“The service is cool and all, but still - how does Teleport make money?”. We get this question a lot. Most startups do.
Whether they should be able to answer that or not really depends on the phase the startup is in. A pre-revenue startup must focus on proving that they are doing something people want and not worry too much about revenues. Getting closer to the A round, a startup must be able to prove that somebody is willing to pay for their services as well.
Considering that soon, Teleport’s services have been live for a year, it’s time for us to start answering the $ question as well.
Teleport is helping global talent with two things:
- Find the best city to live and work in - Teleport Cities
- Prepare and execute the move to the city - Teleport Zen
Since our interest is to have as many users using our search as possible, this is something that we want to keep free forever. So knock yourself out with browsing cities - the king-sized matrix with 135 cities and 160 data layers will help find the best place for you.
But since the actual moving process is something that always involves expenses, this also offers more business opportunities, especially if we can save money for the users. Moving related expenses tend to be higher than people initially think - an average US interstate move for one person costs around 12,459 dollars and corporate relocation is on average a couple of times higher.
The corporate relocation service is super convenient - everything is tailor-made for you. It costs a fortune, but somebody else is paying for it. Would you be willing to pay 50,000 dollars for relocation from your own pocket? I wouldn’t. So, we are trying to democratize the relocation market by building software that is making it easier and less expensive to move to another city, similarly to how members of our team who used to build Skype made long-distance calling accessible to more people all over the world.
Teleport started with helping users find the best city, but with the launch of Teleport Zen this week we are taking a big step towards the second pillar - helping people make the move happen. Moving to every city is different, so we are working on building Zen with the best service providers for all the cities. For example in Tallinn we are cooperating with Transferwise, LHV, ShipItWise, MoveMyTalent, Taxify, LeapIn, Monese, Telia, Autolevi, Sixt and many others. This is just a start, step by step we will try to make Zen great for other cities as well.
So, if you are offering the best service in your city for people on the move, whether it’s banking, moving stuff or telecom services, drop me an e-mail at kristjan@teleport.org. And, if you have dreamed about moving somewhere - do try our services, because as a user once wrote to us: “You make dreams look like real options”.
Kristjan Lepik is part of the Teleport Team, working on business development and helping cities worldwide reach talent better. When he’s not busy doing three-digit calculations with his pocket calculator, he likes to hike and travel to strange places all over the world.
