Innovative Cardiff graduate prepares for launch of award-winning adventure app

Dan Swygart, is preparing for the launch of TrekinHerd, his award-winning adventure app that plans to connect users across the globe.

Next month will see the official launch of TrekinHerd, a new app that offers backpackers and adventurers a social platform to share experiences and stories.

TrekinHerd is the brainchild of 22 year-old Dan Swygart, who graduated from Cardiff University in 2017 with a First Class Honours Degree in Economics.

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The idea came to Dan whilst he was travelling across America in 2016.

“I didn’t really feel like there was a platform out there for me to share my adventures on” said Dan.

“Likewise, I was travelling by myself and I wanted to be able to meet other people. There wasn’t any sort of app that did that. So that’s when I came up with the idea of a social app for backpackers and outdoor adventurers”

Indeed, there has been a surge in the number of British solo travellers in recent years.

“I realised that if I needed something like this, there would also be potentially thousands of other people who also needed it”, said Dan

A significant moment in Dan’s early career came in late 2017 when he won the Cardiff round of Virgin Media’s ‘Voom Tour’.

Along with a sizable investment, this victory gave Dan the chance to have brunch with Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group.

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“He loved the concept because he is an adventurous man,” said Dan, “he was advising me on how best to move forward with it. So that was really cool, and it gave us a position to go to more people and say this is what we’re doing, we’ve won this competition, Richard Branson loved it, this is for real.”

“The main piece of advice that Richard Branson gave to me was to not give up too much equity… you want to retain at least 51% so that you keep control of your brand.”

Since then, TrekinHerd has also recently gained the attention of other prominent social media platforms, such as Facebook.

 

Dan has also been speaking to current postgraduates at Cardiff University about his own experiences as a young entrepreneur.

“My advice to young entrepreneurs would be, just do it. The best thing to do is to learn as you do it.”

On how his experience has allowed him to develop, Dan said, “I have learnt more in the past year doing this than I have in the three years of my degree, easily. Ten times more. Every day you learn something new.”

Of course, being a young entrepreneur does not come without its risks, as Dan acknowledges.

“Being an entrepreneur, especially with something that is very high risk, is like licking an ice-cream with shards of glass in it. So if you want to taste the nice ice-cream, you can’t be afraid to get your mouth cut open.”

In terms of the future of TrekinHerd, Dan explains,

“There is a potential for an early buyout with TrekinHerd. But my goal is to grow it massively, make it used by every traveller and adventurer around the world, and make it a well-known brand that is user-friendly for everybody.”

The aim is to use the app for environmental reasons and other things like that. One of my personal aims is to use part of our revenue for environmental projects, and that is shared by the user-base of the app.”

The app is currently undergoing final testing on both Apple and Android, and is due for public release in April 2018.

For more, visit https://www.trekinherd.com/ or find TrekinHerd on Facebook and Twitter