Tripino was an AI travel planner that brought every part of a trip into one app —itineraries, activities, and logistics — across trip types: personal, work, health, group, and tour—built in Iran in 2019, before the local market had any real AI-assistant products.
Founder & CEO, and the person who designed the product end-to-end: research, UX, UI, and brand. I also ran growth and social, and led investor conversations. Tripino was a full 0→1: from idea to launched product to 200K+ sign-ups.
The Problem
Planning a trip meant juggling tickets, rooms, and activities across a dozen disconnected tools, and nothing adapted to what a traveler actually wanted to do. People on tight schedules (work trips, health trips) had no way to make the most of a place, and casual travelers had no easy way to plan around their own interests.
What Tripino Did
An intelligent, algorithm-driven planner built around a few standout ideas:
"Tell me where I can go" — describe your preferences and get destination suggestions, each with a full itinerary.
Trip-type modes — personal, work, health, group, and tour, each planned differently.
Plan-your-day — not just travel; plan a great weekend in the city you already live in.
The Hard Part
The real challenge was collapsing many trip workflows into one app without overwhelming people. I interviewed dozens of users to find the handful of inputs that actually mattered when planning a trip, then mapped those to our algorithm so the output was accurate and genuinely useful, not just another form. That research is what kept a feature-rich app feeling simple.
Growth
Tripino grew to 200K+ sign-ups, mostly through Instagram, driven by the novelty of the idea and a series of high-quality social campaigns. The clearest signal that it was working was that users DM'd us every weekend asking for a plan for their own city.
Reflection
Tripino was my first company, and it taught me how much timing and resilience matter. We grew a real audience, but when COVID froze travel and our fundraising fell through, the business couldn't continue. I came away knowing I'd push harder before walking away from something next time, and more sure of my instincts as a founder, especially in building and leading a team, which became the through-line into my later work.
