I’m Krystin Hargrove, single mom of two kiddos 13 and six. I love traveling and have spent a considerable amount of time traveling solo with my kids. I pivoted in my career after working 10 years as an Accountant, the last six at a startup, to pursue entrepreneurship.
I’m the founder of CoTripper, we create group family travel itineraries for single moms. Single moms can join us in Costa Rica this summer.
Travel has always been a passion of mine. Traveling with my kids I realized single moms have unique challenges traveling solo with kids the industry wasn’t addressing. CoTripper was created to make family travel easy for single moms and was my introduction to the travel industry.
I’d say my journey into entrepreneurship began when I started a personal style blog in 2011, and monetized it a few years later. From there I dabbled in e-comm, professional services, and community organizations where I realized my real passion was serving women. Women were consistently my target market through my entrepreneurial endeavors.
My entrepreneurial ah-ha moment was landing a job at a startup, I had no idea what a startup was. Working there gave entrepreneurship an entirely new meaning. Entering the startup ecosystem and learning about investors, venture capital, pitch competitions etc… was eye opening.
The more I entered these spaces I noticed I was often the only Black founder there, and on top of that, building for an underserved and often overlooked yet emerging consumer segment, in single moms. Although challenging, these experiences plus my experience in motherhood make CoTripper deeply personal to me. As a Black female founder the >1 percent statistic stands out as motivation, in that, venture isn’t the only route to build. Single moms are the most resilient women I’ve ever known, and being one, my eyes are fixed on building the top travel platform for this community no matter what statistics show.
Quite honestly, my experience within the travel industry has been positive. Reaching out for partnerships, advice, or to introduce our mission at CoTripper have been welcomed warmly. As an early stage founder who’s never worked in travel, the challenges have been around access and industry knowledge on growing a travel business. Suppliers have been challenging to land, especially as CoTripper was founded just before the pandemic. And continues to be challenging as the travel industry rebounds post pandemic. It’s our goal not only to provide single mom families with rich travel experiences, but also to create a global community that provides single moms career opportunities to guide our tours. These goals require access to and help from industry leaders that in my experience have been difficult to find.
As a Black woman I feel representation has definitely improved in recent years. There are several platforms that exist I trust to provide useful travel information. As a female travel founder, I haven’t found the same level of representation. It’s been hard to find female founders that can speak to building a travel business while also raising a family, which is extremely important because community and network are core to building in my opinion. Throwing in support, I think building for single moms in travel has been met with hesitation due to societal stigma and perception. We know that moms are the primary planners of vacations and to leave out this demographic, who’s raising ¼ of U.S. children, would be a big mistake for the industry. So while there is certainly room for improvement across the industry, the CoTripper brand supports single moms traveling solo with kids.
I’d say the top-three things the travel industry can do to support women+ succeeding across the industry are 1) provide better access for women to gain the tools and knowledge needed to succeed.
2) Invest in women whether it be executives or founders so there’s diversity in thought and experience across the industry.
And 3) Listen, creating environments that support women openly and honestly expressing the support they need to thrive in the industry is the only way to vet where investments should be made. I believe these three points would create meaningful and effective change in travel.
For all the women+ who want to start something new: As simple this may sound, cliche even, START! Going for it is the only way to take on a new challenge or build. I’d say failing is a myth because without it you won’t know what’s not working, so in that regard, there are only successes along the journey. Community is everything; you have to find a circle of support to keep yourself grounded. But most of all be disruptive, disrupt what you believe is possible, disrupt how “things are done,” disrupt the status quo. Create what you think will make people’s lives better and do it at your pace.
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