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Travel is the white whale of tech startups. It's very alluring to tech entrepreneurs since it's: A) Sexy - the idea of running a travel startup sounds exciting
by rwhitman 11y ago
Travel is the white whale of tech startups. It's very alluring to tech entrepreneurs since it's:
A) Sexy - the idea of running a travel startup sounds exciting. It feels like an opportunity to periodically escape from the humdrum life of staring at a computer screen in the office all day, while still doing what you're best at.
B) A broken business - travel booking, planning etc is very confusing and flawed in many ways
C) A "big pie" to take a bite out of - it's a multi billion dollar market, so there must be opportunity in there somewhere.
The problem is, every tech entrepreneur has these same thoughts, and everyone has tried to execute on them at one point or another. It's a ridiculously competitive market, and for the most part the big $$$ for revenue are locked up by monolithic travel booking networks, that are only willing to relinquish a teeny tiny piece of the travel $$ pie to newcomers.
Then drop in this hard truth - recreational travel isn't actually all that commonplace amongst average people. The average joe goes on one or two major vacations in their entire life. So if you want to make money, you need to cater to either travelers with a lot of disposable income (the wealthy or retired), or business travel. Those niches are already very crowded but dominated by big, established, aggressive players, that you and every other dreamy-eyed tech entrepreneur eventually have to compete with for attention.
It's a long, nearly impossible battle to wage for anyone who hasn't spent their life in the industry. Winning in that space is a war of attrition competing with businesses with decades in the travel field, all in hopes of this grand and naive vision of striking it rich while on permanent vacation. Unwinnable. The white whale.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoTravel, and dating sites. Everybody, just stop already.
- ewams 11y agoYou can share your photos from your travel with your new date on our new app. We are changing the world!
- strictnein 11y agoTripr: Swipe right if you want to go on a trip with this person. Do I get showered with VC money now, or is there something else I need to do?
- ygmelnikova 11y agoI bet you checked to see if that dom was available before posting.
- RottenHuman 11y agoMake a catchy video, presenting the idea, create an kickstarter. Hope to get viral (hire an ad agency who can make that happen). Research the market. Know the market. Hire someone to build a sound business plan for you. Go begging for that money shower. Cry for the thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours already spent which you may never see again.
- tim333 11y agoVCs may not bite. Try equity crowdfunding.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- stfnfhrmnn 11y agoHmm, too late: https://www.triprapp.com/ https://www.triprapp.com/
- jerf 11y ago"We're going to fix email!" "Someone" ought to make a list of the white whale ideas. Not that nobody should ever try one, but I firmly believe that if you're going to try an idea that has been tried a lot already you should go in with eyes wide open.
- systems 11y agowhat is the definition of a white whald idea i googled ... but nothing quick came back
- enraged_camel 11y agoI think whenever the line of thinking is, "X is such a huge market, even if we capture just 1% of it we would be rich!" that's a white whale.
- rwhitman 11y agoMy definition would be a startup in a space that's aspirational in terms of both social status and wealth, yet success is nearly impossible to reach. To the point where the obsession over it's pursuit has a track record of causing repeated self-destruction.
- gpvos 11y agoMeaning #2 here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/white_whale https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/white_whale Or see here: http://en.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=white%20whale http://en.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=white%20whale
- jfoutz 11y agoIt's an allusion to Moby Dick the white whale. A whaling captain, Ahab, is obsessed with killing Moby Dick, because Ahab lost his leg to the whale. Ahab sacrifices everything in his mad pursuit. Moby Dick ends up sinking the ship, killing his crew, and Ahab himself. It cost him everything for something that was foolish. Maybe the moral of the story, try a travel startup, but be willing to pivot.
- exelius 11y agoThese are the types of problems that a 22 year old with a BS in Comp Sci are capable of solving. Which is why both spaces are so crowded: there isn't really anything difficult about the business, the consumer experience sucks, and they're decentralized enough to actually break into. The reason the industry sucks is further down the value chain, and you have no realistic shot at changing any of it unless you can also break into the (much bigger, much more profitable and much more competitive) business travel services market. But neither of these businesses leads to "sticky" customers: people don't travel frequently enough to develop brand loyalty to a travel site, and for a dating site, the ideal scenario for your customers is that they find someone and stop subscribing to your site. This is the kind of business problem that's not readily apparent until you start to dive into the customer lifecycle and personas. As a result, dating and travel sites are essentially branded experiences where the only difference between many of them is the advertising.
- Retric 11y agoI remember thinking the only way to avoid your best customers dropping from a dating sight was focus on friendships vs. romance. Which would have a huge network effect and active users would stay on the site yada yada, only problem was by the time I was done adding useful features I had just recreated Facebook... Dammit.
- exelius 11y agoYeah; which is why ideas on their own are worthless. Any idea worth having has been had a million times before: you become rich by converting that idea into a profitable business better than anyone else has.
- purplelobster 11y agoEven though I'm doing a side project on this myself: language learning.
- ghaff 11y ago>Those niches are already very crowded but dominated by big, established, aggressive players e.g. Concur buying TripIt (which isn't as good as it could be but I still find it invaluable). And, having said that, I still just use the free version.
- rwhitman 11y agoIf you recall when TripIt came onto the scene there were several other competing services (remember Dopplr?) that all got pummeled into dust during the recession. TripIt is pretty much the sole survivor of that era, though the product is more or less frozen in time.
- detaro 11y agoWasn't Dopplr mostly a social network and not really comparable? (A "find overlapping travel plans" is one of the few social networks I actually would use, but I can see why it isn't viable on its own)
- mrbird 11y agoTo this, I would also add: Local events (things to do) sites. http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/15/the-curse-of-the-network-effect/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/15/the-curse-of-the-network-ef...
- w1ntermute 11y agoWhat the GP said about how often people travel: > Then drop in this hard truth - recreational travel isn't actually all that commonplace amongst average people. The average joe goes on one or two major vacations in their entire life. is similar to what sama said about why his local startup (Loopt) failed[0]: > Most people are too boring I think--they're at the same places most of the time. 0: https://www.producthunt.com/live/sam-altman#comment-208794 https://www.producthunt.com/live/sam-altman#comment-208794
- AngrySkillzz 11y agoSome serious judgement from sama in that comment. Maybe "average people" would like us techies more if we weren't so sanctimonious in addition to being affluent and insular.
- sliverstorm 11y agoThe irony is techies are famous for staying at home with their computer or other electronics.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- TillE 11y agoMan, I've been wanting one of those for years. Even just searching for interesting concerts is a tedious chore on most sites. The lack of anything like this means I basically have a few favorite local venues, and I try to keep up with their programs. It's really not ideal. There is a small site that maintains an event calendar for my city, oriented towards a certain subculture. That's by far the best thing I've seen for discovering new things to do. I don't know if there's an actual business model in any of this. That's definitely the hard part. But it would be such a useful resource.
- iambateman 11y agoI would also like to add: "see who is at which club before you go to that club" startup. -_-
- joslin01 11y agoI've created a business that tries to do this before. Well, the business was an events aggregator in NYC, but we envisioned that would be one of the future features. When you learn how to force people to check-in to a club and broadcast it, you'll have this app. Until then, it's really difficult. I once had an idea was that you would open up the app and it would have two buttons: (1) MALE (2) FEMALE. Clicking one would check you into that club. This would solve what a lot of people want -- where are the people & who are those people? Even something that simple though -- what's the reward for the user checking in? On Foursquare, it was awards and badges and stuff. If you could do that around night-life, you might have something.
- dieterrams 11y agoYou have to make this sort of thing effortless (symbolic rewards lose their appeal over time). E.g, use background location or iBeacon so users are checked in without having to pull out their phone. The first time they enter a club, they get prompted for permission to check them in now and any future time they're at the club. Specifying male/female should only need to happen the first time they use the app.
- w1ntermute 11y agoWhy no one has solved event discovery: http://www.hughmalkin.com/blogwriter/2015/9/23/why-no-one-has-solved-event-discovery http://www.hughmalkin.com/blogwriter/2015/9/23/why-no-one-ha...
- robterrell 11y agoCheck out BarEye in the App Store. I think they've narrowed down to a single geo now for advanced features like "send a drink", but the basic features like "which club are my friends at" work everywhere.
- 11y ago
- CPLX 11y agoAn excellent reply. And to this point: > Then drop in this hard truth - recreational travel isn't actually all that commonplace amongst average people. The average joe goes on one or two major vacations in their entire life. The vast majority of people who go on a vacation, especially with children, just get into a car they own and drive there, typically to a place they are familiar with for some historical reason like family, etc. There just aren't that many variables involved.
- rwhitman 11y agoYup, exactly. The other scenarios are visiting a friend / family member, who holds the responsibility of "tour guide", meaning the only thing the family books is a flight and maybe a rental car. Or they book an all-inclusive package deal to lower the risk of a national lampoon style vacation disaster. Either way these types of middle-class family vacation package trips are pretty well locked up online by the likes of Expedia and big corporate partners who have a lot of volume resale power like Costco. The remaining sliver of the family travel market - wealthy people & retirees - are actually still mostly the domain of the legacy travel agency business. Licensed travel agents not only still exist, but they're thriving in some cases. And get better commission $$ per sale than integrating with an affiliate partner, to boot. The ironic sad reality is that anyone thinking of making a living running a travel app/site, is probably much better off getting travel agent certification instead...
- ghaff 11y ago>The remaining sliver of the family travel market - wealthy people & retirees - are actually still mostly the domain of the legacy travel agency business. Even if it's not traditional legacy travel agents, you also have all manner of adventure travel and similar organizations that will arrange private small group trips. Ultimately, if you're doing something complicated and obscure, dealing with an experienced human is often the best thing--even if it flies in the face of "do everything in software" which is SV's answer to everything.
- fs111 11y ago> The average joe goes on one or two major vacations in their entire life That might be true for the US, but it is def. more common in Europe, where people go on trips every summer.
- Raphmedia 11y agoIt's a false statement for Canada too. A lot of people migrate south for at least 2 weeks every winter.
- ghaff 11y agoI read the comment as one or two major vacations that require all sorts of complicated planning that isn't well-served by current sites. Depending on values of "average," I suppose that might be true. If you're driving to a beach cottage you rented for a couple weeks every summer, you don't really need a fancy app for that. I travel a lot and even I have maybe one or two trips a year tops that aren't pretty straightforward.
- sevensor 11y agoI think it's also false for the U.S., but the "major vacation" is for most people not a skiing junket to the Alps, or even a week at Disney World, but a few days at a nearby KOA, or long weekend at the hunting camp, or at a regional amusement park. There's still a middle class in this country, and it still takes vacations. It just doesn't leave its home state very often.
- CM30 11y agoThat's definitely true. Probably a few more times than that actually, since it's pretty common for people to take a weekend off in a nearby country (like say, France if you're in the UK). Question is, is it enough to support a business model? Popular services tend to ones where the user's return on a regular basis, not where they check in every now and then if they even remember it exists.
- sliverstorm 11y agoWhat "degree" of trips? People in the US make lots of trips within their state or to a neighboring state- maybe five hours in the car, or a 90-minute plane ride. But 18-hour trans-oceanic plane rides do not happen every summer.
- CM30 11y agoNah, the real best example of this is the entertainment industry. Like, video game development, or maybe film/TV production. The industries where people are so desperate to get involved that they're willing to work insane hours for often little pay in harsh conditions just for the potential exposure and popularity. Or in some cases, work for nothing on the assumption it might pan out at some unknown time in the future. There's a reason why so many people in Hollywood are working low paid jobs with the aspiration of becoming an actor or actress at some point in the future. Or why sites like Youtube are littered with the attempts of becoming the next big thing by hundreds of thousands of creators and small teams/companies. Or why every video game market in existence is filled with tons and tons of indie games of every possible level of quality. All those things are seen as glamorous, have huge multi billion dollar markets and have flaws people think could be fixed in some way or another. And yet again, they're all ridiculously competitive, are incredibly hard to make a decent profit in and then have the added problem that the product is extremely easy for people to avoid paying for.