4 ms·
I do like the idea. I travelled a lot in the past but never made an effort to reach out to interesting people, so when planning future trips, I'm gonna make an
by IsaacL 14y ago
I do like the idea. I travelled a lot in the past but never made an effort to reach out to interesting people, so when planning future trips, I'm gonna make an effort to connect with local startup scenes.
I think for this to work you have to really define your community. Exclusivity will help, something like asmallworld.com (an invite-only social network).
Off the top of my head, I can think of two groups who'd use something like this:
1) people like us, ie entrepreneurs, and others in the startup world (investors and so on).
2) partyers, who want to find the cool places that aren't yet in the tourist guidebooks.
I think both groups would like some exclusivity. I mean, in any local startup scene, the most interesting people are oversubscribed - all the founders of no-traction startups want to grab coffee with the guy who just raised a $10 mil Series B.
When the $10 mil CEO travels to a new place, he'd probably like to grab coffee with founders at a similar level to talk shop. But those guys don't necessarily know who he is or why he's worth talking to.
If you can get people to say "hey, this person messaged me on urbanvisitor.com, he must be worth meeting" - then you'd have a decent business.
- mittermayr 14y agoi really, really like your comment. it reflects exactly what i was hoping for someone else to bring up. i agree on the two groups and i agree on the 'oversubscribed people' issue. i actually love the term. i truly believe that most services fail to deliver on this and end up having lots of hookers use it with fake profiles, or joe the weird power networking guy who sells nothing but his life consultancy work to you and keeps requesting meetings... so fully agree. that's crucial to nail. thanks isaac.
- IsaacL 14y agoYeah, it seems a lot of social sites don't grasp some of the underlying dynamics of how social networks actually work in the real world. If you can work out those dynamics, you'll have a hit. Despite people thinking he's an awkward nerd who got lucky, Mark Zuckerberg is actually very good at this.