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LetMeGo Story

Learning from Past Successes

The story of LetMeGo and our sister sites begins with our parent company, Torrenegra Labs, which has created several companies in the past. The most successful of these, Voice123, is the world's leading voice talent marketplace. It was in engineering the technology needed to create the 2.0 version of this service that Alexander Torrenegra, the company's founder, developed a number of ideas for new technologies that could be applied to any of a number of industries.

The industry that seemed most ripe for the innovations that Alex had in mind was the travel and lodgings market. Alex had extensive experience with this industry, having worked with the vacation rental startup Rentalo.com for several years, first as a consultant, and then as a product developer. Analysis of the current state of online lodging marketplaces, combined with his and his employees' love for travel, convinced Alex to make the huge investment required to bring our company to life.

Learning from Past Failures

While Torrenegra Labs' experience with Voice123 was valuable, the company's development of the moderately successful Language123 and the failure of its Casting123 venture were just as vital to the genesis of LetMeGo.  Because Torrenegra Labs had made mistakes in entering industries that had little need for online marketplaces, they were forced to go back to basics, educating themselves about the theory that underpinned the development and deployment of successful marketplaces. In a sense, they had stumbled into success with Voice123—now, they needed to learn why it had worked in the first place. By learning why their later businesses underperformed, they learned more about why Voice123 had succeeded.

And when the time came to create a new venture, we were able to combine their experience with success and failure into a potent new business, setting their sights on revolutionizing a much larger industry.

Big Ideas for Small Lodgings

When the time came to begin developing LetMeGo, the team had one big idea: we knew we wanted to bring the reverse auction transaction method to the lodging industry. Travellers would enter the details of their itinerary, and lodgings would submit personalized offers. 

Not only would this approach benefit travellers, but it would also benefit many small lodgings that are underserved by existing marketplaces. A semi-opaque system, by which lodgings present real-time information on pricing while able to view each other's offers, would level the playing field, allowing small owners to compete with hotel chains without having to invest thousands in customized pricing software.

Travellers would gain access to a much wider range of lodgings, tailored to their needs, and lodging owners would gain flexibility, basing their prices on the booking date, capacity, and the offers that other lodgings submitted for the same itinerary.

The Focus

One of the earliest questions the team had to answer as we designed LetMeGo was this: should we expand the service to compete with the largest companies in this sector? Should we attempt to build a service that offers one-stop shopping for travellers, including flights and car rentals, as well as lodgings?  

It quickly became clear that dividing our attention among numerous service offerings would not allow us to create our vision of the world's best lodging marketplace. By retaining a relentless focus on every aspect of the core business, and devoting enormous resources to serving the customers who use it, we believed we could create something truly revolutionary.

After all, our goal is not to be the biggest player in the travel industry; rather, we want to be the best, most trusted service for finding the right lodging at the right price.

The Immersion

Once the team knew precisely what it was we were seeking to build, we got to work. But it was an enormous project: requiring more than 14 times the effort involved in the launch of Voice123. And while the team's extensive planning had prepared us for much of what was to come, unforeseen complications began pushing the completion date farther and farther into the future. Finally, in February of 2009, Alexander brought the team together and made a bold proposition: for the next three months, we would live and work together under one roof, building our software during every waking moment. Thus, the LetMeGo Immersion was born.

It was a grueling test of dedication, will, and interpersonal skills, but the Immersion also turned out to be a success. The project was back on schedule. By the time of its launch, LetMeGo had absorbed more than 28,000 man-hours by the most talented, dedicated professionals in the business.