PEEK: THE TRAVEL ADVENTURES PLATFORM STARTS A NEW JOURNEY IN SILICON SLOPES.

• Author: Rawle, Chris
• Position: SILICON SLOPES

Nearly 10 years ago, Ruzwana Bashir prepared to embark on a trip. She circled in on a destinationIstanbul, Turkey--and began searching for fun, local activities. For 20 hours she searched. 20 HOURS. This is incredible planning discipline. I would have given up after 25 minutes, scrapped the whole trip and laid in bed for a month with a warm towel on my forehead. Bashir did not, instead sifting through the cultural hotspots of Istanbul to find what she desired: experiences.

"I was planning what I hoped would be a really awesome trip," said Bashir. "When it came down to it, what I cared about were the things we were able to do there: what cool activities were available? I found myself researching the best things to do and then calling the businesses to try and arrange these tours. And I thought, this is a really tough thing to do."

Out of this planning process, Bashir concluded two things: one, experiences form the beating heart of every trip; and two, there wasn't a great service for curating those experiences and presenting them to prospective vacationers in a timely manner. She filed these tidbits away for later and, following her Istanbul vacation, enrolled in Harvard Business School.

It was during this time that Bashir built the foundation of her professional career. She gained a sharper understanding of finance and venture capital through her employment with Goldman Sachs and The Blackstone Group. She gained a love for startup life through her employment with two early-stage businesses, Gilt Groupe and Art.sy. After graduating from Harvard Business School, she arrived at a familiar post-graduation crossroad. What next?

"I always knew that I wanted to build my own business one day," said Bashir. "Having worked at an environment like Blackstone, I realized I wanted to create and build value. From the private equity side, it was intellectually challenging and I learned a lot, but I didn't feel like I was building something--it was more like I was moving things around. When I began working at startups, I was really excited to help build software or a website that had the ability to access millions of people."

SILICON VALLEY

Ruzwana Bashir came to Silicon Valley to create a startup. After moving to San Francisco, Bashir was introduced to Oskar Bruening, a MIT grad with technical experience in the enterprise software space (at VMware, Symantec, Vontu and Pipewise). They began working on a business idea based off Bashir's Istanbul trip-a...