Guidezone launch a unique marketplace at a fraction of the time and cost of building from scratch

Jacob Hallberg and Simon Jenner are the co-creators of Guidezone. Both Jacob and Simon know that skiing with a mountain guide enhances safety and improves the adventure; however, locating a reliable mountain guide is hard. So they founded Guidezone, a marketplace that connects customers with certified mountain guides for various mountain adventures.

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This week the Dittofi team sat down with Jacob Hallberg, the founders of Guidezone, to learn more about how Guidezone started, how they developed their marketplace technology and how the technology is being used today.

How did Guidezone start?

Jacob Halberg: The concept of Guidezone was born from Simon and my deep passion for skiing and the thrill of exploring new places. We’ve always found that skiing with a guide not only elevates the adventure but also significantly enhances safety. However, we noticed a challenge: locating a reliable mountain guide is often a hard task, plagued by limited online information and outdated booking processes. This stops a lot of people from experiencing the outdoors. Recognizing this gap, we wanted to develop a more streamlined and user-friendly service, making the experience of guided adventures more accessible to everyone.

We wanted to make the experience of guided adventures more accessible to everyone.

How did you build your marketplace technology?

Jacob Hallberg: We chose to build our marketplace technology using Dittofi. We chose Dittofi for its rapid implementation capabilities, the flexibility to create customized features and functions, the modern tech stack (React and Google Go) and the ability to write code where necessary. This aligns with Guidezone’s need for a tailored solution that can be quickly developed and adapted to the specific requirements of the guides and the customers.

We got help from Dittofi – through their marketplace boot camp – to set up most of the core functionalities. This was good to learn the Dittofi system and to launch an MVP. After getting used to the system, we’ve also built features and functionality ourselves: both for frontend and backend.

After getting used to Dittofi, we’ve built features and functionality ourselves: both for frontend and backend.

Simon (my co-founder), who has a more technical background, is the primary user of Dittofi. However, I am also able to create some of the frontend code through AI code writing, which Simon then copies into the Dittofi app builder.

What was it like working with Dittofi?

Jacob Hallberg: We’ve used some of Dittofi’s pre-built marketplace features, and created some of the functionality ourselves. Dittofi’s rapid app builder has allowed us to allocate more time for the functionality that is unique to our service, and therefore spending less time building generic features.

Working with Dittofi was good. We’ve received a lot of help and feedback – not only when it comes to our build, but also strategic inputs on how to grow our business, along with some intros to other people in the industry. Using Dittofi it took us roughly one month to release the first version of Guidezone; however, before we even launched, we had already started to manually upload the sell side (mountain guides) into our system.

Working with Dittofi was good – it took us roughly one month to release the first version of Guidezone.

What are the next steps for Guidezone?

Jacob Hallberg: Guidezone is designed as a full stack web application whose primary goal is to make it easier to find and book certified mountain guides. The customer side has more of an e-com look to it, whereas on the guide side, it’s more of an admin system to manage their tours.

Without giving too much away, our next steps on the technology side are to further enhance our marketplace to make the booking management system on the guide side more tailored for mountain guides. On the business side, we already have guides on our system and so we are now focused on driving buyside customer acquisition. To do this we are focusing on several customer acquisition strategies.

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