About Potniq
Growing up in Slovenia, at the crossroads of Central Europe, the word potnik always meant traveler to me. Passenger. Someone taking a journey.
On the route of the storied Orient Express, from the hinterlands of Venice to Istanbul at the very edge of Europe, most people understood what it meant: someone who travels. Someone who boards knowing they will arrive on time.
That meaning is staying. Even as the world gets smaller.
The world got faster. The math got harder.
I've flown London to Miami for a single day of meetings, flabbergasting the familiar faces of the flight crew on the return flight with a "hello again!". I've been on multi-week, 50-leg, multi-conference runs across three cities. I've sat in hotel lobbies refreshing Google Maps for the third time in ten minutes, wondering whether the traffic will hold.
You know this feeling.
You're in a meeting but not fully present, because you know you need to leave in 17 minutes and you're still not sure if that's enough. You skip the gym, the pool, the morning run. Not because you don't have time, but because you're not sure you have time.
So you build in buffers. Then buffers on the buffers. And still wonder if you got it right.
This is exhausting. It chips away at your focus. It's bad for your performance and worse for your wellbeing. And travel is already stressful enough without turning every transition into mental arithmetic.
What if you just... knew?
Imagine checking your phone once in the morning and seeing exactly when to leave for every stop that day. Not a guess. Not a buffer built on anxiety. Just the time.
Imagine actually using the hotel gym because you know you have until 7:40. Being fully present in that meeting because the next departure is handled. Knowing you have time for that souvlaki after all before heading to ATH. Grabbing a little something for your family because you're not rushing. Squeezing in one more meeting and finally closing that deal, because you can see it fits.
Imagine the cognitive load, all that background hum of "will I make it?", just... gone.
That's what we're building.
Where we're going, you won't need roads
Well, you might. But you won't need to worry about them.
Today, Potniq takes your flights, meetings, and hotels and gives you departure times for every stop. We factor in routes, traffic patterns, and sensible buffers you can adjust to how you travel. One tap to navigate to your next stop.
Soon, your departure times will live in your calendar; every transition synced, every "leave by" reminder right where you expect it. Potniq will sift through transit notices for you, whether they're published in Italian, Thai, or German municipal PDF. That construction project, the bridge closure, the diversion that turns the highway into a parking lot: you'll know before you book the hotel.
And when the world changes mid-trip, we'll let you know. An incident on the M4, signal failure on the Piccadilly line, a delayed connection in Frankfurt: "Your 2pm just got tighter. Leave now, or here's your new window."
Real-time when it matters. Foresight when it helps.
We're not there yet on everything. But this is what we're building toward.
I started Potniq for non-stop travelers with tight connections: the ones who've done the mental math too many times and want it handled. Whether you're the one everyone asks "so when do we need to leave?", or you're juggling client dinners and museum tickets in the same itinerary.
Get on board.
Zan Markan
Founder, Potniq
Start Planning →