Have you ever been perplexed by bus routes and their schedule? Or wanted more information about them that is reliable and collected all in one place? Well, GetByBus is your answer.

This startup company is part of Split’s startup ecosystem and it focuses on travel software that brings tech solutions to inter-city bus transport. It was founded in 2014 by Ante Dagelić, Tereza Kulić, Vivian Lukšić, and Morten Smalby.

Today the team is made up of 14 full-time and 8 part-time employees who are working hard to make traveling by intercity buses as hassle-free as possible by simplifying the search and sales of bus tickets.

GetByBus is continuously developing various IT solutions (sales, POS devices, yield management, analytics, load scaling, etc.), with www.getbybus.com being their main platform that has millions of monthly web, as well as mobile app users. Besides, more than 500 bus companies that cover hundreds of thousands of bus routes are using the GetByBus system.

Morten Smalby, one of the GetByBus founders, gave us some insight into the company. Morten is originally from Denmark, but he fell in love with Croatia, or to be more precise with Dalmatia, many years ago. At the time he used to write a tourist blog in which he praised the beauty of the Croatian coast and provided helpful advice to foreign tourists so they could reach their destinations more easily. That is where the idea for this startup was born:

“I noticed searching timetables and buying tickets for buses was quite complicated.”

Therefore, a need in the market was noticed and service was provided. This seems like such an easy and text-book style way to start a company, but there are of course many hours of dedicated work that went into it from the very beginning.

As one of the obstacles that GetByBus encountered on its journey, Morten mentioned Croatia’s legal framework, which is known to cause a headache (or a few):

“The legal framework for operating a startup business in Croatia is not super startup-friendly, so you have to spend quite a bit of time navigating it, which is what we have done.”

Unfortunately, this is one of the common startup issues in Croatia. And while it certainly was a hassle for the GetByBus team, we are happy they have overcome it to provide us with a hassle-free traveling experience.

Since we’re already on the topics of obstacles and mistakes made, we asked Morten were there any mistakes or things that could have been handled in a different way:

“I can’t think of any single big mistake, we for sure could have done many things differently, but it is hard to say if the outcome would have been better or worse.”

Whatever the changes the GetByBus team would like to make in the past, we don’t feel they should as the outcome – both, as a web platform and the app – is pretty amazing and for sure something to be proud of. The team is doing a great job and are for sure just going to keep improving.

That is one of the great positives of startup teams that Morten also recognizes:

“With a fairly small team, you have a very easy decision-making process. If you have a great idea and/or a new feature, you can implement it very quickly.”

We have seen in our previous startup profiles that this team cohesion and fast implementation of new ideas is characteristic to startup companies in general and also something all of them see as a great positive aspect of startup life. Who wouldn’t like to work in an environment where team spirit and creativity flourish day-to-day?

One thing we always ask our startup teams is to give advice they think might be useful. One piece of advice Morten would give himself in the past, as well as to anyone else who is at the beginning of their startup journey is this:

“If you work hard and it feels right – you are on the right track!”

Morten and the entirety of the GetByBus team have for sure proven that this piece of advice holds true. We would like to thank them for this insight into the company and we wish them lots of success in the future.

For all of you who like to travel, you should also know that, in addition to making the ticket purchase easier, GetByBus also has a very informative blog with many helpful tips on luggage safety in buses, luggage storage at stations in Croatia, and useful information on bus delays.

Therefore, if you want to travel by bus while avoiding all the hassle of searching for reliable information and correct timetables, we warmly recommend using the GetByBus website or app. Let the GetByBus team handle the information nuisances, you just enjoy the ride!