From Idea to AI App: How Kurve Helped RoomHawk Build, Validate & Scale

From idea to AI app, RoomHawk's journey started with one insight: hotel prices often drop after you book, but almost no one checks back. What if you could get notified when the price drops, and rebook at a better rate?

Kurve helped transform that idea into a fast-working proof of concept, then a lean MVP, and finally an intelligent AI-powered product that is now scaling organically. Every phase followed a strict validation approach: clear objectives, hypotheses, and only advancing when results proved the value.

Benefits of Working with a Combined App Development and Growth Marketing Agency

Table of Contents

• 1. Proof of Concept: Validating the Insight
• 2. MVP: Validating the Funnel
• 3. AI Evolution: Validating the Full Product
• 4. Founder Partnership: Business Strategy, Not Just Code
• 5. Why This Approach Works: Past Proof Points

1. Proof of Concept: Validating the Insight

Objective: Prove that users want to be notified when hotel prices drop after booking.

Hypothesis: If users could track hotel bookings for price drops, they would use the feature and save money.

We built a working prototype in under four weeks using Heroku. The tool allowed users to input a booking link, then tracked price drops daily. If a better price appeared, users received a simple alert with a recommendation to rebook.

This helped answer key questions early:

• Would users input bookings manually?
• Would price drops occur frequently enough to offer value?
• Could this run reliably at small scale?

The answer was yes. With zero marketing, early users submitted bookings via Reddit and word of mouth, validating both demand and feasibility.

2. MVP: Validating the Funnel

Objective: Test whether users would complete the full journey from search to tracking.

Hypothesis: Organic search and influencer content could drive engaged users to submit valid hotel bookings.

We launched a simple MVP using Bubble. Design was secondary. We focused instead on reducing friction in the funnel. Users could:

• Land on an SEO-optimised page via hotel or city-based searches
• Enter their hotel and booking details
• Receive email confirmation if price dropped

We ran light influencer outreach and built foundational SEO pages. This generated qualified traffic and measurable conversions, giving the founder real-world data on:

• Search intent match (CTR, dwell time)
• Submission rate (input form)
• Rebooking interest (clicks on rebooking links)

Once we saw a repeatable funnel at small scale, we moved forward.

3. AI Evolution: Validating the Full Product

Objective: Expand functionality while keeping the product fully automated and intelligent.

Hypothesis: A fully AI-powered system can handle hotel search, pricing logic and rebooking recommendations better than manual rules.

We rebuilt the product to handle:

• Hotel search with location and room parsing
• Smart pricing comparison and tracking
• Intelligent recommendation triggers (based on cancellation policies and value gaps)

This made RoomHawk one of the most advanced hotel tracking platforms available. Our north star metric became successful rebookings triggered. All roadmap decisions focused on improving this signal.

We also introduced the ability to track public hotel searches, turning RoomHawk into both a discovery and savings tool. This unlocked broader SEO visibility and engagement.

4. Founder Partnership: Business Strategy, Not Just Code

The founder behind RoomHawk is a seasoned entrepreneur from a different industry. While he brought the insight and business mindset, he needed a team to navigate tech product development with minimal waste.

Kurve acted as more than a dev shop. We:

• Defined each sprint with clear hypotheses and minimal investment
• Acted as strategic product advisors, not just executors
• Built growth loops into the product from day one
• Handled performance measurement and iteration across build and marketing

This helped protect budget, maximise learning velocity, and avoid overbuilding. The founder now owns an investment-ready, high-conviction app with traction, clarity, and optionality.

5. Why This Approach Works: Proven with TreeCard, Trundl and Beanstalk

RoomHawk's success isn’t an anomaly. The same lean, validation-first methodology has driven results across several apps we’ve supported:

• TreeCard: We helped validate a new product wedge "walk to plant trees" as a more efficient acquisition route than directly promoting their debit card. Through UGC and structured funnel testing, we scaled this wedge and ultimately drove higher quality card users at a lower cost.
• Trundl: This walking-for-good app validated its mission-led value prop through ASO and community-led influencer testing, generating thousands of installs across Europe and a clear, data-led roadmap.
• Beanstalk: A family investing app that scaled via high-efficiency UGC and paid media, achieving acquisition costs below £4 with transparent funnel tracking and structured growth experiments.

Each one followed the same approach used with RoomHawk:

• Build fast and lean, focusing only on high-impact features
• Validate each assumption through behaviour, not theory
• Only invest further once ROI is visible
• Scale with Kurve’s integrated growth stack, SEO, UGC, ASO, influencer and performance marketing

If you’re a founder or business leader aiming to de-risk development and scale confidently, Kurve’s app development and growth services are designed for exactly that.

Book a free 30 min call with our experts today to see if we can help your idea become a reality.