

MyVR (YC W12) raises $1.4M to attack the vacation rental industry - jonmurray
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/28/myvr-raises-1-4m-from-sv-angel-chris-dixon-to-attack-the-85b-vacation-rental-industry/

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onedev
Congrats, but I cannot forgive the terrible name.

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buro9
Branding is terrible, especially given that vacation is an extremely American
term and they mention the European market.

In Europe people have rented out holiday homes for as long as I know. There
are some big incumbents in the market, this one for example:
<http://www.novasol.co.uk/>

Novasol specialise in the Germanic, Scandinavian and Eastern European.

The problem myvr will have isn't just persuading advertisers that they can
deliver customers (margins are slim and they can only afford to advertise in
one place), but also to convince holidaymakers that the risk is virtually non-
existent.

That's one of the things the incumbents work hard on, visiting every property
each year and auditing it to ensure that it is as advertised and hasn't
dropped in standard, and that all of the safety things (contracts, insurance)
are in place.

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jonmurray
Hi buro9- thanks for the discussion.

We're primarily focused on the US & Canada right now, though we do have
customers elsewhere.

One distinction to make is that we're not like the "incumbents" you mention.
We're more like property management software (or "property marketing" might be
closer). We're not trying to build a destination site and attract renters to
it. Our goal is to make it easier for an owner to market across these types of
places.

Tactically speaking, we go out and vertically integrate anywhere meaningful to
vacation rental marketing, and allow an owner to upload their home info once
and then simply click to opt into whatever channels they want. They get to
manage it all in one place and everything stays in sync (no more juggling
multiple calendars, rate tables, etc).

So, think of us like the DSP's that emerged to help advertisers deal with all
the various ad networks that popped up. It's a pain in the ass to go integrate
with all of them. For now, we're launching with the major listing sites
(similar to the incumbents you mention) in the US. We also provide the other
several other helpful marketing tools - their own website, their own Facebook
Page (a great 'CRM' tool, if you will), auto-responders, Craigslist ad poster,
etc...

I think that's quite different than what the incumbents are doing... They're a
vertical. We'll never aim to be a vertical.

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buro9
That's a really clear explanation.

Most of the incumbents I know of in Europe are effectively paid-for directory
businesses that in essence provide listings (and then booking, and all of the
dull contractual stuff).

My question would be: How will you be able to get your listings inserted into
their databases if the barrier to being in their database is a payment?

Is your aim to become a re-seller for the existing sites? So you'd be a one-
stop-shop for getting your holiday home listed in the places most likely to
convert.

Or more that you hope to encourage the incumbents to take your feed through
other enticements (such as being able to take a commission on properties that
would normally have been listed elsewhere)?

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jonmurray
"Is your aim to become a re-seller for the existing sites? So you'd be a one-
stop-shop for getting your holiday home listed in the places most likely to
convert."

Yep, that's it exactly.

The selling point to them is that we bring them new customers. We're seeing
that owners aren't marketing as they should because everything they do is
incremental work and upkeep. If we can make launching into a new channel (or
listing site) as easy as a click, and centralize the management of it all, we
believe owners will increase their marketing. It helps that we can also bring
large quantities to the listing sites, so that we can also get discounts for
our owners (a further incentive to increase their marketing).

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buro9
That is actually really compelling.

Particularly if you can break the annual or 2-yearly contracts and allow
owners to experiment with different listing sites for short periods of time
(monthly listings).

This is even more compelling if you are the ones centrally managing the
visibility of availability across the listing sites (so if a booking is made
via site A the unavailability is reflected on site B).

The fear in making a bad marketing decision for a small holiday home owner is
real. Their margins being small they can only afford 1 listing usually, 2 at a
push. But just as with Open Table and restaurants, the home owner isn't really
sure whether it works, or if it does whether it works better than other
alternatives. Giving them the ability to see this stuff would solve a real
pain point for them and truly make them happier.

Unfortunately, for some of the smaller listing sites they're likely to go out
of business. In somewhere like the Lake District in the North West of England,
there are about 5 or 6 listing sites but only 1 or 2 that really work... as
soon as home owners have visibility of this the smaller ones are likely to
sink very quickly.

Of course, this is to the advantage of home owners, but I wonder whether the
smaller listings sites will see the big picture and realise that your solution
is good for everyone but them. Not that they deserve to survive when all they
sell is fear and very little real marketing power.

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vizzah
Looks like 'VR' in relation to 'vacation rentals' is actually more widely used
than it seems at first. VRBO.com from Homeaway (since 1996). So perhaps a
valid choice, albeit not so customer friendly.

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jonmurray
I do think most VR owners get it...

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tstegart
Congrats guys!

