An Innovative Response to Travel Planning at the Height of Covid

There is a purpose behind every app build. Make money. Help others. Solve a problem. All of the above, maybe?

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Peanut was created in response to the convolution of travel during the peak of the Covid pandemic to solve a problem and help travelers in the process. Travel became extremely difficult. The rules kept changing

• where you could travel,
• how you could travel,
• what you could do once you got there.

This information was scattered throughout the online universe, making it extremely difficult and time consuming to find the answers you needed.

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The Google Chrome extension Peanut was created in response, by big tech alum who were having the same difficulty traveling as everyone else. Once downloaded, when booking hotels or searching flights on popular travel sites, such as booking.com and expedia.com, it automatically provides important travel information about your search. Information includes the destination’s:

• rules and regulations,
• visa requirements,
• flight delay stats,
• hotel history,
• weather trends, and
• if travel insurance is required to enter.

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Team Synergy, Work Ethic, and Discipline

Peanut was an innovation born out of necessity. When the founder of the Peanut, Brady Simpson, identified these travel issues as a problem that required a solution, he began to assemble a team.

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As a senior product manager at a major big tech brand, Brady was already familiar with developing expert teams knowledgeable enough to execute such a project. He knew that he had an interesting problem that no one was solving and that people would gravitate towards the project, making recruitment easy. For Peanut, the team included engineers, designers, and different tech support experts. He assembled his team by identifying:

• the target market and
• talented friends and experts who could bring the app to life.

Assembling a great team is only one part of the task involved in building an innovative product. While all experts and professionals in their fields, the team could face some mentally daunting challenges. To avoid this on the Peanut project, team members retained their full-time jobs and devoted a consistent number of hours daily to the project. The team was able to accommodate this because, during the pandemic, they had few social commitments! Also, they stayed disciplined and consistent to make the most of their time.

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Time the Launch of a New App

While some products are seasonal in their use, that doesn’t mean development should be restricted to it. Brady advises that If you want to build a product that provides a solution, stick with it, regardless of whether it may become less relevant and phase out with time.

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The Peanut development team was concerned that the availability of a vaccine would make the product less relevant during Covid, if needed at all. However, the team’s fears were allayed when they realized that, despite it being developed to help travelers during Covid, it still proved beneficial to all travelers everywhere.

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Even if its current relevance appears to be time-bound, it can be innovated further by incorporating other features into the original product, making it even better than its initial concept.

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Learn more about Peanut at www.trypeanut.com.

About Insured Nomads   

Insured Nomads is the first to take an integrated traveltech, fintech and insurtech solution to the world for remote workers, globally distributed teams, expats, and travelers. Their purpose is to make travel as safe and smart as staying at home. They do this by providing health insurance with exceptional medical benefits in tandem with wellbeing, safety, security, and advanced tech-enabled solutions for ease of payment for healthcare, emergency response and evacuation. Insured Nomads is available through affinity relationships, direct, embedded and through select brokers and partners for groups and individuals. 

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Information on integration, collaboration and partnership contact Brett Estep: brett@insurednomads.com

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When researching destinations and travel, Try Peanut - a free google chrome extension. It automatically displays travel requirements, visa rules and more on booking.com, expedia & google flights.