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If you don’t mind sharing, how did you go about testing the product-market fit for your apartment website?

anoncoward111 8y ago
Of course, my pleasure :) I'll send you an email too just to say hi. So, in my case, I was living in Chile and I had booked tickets to Thailand and Japan (Ironically I ended up moving back to the USA for a full time job that I wasn't planning on landing!!) In Chiang Mai Thailand, specifically, you can book a 1-3 month apartment for about $150 a month USD cash. They speak english, there's no lease, no craziness. And only a few guest houses offer these types of prices and terms, so you really had to hear about it from a friend of a friend type situation. So I wanted to build a site that was a "curated list" of these apartments. And I didn't even have firm data, names and numbers of landlords, availability, etc. I just wanted to make something that looked and felt like airbnb, but was light-weight and mobile friendly (text, css, and basic js only. site load files of just a few KB not MB!!!) So, I mocked it up, and made some posts to some reddits and discords where I was only sort of a contributing member. I basically said, "guys, all of us are having a lot of problems finding legit landlords with good terms and prices abroad. I have a list of a few that are good, but I want to scale it out and make it available as like a public service to our channel. Is this something you guys would read? aka, is it worth my time to do this for fun?" And the response was overwhelming. "YES! I want to see this list!" and "Thank you so much!!! I'm having no luck booking a room right now". and etc etc. People I've never heard of messaging me for months, "Did you finish it yet?" From a technical standpoint, the site was a success. It looked and felt like a responsive airbnb that worked on any device. The problem was that it was extremely, extremely difficult to collect data of any kind. Language barriers, not network effects, nothing. These landlords are so hard to find, they're like ghosts!!! So the product fell dormant because of an inability to scale to the level of service needed for it to be useful. But the demand is there, and the grassroots method I used to discover that demand was really successful and mostly by accident ;)
- alfredallan1 8y ago
  I know the line of business you’re talking about - getting landlords to list their properties. It is a gnarly problem, but one that’s solvable. The catch is that it is truly hyper local. You can’t do Thai from Chile. It needs to be done by being physically present in different major Thai destinations that you want to list, going from door to door to meet the landlords you already know about, and to discover other you don’t know about. It is literally a pariah dog’s job while you’re getting started (and you’ll graduate into a working dog’s job if you’re successful), but once you have established basic rapport and have the contact numbers (not just emails) of the landlords, you could very well just call from from a nice Thai beach, as long as you maintain periodic physical contact. It is great that the app is polished, but additionally (if you already havent) you’ll have to make the technical side such that it is extremely easy to update - and the owners can do it themselves. Convice the owners to do it themselves. Make a few local friends who speak English, and are young and hungry, make them commissioned agents. Take them along with you, assign each renter to an agent, and be fair (and initially generous) with the agents. But be sure you the “keys” are with only you. If you do it right, and are able to be accepted into the culture (important to behave as they do, be very humble, and give up the traditional “confidence”/arrogance commonly espoused in western society), and be sociable enough to blend in with the landlords, you might become a social phenomenon, and get many more landlords through word of mouth. I strongly recommend you give a serious go, physically, hyper-locally, town-to-town, house-to-house. Not just make the app and expect that the supply side will come looking (the demand side will, you’ve already figured that out). You have to go to them, convince them, request them, implore to them, show them the money, and the potential market (don’t expect them to understand the benefits straight off the bat). You’ll also get into trouble when a renter trashes a place. When you do, either sell to AirBnB or hire experienced people from that company. When you pull it off, you’ll be like a mini/local airbnb, and worth a decent fraction of what they’re worth. Understand that this is a supply-demand business. Your demand will be off the internet. Market it the way you know. The supply part is very different. Do Thai landlords frequent Reddit in droves?

Of course, my pleasure :) I'll send you an email too just to say hi. So, in my case, I was living in Chile and I had booked tickets to Thailand and Japan (Ironically I ended up moving back to the USA for a full time job that I wasn't planning on landing!!) In Chiang Mai Thailand, specifically, you can book a 1-3 month apartment for about $150 a month USD cash. They speak english, there's no lease, no craziness. And only a few guest houses offer these types of prices and terms, so you really had to hear about it from a friend of a friend type situation. So I wanted to build a site that was a "curated list" of these apartments. And I didn't even have firm data, names and numbers of landlords, availability, etc. I just wanted to make something that looked and felt like airbnb, but was light-weight and mobile friendly (text, css, and basic js only. site load files of just a few KB not MB!!!) So, I mocked it up, and made some posts to some reddits and discords where I was only sort of a contributing member. I basically said, "guys, all of us are having a lot of problems finding legit landlords with good terms and prices abroad. I have a list of a few that are good, but I want to scale it out and make it available as like a public service to our channel. Is this something you guys would read? aka, is it worth my time to do this for fun?" And the response was overwhelming. "YES! I want to see this list!" and "Thank you so much!!! I'm having no luck booking a room right now". and etc etc. People I've never heard of messaging me for months, "Did you finish it yet?" From a technical standpoint, the site was a success. It looked and felt like a responsive airbnb that worked on any device. The problem was that it was extremely, extremely difficult to collect data of any kind. Language barriers, not network effects, nothing. These landlords are so hard to find, they're like ghosts!!! So the product fell dormant because of an inability to scale to the level of service needed for it to be useful. But the demand is there, and the grassroots method I used to discover that demand was really successful and mostly by accident ;)

alfredallan1 8y ago
I know the line of business you’re talking about - getting landlords to list their properties. It is a gnarly problem, but one that’s solvable. The catch is that it is truly hyper local. You can’t do Thai from Chile. It needs to be done by being physically present in different major Thai destinations that you want to list, going from door to door to meet the landlords you already know about, and to discover other you don’t know about. It is literally a pariah dog’s job while you’re getting started (and you’ll graduate into a working dog’s job if you’re successful), but once you have established basic rapport and have the contact numbers (not just emails) of the landlords, you could very well just call from from a nice Thai beach, as long as you maintain periodic physical contact. It is great that the app is polished, but additionally (if you already havent) you’ll have to make the technical side such that it is extremely easy to update - and the owners can do it themselves. Convice the owners to do it themselves. Make a few local friends who speak English, and are young and hungry, make them commissioned agents. Take them along with you, assign each renter to an agent, and be fair (and initially generous) with the agents. But be sure you the “keys” are with only you. If you do it right, and are able to be accepted into the culture (important to behave as they do, be very humble, and give up the traditional “confidence”/arrogance commonly espoused in western society), and be sociable enough to blend in with the landlords, you might become a social phenomenon, and get many more landlords through word of mouth. I strongly recommend you give a serious go, physically, hyper-locally, town-to-town, house-to-house. Not just make the app and expect that the supply side will come looking (the demand side will, you’ve already figured that out). You have to go to them, convince them, request them, implore to them, show them the money, and the potential market (don’t expect them to understand the benefits straight off the bat). You’ll also get into trouble when a renter trashes a place. When you do, either sell to AirBnB or hire experienced people from that company. When you pull it off, you’ll be like a mini/local airbnb, and worth a decent fraction of what they’re worth. Understand that this is a supply-demand business. Your demand will be off the internet. Market it the way you know. The supply part is very different. Do Thai landlords frequent Reddit in droves?