The past few months of building Beagle & Baobab have been a whirlwind. Thankfully, I married a patient woman. What started out in February 2025 as a simple idea to start a company focused on luxury travel to South Africa quickly hit a brick wall: What does that actually look like? How do I differentiate an (admittedly fairly generic) initial idea in an ocean of competition? And how on earth do I build a product that someone actually wants to spend money on? All big questions, and ones I still only have partial answers to. What I do have, thankfully, is the makings of a strategy that so far has helped me to move forward at a fair speed, all things considered.
It’s my experience with this kind-of strategy that I want to share with you, after happily ripping it off from the folks at Y Combinator and similar teams in the tech startup space. It might seem strange to copy-cat entrepreneurial strategy from hard-core tech startup nerds (think AirBnb, Reddit or Stripe), but these folks know their stuff. It’s not all applicable all of the time – I’m not shipping software or building reusable rockets – but the underling principles are fairly sound and, if anything, maybe give a non-techy business a competitive edge against the decidedly old-school competition. Adapting the ideas of super smart people to new contexts is usually a good bet, anyway.
Set Terrifying Goals
It starts with the goal: What am I actually trying to do? It can’t be too small and unambitious, because that would be like purposefully shoving your dreams in a small, sad box. The goal needs to be bold. Ideally, you need to scare yourself with the ambition of what you’re trying to do. Writing it down on a piece of paper and thinking, “Oh shit, can I really do this?” is probably exactly where you want to be. Because building something new is damn difficult, so why bother unless it’s for something exceptional? Lastly, don’t be too specific. When ideas meet the reality of the market, it’s often the idea that needs to change (but not always). Be prepared for your goal to refine itself over time, or in the process of pursuing it, to discover something better.
For Beagle & Baobab, that goal (after significant refinement and experimentation) looks something like this: To build the best travel company in the world by totally reimagining what a travel company can be. I was lucky enough to grow up in a place so special that millions of people from around the world want to experience it. The question then isn’t how do I build a travel company, but how do I celebrate an incredible destination in a way that no one ever has? I’m not too sure how I’m getting there just yet – building a business is partly a process of discovery, I’m learning – but I believe I’ll know it when I get there. Thinking about the scale of the journey, it’s a terrifying prospect. But if I were to get only 70% of the way, or even 50%, with a goal like that I think I’d land somewhere spectacular.
MVPs + Failing Upwards
The best way to reach that goal is to simply start, right now. Build something – some rudimentary version of the vision you have in your head. It may feel safer to stay in planning mode, working out your ideas on paper until they’re perfect, but the reality of building a new business is that you simply don’t know if your ideas work until they hit reality. From day one, pursuing my goal for Beagle & Baobab has been an iterative process of failing upwards – I build something, it doesn’t quite work, so I tear it up and start again, building on those few things that I liked from previous iterations. Looking back on the past few months of whirlwind progress, I’m grateful I started as quickly as I did. Waiting longer than is necessary isn’t smart – it’s just fear.
Let’s borrow again from the practices of successful startups, one of which is that they don’t spend much time planning. These folks build a minimum viable product (MVP) and immediately send it out into the world, ignoring how messy or imperfect it is. The objective here being not to get it (i.e. the product or service you’re building) right on the first try but to get a stripped down, barebones version of your idea in front of other people as soon as possible. This is when the magic happens – now you’re able to collect invaluable feedback to inform the next iteration of your product/service. If your goal is to build something people actually want (or something they don’t know they want but will quickly fall in love with anyway), the roadmap is simple – build it, see what they do, and learn.
Another way to think of it is like this: At the end of the day, your terrifying goal is all that matters. How you achieve that goal, what the business or product ultimately looks like, is something you can’t fully imagine at this moment. But to get there, you need to not only start but to also be radically open to change. Don’t fall in love with your ideas, because the early one definitely won’t be the best. Be ready to pick through their bones and keep the good bits, though. Every aspect of your business – whether it’s the underling model, the product itself, or your marketing strategy – will likely go through dozens of iterations before it hits the right mark. It’s inevitable. When you get down to it, the only way to really build the best thing you possibly can is to shovel through all your shit ideas as quickly as possible so that you can get to the really good ones. Built, test, and start again.
Non-obstinate Determination
Your early efforts will feel a lot like failure. You’ll always feel that you’re slightly missing the mark. It’s exhausting and demoralising to regularly stare your hard work in the face, realising you need to start again; to realise that you can do better. I’ve probably never been more stressed and intellectually isolated in my life. Starting a business is brutal. But this regular experience of failure is critical, because it’s in those moments that you discover the things that work and the things that don’t, helping each iteration of the business to be better than the last. And while it’s stressful, it’s also incredibly exhilarating to bash your head against the wall and finally feel a few of those bricks shift in the right direction. Who were we to think we could build a company? Naive fools, that’s what. Luckily for us.
While naivety will fuel your dreams in the beginning – there’s a lot to be said for the benefits of blissful ignorance – determination is what’s needed once you realise the scale of the challenge you’ve set yourself. When facing that challenge, a delicate balance must be struck: You can’t ever give up, but you also need to realise when you’re wrong and change tack accordingly. Determination is invaluable – the world will throw you more obstacles than you can imagine. You need to be prepared to suffer and push forward regardless. Obstinacy, however, is dangerous. If you don’t realise when you’re on the wrong path, or simply refuse to do so, and persistently push on regardless, you’ll doom yourself to failure (and not the good kind). It’s a lot to ask, I know. I’m sure some are born with a natural knack for the balance, others not. I trust you’ll figure it out anyway.
Final Notes
What I’ve written here is less of a strategy and maybe more of a snapshot of my experience in building Beagle & Baobab so far. I’m still pretty new to this game. I like to think I’ve always been good at paying attention, however, and these few unmolded blobs of wisdom are a some of the things I’ve noticed during this first leg of the journey. It’s been incredibly tough trying to build my first company while simultaneously juggling a new life in Germany, language classes, work, and everything else that busies us day-to-day. But I wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s been a joy to imagine something new and find the courage to usher it into the world, armed with nothing but my wit and drive. I’d urge you to try it for yourself.