Building a Platform for Adventurers
For years I made ads for other people's brands. Good ones. Award-winning ones even. But there's something in the California water, and eventually it got me: the itch to build something that was actually mine.
So a few of us did. Lyfx was adventure on-demand: an app pairing people with legit local guides who knew the spots no algorithm was ever going to find for you.
I came on as a Creative and Product co-founder, which is a fancy way of saying I designed the whole thing and learned everything they don't teach you in advertising. First year, it reached users in 30 countries and shipped with over 1,500 outdoor experiences inside the app.
Designing the Whole Thing
I led design on the app's first build: a small, fully remote team of developers, and me on the other end drawing screens at 2am. Together we shipped dozens of UX flows, more than 300 unique screens, and a custom component library from a blank canvas.
Launching on a Shoestring
We had almost no media budget, so we built our way around it. We made a Social Ad Generator: a little tool that pulled from our image and copy banks to auto-generate hundreds of ad variations, each slightly different in imagery, layout, and language.
Every ad's performance got tracked across Facebook, IG, and Twitter, and the winners stayed in rotation while the losers died off. A tiny Darwinian ad engine, evolving in real time against actual engagement. It worked: our user base jumped within weeks of launch.
To plant a flag in the real world, we made a limited run of Lyfx swag. Apparel built around wearable maps of adventure hotspots across the country. Merch you could actually navigate by (more or less).
And because a brand about adventure should probably go on one, we made our own.
"Guanaco" is an original documentary following our founder, Pedro McCardell, on a 12,000-mile motorbike ride through Patagonia. Every frame shot on an phone. It's really about the people he met along the way, and one quietly gutting encounter with a young guanaco tangled in a fence wire, trying to get free.
The film was a semi-finalist at the Hollywood International Independent Documentary Film Awards and screened at adventure film festivals around the world.
Press:
“Have App, Will Travel Like a Local” - The New York Times
“Lyfx is an Uber for Outdoor Guides” - Outside Magazine
“This New App Will Connect You With a Local Expert” - Travel + Leisure
“Entrepreneur Crosses Continent On Motorcycle, Launches Lyfx Adventure App” - Digital Trends
“Lyfx is an app that makes it easy to connect with local experts” - Uncrate
“The Lyfx App Lets You Adventure With The Locals” - Gear Junkie
“The Lyfx App Offers a New Way for Travelers to Explore” - Million Miles Secrets