
Behind The Scenes At Adioso - Part 1: Reality Check - tomhoward
http://tomhoward.co/part-1-reality-check
======
inspiredworlds
Crazy good blog post.

I live with Tom for a few months and I can say Tom is definitely passionate
about Adioso and fighting for survival any way he can. To me, Fenn and Tom are
two of the pioneers in the startup scene in Australia. I know that there were
people in Australia doing startups before then, but for the current generation
of new people doing startups they are an inspiration and the people we look up
to.

When someone talks about YC in Australia, you can be sure that the name Adioso
isn't too far off. I love using Adioso, even before I met Tom & Fenn. It such
a cool idea and I still use it as my first point of call for looking for
flights. If only they could keep adding more flights! I'm glad that they have
gone back to open ended text search - that is what made them unique and easy
to use.

As a user, you sometimes don't know where you want to go, BUT you want to go
somewhere. You might know the origin destination and possibly the end
destination, which makes Adioso great to use.

I also had an interview with an incubator in the US, and who do you turn to?
The guys with the experience. So I asked Fenn for help which he was more than
happy to assist with and he gave me some invaluable advice to prep me.

I'm sure these tough little cockroaches just won't die easily and they can
figure it out.

------
iamjonlee
I think that there's potential but the current layout of the homepage doesn't
appeal to me. Just because of the homepage, I'm not inclined to continue using
the app. I know you guys aren't designers but there are a few improvements
that I can see.

1) Your tagline on the bottom of the homepage tells me more about your service
than the copy with the "Have the best vacations humanly possible". Lists are
boring, especially without visuals. Because the homepage is the most important
page, I'd focus on only getting them to try search first then find out about
all the other features you offer.

2) As many have mentioned, the video thing is really annoying. I click on the
video to expect something to watch, but it's blank. If you don't have a video,
don't put a placeholder image there yet.

3) Where do you want to go and when? default text in the searchbar. The less
the user needs to type, the better. It's also MUCH more convenient for the
user to select the When from a drop down list because they usually have pretty
precise dates they want to travel. Because there's this extra option, I didn't
know what to type at first. I had to search 3 times to realize that you do
City, State and Country.

4) Because your site doesn't have any visuals, your featured lists actually
take most of my attention. Those should never take away from your search bar
which is your call to action.

I'm no expert on design, but I'm just listing out what I've learned the past
year (my homepage for a past startup was very similar to what you have now).

I took a few minutes to make you a sample homepage mockup that incorporates a
lot of the stuff I mentioned above. Design is a really subjective matter;
everyone will think differently of the mockup below, so it's up to you. Just
my two cents.

LINK: <http://www.grooovy.me/Adioso.jpg>

~~~
luxpir
Nicely done, Jon. fwiw, I think you've stepped it up to where I would have
expected it to be, graphically, as an average-joe user.

------
stevenj
When is the right time to quit something? A startup, a marriage, a book, etc.
Is there a right time? If not, when should you quit? Or should you not?

The people who make it say that persistence is key.

But what if you're climbing the wrong mountain? How/when do you know that what
you need most is change?

For me personally, I've changed things when my heart just isn't in it for the
long haul anymore. When I don't love it anymore. (And usually, when I realize
I don't love it anymore, I often realize -- sometimes not until much later --
that I never did.)

It's been clear to me when I do love something, or someone. So that's what I
focus on.

~~~
gruseom
This is a really good comment.

The principle, "Exits are harder than entries," comes up in a lot of different
places.

Hindsight bias distorts the picture. What could be more obvious than that,
say, the Twitter guys were right to keep making Twitter even when nobody else
cared. But whenever we think that way, we're retroactively assuming the power
to predict the future. Then we find ourselves in some real situation that
matters and that superpower doesn't work and we're totally stumped. (Edit:
actually almost all our vocabulary around "persistence" assumes hindsight.
When something turns out to have worked, you displayed plucky perseverance.
When it fails, you were a stubborn fool. In real time, these qualities are not
so easy to tell apart! Maybe they're the same thing sometimes.)

So what do you do? It's a hard, deep question. I agree with stevenj. Consult
the heart.

~~~
Alex3917
I'd have to disagree on this one.

Clearly there are tons of people excited about the idea of Adioso. The problem
is that the technology doesn't deliver. No matter how ridiculous of a schedule
I'm willing to put up with, I still can't get from NYC to Cambodia and back
for $300 or whatever. And it's not even clear that that will ever be possible
no matter how much time they put into developing it.

Now if they were able to figure out a way to charter planes that would
otherwise be flying empty and get them filled to capacity so that I actually
could go to some random country in SouthEast asia for a few hundred bucks then
that would be awesome. But that simply hasn't happened yet.

------
jeffpersonified
Too rare are blogs/posts in the Valley about the "trough of sorrow." Even
rarer are the ones that don't leave on an upbeat ending. This is life. This is
what it is really like to build something people want... or to try to.

Thank you for writing this. The euphoric prose that plagues TC and ilk can
often do a real disservice to those trying to build the seemingly impossible,
and your honesty and humility are refreshing.

------
rriepe
I think the guys at Adioso are on to something potentially cool.

But after reading this blog post and checking out their site, the only three
words on my mind are "Video coming soon..."

~~~
ryan
They are probably 'smoke testing' whether it's worthwhile to spend the effort
making a video, based on the percentage of people that try to play it.

~~~
nedwin
That is exactly what they are doing.

~~~
wernah
Are you the ned mentioned in the article?

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bobrenjc93
At first glance, I thought adioso was another KAYAK competitor. It took me a
few minutes to realize that adioso's core value proposition is its ability to
predict the best time to buy plane tickets. May I suggest replacing your
current home page with something like this...

Buy plane tickets at the best possible time 1) Search for your destination 2)
Subscribe for deal alerts 3) Book your ticket to your destination

Furthermore, why limit yourself to plane tickets? Why not combine a few more
services like hotels and car rentals? This opens up the possibility of booking
entire vacations all through one portal.

Thanks for the great read. I wish you guys the best of luck.

~~~
robryan
They have hotels, although it isn't as core to the product as flights. I think
the use case you describe and the KAYAK one are both valid uses cases of the
site, you might though be right that shifting the focus to differentiate
themselves could be a good idea.

------
batiudrami
Adioso is great - I love the date/price graph you get across the top of each
search. It was super helpful in finding flights for my holiday to the US (PER-
LAX) in August, which I booked just last week. I know very little about
startups, or even how this article relates to your current situation, but I
hope you guys do well.

edit: Some features I would love:

-'I need baggage' and 'I'm paying with a credit card' checkboxes which would add the relevant fees to the fares. From an Australian standpoint, sometimes the difference between a Tiger fare and a Virgin one is far less significant once you add fees.

-A 'get me here by [X]AM/PM' option, or the ability to sort flights by time a-la Hipmunk so that if I'm looking for a connecting flight which is different to the recommended one, it's easier to find.

~~~
alec
If you're searching in the US, give Google Flight Search a try - it has a
data/price graph that will let you filter by departure/arrival time, and it's
instant.

~~~
batiudrami
I was actually looking for international/Australian domestic ones. For US
domestic, I find Hipmunk is awesome.

------
ericflo
This hits very close to home. Thank you so much for writing it.

~~~
mkuhn
Yes, this hit close to home and is a very inspiring read.

With our startup we have had multiple of those near-death experiences and
currently are navigating a difficult situation. So it was good to read how
others handle this. This just gave me a big boost. Thanks for sharing and the
openness.

------
wallflower
Tom - I have read hundreds of founder stories and you write like a skilled
novelist and from the heart. Good luck, the numbers will keep going up..

------
emgreen
I feel like your product is possibly amazing, but for some reason your front-
end stuff just isn't hitting the spot or communicating what you're about
enough.

I think you should try out your site on some random everyday folk, pretending
like you're not hugely emotionally invested in it, and watch, listen, and ask
lots of questions. Just go to a cafe or pub, and ask nicely, people are often
kind. Even if you don't get any golden information, it's amazing to see what
you do through someone elses eyes.

I'll be brave, reveal what an idiot I am, and honestly explain my "man on the
street" experience:

* I follow the link on your blog post

* land page * What is this? "have the best vacations..." hmmm, maybe holiday booker (meaning flights + hotels) * 1. blah 2. blah blah 3. blah, video. whatever, no time, I'm ignoring * oooh, I like this search box. I type: "berlin on sunday" (true, I do in fact want to buy a flight to Berlin on Sunday)

* results page * I get "Birmingham to Berlin" results * I happen to have my browser window small. All I can see is something for typing in an email. I don't want to type in an email or read the text about why I should type in my email. Also I'm in London not Birmingham. I wanted something better than a box to type my email into. I think, "this is rubbish", and go back to the blog post.

* After finishing blog post. I think "maybe if I say I'm in London it'll work better". So I go to front page, and scout round for something to say I'm in London. Find it, and use it.

* results page again * I get "London to Berlin" results * I heard someone say something about a graph in the blog comments, so I scroll down * Ooooooh, nice graph! Wow, I really like this. * Now what?! Another scout around, and I figure out to scroll down some more to view the flight details * Top item is a cheap and correctly timed flight. I am extremely pleased and impressed. * I find myself opening up another tab to go to that airline's page directly. It was done automatically. I'm not sure why, I think it's because I don't quite trust your site enough and wanted to go to a "proper" site to do the actual buying.

So some clear problems:

* I totally didn't notice/get the following flights idea * Small UI niggles, and I guess maybe general look of the site, led to a general feeling of distrust * You communicated some important stuff using text (following feature), and I didn't read any of it * You're UI required me to know to scroll down * You quickly asked for an email. But at that point I hadn't experienced any useful functionality, didn't trust you, or understand what you would do with it.

------
badclient
Sometimes I feel like an a book dedicated to start-up mood management would go
a long way. It could just be interviews of founders focused on how they
managed ups and downs mentally.

It could be of great aide to founders who haven't made it yet.

~~~
nodemaker
Its a roller coaster ride for sure...one day you can change the world and the
next you are piece of shit!

------
robryan
Very interesting the part about the "How much do you heart me?" campaign. This
was very well designed, leveraged their core product well, got lots of
positive feedback and got a significant amount of attention. Yet in terms of
driving sales it completely failed.

This may have been a case of reaching the wrong audience, lots of people in
the startup scene and lots of travel related people but nowhere near enough
people actually looking to take valentines day trips.

I think as in many startups there has been some aversion to pushing the sales
stuff. We hear so much about nailing the user experience and not making out
products low quality and spammy. As many other articles have also said though
build something awesome and people will come may work for some but isn't the
reality to everyone, especially in the crowded travel niche.

------
doctororange
Thanks for such a candid telling of the Adioso story. Certain parts ring _so_
familiar it's uncanny. Just as you got a boost from hearing that Airbnb had
some tough times before the tide came in, we find it encouraging to hear how
you've had to battle the odds. Staying tuned for part 2...

------
benologist
AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED??

Great read, really can't wait for part 2.

~~~
ph0rque
At least we know they didn't get acquired by another company, and they didn't
quit, so the ending must be good, right?

------
hartror
It is interesting reading this from my perspective as I am in the Melbourne
tech/startup scene and have met all these guys at various events, and have
even worked with one of them. From the outside Adioso has always looked like
the shining beacon of what can be accomplished building startup while living
in our wonderful city. The reality of course is so much more.

The obvious take away from this post and something I have already experienced
first hand, is the difficulty of raising and networking this far away from the
valley. Locally we just don't have the investor or talent pools to draw on and
finding people with the right attitude for a startup is very difficult.

Thanks for the epic candid post Tom and I am looking forward to the next
instalment!

~~~
doctororange
It really makes you wonder how many of the other shining beacons are also
working their asses off to stay afloat. Probably, nobody has it easy.

------
danbmil99
This is the clearest testament I've seen in a while to what the downside of
startup life can be like. The problem with most of these stories is, you read
them in the context of something that was eventually successful, so they
follow the Bad News Bears/Rocky Balboa/rocumentary narrative of defeat,
struggle, success. Understanding that in real life, you have absolutely no
guarantee of a happy ending -- in fact, it's the less likely outcome -- is
important, I think. Otherwise, you may find yourself thinking "Wait, I can see
this thing actually failing - that's not part of the movie script, so I must
be doing something wrong!"

------
simonw
Thank you very much for this - a rare, personal and beautifully written
insight in to what it's like at a startup after the initial enthusiasm and
buzz has worn off and the hard slog has set in. I'm really looking forward to
part 2.

------
fsckin
Searched for something I've been wanting to do for awhile, and got this
message:

We can't get you directly to China just yet.

Might want to put a prominent (disclosed) affiliate link there instead of
letting me down. Or just simply say "But wait, there's more! I can get you to
country X nearby.

Perhaps consider using different geoip databases for different locales, I
might be in the minority but you thought I was 940 miles away, in the USA.

------
antimora
Some of the questions I have after reading the article, which I loved the
story behind.

1) What took 2 years to build? I don't understand special technology behind
this site.

2) What's the value proposition to a user here? The data isn't even accurate
and the site warns me of outdated prices.

3) How do you guys come up with trips? Are those manually maintained?

4) How would you make money in the end if all booking would happen by a third
party?

~~~
itsprofitbaron
I am not affiliated with Adioso in any way and this is what I can remember
about them but, I hope it answers some of your questions.

Adioso quietly launched to Australian discount travellers in early 2008 which
had a simple interface and the ability to search over broad terms.

It was initially a side-project but they ended up pursuing it further - and
got into YC W'09 program. They had a major global launch in 2010.

With regards to the technology behind the site, Adioso use NLP rather than the
traditional stuff you find on other travel type sites entering the origin
dates etc in forms, with Adioso, you can enter stuff like "Europe In July"
etc.

They also have a routing engine which links flights from low-cost airlines to
create long-haul itineraries to help their users save $$$.

Essentially the value proposition for Adioso is to:

\- allow travellers with flexible dates & destinations to see where they can
go/look for alternatives they never may have thought of

\- Use low-cost airlines to make long-haul flights - saving you $$$

With regards to their revenue model - even if it happens on a third party site
- they can still take referral fees from both airlines and accomodation.

Similarly, I believe for all of these travel search engines etc that there is
the potential to develop a new method for airlines to advertise their services
and acquire new customers - there would also be some referal fees (and
potentially an upfront fee) for this as well.

------
Detrus
This smells like another round of search engine wars, only with niche searches
and complex UIs.

How many search engines for the same task will a significant userbase
ultimately tolerate? Of course most of the current players will have to exit
at some point. And I bet the winners will mainly win on UI because in this
case it's complex and the prices seem pretty close.

Following deals, date range and wide area search are very nice touches but
then if I want to search the traditional way, helps to remember a bunch of
other search engines and figure out noticeably different UIs more suited for
the task, like Hipmunk.

And is it really surprising the Adioso userbase remains small with a novel
therefore hard to explain value proposition and an unfinished landing page
which might not explain it? Also the UI needs bugfixing and polish. Otherwise
a few more marketing attempts that clearly communicate the novel searching
concept and that it allows you to find the lowest price should lead to
slightly higher numbers.

------
marcamillion
This is one of those blog posts that I don't think I will be able to forget.

Strikes close to home, and so well written.

------
benthumb
Very nice piece of writing ... nice to the point where I think this fellow may
have found his true calling (He talks about attending a movie premiere, and,
honestly, a film adaptation of six years in the trenches of a ycombinator
start-up would--I think at least--make decent fodder for a film).

That said, when I read this I immediately thought of this bit of PG's LISP
advocacy:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/carl.html>.

There's clearly no explicit delineation of human drama here, b/c, obviously,
it's not intended as such: it's a technical briefing (a really masterful one).
One can only guess what trial by fire--if any--there was behind the scenes.

------
rdl
There is always the third option -- quitting (or doing a pure talent
acquisition) and going to a successful later stage company in an easier
market.

Especially if you're approaching burnout, a purely-technical role in a "safe"
place (where there's great technology, but the business itself is largely
derisked, at least on a short timescale) is probably going to be a good way to
recover.

Especially if you're covered in preference, for founders, it's probably
relatively better to go to the best new role vs. maximizing sale price in a
talent acquisition but going to a less interesting company or position.

------
bdr
Wow, what an amazing post. Honest, sensitive, and very well written.

------
arvinjoar
A friend and I almost did a travel-search startup, but I'm we didn't, we
wanted to do something like Wanderfly (before we knew it existed). Seems like
Wanderfly made somewhat of a pivot though, so that either means the idea (of
selecting interests and a price range or even certain geographical areas and
doing relevant searches) didn't work at the time, at all, or the execution was
flawed. I very much doubt that bad execution was a factor, it looked very good
to me.

------
paulsutter
You have cool + unique + valuable core capabilities but you lack a
distribution mechanism and your site communication/UI is ineffective.

Spend more effort getting the right people involved and less effort on coding.
Talk to the guys below who have good landing page and virality suggestions.
You dont necessarily need one of them fulltime, but you do necessarily need to
listen and internalize what they're saying. Be generous with equity to solve
this problem.

------
rmATinnovafy
Off-topic: Adioso sounds like the Spanish word for hateful (Odioso).

Might confuse people in Spanish speaking markets.

~~~
jng
As a native spanish speaker: it reminds you much more of "adios" (goodbye). I
didn't even think of "odioso", which isn't nearly so common.

I even thought that they possibly based the name on the Spanish word "adios"
(you say "bye" when you leave, right?).

~~~
rmATinnovafy
I'm also a native speaker.

I do get the play on words with the word adios. But after saying it aloud my
wife asked me if I was saying Odioso instead.

I actually say bye rather than adios. :)

~~~
jng
I was just sharing that it didn't remind me of "odioso" until you mentioned
it. In any case, "adioso" still doesnt sound good to my spanish-speaking ears,
but I understand that's not the target market.

------
volaski
I wonder what happened since then? Socialcam launch party was quite a long
time ago, and the story is basically around that time. And the story doesn't
sound like a startup failure postmortem, so I'm kinda confused. Hopefully some
good news coming up in the next post?

------
dm8
Keep ploughing in for growth Tom. You'll get there. Its part of startup life
cycle.

~~~
antimora
Sometimes a better advice is to quit.

Here are some good points about quitting talked in Freakonomics: "The Upside
of Quitting" [http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/09/30/new-freakonomics-
radi...](http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/09/30/new-freakonomics-radio-
podcast-the-upside-of-quitting/)

------
seeingfurther
Heartfelt, true, emotions raw and stripped to the bone. Amazing post.

------
inuhj
I used it to search door a flight from LA to Rhode Island. The date list went
from April -> August...alphabetically? April is done and the drop down only
included April and August.

------
salimmadjd
Thanks for sharing an honest insight. I think many of us have been or are in a
same position, so its good to read younjourney. But, please edit it down and
make it shorter.

------
robot
Best writing I read this month, and I only read half of it yet. Story captures
the startup situation and founder feelings really well, I found a lot of
parallels.

------
nl
You want your numbers to go up?

You need a viral component. That "You aren't following these results" thing
should be a Facebook app (or maybe a Twitter bot?), not an email.

------
rudiger
_> Suddenly email was back, and now it was our big hope._

Email wasn't "back." It had never ceased to be important.

~~~
mgkimsal
By the same token, when all those "email is dead" memes went around, email
wasn't "dead" either. "email is for old people","everyone uses facebook", etc.
were all popular for a bit a couple of years ago, iirc.

------
jayliew
Promise you'll write part 2! Thank you so much for sharing - can totally
relate. All the best, Tom.

------
bbq123
Nice blog post but since when Greece belongs to Asia?
<http://i.imgur.com/NMYeQ.png>

