
Ask HN: My strange pain point – is it a startup idea? - get
I travel pretty often. I&#x27;m not exactly a digital nomad but I like to stay in cities around in other cities and do whatever I would have done at home otherwise. Mostly working on web projects.<p>And it&#x27;s insane, how much time I spent on AirBnB and Booking.com, looking for the right apartments. Hours and hours of work that could be replaced with a simple database query if they had structured data. But even without, it could be made much easier with the right interface.<p>Two of my requirements make it so hard:<p>1) Top floor. I don&#x27;t like people running &#x27;on my head&#x27;.<p>2) A view. I don&#x27;t like to look out of the window and stare at another house.<p>So I have to look at each offer on AirBnB and Booking.com and try to figure out if it matches those. This is hard enough. I even became super good at finding the apartments on Google Earth so I can look at them from the outside. Insane.<p>To add insult to injury, neither of the two sites offer to tag apartments as &quot;I don&#x27;t like it&quot;. So when I look at the same city another day, I have to start over and look at all those apartments I already looked at again.<p>On AirBnB I abuse the &#x27;Wishlist&#x27; feature to mark apartments as &#x27;Dont like it&#x27;. So my &#x27;wishlists&#x27; are really &#x27;dont wish lists&#x27;. But at least it somewhat works. They mark apartments on one of your wishlists with a heart. So I know that the apartments with a heart are those that I don&#x27;t like :) Since they only allow 50 or so apartments on a wishlist, I have multiple wishlists for every city.<p>Realizing how much time I spend on this, I am considering to hire somebody for it. So I will have a database with apartments with a view.<p>What do you guys think? Should I then put it online? Like &#x27;Nomad list with a view&#x27;? Or am I a unique snowflake? Or does something like this already exist?
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dirktheman
I used to work in the travel industry. You wouldn't believe the explicit
wishes/demands of people: bed size, shower type, hard floors, no stairs,
fridge, no yellow lights (really), double ply TP, south facing windows,
vincinity of freeway exit, you name it.

The thing is: there's an infinite number of data you'd have to gather. I feel
your pain (we need a children's cot and that alone is almost impossible to
filter with AirBnB) but it'll be really hard.

~~~
get
This is a misunderstanding. I would not gather data about bed size or shower
type. All I want to do is assemble a list of top floor apartments with a view.

~~~
timdavila
Those are your requirements.

Dirk is saying yours is one of a long list of very specific requirements
people have requested in the past. You asked about a startup idea, so he is
generalizing the problem to make it applicable for more users than just
yourself, and pointing out how complicated it would be.

~~~
get
I understood that.

But as I said, it's a misunderstanding. I am not thinking about a
generalization. I am thinking about a site that lists apartments with a view.
That's it. I wonder if that has enough merits to become a startup.

~~~
dirktheman
I'm going to steal your idea here but then for apartments with long beds!

All jokes aside, as a startup idea this would narrow your market down too
much, I think. The number of people with specific apartment demands > number
of people who want an apartment with a view. I could see some merit in having
a site with a very large amount of very specific attributes that you can
filter. But it's pain in the neck to gather all this data.

But don't take my word for it! If I could find a site that lists airBnB
apartments with baby cots, a potty and socket covers I'd be sold!

~~~
get
"this would narrow your market down too much"

How do you know? Can you quantify that somehow?

"people with specific apartment demands > number of people who want an
apartment with a view"

The same could be said for every site. There is always a generalization that
targets more people.

One essential advice for startups these days is that the initial target
audience can very well be small. It's interesting to see that 'too small of a
target audience' is the main counter argument in this discussion.

How big was the estimated target audience for AirBnBs original offering to
house people on air mattresses?

~~~
dirktheman
You're reading too much into my words, I think. I meant the market size of
"people with specific demands" is by definition larger than the subset "people
with the specific demand of x". And yes, while it can't hurt starting with a
small audience, you do have to find a way to broaden your market at some
point. And stating 'if only 1% of the world population uses this it's still 76
million' isn't a very good way to define market size and there isn't a VC who
will take this seriously.

It's funny that you bring up AirBnB because there is a well known story about
their market size that Brian Chesky likes to tell:

 _Brian Chesky has a funny story that he tells about their continual
difficulty guessing market size.

The Airbnb founders had no idea how large it was. How do you measure the size
of the market for airbed rentals at conferences and political events?

Before one particularly important VC meeting, they put together a slide that
asserted the size of the market was "$200 MM per year". Nate (one of the
founders) felt deeply uncomfortable with this figure, and insisted they reduce
it. So, they changed it to $20 MM.

Shortly before the investor meeting, Brian and Joe (without Nate) met with
(now YC partner) Sam Altman, who told them "Investors like Billions not
Millions, baby, so change the 'm's ' to 'b's!"

So, Brian and Joe changed the market size to $2 Billion -- unbeknownst to Nate
-- who was shocked to see the much larger market size slide for the first time
in the investor meeting...

Later on, after YC, when they first met with Sequoia, one of the partners
there told them sequoia had been looking at the vacation rentals market for a
long time -- and did they know that the vacation rental market was a $40
billion a year industry?_

You asked for an opinion if this would be a good idea for a startup. I gave
you my honest insight. I'm not claiming to know everything or even to be
right, but I don't have to prove you wrong by quantifying why your market size
would be too small. My advice to you: if you ask for an opinion you either say
'thank you', ask for clarification, or prove my assumptions wrong. Right now
it seems that all you want to hear is 'it's a great idea!'.

~~~
get

        Right now it seems that all you want to
        hear is 'it's a great idea!'.
    

No! If there are counter arguments, I want to hear them!

The more replies I get without counter arguments that convince me, the more I
get the feeling this actually might be a good idea. Because if everybody tries
to discourage me and all the arguments are just 'feelings' then maybe there
are no hard facts that speak against it.

For example you said that you would steal the idea for apartments with long
beds. This is an interesting argument. Because it made me compare Google
trends for 'hotel with long bed' and 'hotel with view'. I also did that for
'hard floor' and all the other parameters you mentioned. And I saw that the
demand for a view is by far the biggest.

    
    
        My advice to you: if you ask for an opinion
        you either say 'thank you'.
    

Thank you!

~~~
dirktheman
Ha! We're alike in the sense that the more people tell me it can't be done,
the harder I work to prove the opposite. To sum up my counterarguments: I have
a feeling the market size isn't goint to be big, and it's going to be pretty
hard. And you're right, both arguments are not fact based.

Also: thank you for this reply. I re-read my parent comment and in hindsight I
sound rather condescending. Not my intention, and I apologize.

All the best with your 'AirBnB with a view'!

~~~
get
Great! I'm happy I did not completely disgruntle you and you still speak with
me. I can be way too undiplomatic at times.

Small market + Hard problem sums up the responses here nicely. I like that!
Because I'm not convinced the market is too small. And because I love hard
problems!

I wonder what format I should use for my list so I can put it online easily...
hmm... It would have to be one list for each city. Maybe I should put it all
in one sqlite db and write a script that renders it to static pages, one page
for each city?

------
_wmd
I feel your pain. I've been travelling for the past 6 months, and have become
the world's foremost critic of booking.com's UI in that time. That site,
despite dominating the entire planet when it comes to such things, has no
option to select [x] I REQUIRE A DESK TO WORK FROM

It's unbelievable how far gone these sites are from scenarios like yours and
mine, and it'd be so easy to fix up.

Or they lack any understanding of the areas they market. I'm currently in
Kathmandu, can I filter hotels by those that have a heater and hot running
water? Of course not, but sure, I can filter by 100 options like "Airport
shuttle", "24/7 front desk", and differentiate between a "hostel" and a
"lodge", or whether the room has "soundproofing", 99% of these of which every
hotel will tick yes to.

Another pain point -- WiFi. There are 100 ways they could measure this, but
not a single one implemented, even a sliding "how shit was your connection?
during the review, or, say, a surreptitious "How was your check-in?" e-mail
that runs a miniature JS speed test in the background

Another travelling scenario - short term contracts around London. I don't care
where I sleep, I care about rail and bus routes _only_. Can I search by that
on any site? Of course not

Meanwhile I actually built a niche site around that last one, but it can't
stand on its own -- it'd never become popular or turn any kind of profit, the
only hope is that a big site with roaring revenues like Booking.com would
somehow see the need, and spend a few working days worth of developer time on
it. But that'll never happen, because the improvement to their bottom line
would most probably be minimal -- I'll still use booking.com whether or not
they implement the feature, because there are so view viable alternatives in
this sector

~~~
get
Would love to see your site. If you want to get in touch - I have put my email
on my profile.

------
zapperdapper
I hear you - I've often wanted a feature to reject apartments/hotels without
an outdoor pool (don't like indoor pools).

The trouble is building a database is going to be a huge project and "view" is
a little subjective. Wouldn't you have to basically replicate AirBnB's
database but with a better interface? You would probably end up doing
something like web crawling TripAdvisor or something like that (which is
against their policies by the way).

Or is the plan to allow people to build their own personal lists from
Booking.com, TripAdvisor, AirBnB etc.? - if the latter I think that is a good
idea, but ultimately you've still got to find those apartments so you run into
the original problem again.

p.s. writing this from 32 floor apartment with a spectacular view out over
Manila. Not top floor but I've heard nothing at all from above me! (Booked via
AirBnB)

~~~
get
My 'plan' is very simple. It's just a list of links for each city. No
community features or anything. Just the links to apartments that I myself
found. Features could be added later. But the initial idea is to just put a
list of links online. Probably with a line 'If you know about an apartment
with a great view you want to share, please send it to ...@...'.

If you like, let me know which apartment it is in Manila and I will happily
add it :)

~~~
zapperdapper
Great idea then!

Twin Oaks Place, Manila. View from 32nd floor out over Manila is incredible
especially at night. There are even distant mountains you can see once the
smog clears in the morning! ;)

~~~
get
Thanks! The "One-Bedroom Apartment" here?

[https://www.booking.com/hotel/ph/30-cd-twin-oaks-
place.html](https://www.booking.com/hotel/ph/30-cd-twin-oaks-place.html)

I wonder if one is guaranteed to get it with a view or it could happen that
you book and end up in a lower floor?

~~~
zapperdapper
Yep, that's the one - I'm in the studio apartment - quite big though.

When you book you can ask the owner which floor it's on, so I knew I'd be on
floor 32. They also usually have photos of the view as it's often a selling
point.

Last place was floor 31 (Currency Services Suites). Was also up about floor 10
I think at St Francis PLace Shangri La - lovely apartment complex that is
right opposite St. Francis church and Lourdes school.

Twin Oaks building goes well over 40 floors though I think. I can see the
second tower through the large window here (that tower doesn't appear to have
been completed yet). It goes way above me (at least 10 or 15 floors). I think
if you are above say floor 10 you'd get a decent enough view. Warning though -
even at floor 32 the traffic noise is noticeable, but not too bad.

------
Joona
For tagging apartments as "I don't like it", you could create a browser
extension that automatically hides them. That aside, I think dirktheman's
comment is relevant; I don't think the data you want is useful for most other
users.

~~~
get
I never use browser extensions because of the security and privacy problems.

When you say 'most other users' \- can you quantify that? If for example 99%
of the world population does not care, that would still leave me with 76
million people who do care.

~~~
jaredsohn
If you build it yourself for yourself, you should be able to have some
confidence re: security and privacy.

------
irremediable
Probably too small a demand.

The general problem is property search with lots of options, and even that is
a tricky niche... I worked at a company that tried to do this, and in the end
we found it's too much work per niche.

Maybe if NLP gets a lot better.

~~~
get
Can you quantify the small demand somehow?

Is an apartment with a view not something many people want?

When I look at r/digitalnomad, the top post right now is somebody showing of
the view of their apartment.

Booking.com has a filter 'View'. So there must be some demand, right? The
filter just does not work. When I look at apartments with a view in Bangkok
the first 3 they show me are:

[https://www.booking.com/hotel/th/bangkokshortstay-3br-
sukhum...](https://www.booking.com/hotel/th/bangkokshortstay-3br-
sukhumvit.html)

[https://www.booking.com/hotel/th/aspira-
parc-39.html](https://www.booking.com/hotel/th/aspira-parc-39.html)

[https://www.booking.com/hotel/th/ekkamai-
prestige.html](https://www.booking.com/hotel/th/ekkamai-prestige.html)

None of these are what I mean with an apartment with a view. Some are just
hotel rooms. Some seem to not have a view.

~~~
irremediable
Estimate how many people are searching for property at a given time, how many
of them would use your view-focused site (a tiny fraction), how many of them
would find something through it and hence give you income (probably referral
bonus from whatever big property listers you're partnering with).

Now weigh that against the cost of creating/running a site, and digging out
the properties with a view.

I've not done this rigorously at all. But in the site I worked on, I suspect
people filtering by facets similar to "has a view" were, optimistically, about
1% of our engaged audience. Conversion rates were like 5%. So that was
probably a few tens of people per day (we had a fairly big audience!)

If you monetise by referral bonuses, you'll probably get tens of dollars per
referral. So at most ~100USD per day.

Now consider the costs of setting up and running such a site. Remember that we
were a global property search engine -- to get that thousands-strong audience,
we were running all over the world.

IMO it just doesn't add up.

You can always prove me wrong! One way might be to focus on high-end clients,
and somehow make more money from them... larger referral bonuses, for example,
or having the clients pay you to find them properties with a good view.

But yeah, I remain sceptical.

------
DoreenMichele
I will suggest that people who want it with a view may be a small number, but
probably a well heeled group. That absolutely does not make the radar of
people on a budget. So if you build it, you might be able to charge a
membership fee.

------
hodl
Practical problem is how do you get hosts to provide all this extra info and
trust them to be honest and accurate.

I can't even search for real estate and specify houses without getting
apartments or vice versa

~~~
get
I would just do what I already do. Look carefully at each apartment to see if
it could have a nice view. I judge it by the photos, the description, customer
reviews and Google street view.

Only apartments that might have a nice view go into my list.

I wonder if anybody else is interested in that list and if it would make an
interesting website.

------
sharemywin
a place where people could build sql queries and save them for others.

Maybe you could use:

[http://commoncrawl.org](http://commoncrawl.org)

I kinda remember a site that saves html in tables to be queried.

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NumberCruncher
What about sendin an automated massage to the landlord like "top floor with
nice view?". What about not giving a fuck about such unimportant things and
spending your time more wisely? I mean if I want to live every month in a
different accommodation I can not expect having the same comfort than in my
dream flat. It's like expecting that the food at a restaurant tastes like
being cooked by my mother.

------
gallerdude
I don't think there's a huge audience for this.

