Read about the BudgetBro App and more, from the Founder.
Hi, if you're new here, I'm Joshua Rawlinson, founder of BudgetBro: a new behavioural travel (budgeting) app launching in beta soon. If you've been around for a while though, like the last few months, February hasn’t been full of big wins. It also hasn’t been full of losses. It’s been steady. Focused. Everyone on the team is still showing up with the same intention: make the app better than it was yesterday. That consistency matters more than a flashy announcement.
We’ve secured a small amount of funding. Updated the website. Fine-tuned parts of the app that most people will never consciously notice. Expanded the team. Tightened up our future plans. A lot is happening behind the scenes. No beta release just yet. I do sometimes think this whole thing would make a great Netflix documentary. “Beta Testing My Nervous System” feels about right.
I’m writing this from Berlin. ITB starts tomorrow. Further down I’ve dropped a photo of where we’re staying. It’s not conventional. Samar had concerns. Fair ones. Keep reading.
Not much has changed on the UI front, and that’s a good sign. It means we’re close. Our frontend developer, Dhananjani, has been ahead of the backend for a while, which has given us space to refine the small stuff. I mean tiny details. Spacing. Micro-interactions. The bits most people don’t consciously see but absolutely feel. I enjoy this part more than I expected. There’s something satisfying about tightening a screw no one else noticed was loose.
On the UX side, we’ve been thinking long term. Specifically churn. Churn is the percentage of users who stop paying. In travel, that number is naturally higher because people stop travelling. So the question becomes: how do we onboard people before they travel, and how do we keep them when they get home?
BudgetBro isn’t just going to sit inside a 3-6 month travel window. We’re building an ecosystem. That means expanding beyond pure travel budgeting so we diversify properly. If we get that right, churn becomes a strategy problem, not a seasonal inevitability.
One big shift this month is that I’ve gone back onsite temporarily to make sure cashflow isn’t something that keeps me awake at night. I’ve dusted off the tools and stepped back into the cold. It was a shock. I don’t quite have the body I used to, and after years in warm climates the British winter hit differently. On the trowel I looked like I was about to hold up a bank.
I’ve also been wearing a MusiCozy headband with built-in speakers. It keeps you warm and you don’t have earphones jammed into your ears all day. Small thing, but when you’re working solo it makes a difference. Whoever invented that deserves a pint.
Here’s a photo of me onsite in full winter mode. Feel free to laugh.
I didn’t mention this earlier because I didn’t want to jinx it. Since January I’ve been deep in the business plan, personal survival budget, forecasts, all of it. We were approved for a government-backed startup loan and the funds have now landed.
That changes things. It’s allowed us to expand the team sooner than planned and bring forward features we originally parked for post-beta.
One of the big ones is offline sync. A lot of people care about it. More than I expected, if I’m honest. Connectivity isn’t the issue it once was, but this isn’t about what I think. It’s about what users want. Offline sync isn’t small, so we’ve brought in a new developer, Rikas, to focus purely on that. The rest of the team can stay locked in on the final hurdles.
The loan gives us roughly three to four months of additional runway. It also takes some weight off my shoulders. That said, it’s not the finish line. We still need proper equity investment to scale this the way we intend to.
I’m still not taking a wage. Ten or eleven months in and I haven’t paid myself from the company. I’m fine with that. I believe in the vision, but more than that, I enjoy building it. Even if my hairline has filed a formal complaint.
Now, the accommodation. ITB Berlin isn’t cheap and neither is Germany in general. I booked late and we couldn’t justify £100+ per night. I also wanted privacy. So I booked a capsule inside a hostel. Six nights for £172. I’d never done it before.
If you’ve never seen a capsule setup, picture a small, enclosed pod with just enough room to sit up, charge your stuff and shut the world out. Samar thought I’d lost it at first. But once we arrived, she came around quickly. It’s surprisingly cosy. Private. Quiet. Better than most hostel setups we’ve had over the years.
Here’s a photo so you can judge for yourself.
As for ITB itself, I still don’t fully know what to expect. I’ve read a lot, but events always feel different in real life. What I do know is that turning up as the face of something we’ve built from scratch feels significant.
We’ve got a simple plan.
For the record, that division of labour wasn’t my idea. Nathan put it together.,, and I’m not complaining haha.
If you read these recaps back to back, you’ll probably notice a theme. We’re always slightly on a knife-edge. It can feel heavy. Slow. Like progress is happening under the surface rather than in headlines.
But that’s also where most startups fall apart. Quiet pressure. No applause. Just work.
Every problem we solve makes us harder to kill. Every month we survive, we get sharper. We’re cementing our place in the travel space properly, not loudly.
If you’re a regular reader of these updates, I appreciate you more than you know. If you ever want to chat, connect with me on LinkedIn or drop me an email at
See you next month.
