Streamlining your Travel Needs with Lambus and MongoDB

Traveling can be a hassle.

Ok, that’s putting it mildly (to say the least). But what if traveling didn’t have to be so difficult?

Lambus is the all-in-one travel platform that is designed to put your entire trip into your pocket. From waypoints and expenses to tickets, photos, and much more, Lambus was built for not just individuals traveling solo but also for traveling those in a group.

Lambus allows its users to have everything they could possibly need when it comes to traveling across its many devices, without the need for wifi. Trips are stored offline, so they can be accessed on the go.

Built with MongoDB spoke with Leon Braun, co-founder and CTO about the ins and outs of Lambus, his plans for the future of the company, and what his journey has been like so far.

Built with MongoDB: What is it that Lambus does?

Leon Braun: Lambus is a platform you can use for all your travel needs. You can focus on your trip and don’t have to worry about where all your documents and trip related things are. Lambus can be used by solo travelers as well as with your partner or in a group. It allows you to organize your trip from start to finish.

Built with MongoDB: What is Lambus’s mission?

Braun: Our mission is to become the one platform that you want to use for all your trip related things. We want to inspire you with everything related to your trip, whether it’s hotels, flights, or rental cars. You only need to use one platform for everything that you need to do when you travel.

Built with MongoDB: What made you decide to start this company?

Braun: Hans (Knoechel) founded it and was looking for people who also love to travel. So we started in 2018 with six people in the founding team and grew to ten people. Now we want to get even bigger - both in terms of team and users. That's one of the reasons we need a database that can scale with us.

Built with MongoDB: What was the initial project that Hans was working on?

Braun: The project has been Lambus from the beginning. But of course, some things have changed since then. Hans initially wanted to organize a few waypoints and documents, and after a while it became bigger and bigger. We added more features, for example expenses and photos. Many of our features come from user ideas or user feedback, as we are very user-centric.

Built with MongoDB: Was there a problem you were trying to solve with Lambus?

Braun: There wasn’t a problem, necessarily, but we saw that you have to organize a trip with many different apps. Two to three apps for inspiration, another for sights with possible accommodations and so on. Each time you enter your data all over again. Not necessarily the best user experience. So we developed an all-in-one platform that organizes all travel-related things.

Built with MongoDB: How has Lambus shifted over time?

Braun: It doesn’t really change in general, but we focus more on features that the users really use. Like the chat feature that we implemented very early on but is hardly used. That's why we put it in a less prominent place. Basically, the idea is the same now as it was in the beginning, but we try to focus more on our customers, and what they want, so some features grow bigger, and some features do not.

Built with MongoDB: What is a feature that a customer expressed they were interested in that you implemented?

Braun: The ability to import and show GPX files for example, we received some customer feedback and implemented it within one week. We always try to implement customer feedback very fast. Another example is email import, you can forward an email with a booking or something else to an auto generated email that’s only made for your trip. The content will then be added to your trip automatically.

Built with MongoDB: How did you decide to build with MongoDB?

Braun: We needed a database that can scale with us, and it’s flexible enough to get our features and products integrated quickly, so it had to be an object oriented database. We used it in many projects before, because you can get a free tier to experiment and launch your product with nearly no costs. Once you get bigger you can get into the paid plans. We are also very happy to be in the MongoDB for Startups program, which gives us the ability to get more performance for events like the German version of ‘Shark Tank’ in which we are hosted in May 2021.

Built with MongoDB: What have you enjoyed the most about building Lambus?

Braun: There are so many things. We launched the product, and we are getting more and more customers in such a small amount of time, all without spending money in marketing, so it was really exciting to see people really use it and love it. It’s also very exciting to build a product that is used worldwide. And of course it’s also nice to be able to help people with all the problems around traveling.

Built with MongoDB: What advice would you give to aspiring CTOs who want to build a startup?

Braun: Just do it. If you don’t start it, you’ll never know if there’s a way to do it. Focus on your customers and try to grow as fast as you can.