Bootstrapped a dive travel business to profitability in year one
“Dynamism, enjoying life and getting the best out of it, this is why Sandro is always surrounded by happy divers!”
Context
MakingSauce was a dive travel business I co-founded. We organized group and tailored dive trips to remote destinations around the world. The core value proposition was maintaining high standards of safety and service in locations that typically could not guarantee either.
This was a side project built in parallel with other full-time roles, entirely self-funded with no external investment.
Challenge
Remote dive destinations attract experienced divers, but the local operators in those locations rarely meet the safety and service expectations that come with the price point. The challenge was twofold: building a supply chain of vetted providers in places where reliable partners were hard to find, and supplementing those providers ourselves to deliver the level of safety and service that the destinations alone could not guarantee. All with no funding and no full-time commitment.
Approach
Operations
Together with my co-founder, I identified and vetted local dive operators, accommodation providers, and logistics partners in each destination. We built the travel packages end to end: itineraries, safety protocols, pricing, and contingency plans for remote locations where things regularly go wrong.
Website and SEO
I built the website from scratch and ran SEO as the primary acquisition channel. The site ranked organically for the dive destinations we were offering trips to, bringing in travelers with high booking intent at zero acquisition cost.
Paid Acquisition
Launched search ads from scratch to supplement organic traffic. Targeted destination-specific and trip-type keywords to capture demand that SEO had not yet reached.
Result
Profitable within the first year, entirely bootstrapped. I later left MakingSauce to join Diviac full-time, leaving the business to my co-founder.