Roady

In Founder Focus we introduce entrepreneurs and change-makers working on innovative startups, social enterprises and SME’s around Aotearoa New Zealand.

At a glance

Founder: Roscoe Price Moor

Business: Roady

Founded: 2020

HQ: Wellington

Can you tell us a bit about your business?

Roady is New Zealand’s leading travel content and media platform and the place travellers go for inspiration to plan and book their NZ Road Trip.

After spending years travelling the country shooting content and building up a social media following of over 280,000 — we developed a travel app to give our audience greater functionality to find cool things to do and plan epic trips.

In just 14 months since launching, our app has already facilitated in over 90,000 adventures in NZ and is quickly becoming NZ’s go-to app for finding things to do.

Roady has an organic social media reach consistently averaging above 1,000,000 monthly, and driving downloads from travellers all over the world. Our large reach stems from the impactful campaigns we continue to execute with RTO’s, tourism operators and multinational brands such as Polestar, Universal Music and Camplify.

After executing our first campaign across the ditch in December 2022, we’re currently undergoing our seed capital raise to enable us to launch the Roady App in Australia in 2024.

What’s the backstory for your business idea?

Roady started a few years back after returning home from the UK. Like many kiwis I’d been all over Europe, but I’d hardly seen NZ — so I really wanted to get out there and explore more of my backyard.

But, when I started planning I quickly learnt that planning a road trip was a really fragmented experience.

So I wanted to build something that provided greater functionality and I saw a real gap in the market to be the Trip Advisor for Millennial and Gen Z travellers, who prefer to plan travel in a far more visual/ social media-esque way.

The idea for the app was inspired funnily enough by Pokémon Go. I noticed how addicted people were getting, going out there and capturing Pokémon, and I had the thought that what if instead of capturing Pokémon we encourage people to get out there and tick off these bucket-list travel experiences.

What programmes, learning or mentoring, or resources have been of assistance so far?

For early-stage startups, I would recommend going through an accelerator program to meet potential mentors and fast track growth. I went through a Tourism Accelerator at Creative HQ in Wellington, which was hugely valuable for me in the pre-product phase. Two mentors from the program have also now ended up both as Roady investors and on the Roady board.
I would also strongly recommend reading a book called Traction by Gino Wickman where he explains the Entrepreneur Operating System — a business strategy that has been invaluable for the company.