Voya

Bringing AI to business travel - From first MVP to exit with Volkswagen

3.5

months from idea to market

+1M

app downloads

+5M

funding from top investors

The ask

Build and launch Voya’s smart business travel app in just 100 days.

The Solution

An AI-powered travel management app for business travellers.

Background

To most business travellers, managing travel administration has always been a tedious task. As a response to this problem, the founders of Voya imagined a software solution that would easily manage all the services a business traveler needed.

After securing seed funding, Voya asked MVP Factory to bring their vision to life and help disrupt the industry.

The Challenge

The Voya team came to us with an idea that needed to become a real app in very little time. Starting with a clean whiteboard, we first had to unpack everything Voya had done up till now, challenging and validating their strategy, prototype, and route to market.

There were many questions that still needed answering, like what are the first steps for development?

What is the balance between scalability and features when you are aiming at Series A funding? And how can we find and build the right team for the job? Assuming that Voya would become an app used by potentially millions of users, we needed a rock solid action plan. Challenge accepted.

BUILDING AN AI APP FROM SCRATCH

Process

What we did

Validating the Blueprint

With our core team, we ran a Discovery Workshop to outline what needed to be developed and made sure we had a good grip on all jobs to be done. We then directly built prototypes and validated those with actual users every step of the way. This iterative process made it easy for our software engineers to start developing the full version of the application in a matter of weeks rather than months.

Building For Scale and Funding

We spent a lot of time with Voya’s product team to make sure they could continue to lead the development of the app and be ready for fast scaling. At the same, we reached out to our network of investors to help secure the money Voya needed to grow.

Voya Team Creation

After the initial 2 weeks setup, we looked to our network of elite freelancers and brought together a team of Product Management, UX/UI Designer, and Software Engineers to join the Voya team. Within only 4 days of recruiting, we kicked off the first of seven 2-week agile development cycles.

achiEvements

Value delivered

We brought a user-validated MVP to the market in just 14 weeks, which could automatically onboard users using Voya’s all-new AI technology.

The elastic staffing model - bringing in talent only when necessary - helped to keep to a very strict budget, ensuring every euro spent was going towards creating client value. Our user-centric approach also helped Voya to successfully close angel and VC-investor funding rounds from top players like Global Founders Capital, Motu Ventures & Rockaway Capital. The result of Voya’s collaboration with MVP Factory served as the backbone to Voya’s success as a company and as an app.

Today, Voya’s app has been downloaded over a million times, transforming the early-stage startup into a company with more than 30 employees and enough funding to continue growing. Voya caused such a stir that it was recently acquired by VW Financial Services, adding more proof to its business success.