My brain is a living database. I track everything: every song, every film, every YouTube video, and every place I’ve been or want to go. Everything. I have to know what I’ve done, what I loved, where I rank it, and what's next. That’s just how I’m wired.
But when it came to travel, I hit a wall. My bucket list was scattered across Notes, spreadsheets, and Google Docs. There was no beautiful, unified way to track my journeys, remember details and experiences, or plan what’s next.
Why doesn’t this exist? Spotify does this for music. Goodreads does it for books. Why can’t travel be the same?
That question stuck with me.
The Day Everything Changed
On July 4, 2024, I started building Matterhorn.
While most people enjoyed the holiday outside, I spent it in a coffee shop, planning and building. Extensive travel, from touring US and Canadian cities as a musician to experiences abroad in places like Interlaken, Florence, and Berlin, inspired me to create something that would help others explore the world, too.
When I searched endlessly for the travel app I needed, I hit the same wall over and over again. Every single travel app was trying to be the everything app: book your flights, reserve your rental car, plan your entire itinerary, push tours and services you never asked for. That always overwhelmed and frustrated me as a traveler. I just wanted a simple, elegant home for my journeys, one that wouldn’t take a cut of everything I do or sell me things I don’t want. Just like a music app, I want a place to store my songs and enjoy them.
This is what I believe travelers are looking for.
What Travel Apps Get Wrong (And What Matterhorn Gets Right)
Here’s the problem I see with travel apps today: they’re all trying to keep you on your phone.
Instagram buries your travel moments in a feed designed to make you scroll for hours. Travel sites want to plan your itinerary for you while also getting a kickback on what you spend and how you travel. Yelp is specifically for restaurant reviews or for businesses to advertise to you. Even Google Maps wants to advertise to you. Every app is fighting for your attention, trying to monetize your moment.
But Matterhorn stands apart. Unlike other travel apps, Matterhorn is designed to get you off your phone and into the world by focusing entirely on organizing your travel experiences, not selling extra services or keeping you scrolling.
Think about a conversation you’ve had recently about travel. Someone asks, “How many countries have you been to?” or “When was that trip to Spain?” And what happens? Everyone pulls out their Photos app and scrolls back, trying to remember. People forget dates. They forget what they did. They can’t quickly tell you how many cities they’ve visited, the name of a pizza place in Italy they loved, their favorite activities, or what they want to explore next.
That’s the friction Matterhorn solves.
Matterhorn is the travel companion built for obsessive trackers. It lets you capture every travel detail in a streamlined, organized, beautiful place made just for remembering, ranking, and queuing your journeys, so you can stop worrying about remembering and start focusing on experiencing.
It’s not a feed. You won’t doom scroll for hours or envy your friends’ trips. There’s no algorithm trying to keep you addicted. It’s built to help you explore the world, not to keep you glued to your screen. Matterhorn is designed to:
Help you discover places you’ve never heard of.
Let you organize everything.
Get you back outside to actually experience the world.
What We’re Building
Matterhorn is built to solve one core problem: everything about your travel life is scattered.
Your bucket list is in Notes. Your travel history is in your Photos app. Your thoughts and ratings live nowhere. Your friends don’t know where you’ve been or your favorites. You can’t easily tell your own travel story and definitely can’t remember how many cities in Europe you’ve been to, or your top 10 places to go next, off the top of your head.
We’re building Matterhorn to be the dedicated platform where your entire travel story can be captured in one place, personalized, visually beautiful, and entirely yours.
That’s it. We’re not here to book your activities or plan your itinerary. We’re here to be the backbone of how you organize, remember, and share your travel.
More to come on what that actually looks like. We’re keeping some things under wraps until launch. You’ll see everything soon.
Who This Is For
If you’re someone who:
Loves to travel and experience everything life has to offer
Likes tracking things and being organized
Appreciates beautiful, thoughtful design
Wants to remember every place they’ve been and never lose one they want to visit
Loves community
Believes their travel story matters
Then Matterhorn is for you.
How We’re Building It
We’re nearing beta. This is not a speed run. I’m a stickler for quality. I want things to be right the first time. Once features ship, they’re out there. I want to earn your trust, listen to feedback, and build something that lasts.
We’re being intentional. We’re not building to impress. We’re building to solve real problems. Every feature has to earn its place in the app.
When you see Matterhorn, you’ll understand what we’re doing. And then we’ll listen to what you think, and build from there.
Bootstrapped, On Purpose
Here’s what makes Matterhorn different: we’re bootstrapped.
This has been built without any venture capital. Matterhorn is not in the hands of investors. We’re not building to please a board or chase growth at any cost. This is self-funded, and we’re in control of how the app evolves.
This means we’ll be community-first. We won’t succumb to greed in exchange for community disdain. We’ll move thoughtfully. We’ll listen to you. We’ll ship features that make sense, not features that look good in a pitch deck.
Matterhorn will always be free to download and free to use. If you want the full deep-dive travel experience, Matterhorn Pro is there for you with more features. More on that soon. We feel we've priced it fairly because we believe you’ll get real value from it. But you’ll never be forced to pay to enjoy the core experience.
The great thing about the app is this: if you’re someone looking for an organized way to track your bucket list and the places you’ve been, this app is for you. And if you’re someone who wants the best insights and travel features, this app is also for you. Matterhorn is as surface-level or as powerful as you make it.
The Roadmap Ahead
We’re not going to lay out a detailed feature roadmap right now. What we will say is this: we have plans. Exciting ones. But we’re going to earn the right to build them by listening to you first.
We’ll ship thoughtfully. We’ll iterate based on feedback. We’ll move at a pace that lets us get things right, not a pace that lets us move fast and break things.
The roadmap is flexible because we’re building with you, not at you.
Why This Matters
Travel is personal. It’s not just about checking a box; it’s about experiences, growth, and memories. Where you’ve been shapes who you are. The places you love reveal what you value, and I truly believe possessions can only satisfy you so much in life. Experiences are what we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.
But travel apps have lost sight of that. They’ve turned travel into a transaction.
Matterhorn is built on a different belief: that your travel story deserves to be celebrated, organized, and shared with people who get it. That you shouldn’t have to search through ten different apps to remember where you went or find a recommendation. That a community of travelers is more powerful than any algorithm.
I’ve been building this for two years. I’m incredibly passionate about it. And I genuinely believe it will change how people travel, how they see the world, and how they share their experiences with others.
I can’t wait to put it in your hands.
Matterhorn is almost here. Join the waitlist now and be among the first to experience it.
See you out there,
— Hunter 🏔