4 ms·

Right now they are taking all of the money for themselves, but in the future, if the service becomes popular, you will likely see them work directly with restau

Right now they are taking all of the money for themselves, but in the future, if the service becomes popular, you will likely see them work directly with restaurants and share the revenue. The whole point of this service is to make reservations into something that can be bought. This obviously works best with the cooperation of the restaurants.

lotharbot 12y ago
> "you will likely see them work directly with restaurants and share the revenue" Why wait for the future? If some startup thinks that selling reservations at restaurant X is profitable, they should be partnering with restaurant X right now to sell their reservations. They should be sharing in the potential downside with the restaurant -- if they book reservations they don't sell, and the restaurant has to turn down paying customers, the startup should pay some cost for that.
- onewaystreet 12y ago
  Because it's very hard to get small businesses, especially restaurants, to signup for unproven new services. This is why you had companies like Groupon spending millions on hiring local sales people.
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    That's an excuse, not a reason. "Because doing the right thing is too hard" is not a valid reason for doing the wrong thing. "Let me do the wrong thing, I promise (disclaimer: not a real promise) to do the right thing once I've gained sufficient profit" is even less of a reason.
    - gfodor 12y ago
      Bullshit. Many, many startups have a chicken and egg problem like this and artificially create demand or supply through 'questionable' tactics in order to prove the business model simultaneously to themselves and to their potential customers. This guy can now go into restaurants and tell them how much people are willing to pay for their reservations. Nobody else can do that, and that just might make the difference to getting those restaurants on board with his product. Once the engine is humming then of course not only will it be unnecessary to keep doing what he's doing but it won't scale anyway. There's often no other option and the ends in fact do justify the means if the net result is a more efficient market for both parties once it has been bootstrapped up "in the small." Of course, this requires you to not be an evil scumbag and be honest with yourself, but I see no reason to assume a path of execution is inherently evil, the intent and overall strategy greatly matters.
  - lotharbot 12y ago
    according to another comment in this thread, there are startups in New York that are doing it the way I suggested (ie, partnering with restaurants at the beginning).

lotharbot 12y ago

> "you will likely see them work directly with restaurants and share the revenue" Why wait for the future? If some startup thinks that selling reservations at restaurant X is profitable, they should be partnering with restaurant X right now to sell their reservations. They should be sharing in the potential downside with the restaurant -- if they book reservations they don't sell, and the restaurant has to turn down paying customers, the startup should pay some cost for that.

onewaystreet 12y ago
Because it's very hard to get small businesses, especially restaurants, to signup for unproven new services. This is why you had companies like Groupon spending millions on hiring local sales people.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  That's an excuse, not a reason. "Because doing the right thing is too hard" is not a valid reason for doing the wrong thing. "Let me do the wrong thing, I promise (disclaimer: not a real promise) to do the right thing once I've gained sufficient profit" is even less of a reason.
  - gfodor 12y ago
    Bullshit. Many, many startups have a chicken and egg problem like this and artificially create demand or supply through 'questionable' tactics in order to prove the business model simultaneously to themselves and to their potential customers. This guy can now go into restaurants and tell them how much people are willing to pay for their reservations. Nobody else can do that, and that just might make the difference to getting those restaurants on board with his product. Once the engine is humming then of course not only will it be unnecessary to keep doing what he's doing but it won't scale anyway. There's often no other option and the ends in fact do justify the means if the net result is a more efficient market for both parties once it has been bootstrapped up "in the small." Of course, this requires you to not be an evil scumbag and be honest with yourself, but I see no reason to assume a path of execution is inherently evil, the intent and overall strategy greatly matters.
- lotharbot 12y ago
  according to another comment in this thread, there are startups in New York that are doing it the way I suggested (ie, partnering with restaurants at the beginning).