Why We Built Flokk Instead of Using a Spreadsheet

I have a confession. Before Flokk existed, our family travel planning system was a Google Sheet with 11 tabs, color-coded rows, and a dedicated column for "Matt's Ideas" that my wife, Jody, and I reviewed every so often.

We were not unique. Every family we talked to had some version of this. A shared note full of links nobody remembered saving. An Instagram saved folder that is 500 videos deep with zero organization. A restaurant recommendation from 2024 that is buried somewhere across emails, texts, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs -- you get the drift.

The problem is not that families are disorganized. The problem is that the tools were never built for how families actually plan trips.

Here is how it actually goes. You are scrolling Instagram in bed while your spouse watches something you have no interest in. Someone on your feed is eating the most incredible bowl of ramen in a tiny Tokyo spot you have never heard of. You save it. You also save the reel your friend posted from Kyoto. You screenshot the hotel someone mentioned in a Facebook group. You drop a Google Maps pin on a neighborhood you read about in an article you half-finished while getting the kids out the door.

Two months later, when you are actually sitting down to plan the trip, none of it is in the same place. You dig through your camera roll, your messages, your emails. You check your Instagram saved folder. You go back through your notes app. You search your browser history. You give up and Google "best ramen Tokyo" like everyone else, starting from scratch as if none of that research ever happened.

That is a broken system. Not because you did anything wrong. Because no tool was connecting the moment of inspiration to the moment of planning.

But saving things was only half the problem.

Even when families managed to corral their saved content into one place, the actual planning work still happened across five other tabs. Someone is building a day-by-day itinerary in Notion. Someone else is tracking costs in a spreadsheet. There is a shared note for packing. There is a group chat for coordinating with the other family coming along. None of it talks to each other. None of it moves with you.

That is the other gap Flokk was built to close.

Once your saves are in Flokk, you can actually build a trip from them. Drag places into a day-by-day itinerary. See everything on a map. Track your budget as you go -- flights, hotels, activities, all of it -- so you are not doing rough math in your head three weeks before departure and hoping for the best. And when you are traveling with another family or coordinating with grandparents, you can share your trip directly so everyone is working from the same plan, not a version that was copy-pasted into a message two weeks ago and has since drifted completely out of date.

Flokk is not a notes app with a travel skin on it. It is the thing that was always missing between "I saw something amazing" and "we actually got there and it was exactly what we hoped."

We built it because we kept losing the good stuff. Because the open browser tabs deserved somewhere better to live. And because planning a family trip should feel like something you are looking forward to, not a project you have to manage.

Ready to plan your next family trip?