From Local Hospitality to Global Itineraries: Inside Catherine Chen’s Entrepreneurial Leap

For Catherine Chen, business isn't just something you study in a textbook or learn through lectures. It's a fundamental part of her daily life. 

As a rising junior at the Dreyfoos School of the Arts, Chen’s entrepreneurial drive was forged on the floor of her family’s Chinese restaurant. "I've been a manager and service employee at my family's Chinese restaurant for years. I'm constantly trying to work on my entrepreneurial mindset alongside my family," said Chen. Building on her hands-on experience managing operations alongside student council duties and nonprofit work, she brought a unique perspective to the program. 

When it came time to take her business acumen to the next level, she didn't just look for theory; she looked for action. That drive led her straight to the LaunchX San Diego Exploration program. 

Chen purposefully chose the fast-paced, prototype-driven LaunchX Exploration Program. Drawn by the opportunity to turn a concept into a tangible product in a compressed timeframe, her ultimate goal was clear: build something real and pitch it live on Demo Day. 

What she didn't realize was that her passion for supporting local, small businesses would soon collide with a team of diverse peers to solve one of the most frustrating aspects of modern leisure: the chaotic, multi-app mess of travel planning.

Coordinating a group vacation comes with inevitable headaches. As Chen explained, her team set out to solve those exact pain points: "We're trying to tackle time management, limited travel budget, fear of missing out, and frustration when you're disconnected with a travel group when you're trip planning."

She continues, “This comes from a lot of wasted time, for example, in the car when you're trying to figure out where to go next, having time differences and conflicts between the travel parties.”

Between juggling group chats, managing budgets, racing against limited time, and bouncing between a dozen different booking apps, the joy of travel often gets buried under a mountain of logistics. It was this exact travel dilemma that Chen and her team set out to dismantle during their time at LaunchX. 

They recognized a glaring gap in the market: while modern travelers have access to more information than ever, the planning process remains completely fractured. Journey Atelier, a centralized web platform designed to streamline travel planning from start to finish. 

The platform allows travelers to input their destination and preferences to instantly generate personalized, interactive trip itineraries tailored to specific demographics like families or elderly travelers. The centralized platform replaces disjointed travel apps by relying on authentic peer recommendations to help users discover cohesive plans and local hidden gems.

While many modern tech startups immediately lean into AI tools to auto-generate generic lists, Chen's team– Peter Qin, Yerali Esenbaev, and Yugun Sok–  deliberately chose a different path. They built Journey Atelier around the power of authentic, peer-to-peer interactions and reliable recommendations, moving away from algorithmic guesswork and focusing instead on real human experiences, while utilizing AI technology to streamline logistics, data, and keep the user experience unified. 

To validate their concept, the team surveyed a total of 45 college students from UC San Diego and LaunchX peers. The feedback was definitive: strong market demand existed for authentic peer recommendations, giving the team the green light to push Journey Atelier across the finish line. 

To act on user feedback, they plan to expand the platform with a social feed. “We wanted to add the aspect of peer review, an ‘Instagram’  kind of like format where you would be able to post and then you would be able to comment, leave a review,” said Chen. 

She also noted that during her group’s mentor sessions, they realized they wanted to focus on helping travelers gain a true cultural perspective. “I really like to look at TikTok or Instagram when I'm trying to plan a trip to see what's trending,” Chen explained, “but I don't really get the cultural aspects because I know some people like to go to very niche areas that really immerse you.”

After all the hard work and dedication, Journey Atelier took the stage for Demo Day. Chen was pleased with the outcome, though she already sees opportunities to refine their approach.

 “I believe we can improve by distributing the work better, especially in preparation for the Q&A portion of the pitch event. Another way we could improve is to make the pitch a more interactive, back-and-forth dialogue between the four members to increase engagement rather than having one person speak for a few slides, another person speak for a few slides, and so on,” she said. 

Looking ahead, Chen hopes to carve out more time to grow Journey Atelier into something far bigger than a standard itinerary tool. Her goal is to help travelers bypass tourist traps through features like an Instagram-style review feed and a “local connection” tool that lets users experience destinations through a resident's eyes.

But her entrepreneurial growth doesn't stop with the app. Chen also intends to bring the marketing strategies and financial feasibility concepts she mastered at LaunchX back home to her family’s restaurant business, starting with ideas to incentivize customer reviews and bring in younger crowds.

For future students considering the jump into LaunchX, Chen emphasizes the importance of actively engaging with peers who bring diverse backgrounds and ideas to the table, as those exact differences often spark the best innovation. “Be open to other perspectives and other ideas because there's definitely gonna be diversity, varied backgrounds, and ideas that you'll need to figure out together,” she said.

Her advice comes down to a few core principles: be your most authentic self, embrace a truly collaborative mindset, and “don't be afraid of failure.”