"We have a secret price. Can you guess it?" — Introducing Deadline

Hi everyone, I’m Elvina Beck, and I’m excited to introduce myself to the Travel Massive community.

A bit about me: I’m the founder of PodShare, a network of 7 hostels across California that I’ve personally permitted, built, and operated since 2012. After more than a decade managing occupancy, pricing, and distribution firsthand, I recently started my latest project in the hotel and hospitality industry: Deadline.

What I’m building: A new private hotel marketplace

Deadline is a new private hotel marketplace where verified travelers submit blind bids on hotel rooms while keeping each hotel’s minimum acceptable price confidential. Or, as we say on the site: “We have a secret price. Can you guess it?” It’s not an auction — it’s a guessing game. Match the hotel’s secret price to win the room.

Here’s a demo of booking a room in Los Angeles for a secret price using Deadline.

🎉 If your bid hits the hotel’s hidden price on an off-night, you instantly win the room.

The problem I’m solving: helping independent hotels sell unsold inventory

Deadline helps independent hotels monetize unsold inventory without publicly discounting their rates. Every hotelier I’ve spoken to agrees that monetizing unsold hotel inventory is a massive problem. My job now is onboarding indie hotels to Deadline.

After a month of building Deadline - I hit the classic marketplace hurdle: the “Chicken and the Egg” problem. Explained in this video:

Since launching, I’ve realized my biggest challenge isn’t convincing hotels—they immediately understand the value.

It’s getting introductions to independent hotels I haven’t met yet.

We launched a referral program to onboard more hotels:

I recently launched a referral program that I think could be especially relevant to this community.

Here’s how it works: if someone introduces Deadline to a U.S. independent hotel and that hotel lists any number of rooms with us, they receive 50% of Deadline’s commission on every booking from that hotel for 12 months.

They only make the introduction. I demo, close, onboard, and support the hotel, and the referrer can track the hotel, bookings, and earnings through their own Deadline dashboard.

It feels like a natural way for travel creators and industry professionals to support independent hotels while earning recurring revenue from relationships they already have. If you know a U.S. indie hotel that could fill empty rooms with last-minute bids from verified travelers, I’d love an intro.

Follow our startup journey!

🤳 I’m documenting our journey from the ground up through short-form videos, covering hotel onboarding, product development, industry conferences, and fundraising, over on my Instagram.

🏆 We recently won FoundersBoost Demo Day Pitch as well as LA Startup Arena “Best Pitch” for Deadline, hosted by Zach Sekar from Nerdstage.

🎤 Watch my latest pitch over on LinkedIn.

Thanks for having me! — Elvina