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Pointhound launched on Y Combinator's "Launch YC" today!
"Helps you earn and redeem your credit card points for free flights to amazing destinations."
Pointhound makes it easy to earn and redeem your credit card points for free flights.
Founded by Jay Reno, Jake Malone and Sam Clark. A mix of point junkies and "point beginners", the founders understand their user — because they are their user. The team, along with founding engineer, Jeffrey Flynn, previously founded and built the consumer startup, Feather, a Y Combinator S17 company. They're combining their consumer experience building Feather with their passion for travel to build a once-in-a-generation travel business.
HOW IT WORKS
🤫 The situation — and a big secret
120m Americans have credit cards, but almost none know how to use them or which one(s) to get. Most think that cash back cards are the best because they give them, well, cash back.
The reality? Instead of cash back, earning points when you spend will get you far greater ROI than cash back — upwards of 10-15x, in fact, when you use your points to book flights.
Book flights with points, you say? How do I do that? Great question: by transferring your points from your credit card portal (like Amex) to an airline (like Delta) and booking with an airline.
Example: let’s say you found a flight that retails for $1000. If you booked that flight through your credit card’s travel portal, it would cost you 100,000 points (or $0.01 per point — the industry standard). By transferring your points from your credit card’s portal to the airline flying the route, it might only cost you 90,000 points. Not bad.
But If you booked the Delta flight through their partner, Air France-KLM’s website, it might only cost you 10,000 points — 10x cheaper!
Yup, really.
❌ The problem
Ok, so now you understand that earning points are better than cash back, let’s talk about the problem:
- Figuring out which point-earning credit card(s) to sign up for is complex.
- Knowing which card you should use to maximize the points you earn is even more complex.
- And figuring out how to redeem your hard-earned points for good, no, great value may be the most complex.
Sure, there are the blogs and content-heavy websites that try to help you navigate the world of points. But they require you to read and digest thousands of full-length articles to understand what to do.
"There are a few companies who have built flight search tools for points, but none seem to holistically address the complexities of both earning points and redeeming those points."
✅ The solution — Pointhound
Pointhound is a completely free way to help you earn and redeem your points for free flights 🏝️☀️
Their goal is simple: to simplify the complex world of credit card points and airline miles. They do this by providing our users with a few delightfully designed tools.
Pointhound's tools help you:
Redeem your points. Not sure how to use your hard-earned credit card points? You’re in luck! Pointhound's flight search engine searches over 140 airlines at once and surfaces incredible deals using your points and miles. And its Top Flight Deals page shows you the cheapest flights from your home airport to destinations all over the world.
It then tells you where you should transfer your points from (ex. Chase) and to (ex. Air France-KLM Flying Blue) to get the absolute best deal using your points.
For example: Someone just booked a flight from SFO to Tokyo in business class for only 60,000 points, when the retail price was $6500 – more than 10 times cheaper when booking with points! Now you can too.
Earn more points. Newly obsessed with finding and booking free flights and want to get more points? Pointhound's personalized credit card algorithm helps you get the right card(s) for you so you can maximize the points you earn (and free flights you can get).
The startup's goal is to equip the “points beginners” – many of us who have a card or two and would like a simple product to help us earn and redeem our points for free flights.
