
When An Accidental Feature Becomes Your Entire Business - sethbannon
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2013/08/21/when-an-accidental-feature-becomes-your-entire-business-vayable-turns-to-custom-travel/
======
minikites
> Wong and her five-person team often jumped in to directly ask customers what
> they were looking for, then went out and organized trips themselves.

So they've basically re-invented what a travel agent used to do, over the
internet?

~~~
pbiggar
You could describe almost any business with a snarky remark like that. Github:
basically re-invented your sysadmin putting up a CVS server, over the
internet; Stripe: basically re-invented what a bank used to do, over the
internet.

Anyway, this is one of those things that works much much better on the
internet. In the bad old days, a travel agent was the only option for booking
flights and trips. Now that you can do it all over the internet, I doubt
there's a market to support that many travel agents: the occasional
honeymooners and niche travelers.

But the internet is great at turning niche ideas into massive businesses. If
there are only thousands of people in your city who need this per year, you'd
barely support a travel agency. But if there are thousands in your city, and
also in every other city, that's a billion dollar business.

~~~
umsm
Adding the internet into the mix doesn't make anything better. The reason why
this "website" grew was because of the human aspect.

Regarding travel agents: when I booked my honeymoon, my travel agent was able
to get me a better price than an hour on the internet. Not only that, but she
was even able to personally recommend hotels and activities.

~~~
snowwrestler
> when I booked my honeymoon, my travel agent was able to get me a better
> price than an hour on the internet

As an aside, I'm guessing you flew internationally for your honeymoon?
International pricing is done totally differently from domestic, which is why
typical travel websites like Expedia can't find the best price.

~~~
umsm
Yes, your guess is correct. Also, we're not talking about $5, we're talking a
few hundred dollars for the whole trip.

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nonchalance
Please, if someone from forbes.com is reading this, please disable the full
page ad for readers coming via HN. Ghostery counts 15 different types of
trackers, and there are many ads on the page itself.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
Sigh. Just use Firefox and NoScript. And "clear history when Firefox closes".
Close Firefox on occasion. Voila, no full page ad.

The Internet will not change its business model to please you. It's you who
will need to change your behavior.

~~~
nonchalance
On the computer, these blockers are readily available. On the iPad, however,
they are not (chrome for ios, for example, doesn't support any of those
extensions)

~~~
PhantomGremlin
Okay, thanks for the clarification. I see your point. I didn't think of the
iPad because, although I have one, I don't do much general browsing with it.
E.g. I use the Bloomberg app to connect to their site, rather than use Safari.

I surf very little on my iPhone, a bit on my iPad, almost all on my Macbook.
Why? Because of screen area. I _love_ being able to crank the font size up to
18 points and still be able to see a decent amount of screen real estate.

Just something to look forward to as you get older. :)

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lifeisstillgood
It's a nice idea that people could simply start themselves up as a tour guide
for x (Oxbridge dons apparently make good beer money touring colleges and
quoting Coleridge)

However like a lot of these connect the world to one person ideas, the money
is scant. They even admit most of their revenue will come from hotel bookings
- so despite the YC, despite the new paradigm for marketplaces and providers,
it's just a new hook for Hilton hotels.

I have a sneaking suspicion that vast amounts of the value and wealth being
created by the Internet is effective unmonetisable - affiliates and ads will
only stretch so far.

~~~
miahi
This is actually another regulated area: in many places, to legally be a guide
for a group you need to have some kind of education or certification.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Most Oxbridge dons have some kind of education.

;-)

But iirr the idea is existing tour guides can do it without their current
agency getting involved.

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Amadou
I'd like to know what it takes to get an advertorial like that in Forbes? What
PR company did Vayable use, how much did they charge? What other forms of PR
did they get out of the deal? How effective was it (may not be answerable in
this case, at least not yet)?

~~~
lauramoen
I wouldn't call this an advertorial, but there are some key points you need to
"pitch" to get Forbes interested. 1) business metrics. in this case it was the
MoM sales jump. 2)something timely/ what we call "newsworthy". Again, in this
case, Vayable pivoted and launched a new site design. 3) A competent
spokesperson that has a good "twist". Vayable's went with the "happy accident"
theme

~~~
Amadou
Are you saying there was no (compensated) intermediary between Vayable and
Forbes? Did they just spam every news site with a press release and hope for a
bite?

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damian2000
> Wong says that going forward the company will take a 15-30% commission on
> hotel bookings

I doubt they will be able to get that much - I think the going rate on any
number of online booking sites is 10% or less ... its highly competitive.

~~~
Amadou
My impression is that they are trying to market themselves not as cost-savers
but as providers of unique experiences. That takes all those other sites out
of the running.

A few years back I had a revelation when I read a study of satisfaction among
automobile buyers - the customers who paid the most had the highest rates of
satisfaction. If you can tap into that sort of customerbase than there is a
lot of profit to be made.

------
techaddict009
Bit.ly has some similar story. Tough it was not a accidental feature.

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forbesscribes
Paul Graham has 2 Forbes Reporters On his Payroll. Don't take my word for it,
check out the authors of the AirBnB, DropBox and other "Stories" for last 4
years and you'll see who they are.

All those stories portray this magical-overcoming-adversity-and-solving-world-
problems tone to it. Plenty of hype that is directed towards future just
graduated kids who'll take the bait and apply for 10k shit money from Paul.
Not hating, just stating (facts)

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mathattack
Impressive. Sometimes you have to keep your eyes open so that you don't miss
success when you are busy doing other things.

There are many online stories, so I'll give one old school urban legend - P&G
soap started to float based on an accident in production. So they marketed
Ivory as "So pure it floats." (Sure Snopes discredits the story, but since it
goes along with my point...)

Sometimes the pivot happens to you.

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shrikant
Reminds me of this apenwarr post on "A profitable, growing, useful, legal,
well-loved... failure":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754531](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754531)

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aaronbrethorst
Bad title. They seem to have found product-market fit, and—not surprisingly—it
wasn't where they originally expected it to be. Good for them for embracing
it.

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guilty_spark
Really good read. It's so easy to fall into the trap of making the product you
want to make rather than the one your customers want to buy.

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grn
When I saw the title I thought that it'll be about Flickr. Do you know other
businesses that underwent such transformation?

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maxmax
The Homsar or Disco Stu of business.

