What's Gone Wrong?

If you’re reading this post, you’re about to get a version of me that’s slightly more reflective and slightly less comedic than usual. November has delivered promising progress across several fronts, but it has also exposed areas where our ambitions have outpaced our visibility. And I’ll be honest, the road to becoming the #1 travel app has held more surprises than I initially anticipated.

Lately, I’ve found myself revisiting our targets with a sharper lens. It’s a balance I’m still calibrating. Are our goals overly ambitious, or have we simply underperformed in getting the attention needed to support them? The truth is, I’m comfortable embracing big goals, but what matters most right now is the momentum that fuels them: pre-launch visibility and a clear path to effective crowdfunding.

Engagement isn’t just about community growth or social metrics, it also directly influences our ability to launch strongly, attract partners, and build a financial runway. At this stage of development, visibility isn’t vanity, it’s infrastructure. Without it, the ecosystem around BudgetBro becomes harder to lift off the ground.

Which brings me to the core concern: our lack of visibility isn’t a threat to what we’re building, but rather to how quickly we’re able to support it through public awareness and crowdfunding success.

Crowdfunding

At the end of October, I set what I believed was a realistic but ambitious target: increase our crowdfunder by another 12% throughout November. We closed the month at 1.4%. Not ideal. But it did teach me two things. First, people who promise support rarely follow through. Second, people who don’t know us either can’t financially contribute or simply aren’t receiving a clear enough message about why we need the funding and what they get in return. Put together, that combination is giving us conversion rates that are, frankly, close to zero.

So yes, this sends us back to the drawing board, again, for the third time. But how do I feel about that? Surprisingly steady. This is uncharted territory for me, and learning curves are inevitable. I’ve never expected this journey to be smooth, and truthfully, I enjoy the challenge of solving problems that initially feel impossible.

To ground things a bit, I looked at conversion metrics from other early-stage startups. With 100,000 views per month, you might convert around 0.2% into crowdfunding pledges. At an average of £9.99 per pledge, that’s roughly £1,998.00 per month. Is that achievable? Maybe. But it also assumes we can consistently generate 100k monthly views on brand-new social accounts with a limited footprint. Suddenly the target begins to feel more hypothetical than practical. Something I actually didn't think about previously.

And to make things even more interesting, we’re heading into December, the month where everyone’s budget is already spoken for. We may be trying to push momentum at a time when people are least able to financially engage. It’s not exactly the perfect scenario.

Still, none of this shakes my confidence. Setbacks aren’t fatal, they’re signals. Crowdfunding remains important, but we’re not out of time. What we do need is sharper messaging, better testing, and more strategic experimentation. So while the numbers may look a little gloomy on paper, the wound is superficial. The engine is still running, and there’s more than enough fuel to keep going.

App Progress

This is the part where I can finally shake off the heavier thoughts, because we are entering a chapter that is moving almost exactly as planned. There have been a few setbacks, but for reasons far outside anyone’s control. A cyclone hit Sri Lanka and caused significant damage across the region where most of our development team lives. Thankfully everyone is safe, although some have been without power for quite a while.

My October target was simple. Keep pushing. We managed to do that. We are now only a few steps away from sending the app out for testing and getting it into the hands of creators, which feels huge. This stage should give us the momentum our socials have been struggling to generate.

The only catch is that reaching this point came with an unexpected cost. We are ready to test, but we have not yet finalised partnerships with Agoda, Booking, Trip or any similar providers. That means we need to lean on Google data for the time being, which is extremely expensive. I spent time with the team working out how to handle this so our testers do not unintentionally create a bill that wipes us out.

A little techy' information for you: Google charge 34 dollars for every 1,000 API calls, and we get 5,000 free each month. The issue is that every hotel, restaurant and activity counts as a separate call. We plan to show 20 of each, which totals 60 calls every time a user loads a location. If you imagine 500 testers travelling to three new places a month, that is around 90,000 calls. The cost for that is 2,890 dollars each month, which is not something we can simply absorb.

The solution is straightforward, although it took hours of discussion to reach it. Users who discover us through Reddit or other testing forums will receive Build A. That version uses static data we add manually, which costs nothing beyond some development time. Content creators and influencers will receive Build B, which includes full Google integration. Even then, we need limits. Twenty five users changing location three times a month already uses our entire free quota of 5,000 calls. So we also need to cap how often testers can use the feature. The question now is what that number should be. Too many calls is too expensive, too few makes the feature pointless. I am still trying to land on the right balance.

Ideally, this becomes irrelevant very soon. Once we partner with the appropriate platforms, we can access the data we need without paying these Google rates, and this hurdle disappears entirely.

Outside of this issue, the app itself has seen progress in every corner. We have even added a few small features that noticeably improve the user experience. It feels good to be at this stage. I am genuinely excited for what comes next.

Decembers Goals?

I'm kind of scared to set any but in the name of BudgetBro, I'll try to be more realsitic so I don't find myself aging 8 times quicker than normal.

• App is out for testing prior to December 20th.
• We triple our total monthly views over all social media platforms
• We beat our Novembers crowdfunding total of 1.4%
• All the BudgetBro team, the followers and blog readers have a blessed Christmas.

See you all at the start of 2026 for another Monthly update.

Big JR 💚