

Ask HN: What do you think of my startup idea? - wheresclark

Like many people here, I have one or two life changing, billion dollar ideas each a week. Almost all of these however, don't make it through my 'reality filter' after putting some real thought into them.<p>I've got an idea that's been keeping me up at night and I think it may be the right idea for me (albeit not a new one).<p>I try to avoid comparisons, but imagine an Airbnb for outdoor adventures. People with outdoor skills and knowledge can post an <i>adventure</i> to take you on. Everything from surfing at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, to climbing Mt Everest.<p>I realise it's open to all sorts of safety issues, but none of which, I think are insurmountable.<p>The number one thing, I would imagine, is to limit who can offer to host an adventure. Much like TaskRabbit filters their TaskRabbits, I'd like to make sure all adventures listed are by the books and run by qualified people. Safety and trust are paramount for these activities.<p>My questions to you are this.<p>Do you know of any startups trying this, or something similar?<p>Do you like or dislike the idea?<p>I should also qualify this by stating that I have domain experience in the adventure world. I've completed a bunch of world first expeditions, most recently skiing from the North Pole to Canada, and paddling a dugout canoe down the length of Papua New Guinea's longest river.<p>I appreciate any feedback, lovers or haters.
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justjimmy
Doesn't something like this exist? AKA Tour Guides?

Also, I think in order to cut down costs for the people who use this service,
it'd have to be a group thing. Having a private session by a personal tour
guide will be very expensive and extremely niche (ie: the wealthier people)
and that, I think, will be your biggest challenge.

I think another approach (which is also on my list of random ideas) is instead
of having a personal tour guide, have a person that functions similar to a
info kiosk instead.

Example: Say you're a Canadian visiting Malaysia, and the 'host' will be
someone that's informed in both Canadian and Malaysian culture and paper
work/law. They're the go to person for _everything_ , questions you have,
whether it's visa, places to stay/visit/eat at. If you ever run into problems,
they can advice the best course of action, etc. Naturally, they'd be well
versed in both languages (yours and the country you're visiting). They'll be a
number you call if you ever need anything, need a price check, need a cab,
etc.

(Regardless, the biggest issue is safety and insurance for a random person
selling 'adventures, which you have already identified. Definitely throw a
Craiglist up, sell a local adventure that you're confident in taking people on
and see how that goes and decide from there. Good luck!)

~~~
timr
_"Doesn't something like this exist? AKA Tour Guides?"_

Yep: <http://www.vayable.com> (we're even in YC this summer)

We have a wide range of things to do, all over the world, and most aren't
expensive at all. One of the most exciting things about what we're doing is
that we're building up a large community of people who have really intimate
knowledge of cities all over the world, and helping them make a living.

In your example, if you need to find places to stay/visit/eat in Malaysia,
looks like we've already got you covered:

[http://www.vayable.com/experiences/search/malaysia/by/popula...](http://www.vayable.com/experiences/search/malaysia/by/popularity)

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jamesjyu
<http://www.vayable.com/>

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laurenproctor
The startups aren't exact matches of what you want to offer, but they haven't
been mentioned yet and they might offer some inspiration.

Excursionist (<http://excursionist.com>) - Create and book unique, one-of-a-
kind travel experiences. Definitely targeted at a higher end consumer. Worth
watching for the way they editorialize places.

SideTour (<http://sidetour.com>) - Hosts create unique experiences. Users then
buy those experiences. Looks like hosts write the copy for each experience,
which (if that is in fact the truth) saves a lot of time on copywriting. Once
you have the infrastructure you could theoretically scale across the world.

Overall I like the idea, but as a consumer I have a few thoughts.

1\. I think it's going to be really important to separate yourself from the
existing competition. Otherwise I probably won't sign up for yet another
newsletter when I really only take a one or two trips a year. 2\. The
vetting/quality control process will be extremely important. If I'm going to
climb Everest with someone, I really want to make sure the experience in their
profile is in fact true. 3\. Finesse re: selling me at the right time will go
a long way. I don't know if this means you hit me when I'm actually booking a
trip or what, but unless the way you present this experiences is incredibly
entertaining/awe inspiring, this context factor could very easily make the
difference between pestering the consumer and offering a once-in-a-lifetime
experience. I don't think UrbanDaddy Jetset or Gilt's Jetsetter has this quite
figured out. Though I'm sure they still make money, figuring out a way to
present yourself more effectively could go a long way.

Whatever the case, I still think there's room for innovation in the space.

~~~
wheresclark
Thanks for the startups list. It's good to get a feeling for the market, even
startups not quite in the exact space.

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democracy
What I would like to see (maybe a bit more complicated, but I would love it):

* Select day, say next Sunday.

* Select time, say 11am-4pm

* Select location, say Sydney CBD

* Select type of activity, say both sightseeing and food, or anything.

* Enter amount of money, say $200 for two adults.

* Click 'search' and then browse the things I could do there at this time spending that much money.

For example: harbour cruise, or cruise and a lunch in a near-by restaurant, or
bowling and pizza in a near-by cafe, etc... Also with comments for these
activities, links to venue's websites, easy to print-out maps, etc...

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jtheory
AirBnB has it a bit easier, because they let normal people rent out their own
space (which involving tidying up a bit and locking away the valuables,
basically), and normal people are qualified to do that, more or less.

The folks who are qualified to run adventures probably do exactly that,
professionally, and so are already listed in the yellow pages, have their
fliers in the local tourist offices, may be listed (and reviewed) on the
Lonely Planet site, etc..

Though, if you're focusing on a wealthy clientele, you could well have
professionals listed offering experiences that they only do rarely, and aren't
available otherwise.

Alternatively, you might be able to aim for mini or offbeat adventures as
well, likewise only rarely available. "Get a tour of Chicago's graffiti from a
famous (reformed) graffiti artist". "Tour of a (private) organic farm and
lunch with the owners; offered 4x a year." "Letter-press tour and workshop in
an active shop" -- etc.. I have a friend in central France, a professional
baker with a massive wood-fired bread oven who tried giving daylong workshops
on making organic bread a few times a year; it was pretty tricky to organize
something so irregular, though, as she couldn't do it unless it was fully
booked (if there were only a couple of people whose schedules lined up with a
date, she would need to cancel it). There's a pain point that'd be nice to
fix.

HTH.

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noonespecial
Love it. Here's some further thought. Some expeditions are only possible given
a certain size and budget. Make it like kickstarter where a guide can propose
an expedition but that expedition will only go if it gets enough interest and
funding.

 _"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of
complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of
success."_

~~~
habosa
Couldn't this just be done on Kickstarter currently? Just make the rewards
different levels of inclusion on the adventure. Although I don't know if
Kickstarter has a way to cap donations, you wouldn't want to have to bring
1000 people with you.

~~~
noonespecial
Sure it could, but even in your comment, you're already adding layers of hacks
onto kickstarter to force it into workability.

Sounds like a perfect candidate for its own platform.

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BerislavLopac
Here's an advice I've learned by experience. Indeed, many of us have a hundred
ideas before the morning shower, and we often start working on some of them.
But to have any chance of success, what you really need is a domain expert.

This means that, in this particular example, you need someone who has
experience at least with tourism in general, and ideally with adventure
tourism and similar activities in specific. Also, they need to be able to
think out of the box and explore new possibilities in their trade.

Ideally, this means that you're working in an area YOU know intimately
yourself, or barring that to have an expert for a co-founder. If you don't,
you'll have to learn the basics and make the rookie mistakes which an expert
would avoid.

When you look around, you'll notice that there are very few success stories
that were started without an expert in the field. Off the top of my head I can
think only of AirBnB, and they keep running into basic level situations like
trashed apartment and the like.

~~~
wheresclark
Good advice. Although I am not a full time guide, I have a lot of domain
experience and have guided in the past. I have intimate knowledge of the
adventure/guiding community and what's involved with adventures, but need to
research more about guiding companies and legals involved with that. I think
partnering with someone who has run an adventure guiding company would be
ideal.

~~~
joshwb84
To get your idea off the ground, you might consider partnering with tour
operators (aka tour guides) that maintain expertise in their individual
adventures. That way, at the beginning, you leave the "guiding" up to the
experts while you work to measure demand, create a brand and iterate on the
value proposition. By handing off the actual "guiding", you can focus on
developing the business. Also, I think this method demands less startup
capital and/or licenses. While vayable.com does this for small (relative to
your past trips) experiences, perhaps a market exists for the grand
adventures? Your expertise would be useful in identifying exactly what people
want/need when pursuing this type of adventure, then finding a way to deliver
just that. Best of luck!

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helen842000
I think this is a great idea. I also like vayable.com but that seems to be
more about guides for locations.

There are plenty of expensive trek companies but what about lower cost
adventures?

I think if the platform included teachers/coaches with skills to share, that
would be awesome.

Like smaller adventures could be an afternoon learning parkour, gymnastics,
breakdancing or an evening learning from a chef, expert fisherman or
astrologist.

While I think it would be difficult to sustain a platform by offering once in
a lifetime things (like Mt Everest) the list of above things could be once a
month.

I'd be more interested in meeting up with reasonably local people that have
awesome skills to teach me.

AirBnB has it's awesome castles and treehouses but I think it's bread & butter
are lower cost sustainable transactions by volume.

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AznHisoka
This is an incredibly hard idea. Think about the average early adopter: he/she
is going to look for adventures close by, or in a certain location. What are
the chances they will find a bunch of choices? It's a classic chicken and egg
problem.

What you can do.. although not as sexy is to limit this to 1 specific
location, say Hawaii. I know there are a couple of companies that are making
nice money by referring customers to certain adventures in a specific location
(you never hear them in Techcrunch or HN, mind you because they not "sexy")

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seltzered_
Like the idea, feel like you need some aspect that helps arrange a group for
these types of trips. I really want a small group whatever deal where the
first guy or two to say "I'm in" gets a discount.

Do follow the other fellow's advice and try validating your idea on
craigslist, couchsurfing, meetup, etc. We don't have a real website yet, but
we've surprisingly got some leads through those channels.

You may also look into trying some of the REI trips that sortof do this
already.

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hungkienluu
Zozi has something similar with "Gurus" (who are world class surfers,
cyclists, runners, kayakers, snowboarders, etc...) that you can bid on to go
on an outing with. Your idea seems interesting and if you have the passion for
it, it has potential to work. You are looking at a marketplace that you have
to build so attracting sellers of experiences and buyers of those experiences.

<http://www.zozi.com/gurus>

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mattwdelong
I like the idea, and there is a startup doing the same thing.
<http://www.urbanadventures.com/>

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greendestiny
Like a lot of people have said - there are professional tour guides. It seems
what you're suggesting is making it easier for experts to become tour guides
by handling booking, advertising, paying that sort of thing. There probably is
a need for that. If you know lots of outdoor experts who could run tours but
don't because they don't know how to set it up, then I'd say you should
definitely do it.

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DividesByZero
Something similar to this exists for local tours, if only I could remember
what it was called.

I think your biggest problem is going to be vetting the providers and managing
your risk/liability. How do you plan to provide/require insurance? How are you
going to deal with problems between customers and providers?

What will your vetting program look like when your providers are global?

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wheresclark
Thanks for the feedback people. All great points and worth considering. I am
inclined to focus on outdoor adventure rather than the looser
'experiences/tours' approach. A system pointed out by a couple of people
(thanks!) that I particularly like is to wait until you get a minimum amount
of interested people before going ahead with the adventure.

Keep the thoughts coming.

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sakai
I like the idea, and know a number of people that would be keen to use it on
both the supply and demand sides. Note that this is a bit similar to Zozi's
"Gurus": www.zozi.com

Worth poking around and understanding if those economics have worked out for
them / how this might be different (from a business model perspective)

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martinshen
YC funded: vayable.com

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gcv
I like the concept quite a bit, but the devil is in the details (as always). A
similar idea was attempted by findmefit, with a focus on fitness events and
yoga practice, but I think they had a lot of trouble getting traction.

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runjake
Ideas are a penny a piece.

Re-ask this question after you have an MVP and post the URL. At the least it
will be good implementation experience.

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argumentum
Yeah, Vayable YC s12 is doing pretty much exactly this:

<http://www.vayable.com/>

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tagabek
At first I thought it would be cool to call this "Adventure Time," but then I
realized that you might receive a few lawsuits.

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livestyle
validate your idea..run some craigslist ads to gauge some interest. Validate
it without wasting time and money

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ig1
Gidsy is the biggest player in this space, and YC recently funded a competitor
called Vayable.

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stevencorona
I would love to use something like this.

~~~
wheresclark
Glad to here it Steven. Quick question. Would you be looking to go on hard
(Everest) or soft (Surfing at Bondi) adventures? Both equally good in my
books.

