eola

Dan and his co-founder Callum stumbled onto the idea when Callum went surfing in Scarborough during winter and was shocked at how difficult it was to find other adventures to book. Dan had recently closed his web development agency and was skeptical about the startup hype, but Callum's realistic, down-to-earth job posting caught his attention. They quickly realized the real problem: the multi-hundred billion dollar activities industry remained almost entirely offline because businesses lacked decent software tools and automation.

Neither founder had experience running an activity center, so they did something radical—they talked to customers obsessively. "From day one we were visiting, calling, and emailing centres," Dan explains, "trying to understand where their pain points were." They discovered that almost every business had the same set of problems. When they launched their beta in 2018 with just 5 customers, payments were handled manually by Callum going through spreadsheets. Before even building a fully functional product, they validated demand by creating a "pioneer program" where businesses paid £100 just to signal interest—proving there was real need before investing heavily in development.

Eola's early growth came through direct outreach. They built contact lists of relevant experience providers and focused on a personal sales approach. But what truly fueled growth was a customer-centric content strategy. They produced high-quality B2C content featuring their partners, offering tips on how to increase bookings and reach new markets. This created steady inbound lead generation through SEO and generated powerful word-of-mouth referrals because the company kept customers at the center of everything.

Their "modest budget" approach—combining low-cost digital B2B campaigns, SEO, and content marketing—proved far more effective than splashy paid campaigns. They charged a flat 4% fee on transactions (including payment processing), aligning their incentives perfectly with their customers' success. The usage-based pricing model became their secret weapon during COVID-19, when activity centers faced massive uncertainty. Unlike subscription competitors, eola only cost businesses money when they actually made bookings.

By late 2020, eola had grown to nearly £1M/mo in transaction volume, with revenue nearly 5x from the previous year and rapidly growing margins. The company had weathered an existential crisis—losing their lead investor with only 2 weeks of runway during lockdown—but their team's loyalty and the underlying product strength carried them through. They were seeking investment to scale to £1bn in platform volume by 2025 while expanding functionality far beyond industry standards.