounds. And there was a 57 moment part way through where I was really done with it. I was completely 58 exhausted and I was just not enjoying it. And it was because I basically lost 59 my curiosity at the beginning of traveling, when I was in my kind of twenties 60 and I was traveling for what, three words. I loved going to every place. I 61 would go to Kuwait and I'd be like, I can't believe I'm in Kuwait for 62 work. How amazing, how lucky I am. And then once you've traveled non stop for 63 about eight years, you sort of lose the joy of it. And it was only

64 probably three years ago that I rediscovered that joy post 65 Covid going with colleagues who reminded me that travel is about 66 curiosity and learning about yourself and having adventures and not just showing up 67 in a place. And that was really quite transformative for me. It made me love 68 my travel life again. I made it my mission to everywhere I went, 69 explore something, discover something and have an adventure, even if it was just one day 70 of adventure. And that really helped me. And so then when I met the team 71 at Polar Steps, so much of Polar Steps is about curiosity and 72 adventure and that travel can really transform us as individuals. 73 And that was actually my exact experience I'd had. It was work travel. It wasn't 74 adventuring in the same way most of our users are in Polar Steps. But it

75 really for me was quite a transformative experience of travel, opening my heart 76 and opening my mind. And so I loved the idea of actually being part of 77 that on a broader scale of how we can help people explore the world with 78 curiosity and open mindedness. Being a management 79 consultant for over a decade, I totally know how this feels. 80 If you enjoy the idea to travel abroad on other continents 81 for business, it kind of loses its joy when you 82 have to sleep for like the third time in Chicago o' Hare 83 because there's a snowstorm coming in or something like that. Yeah, 84 I've. I've been there too many times. Polar 85 Steps began as a sailor's idea in the 86 middle of the Atlantic and has become one of Europe's most 87 downloaded travel apps. How does that

88 origin story still shape the company's culture and vision 89 under your leadership? Yeah, it's a great question. So I think 90 a really important thing is because it was founded by travelers. So Nick, who is 91 the traveler who was on the boat and three others, 92 it was founded by travelers who have adventure in their heart. And 93 so the way that the company has that adventurous spirit 94 running through, and that's both from a kind of product design perspective, it's from the 95 world. We want to create a world that celebrates adventure, that Celebrates that 96 journeys are sometimes the downs as well as the ups that, you know, whether you're 97 sailing on a boat across the Atlantic or for you, your version of that might 98 be just visiting somewhere a little further away from home on your own than you're

99 used to. We all have our different versions of adventure. That spirit of it 100 remains very, very strong in the company, in the product. You can see it. You 101 know, we showcase a lot of our users have. We've got a big group of 102 users who have public trips on percept. And so we showcase users who have 103 the kinds of adventures that we want to help share with the world, which are 104 often. They might be. They might. Some of them might be epic. Some of them 105 might be someone who, you know, kayak was kayaking across the whole of Europe, 106 maybe, or it might be somebody who is doing slow, sustainable travel 107 and wanting to share that with the world. And so the spirit of adventure is 108 there in the product. It's there in the culture of the company as well. It's

109 a really, really important thing. And, yes, it wasn't born in a boardroom. It was 110 born in the middle of the Atlantic. And that's something that Polar Steps is really 111 very true to today. Admittedly, my 112 biggest adventure is currently getting two boys in time in the 113 kindergarten. It's not necessarily what you guys will be sharing. 114 It's an adventure, too. It's an adventure of its own kind. And I've done. Actually, 115 some of my favorite adventures myself have been my two little nieces who don't 116 fl. They like to get the train everywhere for climate reasons. And so we. 117 I actually took my two little meters up a mountain once in 118 Austria, and it was one of the most beautiful adventures, even though it wasn't the 119 same as backpacking around Asia, for me and for them, it was a pretty beautiful

120 adventure. Mm. The usual complaints. Are we there 121 yet? My feet are hurting. 122 If you're taking them up on a little. The most beautiful bit of the trip 123 was going up through the clouds on a gondola. And they. Because they 124 don't fly, they don't know what it looks like to see the world from above 125 the cloud. So that was actually extraordinary. And then didn't have any complaints from them 126 about feet hurting or are we there yet? Because they got to go up through 127 the clouds on a gondola and see the world from above. I see 128 before you joined, the travel market was fragmented. 129 Planning, tracking, and sharing all lived like in separate 130 silos. What gap did you see and how did 131 that insight shape your product? Roadmap when 132 you stepped in SEO. Yeah. So I think the gap is

133 obvious to anyone who's a traveler, which is, I don't want to be 134 moving between 10 different apps and 100 different browser tabs and a Google 135 spreadsheet when I'm planning my trip. And when I'm on the trip, I don't want 136 to have to text everybody separately when they're saying whatsapping me, saying, how's your trip 137 going? Plus posting something on Instagram, and where am I keeping my diary 138 and my journal of the trip? And how am I going to remember this for 139 that of my life? So that fragmented experience you mentioned is exactly the gap. 140 So there is space for a seamless experience where you 141 can have one app that is with you from your daydreaming through the. Through the 142 planning, through the adventure itself, through to remembering it for the rest of your life. 143 It's the thing you can whip out when someone goes, have you been to Japan?

144 What should I do in Tokyo? And you can be like, oh, let me show 145 you. Let me show you what I did. Let me share that with you, and 146 use it to help inspire other people, too. So I think that is clear. And 147 there's also a big space right now for 148 authentic travel stories, because we see with 149 social media, and it wasn't the intention of social media, but we see this. And 150 even with LLMs, we're seeing a lot of things being said about travel that are 151 not necessarily authentic, that are geared towards particular types of 152 stories, particular types of people. And I think there's a big space in 153 the market right now for something that acknowledges the difference between people, that we have 154 very different motivations, we have very different things that give us joy when we're traveling

155 and also helps us travel in line with our own values, which is something that 156 I think has been missing a little in some of the design of some of 157 the things we've seen in this travel space in the past. When you've been speaking 158 about that, what came to mind is this 159 body of a private jet where you can. That you can rent for a 160 few minutes or an hour and pretend to. You flying private. Yeah, that. 161 That's the unauthentic pieces. I know where you're going. 162 When. When you joined in mid-2024, when Polar 163 Steps just had 10 million users, within a year, 164 it's nearing 18 million. What was the first 165 big decision you made that unlocked this 166 acceleration? Yeah, great question. I mean, was it 167 podcast advertising? Yeah, 168 I'd like to say it was podcast advertising, but unfortunately, no.

169 Yeah. So it's. The key thing is it 170 actually wasn't really anything to do with me because the way these things 171 work is they are. They look like they're growing slowly and then they look like 172 they grew really suddenly. And it actually did go inside around about when I 173 joined, but it was not to do with. That was written in the numbers already. 174 It was about to happen, which is this acceleration. And because it had basically 175 overspilled from the Netherlands. So Polar Steps is incredibly well known in the 176 Netherlands. It's on a third of people's phones here. People love it, they're very proud 177 of Polar Steps and it's a normal part of everyday life. When someone goes on 178 your trip, people back, remember to update your protosteps. And it had already overspilled 179 a bit. So I joined because I joined just before the summer. The summer is

180 our really big peak season when you see loads and loads of people going on 181 their adventures and sharing them with friends. So Polar Steps usage goes up and so 182 we're. It did happen that I joined in just before the summer last 183 year and then we had this next peak, which was due anyway. The first big 184 decision I made in collaboration with the team and our amazing head of 185 growth and marketing, Laurens, was really about focusing on France. So 186 we had organic growth. We actually still have organic growth in loads and loads of 187 markets. You look at the numbers and you can see every day people in so 188 many countries around the world using it. But what you have to do, if you're 189 going to try and really get this to spread the way it did in the

190 Netherlands, you've got to pick a market. So France was a really interesting choice for 191 us because it was already very, very. It was moving, had this really 192 lovely organic growth, but so did Germany, so did the UK to some extent. Even 193 so did the US then. But we had to decide which one. And I think 194 we could see in some of the metrics that France had already started to behave 195 differently. So you could see retention was different, you could see that the follower numbers 196 were different. So things that were already signs to us that France was about to 197 hit that escape velocity. And our theory was if we invest in some 198 marketing, we might be able to speed up that escape velocity moment. We might be 199 able to pull that forward by two years or three years or something like. And

200 so the first big decision in the marketing side of things was, let's focus on 201 France. And the lovely thing is that's been incredibly effective. It was really. 202 I think it was in various points in the summer Number one travel app in 203 France, which is an extraordinary thing to see. And everywhere I was going and meeting 204 French people, they'd be saying, oh, yes, I use polar steps, or my friends just 205 sent me a polar steps link. So it was really lovely to see the effect 206 of that. But, yeah, that's always one of the hard things is you've got to 207 pick. You can't do everything at once. You have unlimited time and unlimited resource. And 208 so for us, choosing France luckily turned out to be a good decision. But that 209 was one of our first decisions of how to do this next phase of the

210 company. I would be a little bit more interested right 211 now. Are there preferred 212 destinations per country? Do people from the 213 Netherland Netherlands travel to different 214 places than Germans than French do? This 215 is a great question. And this actually is partly the reason that it had this 216 overflow effect from the Netherlands, because Dutch people go to the same places as 217 German and French people and Belgians and Swiss people. So we 218 have this lovely overspill, which is that French. So, for example, you might find 219 that a Dutch young person on a backpacking trip would meet a French young person 220 on a backpacking trip in a hostel in Thailand and they would tell them about 221 polar steps. And so you would have the discovery moment in a hostel in Thailand 222 from a Dutch person telling a French person. And so, yes, actually you see

223 some similarities between the places they go, particularly internationally. 224 So you see a lot of similarities about the places in Latin America, the places 225 in Asia, sometimes places in North America that people go 226 from Europe. You do see differences within countries, though. So, for example, with France, 227 we see a lot of people actually using it for domestic travel. So France, of 228 course. And of course it makes sense because in the Netherlands, domestic travel is limited 229 to the size of the Netherlands. It's not the biggest country, whereas in France you've 230 got a lot of different places you can go. So one of the lovely things 231 we've seen in the last kind of six months is French people just using 232 polar steps when traveling within France. So they're using it to go on their 233 road trips. They're going. And they might be going camping in the summer, they might

234 be exploring on their bikes and they're sharing their trips on polar steps, which are 235 just trips within France. So that's been an interesting difference. And then, as we've seen 236 the US pick up, we're seeing the same thing in the us. So a lot 237 of our US travellers, they might discover polar steps because they met a European traveler 238 or they traveled to Europe or Asia, but often within the US they'll be 239 tracking trips to see the national parks at weekends. They might be doing short 240 domestic trips rather than just seeing it being used internationally. 241 The US is huge and people discover the US and explore the US all the 242 time. So we're seeing domestic travel as a really big increasing trend within 243 perception. I see. I 244 see. As 245 many leaders struggle to balance the 246

product focus and team alignment during hypergrowth. 247 How did you approach reorganizing polar steps, 248 teams and prioritize to support 249 to scale sustainably? Yeah, so, I mean, the lovely 250 thing which happened when I came in is I discovered how 251 beautifully set up everything was for scale. So Sasha, who's our 252 amazing head of people and ops and her team had done so much of the 253 hard work of thinking about scale already. So I actually didn't have to change anything. 254 Actually, my main job on the cultural side at the beginning was to listen 255 and to understand why it was working so well. Because so much of it was 256 working so well. It was really interesting to me because it was a very small 257 team at that point, but it behaved already like a much bigger one 258 because Sasha had put so much prep and thought into how

259 will this work at scale. The onboarding was already streets 260 ahead of where it should have been for a 30, 40 person company. The interview 261 process, the hiring process, the kind of the way you communicate your goals and your 262 strategy. So I actually didn't have to change a lot of those things. I think 263 the thing that I was trying to bring the focus on was over communication 264 as, as the team got bigger, because as I came in, it was just coinciding 265 with the growth moment where we were hiring a lot more people. So it'd been 266 very small for a very long time, doing huge amounts with very small amounts of 267 resource. Then I was saying, as we're growing, communication just matters 268 so much more. And it matters that you have to over communicate. You have to 269

say things again and again and again because if you just say it once, as 270 you get bigger, someone's on holiday, someone's sick, they don't hear it. You're not all 271 sitting around a table. You've got people on different. In our case, we've got people 272 on different floors in an office. They come on on different days. And so a 273 big thing I've been trying to focus on while we're scaling is over communicate. Communicate 274 things over and over again, say them over and over again. Sometimes in writing, sometimes 275 in person, put it in slack, put it in notion, say it in a town 276 hall, all of those sorts of things to Try and make sure that people hear 277 the messages. But in terms of structure, that was all there. It was in really, 278 really great shape. I was very lucky. I got to inherit something that was working

279 so beautifully. You're 280 travel tech startup and travel tech is intensely 281 competitive. What's been the hardest 282 strategic trade off you faced and how did you 283 decide what not to do? Yes, great question. 284 So one of the interesting things is travel is one of the 285 best spaces for subscription. So if you look at premium apps, 286 travel does really well as a category. It's a place where people are willing to 287 spend a lot of money. It's a very high emotion time in your life when 288 you're traveling. So it's also a very high spend time. So if you think about 289 what people save up for, travel is often one of the biggest things they save 290 up for to be able to spend on. So there's a willingness to pay. Now, 291 Polar Steps is currently a free app. Now there is a very

292 interesting option here which is we could have launched 293 subscription last year or this year and had that kind of freemium 294 approach. We have so many choices at Polar Steps 295 of what we do. And an example of a very tough strategic decision is when 296 do you do subscription? So right now, if you look at the travel space, you 297 look at the research, subscription is really effective in travel. People are willing to spend 298 money when they're traveling. They're willing to spend money on tools that will help them. 299 And we could at Polar Steps have launched this subscription service 300 last year. We could have launched it this year and we've decided not to. A 301 lot of competitive apps, so we don't really have one competitor, but we have lots 302 of apps that have competitive bits. A lot of them are doing premium models because

303 it's a way to make a lot of money. At Polar Steps, we're not interested 304 in making a lot of money this year or next year. We're actually very healthy 305 financially. So luckily we don't have to choose. But what we're much more interested in 306 is building something that is amazing for the user and that has huge consumer 307 growth. And in that case, we decided not to do things like 308 launch subscription last year or this year because though instead we want to focus 309 on building amazing features that delight and surprise all of our users, not 310 a tiny subset of users who are paying. We wanted to build things that make 311 people excited all over the world in all these different countries, while we're hitting 312 this really big user growth curve. So that was a big decision for us because

313 of course, at any moment you could have gone. We could make a lot of 314 money right now by launching subscription, but we're not going to. And that's because 315 we're all about user value. What's the thing we can do right now to create 316 the best user experience? And still this year we've been building features 317 to delight all of our users, rather than features to delight us. Subset of them 318 who are going to be paying. Now, over time, there will come a point where 319 it makes absolute sense to launch subscription, because we've done the major features for the 320 mass market and we'll be into niche ones. But our thing is always focus on 321 the user first. What does the user want? And right now, what we think the 322 user wants is the features that we've been building, particularly in inspiration and planning. Those

323 are quite new to us. Rather than building something for a 324 subset of users that will make you a lot of money, that's not the focus 325 for us. The latest 326 AI powered planner has been a headline feature 327 and a lot of people are now doing AI for the sake of AI. 328 How did he ensure this wasn't just another 329 gimmick, but something that genuinely 330 enhanced the traveler's experience? Yeah, so this is something 331 we've spent so much time on because right now it's very 332 easy to go to an LLM like chatgpt and just type in, plan 333 me a trip to Italy, I'm going for a week. And the problem with that 334 is the LLMs, the way that they're built is not about finding 335 unique or authentic or off the beaten track experiences. What will happen 336

is you'll all get sent to the same place. You've seen this happen over and 337 over again. You get very broad, very vague recommendations that send people to the 338 same place. And even if you're really trying, people will have 339 experience of this. If you're really trying to find really off the beaten track 340 experiences that suit you, it's really difficult with an LLM because the 341 LLMs are statistical models. They're trying to help show the most likely thing that 342 they think you want and therefore they're going to be sending everybody to the same 343 places. So the difference here is instead of doing that, we do a couple of 344 things. One is we take your personal travel history. So if you opt in. So 345 this is opt in only, but for people who want to use the AI feature, 346 we take your personal travel history and we look at that, we say, who are

347 you as a traveler? So in my case, it knows that I really, actually really 348 love train travel. I'm a big fan of trains. I really like it when I 349 can go on a train across Europe rather than flying over. I like to go 350 through and I like to stop on the way. And so when it plans a 351 trip for me. So I actually got it to plan a trip for me in 352 the US recently and it sent me on trains through the US and Canada 353 to see all kinds of amazing nature spots and see beautiful. I 354 love, you know, exploring and hiking and things like that. And it's, it's planning its 355 whole trip based on my preferences as an individual. So that's the first thing it 356 finds you things as an individual. It doesn't treat you the same as everyone else.

357 The other thing we do is in our build of the AI product 358 we put our values of how we believe travel should be 359 into that. And that is about curiosity, but it's also about taking 360 care of the places you go. And so we're trying to help people build 361 journeys which are not just about getting on a plane, going to 362 a place where the locals feel very sick of everybody and it's really over touristed 363 and then coming home again. What we're trying to do is help people understand that 364 there are so many ways to travel. And yeah, if you want to, you know, 365 maybe for example, you, you're used to going to tourist hotspots because you want to 366 feel safe. Okay, we can help you find somewhere that gives you the safety and 367 the feeling of exploration within with comfort. We can help you do

368 that in a place where maybe the locals aren't saying please go home. This is 369 thoroughly over touristed. You know, you want amazing art. Okay, we can help you find 370 that. So a lot of the difference here is rather than just giving generic recommendations 371 that are very vague and very broad and that gets send everyone to the same 372 place. We're saying who are you as an individual? And also how are 373 there ways to travel that might be better for the world than what we've been 374 doing so far? You said 375 in the past that the magic of Polar steps is turning memories 376 into something that can, you can hold in your hands. 377 The printed travel book, for example. Take us behind that idea. 378 Why was preserving emotional memory just as 379 important as scaling a digital app? And we'll talk about

380 this in our founders vault. Find the link down here in the show notes. 381 We've been talking about scaling from the Netherlands 382 outwards, especially into Germany and France. That 383 requires some nuances, some cultural nuances. 384 What did you learn about travel behaviors that surprised you and 385 how did it shape your localization playbook? 386 Yeah, I mean so many people it's incredible 387 as we expand that we learn different things. One of the things I've really enjoyed 388 in the German market, actually, is that a lot of the users are really 389 responding to the fact that Polar Steps is very private. So 390 most of our users have their. All of their trips are private. And you can 391 choose between totally private, just for me. So you as an individual, you can 392 choose family and friends. So Maybe it's your 3, 4, 5 favorite

393 people in the world, or you can choose public. And in Germany, we've seen that 394 the users really respond to the fact that this is not broadcasting. So 395 you're not sharing this with everybody. This is a very, very small select group and 396 the privacy is really important. And that is something that has resonated. I mean, it 397 resonates with all our users, but in Germany, more, more, more than in other places. 398 So we're hearing from users that they care about these. We also constantly have users 399 getting in touch with ideas and actually coming out of Germany, you have. People might 400 be requesting extra privacy features or ways to change things so that they have. They 401 can, can use those privacy features in a different way. So that's been one example 402 and seeing how important privacy is. And that's great because for us, it's something

403 we've always cared about. We've been. The whole point of Polar Steps is that it 404 is for you and your closest friends and family. This is not about getting 405 there on Instagram and showing everyone in the world what you've done. This is about 406 a really authentic experience for me in 10 years and maybe for the four or 407 five people I love most in the world. So that's been really nice because it 408 resonates really nicely in the, in the German market. Whereas, yeah, when you look at, 409 for example, the US As I mentioned earlier, we've seen huge differences in how people 410 travel. Partly an example would be in. In Europe, 411 we're really lucky that we have these massive vacations, right? We have holiday, so 412 we can have advent adventures that last a month. In the US you have

413 10 days to use for all of your adventures that year. So what you see 414 in the US is really interesting. People might be planning trips, they might plan it 415 around the Thanksgiving holiday. And so not only are they going to 416 their parents for Thanksgiving, they're going to do a road trip on the way there 417 and stop on two or three places on the way to try and combine the 418 Thanksgiving holiday with the weekend with a bit of a vacation day. And that leads 419 to a very highly planned trip. So when you look at our planning Use planning 420 in the US is really you're planning, I mean, sometimes to the hour, the level 421 of planning that you're seeing people do in the app. And that is because in 422 Europe, yeah, I might show up somewhere if I'm spending a month exploring, I don't

423 need to plan everything to the hour, whereas if I've only got 10 vacation days 424 to use in the whole year, I'm going to plan and behave really differently. So 425 that's been a really fun thing, is just seeing the app out there 426 and seeing people use it for totally different things. And the resonance across all 427 is it's people exploring, it's people having adventures. But the types of adventures 428 are just so different across different markets 429 from our audience. I'd like to know you listening 430 and have you ever used a travel app that genuinely 431 changed how you travel? If you're one of 432 polar steps, 80 million explorers, drop your story in the comments 433 or Tag us on LinkedIn and we might feature you in the next week's 434 highlight thread. We've been talking 435 about user growth here and retention and virality

436 of the holy grail of consumer apps. What are the keys 437 uses, loops or behaviors that keep 438 PolarSteps community coming back and even bring 439 your friends along. Yeah. So I think the first thing is the fact 440 that it's staying very small in terms of that social network. 441 So the fact that we are not saying to people, bring everyone. You can 442 make sure everyone follows you on Polar Steps. What we're seeing is people bring their 443 closest people. It might be their best friend, their sister, 444 their mum, sometimes, sometimes even their grandmother. And it's people that 445 they really love that they may bring in to follow them on their trips. And 446 so that's a really key part of it, because the reason that people come back 447 is because they are coming back as a traveler themselves, because they want to track

448 their trips, but also because they follow people that they love. And so even if 449 I'm not on a trip, if I get a notification. So one of my sisters 450 did this amazing walk through Italy and when she was tracking on pillow steps, I 451 would get. I would get so excited for every day. I knew she was going 452 to do one update a day. And I would click that notification and I'd see 453 what she'd been up to. And that made me really happy and joyful, even though 454 I wasn't even traveling. I was just consuming her content. But because it's 455 somebody I loved very deeply and a really important thing. So in the design, 456 in the way that we think about Polar Steps, this is not about trying to 457 dilute that and say, get everyone you know to follow you or become a travel

458 influencer. This is really about keep it very real, keep it very small, 459 keep it very authentic. So that's one reason and that's the reason that it works 460 as an organic growth loop, because people bring their closest people with 461 them. So they invite four or five people. They don't invite a thousand, they invite 462 four or five people. But because that is a very strong call to action, which 463 is, hi best friend, come and follow my trip on polar stuff steps. Very strong 464 call to action, which means the best friend probably does follow them. And then also 465 every time they do an update, the best friend probably does click on the notification 466 and open it up and read it. Which is why you get that retained behavior. 467 Because they're having a really positive experience as a follower and as a traveler. So

468 you get that retained behavior. The other thing is also investing in 469 long term decisions about product which are about the love of 470 the user. So sometimes what you can do is you can pick a metric and 471 you can be like, in the next three months we want to change this conversion 472 rate that works for changing conversion rates. What you sometimes miss 473 with that is the longer term bets which are creating a beautiful user 474 experience. Now that's really hard to measure in the short term. You can measure it 475 in retention over three years, but it's very hard within a quarter to do that. 476 And so a big thing we really care about internally is also taking big 477 leaps, big leaps in design, big leaps in surprise and delight. Features that 478 may not affect the conversion rate now, but are a huge part of the reason

479 that our users just come back. Our retention is, is extraordinary at 480 prototypes. I've never seen anything like this in travel and that is because the users 481 love it. And so part of our job is to keep investing in things that 482 users are going to love rather than just the things that give you short term 483 increases or improvements in retention or conversion. 484 As the CEO, you're not just building a product, you're building 485 a brand. How do you keep a sense of purpose, 486 mindful, sustainable travel alive inside a 487 really fast growing organization? Yeah, yeah. So this is 488 a lot of this is about the values. So the values of the company have 489 to be real and they have to be lived by people. And I think our 490 company does a beautiful job of that. And actually one of our values is do

491 good, be good. And I love that value because it's a really nice 492 shorthand for when you're making a decision. And if there's something where you're not quite 493 sure what to do, but the deciding factor is, is this the right thing to 494 do? Is this. Is this being good as a company? Is this being good as 495 a person? That's a really nice way to make a decision, a make a quick 496 decision, because you're like, yes, is this in line with our values? So that's one 497 way. The other way is that the company's also gone through this change moment with 498 the founders bringing me in as CEO. So the founders staying in the company, but 499 bringing me in a CEO. And there was an important moment for them which was 500 also, how do we keep the values, the things you've just mentioned, how do we

501 keep them as the company goes through this change with bringing someone else in and 502 also growing a lot and really expanding internationally and growing the team. And 503 so what. What they did before I joined was draft a 504 manifesto. And then when I joined, my job was to go through it with them, 505 make sure we were aligned, and then we shared it with the company. It's an 506 internal document. It's actually a beautiful website that's been made which explains the 507 kind of manifesto for how Polar Steps believes travel should be and how we want 508 to behave as a company. And that document is really interesting because it's a 509 very much a living document. It actually feeds part of our AI, so we used 510 it to feed part of our AI, but we also talk about it. So we

511 were having a conversation last week about a feature we might want to build, and 512 one of my colleagues was like, is this in line with the manifesto? And it's 513 such a great question. Is, is this in line with the manifesto? Because you've taken 514 a set of principles and beliefs that you can all agree, me and the founders, 515 we all agree this. And therefore, when we're making decisions, we can use it as 516 a shorthand, which is, is this in line with the manifesto? If it's not, we 517 should really reconsider what we're doing. And that's been a really helpful way to do 518 that on a daily basis as well as kind of a big vision and 519 mission basis. Guys, 520 we'll be right back after the short ad break where Claire reveals 521 the counterintuitive growth strategy that helped Polar Stops become one

522 of Europe's fast travel apps without buying a single 523 user. Stay tuned. 524 Okay, let's unpack that growth strategy. 525 Claire, what's the biggest misconception founders have 526 about user acquisition? And what did you do 527 differently at Polar Steps? So I think one of the 528 things that people can get very excited about is 529 it's very easy to acquire customers throughout ads. It's very easy. 530 And you make some beautiful ads. You can put them on Instagram and you can 531 get people clicking and downloading. But the quality of the people that you're bringing in, 532 that's the question mark, is, are they going to stick around? Are they going to 533 engage? Are they the right kind of user? And so for us, there's been 534 a different approach we're taking. Actually, this is an approach we're taking in the US 535

right now, which is we're not going out and we're doing loads of ads. Instead 536 what we're doing is we're doing grassroots, bottom up growth. And so, for 537 example, we know that if you look right back at the beginning of when Polar 538 Steps first started, the reason it started to grow was that the founders were travellers. 539 So they told their friends who were travelers and they told their friends who were 540 travellers and they told their friends who are travellers. And that growth was really 541 powerful because it was getting the right users, users who were excited, users for whom 542 there was huge, huge value and they were telling each other. So that's a lot 543 of what our approach is. Instead of going, we're just going to spend loads and 544 loads of money and we're just going to get lots and lots of users into

545 the pipeline and lots of them are going to churn, but that'll be okay because 546 it will come out in the wash. That's not what we're doing. What we're really 547 interested in is tell people who are travellers, who are adventurous about Polar 548 Steps and they will fall in love because the product is amazing. So because 549 we know this, because this is the feedback we always hear from users, they love 550 Polar Steps. When I sit on support inbox, one of my favorite things is the 551 amount of people, even if they found a bug, because there's already bugs somewhere, if 552 they found a bug, so often they will start their email with, hi, hi guys, 553 I want to tell you first of all how much I love Polar Steps. And 554 then they will say, I'm so sorry, but I think I might have found a

555 bug or I'd like to request a change. But the fact that people are emailing 556 us, starting, and sometimes all they do is to sell how much they love Polar 557 Steps. That level of user love is so valuable. And 558 instead of focusing on how can we grow and blitzscale something and 559 get as many users in the funnel as possible, if what you focus on is 560 how do we build a product that users fall in love with, they will bring 561 Other users for you. So the fact that our growth is organic is because users 562 bring other users with them because they love the product, because it adds value to 563 them. And so although we have found ways to speed this up with marketing, the 564 vast majority of our users are coming organically. And for us that is the focus

565 is how do we build an incredible product Product, not how do we go out 566 and spend loads of money to acquire as many downloads as possible and focus on 567 those vanity metrics. This is really very real. So for example, our 568 metrics that we use, there are loads of vanity metrics you could do. We've got 569 loads of people, for example, who visit our web version of Polar Steps. We 570 don't count those in our monthly active users. We could, lots of people would, it 571 could be a nice vanity metric. But for us we don't because what we care 572 about is real, engaged, sustained, retained users. And that is 573 because we are trying to build a product for the long term that people want 574 of it. 575 You've repeatedly said that Polar Steps will remain app 576 free and privacy first. How do you monetize

577 ethically while keeping trust sacred? 578 And in a data driven industry. Yeah. 579 So I think people think that there is a trade off. So if you look 580 at Per, in some ways is a social media app, right? It's, it's 581 very private social media. It is in some ways like a social media app. And 582 in these other apps that have been designed, it's being presented as 583 the only way to monetize this is through ads. So therefore we have to, we 584 have to sell your data or you have to subscribe. So we don't sell your 585 data or we have to sell you ads. And that just is not true. There 586 are lots of ways to make money and I think Polar Steps is a great 587 example of this. So Kuhn, who was the original CEO and the founder who's still

588 in the company, he had the idea of funding polar sepsis 589 growth with travel books and that that could have easily with a different kind of 590 found different with different types of founders with different values. They could easily have gone. 591 The way we're going to fund the growth is through ads or selling data. 592 Instead, Kuhn went I would like to find a way to fund the growth 593 that respects the users, it respects their privacy, it respects their data. It also respects 594 their experience. Because the minute you start showing those ads, you are changing that 595 experience. And you might be saying, you know, right now we're very independent. We're able 596 to say here are beautiful adventures that you could have over here. And we are 597 not, not doing that because it's commercially better for us to show you this type

598 of trip. The minute you start to have ads and selling data, it's just really 599 changing the user experience. And you're prioritizing money over the user, in 600 this case by saying, you know what, we're going to fund our growth with travel 601 books. It was a way for Kuhn and the team to say, we don't 602 need to do the thing that everyone else does, which is sell your data, or 603 you become the product as the user. We can still provide a free app by 604 selling a physical product, which is really important to you as a traveler, and that 605 allows us to fund our growth. And I think that is just a different way 606 of thinking. You come at it and you go, if my constraints are, I don't 607 want to fundraise loads of money, because that's another option. You just fundraise loads. They

608 didn't want to do that. I don't want to fundraise and I don't want to 609 sell our user either for ads or data. What are my constraints? What could I 610 do within that? And that's where the travel books idea came from. And that is 611 quite a different way of thinking, because it's very rare that a tech company would 612 say, you know what, I'm going to fund our first 15 million users through a 613 physical product. But actually, it's been a way that's allowed us to get to this 614 scale now. Now we're introducing more revenue streams that are more digital tool. It's not 615 ads and it's not selling data. It's things like affiliate partnerships, where if someone wants 616 to book accommodation, et cetera, they can and we get some commission. But that 617 allowed us to get to that level of growth without having to sacrifice our values

618 and our ideals. And yes, it means we haven't got any of those horrible ads 619 in the app. And we won't have any of those horrible ads in the app. 620 Oh, yeah. Just came to mind. A lot of 621 apps that do have some type of 622 gambling or crypto trading ads all over the place. That's. 623 Yeah. Other topic 624 you've been just talking about. Affiliate partnerships and other 625 partnerships. For example, Booking.com, airbnb and Hostel 626 Worlds are now part of your app experience. How 627 do you decide which integrations fit your vision and where 628 do you draw the line? And I'm very, very confident you not only 629 decide on who gives you the bigger affiliate 630 kickback. Right, right. Yeah. So I. I think that's a great example. So 631 we Have Hostelworld on the platform. And obviously the spend on a, on a

632 kind of booking basis of something like Hostel World versus a hotel platform 633 is very different. Right. They're going to spend a lot less on something like a 634 Hostel World because that's hostels. It's not expensive, four star hotels. 635 But that's a great example where this is all about the user. So lots of 636 our users are young. We are talking about very young people who are often 637 traveling on their first adventures as independent humans away from their parents. 638 And they're not going to be staying in expensive places, they're going to be staying 639 in places like, like hostels. And so what we're trying to do is listen to 640 the needs of the user and yes, you might make more money if you were 641 directing them to other types of more expensive platforms. But what we want is the 642

user to feel happy and excited on polar steps. And a key thing here is 643 those are accommodation partners that we have. So if you come through and you plan 644 a trip with us and you haven't booked your accommodation, you can say, oh, 645 look, yes, I have the option to go to airbnb booking.com or 646 hostelworld. But the step before that is, if you already have accommodation, we have a 647 really wonderful way that you can just forward those accommodations bookings to an email 648 and they will appear beautifully in your itinerary, even if you book them anywhere else. 649 So what we're trying to do is give lots of choice to the user and 650 say, how do you want to travel? And that could be you're staying with your 651 friend for part of the trip and you just put that in your booking and

652 that's in your itinerary that you're staying with Emma for three nights. Or it could 653 be, I'm camping, I've booked a campsite. All of those things can go into your 654 plan. So what we're trying to do is give users the choice and to listen 655 to them. And then we know we've got a load of young users on the 656 platform and, and that's great for us. We love having young users. We're not trying 657 to monetize them more than they would feel comfortable. We're totally 658 happy to have young users on the platform booking things like hostels that might not 659 make as much money as an expensive hotel, but are much more on brand and 660 part of this adventurous spirit of bolus steps. We've been talking about a lot of 661 doing the stuff that your users like. I was 662

wondering, as a leader, how do you keep innovation 663 alive in a product that's already beloved. 664 What tools, what mechanisms do you use to ensure your 665 teams keep reimagining travel rather than 666 just simply optimizing step by step? Yeah, so I think a 667 lot of this is in the structure of the company. And so a thing that 668 we have, which I think really helps with this, is we have our product 669 managers and they have a design person that they work really closely with. 670 So, for example, in our track, which is what we call the bit where you're 671 on your trip and you're sharing with your friends and family, we have an absolutely 672 amazing designer, Fika, and we have an absolutely amazing product manager, Analyne. And 673 the fact that they work so closely together all the time. So they are. It's

674 not like they. You're having a different designer for each project. They work really, really 675 closely together. And that breeds innovation because, number one, they're both users of the 676 app, so they always think about things that they would like as a user. But 677 number two, they're incredibly rigorous in how they think. But they're also sparring partners. So 678 you have someone from the design and someone from the product perspective, and then you 679 also have someone from the engineering perspective who's what we call a pillar captain, who 680 works with them from the engineering perspective. So you have those three people who 681 care very, very deeply about that one bit of the app and also, of course, 682 how it leads into the other bits of the app beside it. But they care 683 very, very deeply about it, and they are empowered to really own that roadmap

684 themselves. And that's really, really important, because I might have an idea, but I 685 have a totally different vantage point. So my idea should be data, but it shouldn't 686 be direction. My idea should be input, just like anybody else in the company's idea 687 is input. And then we have to these groups of people and the teams that 688 they work with, the engineering teams particularly, and the user research team, who are then 689 able to help them do that. The other thing we have is we have a 690 group, we call them Focus Projects, but this is a group who work across 691 all kinds of different bits of the business. And this is so Kuhn, who was 692 the original CEO and is a product founder. 693 Kuhn actually runs that. And that allows us to innovate as well, because you have

694 somebody who has all the experience of having been a CEO, understands both the 695 business, business and the industry very, very deeply, and can therefore 696 innovate. And so, for example, we recently launched an amazing video feature, and that 697 came out of Kuhn's team, which was an innovation team. And so that's the lovely 698 thing is it allows us, by having this team that sort of sits outside the 699 normal structure a little bit, it allows you to basically have these kind of innovation 700 projects and you can try new things and you can run really fast because you 701 have someone with that deep, deep product experience, experience of strategy, 702 experience of decision making of commercials, all those things in that product manager 703 role that Kuhn takes on with those projects. And that's a really special thing that 704 I'm really pleased that we've been able to do do by having a founder who

705 stayed in the business. I was wondering for our 706 audience, let's get tactical at the moment. Inside the founder's world, 707 Claire will share parts of the growth dashboard. Polostep uses 708 Claire Travel apps touch deep emotional 709 territory like memory, belonging, nostalgia. 710 How do you design your ex that respects these 711 emotions while driving engagement and business outcomes? 712 Yeah, and this is, this is a key thing which is in, 713 in the product decisions, you are always thinking about authenticity. 714 And so an example of this would be it would be really easy for us 715 to build a feature that takes when people are writing. So when people 716 write the kind of journal, we call it a step. When they write 717 their update of their day or that location, it's a lot of text. And 718 sometimes people spend many hours, sometimes people spend a few minutes. Minutes. It depends on

719 the person. A very easy thing you could do would be build an 720 LLM that would just take a few notes and write it for you. And 721 that for me is not authentic. If all that's happened is you've taken a few 722 notes, like, I saw a sunset, I went on a bike ride, whatever. And then 723 you feed it to the LLM and it will write a narrative for you that 724 is not your real voice. There might be ways that we can help speed things 725 up. We might want to look about how people can input their notes more efficiently. 726 But what we don't want is an LLM actually writing your step for you, because 727 that is losing the authenticity and that emotion. And for us, so much 728 of the value in polar steps is the value for me in 10 years, not,

729 not tomorrow. So when I've just been on a trip, I remember everything. Like a 730 month later, I remember most things. Three years later, I've forgotten huge parts of that 731 trip. And when I go back to my polar steps and I look at the 732 text that I wrote me as a real human with my emotion on that 733 day or on that week that I had that adventure, it comes back to me 734 because it was real. If you just, just take Shortcuts, which is like, 735 yeah, we could. For example, that would be how do we get people writing more 736 text? Because maybe we think that might help drive engagement. You could take a shortcut, 737 which is, yeah, great, let's just get an LLM to write it. But then you're 738 losing the authenticity, the reality, the thing that creates the long term value for the

739 user. Because this is not just about sharing with my friends and family in the 740 moment. This is also about me remembering this and looking back on it in the 741 rest of my life. Which is one of the key bits of the value of 742 Polar Steps is this becomes the profile of me as a traveler. Every place I've 743 been, every adventure I've had had in detail and I want to be able to 744 look back and remember it. So that's just one example. But the whole thing is 745 keep authenticity at the core. When we're designing, when we're thinking about products and 746 features, really, really care about that authentic experience. And 747 that has to form part of the design decisions. 748 You've been part of the management team of two 749 scale ups with global reach. How do you see the.

750 Compare the dynamics of them and. And what did he 751 carry over from one to 752 another? Yeah, so they're very different in some ways and very 753 similar in others, I think. Yeah. One of the interesting things 754 about what three words was having to educate people that an entirely new addressing system 755 was needed. You were taking an addressing system which was designed for postal 756 delivery hundreds of years ago and going, should we maybe update this now? And 757 now we have devices and maybe have something that's designed more for human machine 758 interaction. So there was a lot of education needed at Polar Steps. You actually don't 759 need to do any education. So that's quite a fun difference is that here 760 all you need to do is get the app in the hands of a traveler 761 and that's it. They will fall in love, they will tell their friends. So that's

762 been a difference. I think one of the things that I've taken across with me 763 is the learning that extraordinary people can do 764 huge amounts of things even on their own. So we had 765 at what three words? I remember one of my favorite bits of the company was 766 as we were starting to get traction in the U.S. u.S. We hired this amazing 767 person, Marcus. And Marcus just ran around the US 768 making things that you didn't even think possible happen. I remember once he came back 769 and he was like, yeah. So I've convinced one of the biggest music festivals in 770 this state to put signs out saying download the app. And he thought that 771 that was free. He didn't pay for that. He just convinced them to do it 772 just because he is this incredibly charismatic and intelligent and amazing person who could run

773 around and make amazing things happen. And so I remember that and I remember 774 having how valuable it can be if you, you choose the right person. They can 775 just make extraordinary things happen. And we've just hired an amazing person, Nina, 776 who is an extraordinary person who can make huge things happen in the US Because 777 I learned that lesson, which is you don't need a huge marketing budget and you 778 don't need 25 people if you're trying to keep your team and your company small. 779 If you find one extraordinary person, they can make huge leaps 780 in a market because they are extraordinary. And that was the thing I loved learning. 781 I've loved seeing it come true many times over in my career, that extraordinary 782 people, these amazing people with exceptional skill sets, can just make 783 huge things happen. And yeah, I'm really enjoying replicating that one here.

784 Being an EMT for almost a decade, first in national 785 service and then working through apprenticeship and study, there's 786 a lot of stories I could tell where street addresses usually 787 don't work, especially if you need to find them urgently, but 788 that's a completely different topic. And I'm totally fine with getting 789 rid of this system, but. But let's look a little bit ahead. There's 790 artificial intelligence, there is augmented 791 reality, immersive travel. What future tech do you 792 believe will most change how people plan and 793 relive their journeys by 2030? Yeah, I mean, 794 of course, isn't it wonderful to imagine what reliving your adventure can look like in 795 a world where we've got more 3D and more wearables and all those sorts of 796 things? Of course, that's exciting. I actually think the interesting thing that will 797

happen will be a bit of pushback against 798 what we're seeing already right now on the Internet with travel, which is 799 AI generated content taking over a lot of 800 these spaces. So whether that's blogs, even increasingly upsettingly, we're seeing this on 801 Reddit, which has for so long been so authentic. But people have understood that 802 Reddit feeds the LLMs. So they're paying, you know, they're basically paying companies or doing 803 it themselves to fill it up with AI content to try and get their company 804 mentioned or their brand mentioned. And I think the interesting pushback we will see is 805 we'll see, see a reversal a little bit towards trusted sources that 806 come from humans, because we know LLMs can do all sorts of things. 807 But it's very surface level, right? If you need depth, if you want depth, you

808 need a human. And so as we look at travel content, we're seeing already 809 that over time, as LLMs absorb content made by other LLMs, 810 it very quickly becomes nonsense and not usable. So we need human 811 beings involved in this. And so I think we'll see a bit more of a 812 swing away from, from public information made by LLMs and 813 easily consumed by LLMs towards sources that are trusted and 814 authentic and actually sometimes closed communities. So we see this in Polar 815 Steps. We see people viewing Polar Steps as a trusted source because it's got other 816 travelers and it's real stories and it's not public, actually, that not everything in 817 Polar Steps is public and it's not all being crawled by LLMs and it's not 818 all being written by LLMs. And that's actually something that we're seeing a lot. And

819 you see it already in people love communities like Strava. Strava is a 820 great example where you have this people who are loving their kind of closed community 821 of people, whether it's trust and its authenticity. And I think that's a trend that 822 we will see coming back. So we've had this couple of years where everyone's got 823 very excited by everything that LLMs can do, including in Travel World, where there's so 824 much travel content out there right now written by LLMs. And I think we're going 825 to see an increasing swing back towards trusting the travel content of 826 the people around you, of your friends and family, of travelers like you, and of 827 travel experts. And at Polar Steps, we think this is really important, which is why 828 we have a team of human editors who are travel experts who shape a huge

829 amount of amount of our content at Polar Steps, because we believe that that is 830 where it's coming back to, which is trust and authenticity and a bit of the 831 human stuff in there. Because otherwise the LLM content, it 832 doesn't take very long before that becomes incredibly useless, really, because it's either very 833 broad or you have this thing of LLMs absorbing content written by other LLMs and 834 it becomes nonsense quite quickly. I personally 835 discovered, for me, the more digital the world 836 became, the more physical reminders of 837 travels. I bought to just counteract this a little bit, but 838 just personal belief going into another personal belief. What 839 contrarian belief you hold about the travel industry, 840 something most founders or investors in your opinions, 841 they get wrong. For me, I think this is about values, which is that

842 you cannot build a travel business and pretend it doesn't have 843 an impact on the world, both environmentally and in terms of 844 communities. And I think the problem we have at the moment is we don't talk 845 enough about that in the early stages, when people are founding businesses, when they're scaling 846 those businesses. And actually, you know, in my experience, the investors that we love speaking 847 to are the ones who do care about this and are saying, what does your 848 impact look like in the world? How do you think about slow travel? How do 849 you think about climate change? How do you think about over tourism? And if. And 850 there are a lot, but there are also investors who don't care about those things. 851 They're just. Just thinking about the bottom line. And I think, for me, 852

I'm sure nobody ever went into the travel world trying to design things that would 853 be negative, but we have had accidental negative impacts. So if you look at this, 854 for example, with Instagram, we know that we've seen this thing where an influencer 855 will go to a place and it might be a small village and there might 856 be something really beautiful there, and they will post a video and it will go 857 viral and people will descend on that village, and the village doesn't have the infrastructure 858 for it. Often the villagers don't want you there. Often the tourists will behave disgracefully. 859 They will drop rubbish everywhere. People won't even get the Instagram picture they wanted because 860 they'll stand queue for 25 minutes and then they'll have to Photoshop out the rubbish 861 that was in the picture. All these things were not intentional, but they can be

862 avoided if you are intentional about your design. So a thing that I really believe 863 we should do in the travel industry is care about the impact, care about the 864 impact on communities, care about the impact on environment. So when you're making product decisions 865 and when you're making growth decisions, you're also accounting for that, because if you don't, 866 you will have a negative impact accidentally, even if you didn't intend to, you will. 867 And so for us, it's about having, having a positive impact and helping people travel 868 in ways that are good for the world, good for the communities, good for them, 869 good for curiosity, rather than just assuming that travel has no 870 impact. Travel has an impact and you should care about and you should design with 871 that in mind. We do have a lot of 872

founders, different stages as well, future founders 873 who are listening to this episode. And I think you have to be 874 really interested if you're still sticking with us. We're now recording for more than 50 875 minutes. You have an amazing guest. Thank you, Claire. But for Future 876 founders who are listening and dream of scaling a consumer 877 app from Europe into the world. What's one lesson 878 you'd engrave into their office wall so they see it 879 every day? Do not believe people who say, you cannot do 880 this as Europeans. So we. There is so much of this 881 idea that Silicon Valley is the place, particularly in consumer Silicon Valley. You've got 882 to be in Silicon Valley. You've got to be in the US if you want 883 to build a massive consumer app. App, or you can only 884 build a massive consumer app if everybody works 996 and you don't

885 respect people's work life balance and you don't respect privacy and data and 886 labor law and the things that we have actually protected a lot in Europe, don't 887 believe those things. We can do this. We are doing this right now. We are 888 building a beautiful app that is used all over the world. We've got 18 million 889 travelers. The growth has absolutely shot up. And we are doing it in line with 890 European values and we are doing it in a way that takes care of, of 891 our employees and our team, as well as our users as well as our users, 892 privacy. And I think that is a really important message that we need to be 893 proud in Europe that we can build big businesses. And this is going to be 894 a really big business. This is going to be a global brand and we're going

895 to build it here in Europe. We're not moving to the U.S. we're building it 896 in Amsterdam. We're proud of being European. And so anybody who is out 897 there, people will say to you, you can't build big businesses in Europe. Yes, you 898 can. We have a bunch of big businesses we built here, including in consumer. Believe 899 in it. Don't. Don't listen to a few small voices that might tell, you have 900 to move to the US Particularly from investors. They might say, the only way to 901 make this work is to move it to the US that is not the only 902 way. We can build huge businesses in Europe with wonderful European values and we 903 can do this. So don't listen to the people who say otherwise. 904 I would engrave that in a wall. Finally, 905 the last official question. We do have the two mandatory closing

906 questions, as always. Finally, when you're looking 907 back over you when this is going to be published, around 18 months 908 as CEO, what's been the most defining moment, the 909 one that changed how you lead? I would say 910 our winter party last year, because there was this 911 moment where the team had surprised us. So I didn't know they were doing this 912 and they had written a song. So they'd rewritten the words of a Christmas 913 song to be about the company and including a character of me. Me. 914 So one of our. One of our developers, he dressed up as me, including a 915 wig. And I'm a very cold person, so I'm always wearing a body warmer in 916 the office. And he even managed to get a body warmer. And he was dressed 917 up as me. And he and a few colleagues made

918 this beautiful and very funny song. And it was one 919 of the warmest things that I have experienced at work because it was so full 920 of affection for the company, but also for us as leaders. And it was 921 actually like an incredibly touching moment. And it was something that I. I 922 have really taken forward with me because it really breaks down the barriers 923 between the team and you as a leader when you have this 924 warmth between you and. Because this is a company that has so 925 much warmth in its culture and people who are so affectionate and funny and 926 kind and like that. For me, because I had only been there since June 927 at that point, that for me was such a wonderful moment of, oh, 928 wow. This is a place where I, as a human, can feel really warm

929 and welcomed and appreciated, even as a lead leader. You know, as a leader, you 930 often try and think about, how do I make other people feel included and valued 931 and appreciated. And at Polar Steps, I feel that all the time from our team, 932 we have this incredibly warm team. And that, for me, was a wonderful thing to 933 actually get to experience. And it's also, I think, yeah, for me, 934 that it instilled in me the importance of caring for 935 our team and our culture because it is so special, because it can make me 936 as the CEO, the new CEO. Coming into this company feels so included and so 937 able to be myself. And that is a really special thing. And that gave me, 938 like, an incredibly high bar for how we grow this company and make sure that

939 we protect so much of what is special about this company. I 940 have a special sense of humor, and I'm still trying to let sink 941 in that you're a person who's always code leading a company 942 that starts with the name Polar. Okay, 943 not going to drill on that. Our 944 usual questions for the close. Are you open to talk to new 945 investors? Yes, if they're investors who care about values and behaving well in 946 the world. And are you currently looking for talented 947 employees? Yes, absolutely. Lots and lots of hiring. Please get in 948 touch. We have a careers website with lots of roles on and we're always adding 949 to it. Claire, thank you. Thank you very much. It was pleasure having 950 you as guest and we almost hitting the one hour mark for 951 a very very nice interview. Thank you very much. Was a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks.

952 That's all folks. Find more news streams, 953 events and 954 interviews@www.startuprad.IO. 955 remember, sharing is caring. 956 Sam.

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What is Polarsteps?

Polarsteps is a travel app that combines trip planning, tracking, and memory preservation in one product, designed for private sharing with close friends and family rather than public broadcasting.

How did Polarsteps reach 18M+ users?

Polarsteps scaled through organic product-led growth driven by intimate sharing loops, strong retention, and market spillover from the Netherlands into France and other countries, with selective marketing acceleration.

Why is privacy a growth advantage in travel apps?

Privacy increases trust and reduces social pressure. Users share more authentically when they control who sees their trip, which increases engagement and makes invitations to follow a trip more meaningful.

Does Polarsteps use ads or sell user data?

No. Polarsteps positions ads and data selling as harmful to user trust and experience. It monetizes through travel books and user-aligned partnerships instead.

Why did Polarsteps delay subscription monetization?

Polarsteps delayed subscription to keep feature development focused on the full user base during the growth phase, rather than optimizing for premium-only value that could slow mass adoption.

What is wrong with generic AI travel planners?

Generic AI planners tend to recommend the same “most likely” destinations and experiences to everyone, reducing authenticity and accelerating overtourism. Polarsteps uses personalization to avoid this convergence.

How does Polarsteps personalize travel planning?

Polarsteps uses opt-in travel history and preference signals to shape itinerary recommendations, so trips reflect the traveler’s actual style rather than generic tourist templates.

What is Polarsteps’ strongest retention mechanism?

Retention comes from emotional memory value and follower engagement. Users return both to document their own trips and to follow trips from people they care about.

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