kuisch

Why the conversational UI? Think there are few problems that are best solved by chatbots, party-planning doesn't seem to be one of them.

why should the ability to regulate be contingent on the level of contribution of the regulating authority?

As stated in the press release, the fine has been calculated on the basis of the value of Google's revenue from its comparison shopping service in the 13 EEA countries concerned, taking into account the "duration and gravity" of the infringement. What the commission is asking is simply equal treatment between rival comparison shopping services and its own.

To name a few --

Payments: Adyen, Transferwise, and (arguably) Stripe

Music: Spotify, Soundcloud. Shazam

Travel: Booking.com, SkyScanner

Fashion: Zalando

Telecommunications: Skype

Gaming: Rovio (Angry Birds), King (Candy Crush), Supercell (a.o. Clash of Clans)

This approach makes sense. I also think that sneakers (or streetwear in general) would make for a pretty compelling initial market. You'll obviously encounter the chicken-and-egg problem with this platform, so it would probably be good to try and hack one side of the market. In that light, definitely keep working together with the admins of these huge Facebook groups (I reckon you're in Basement, Supreme Talk, Palace Talk?!). These 40k+ groups make for an incredible opportunity to engage with your target audience. Hell, to get initial traction just raffle a pair of Yeezy's, Air Mags, or that new Gosha among the people that sign-up.

One thing I'd do differently though is start out with a website (vs. an app). It's very true that Facebook doesn't have any form of domain-specific search fields. But it's very accessible. I realize that n = 1 here, but the friction in having to download another separate app to my phone would be too high for me to switch from using the different Facebook groups. I think you'd want to make it as easy as possible to access your solution (or at least submit WTB requests) in order for this to take off. In that light, a website would be much better I think.

On another note, here's a really good read on why Facebook may help you out a lot, but would also most likely be your biggest competitor: http://alexmuir.com/facebook-is-the-new-excel

Anyway, very cool. Happy to chat more if you like -- I'm at [email protected].

I think most travelers would probably fall in either one of these three categories:

Those that know where they'd like to go, how much they'd like to spend, and when they'd like to travel. (Traditional OTAs cater well to this category of people)

Those that know where they'd like to go and how much they'd like to spend, but don't know when they they'd like to travel. (e.g. When it would be cheapest to fly out; one solution that does a pretty good job of addressing this is Hitlist http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/07/hitlist-a-smarter-flight-fi...)

Those that don't know where to go, but do know how much they'd like to spend, and when they'd like to travel. (This would be the category we're addressing)

Along the 'where', '$', and 'when' dimensions, there would clearly be more combinations possible (i.e. 8), but the majority should fall in the three listed above. And sure, feel free to drop me a line at [email protected] -- always curious to hear about how others are thinking about this!

Yes we've been thinking about this as well. On the one hand, it's not being able to get the .com domain as well as the fact that people might confuse it with the Yoga festival you linked to (although we're primarily focused on Europe, at least initially, and the festival is US only). On the other hand, the word perfectly captures the essence of our solution. 'Wanderlust' means 'a strong desire to travel' which is exactly the feeling that we mean to associate ourselves with -- the feeling of knowing that you'd like to get away for a few days, but not knowing where to go. And thank you!

Your characterization of travellers seems a bit off to me. Along those dimensions, there'd be at least two or three other categories of travellers. Not sure how to respond to that.

As for monetization: we don't plan to rush this. Once we have our recommendation engine built out and fleshed out, we will build business around it. But to optimize for revenue in the short term would probably be to diminish our chances in the long term. We want to prioritize consumer experience over everything else. And then only once we have that ramped up to a good scale, we could leverage the customer relationship to move down the funnel, closer and closer to the transaction itself.

Having said that, we're exploring multiple paths to monetization. For example, we think that Wanderlust will have an interesting advertising opportunity, with 1) high ARPU, 2) high purchase-intent, and 3) a user still open to suggestions (a bit like Pinterest's opportunity). One other stream we're thinking about is offering hotels an annual/monthly flat-fee to be featured on our platform.

A PhocusWright study from 2010 found that 40% of (EU) travelers that plan their trip online don't have a destination in mind beforehand. I imagine that this number would be slightly higher for a younger demographic (18-35), which we aim to address initially (thinking 'I don't specifically care where I'm going; I just want to see something new'). The European online hotel & flight sale market itself is valued at roughly $210B. I also expect Wanderlust to be used mainly for shorter city breaks (4-5 day trips) as opposed to actual summer holidays, where most of us tend to have at least some idea of where to go.

I am not sure if the analogy you draw to a local equivalent (and if that fails, surely this would fail) is entirely fair. It's an area I didn't look into specifically.

I'm familiar with Tripaya. As pointed out earlier, there are a few others with a similar approach. There's no real network effect here, so I expect that 1) there will be less of a winner-takes-all dynamic (i.e. room for more than 1 player) and 2) it won't be so much about who gets there first as about who gets it right.

Thank you - we're aiming for the end of April!

That's fair. To be clear, we're very much aware of the 'inspiration' features that the existing players offer (e.g. kayak.com/explore or booking.com/destinationfinder.html). Perhaps I could have worded it differently.

I do think there's a significant difference between adding the capability onto your core, legacy product line vs. starting from scratch and making it the central focus, the thing the entire venture revolves around. Most travel agencies are still optimized for conversion (i.e. the bottom of the funnel); not for planning.

Yes, there are definitely others in this space exploring the same angle -- this is our take. And I think a broader category of interests is something we're moving towards, but not our main priority at the moment.

thank you for your comment

re: variety of trips -- we think the magic lies in providing our users with suggestions they may have never thought of themselves, but that end up being exactly what they've been looking for. We hope to do so by learning as much as possible about exactly those destinations out of the 'mainstream' (like Paris, London, Berlin) and subsequently translate that to the categories of interest we offer. We currently serve 220 destinations and think that achieving a certain level of variety will certainly be possible, especially as we learn more and more about our users and how they like our suggestions.

re: making money -- We don't plan to rush monetization. Volume is key in the travel industry, so we plan to focus on building a great, differentiated, user experience first. Once we've ramped that up significantly, we aim to move down the funnel (from the 'inspiration' phase towards the 'transaction phase'). Having said that, we're exploring multiple paths to monetization. For example, we think that Wanderlust will have an interesting advertising opportunity, with 1) high ARPU, 2) high purchase-intent, and 3) a user still open to suggestions (a bit like Pinterest's opportunity). One other stream we're thinking about is offering hotels an annual/monthly flat-fee to be featured on our platform.

re: similar attempts -- Wanderfly did this in the US (we're in Europe), but got acquired by TripAdvisor and shut down. There's quite a few different start-ups that launched either this year or in 2015. We feel they haven't quite gotten it right for several reasons, but it probably comes down to a not being able to translate technical complexity to a pleasant user experience.

re: user acquisition -- definitely a key point. As pointed out above, I think no-one has gotten the concept quite right so far. I think there's some mindshare to be won if we're the ones who manage to do so; if we're able to connect to the feeling of 'I know that I want to travel, but don't know where to go'. Initially, we'll be focusing on the channels the bigger players won't/can't focus on because of their scale (e.g. blogs, offline communities).

Wrote this bit more as a way to structure my thoughts than anything else, but let me know what you think. Open to any suggestions for improvement.

Really curious as to where this may go. On the one hand, I'm skeptical. It feels like there's simply too much friction for a commodity. And doing relatively well in the Dutch market is one thing. Being able to translate this to the English market is, of course, a different story entirely. On the other hand, being able to read individual articles from most of the major publications in one centralized environment is super compelling to me.

Additionally, I feel like the iTunes comparison that's often made isn't entirely fair. Before iTunes, I believe there simply wasn't any viable (non-illegal) alternative to get an individual song. Whereas Blendle competes with, as mentioned before, loads of other free alternatives online. I'm sure this is appealing to a core group of fairly voracious readers, but wonder if it extrapolates to the wider population to such an extent as to sustain an actual business. Thus far, I believe I've only come across the number of registered users. This is obviously not very interesting and perhaps they're not allowed to disclose any other metrics. Especially with the free initial credit though, I guess you'll find plenty who would be willing to give it a spin. Would love to see DAUs and/or the percentage of people that tops up repeatedly after using initial credit.

To be sure, I definitely hope they succeed. It seems like they've executed very well up to this point.

Appreciate the feedback. We've planned to push an update next week addressing most of your points (esp. #3,#5 & #6).

So far the FB CPC hovers around $0.70. We need >200 users per flight booking. A hotel booking has not been made through our platform yet. Not much data has been collected though, seeing as we've only been live for 2 weeks.

It might be important to note that, at this point, we're not so much interested in how much we make from the actual booking as much as we're interested in the conversion rate itself. We use the Expedia & SkyScanner APIs, which was more practical from a technical perspective to get to MVP as soon as possible. But the affiliate fees for flights are close to nothing ($2 if we're lucky) and we have different solutions in mind.

We only ask for the user to sign-up once she clicks the 'save itinerary' button, which we believed would be the most seamless. The most confusing part of the product so far has been the fact that we currently have two 'book now' buttons once the user tries to book her flight, something we're addressing.

In terms of driving traffic, our SEO/SEA strategy so far has been considerably difficult to pull-of given our limited resources in light of the incredible budget of the traditional OTAs. FB/Twitter advertising has been somewhat better.

Additionally, SEO/SEA is something that we feel will be much more relevant for the parties in the market that cater to those users that already know where they would like to travel to and just need to find their flight and/or accommodation. We cater to those earlier in the cycle, wondering 'where can I go?'. This is the feeling we try to associate ourselves with, which is why brand advertising might prove more useful than direct response. Again, this is tricky with a small budget (<€1000)

Yes, we've tested with >5 random people. Users don't have to book immediately, but can create an account and save the itinerary for later.

Conversion metrics we're tracking: 'happy 1st visit' (i.e. views more than 5 trips), visit/search, search/save, search/book. account signup

Hi Michael, Aaron,

My name's Aron and I'm building Wanderlust (www.wanderlust.ly): a travel website that shows where you could go based on how much you can spend and what you're interested in.

Wanderlust provides users with a complete trip, including a destination, flight, and accommodation, as well as an overview of the best things to do and see during their stay in that particular destination - after which users may customize the options we recommend and book or, if they’re not sure yet, simply save the itinerary and flip to the next trip that matches the criteria they've entered.

Our main issue:

Low conversion rates (visitor/booking). Particularly due to the fact that we're higher up in the funnel (vs. traditional OTAs) and don't have a lot of credibility in the early stages.

Although I realize this is quite a broad question, any insight on how we might improve would be super helpful!

Wanderlust | Amsterdam, the Netherlands | Full Time | Onsite | Remote OK.

Wanderlust is a travel website that shows you where you can go based on what you like and how much you can spend (www.wanderlust.ly)

I'm looking for a technical co-founder, ready to take charge of development from here on out. Yes, you'd be the first technical hire; the third team member. But we do have a closed beta version live at the moment.

More about who we're looking for here: angel.co/wanderlust-8/jobs/99196-preferably-technical-co-founder

I'd love to talk specifics with you. Don't hesitate to reach out at [email protected]

Cheers!