The Emerging Tech Startups We’re Having Our Gen Z Team Members Stalk: Part 1

Here are some things you likely know:

— Millennials and Gen Z aren’t too fond of the status quo

— Millennials and Gen Z love to travel

— Millennials and Gen Z spend more on experiences, and less and less on material items

— While Millennials and Gen Z are letting go of the traditional American Dream, owning a house, having 2.5 kids, etc. they ARE more impatient when it comes to things meant to deliver gratification, especially from technology (think video upload and download speeds, wifi mbps, push notifications, scanning a credit card instead of inputting the information).

And in the SUPER fun and not at all stressful time of Covid-19, everyone, not just Millennials and Gen Z, are itching to get out of the house.

They’re dreaming about the trip they put off, or the trip they have to cancel, or just the fact that now that they can’t go to the beach, they really want to more often.

You know what people want more than anything when they’re antsy? They want (mentally healthy or unhealthy) distractions, and something to look forward to. We collectively have more time on our hands to think about all the things we really want to be doing with our lives.

Put together all of these wants and needs, and we have a massive group of people ready to hop on trains and planes as soon as possible, ready to eat up experiences and new food, and wasting no time on things like checking bags, waiting for cabs, or finding the best hotels or hostels (including myself — thank goodness I already work remotely).

So I started looking into the best travel and tech startups – from planning and scheduling to apps to download when finally on the road again. Here’s the one I’m most excited for, not to mention would totally want as a client at Rock Candy Media in Austin— and as the top B2C AND B2B digital marketing agency in Austin, we like going all in, even in the middle of a pandemic.

(This is not sponsored, we just like seeing passion and brand purpose succeed).

Chipper Cash

As a 21 year old backpacking across the Thai islands, me and my travel buddies were stopping spontaneously to snorkel, to buy street food, to ride a motorcycle, to hike a mountain to a temple… NOT to find the nearest currency exchange office.

And yet, we had to do that every couple of days. Not only because the fees would go up from US banks when you use a foreign ATM, and not only because the fees went up more the more money you wanted to take out, but also because it’s unsafe to carry all your cash on your person.

That was back in 2016. Four years later, and now Chipper Cash is giving me a run for my money as a service that transfers cash across borders as fast and easy as a text message.

Now, knowing we’d pass by an ATM or exchange office in a certain town or airport, we could make sure we had cash in the right places to get the best rate, whenever we needed it. Maybe this is just me being an impatient and spontaneous Millennial/Gen Z cusper, but that’s something I’d have at the very top of my travel planning list. The spot that used to say sunscreen and bug spray.

It’s only in Africa right now, but with the way they’re headed, I’m banking on being able to use them in my next trip to anywhere.

The only thing I hope this fintech startup has, or that its competitors see is missing, is the geographic segmentation, conversion rate optimization (What is CRO?), content syndication, and whole-hearted strategy that make up an integrated marketing plan. One that morphs as people do, and sets trends instead of follows them.

It’s the kind of strategy that sets apart successful startups from the 80% that fail in the first year. The future-proof ones. The passion-driven ones. The anti-template ones. The only ones we do.