Bernie Tschirren and Michael Cameron, both ex-Microsoft engineers and frequent travelers, were frustrated that existing travel sites only handled flights and gave little help planning multi-modal trips by train, bus or ferry.

“We were frustrated that travel websites focused only on flights, with very little information available to plan trips by train, bus, ferry”

Early growth came from people forwarding Rome2rio search results by email, which read almost like organic advertising, well before any deliberate SEO or growth effort.

Revenue-generating "customers" first appeared when the founders bolted on hotel and rental-car affiliate booking options for existing search users, which began generating small commissions.

“We also added hotels and rental cars to the site; both generate commissions and started to bring in some revenue.”