I think this could be powerful in the hands of Airbnb. This takes a lot of risk away from someone who wants to take the initiative and rent out a 20 person villa with their friends only to see half of them flake out, and now that person would be stuck with the bill.
I wonder if they will integrate it directly with AirBNB or keep it as a standalone.
1. Person A takes the initiative and books an Airbnb
2. Airbnb gives him a link to a landing page.
3. On this page, his friends can 'opt-in' to the vacation. When they opt-in, the cost gets split. Say, if the rent/night is $200 and 3 people opt-in, the cost would be $50 each (including person A).
4. Each person who opts in gets charged for his share.
5. Airbnb can also promote other services on this custom landing page such as guided tours. Person A doesn't have to worry about getting the 'yes' from his friends; if you've opted in, you're coming.
I was one of those remote employees that got laid off. I’m kicking off the job search (non-engineering), let me know if anyone knows of anything interesting in Austin or remote -- specifically in account management, customer/partner success etc!
Send me a message with your email address. My company just started looking for a Customer Success Hero today and I can pass along the information to you.
This is one of the benefits of being a founder with YC/well-connected VCs.
Even if you burn though millions without figuring out a market, you will land on your feet (if you are on the executive team). Your employees? Not so much.
My words may sound negative, but my point is: most people who are working at startups should seriously consider starting one instead.
*should start one or join a late stage startup who is still offering equity
N=1, but a friend has done this twice as a product manager with joining late stage startups, getting a decent amount of equity/stock and then the company has IPO'd.
I agree with your point though, the risk/reward for most early employees who are not part of the founding team is not worth it. You'll work just as hard as the founders with a fraction of a fraction of the payout compared to the founders
Luckily we had a stellar remote team, and most of our growth was coming from our international markets. Anyone would be lucky to have one of them if they are still available.
Why hasn't AirBnB, CouchSurfing, or similar companies started disrupting the global shipping business yet by using their users as shippers. They don't even provide an API for building such apps. It's a huge opportunity i think.
What type of package is small enough to fit in someone's luggage, light enough to not cost extra baggage allowance, tolerates non-delivery well enough to lose 10% of shipments to flaking non-professional couriers, and is not well-served by UPS, FedEx, or airmail, and cannot be transported at rock-bottom costs with mild latency via a shipping container?
I have an answer to this question: illegal drugs. I don't have a second answer to this question. This makes me think that you'd have difficulty finding 1,000 of legal packages to run through a proof of concept, to say nothing of scaling to the millions you need to have a viable logistics business.
To be fair there are lots of small items that have great value. Jewelry, watches, etc. Though your points about economics are still valid. Pay FedEx $15 to ship a $4,000 Omega watch, or give it to a complete stranger that is traveling via AirBnB? FedEx wins.
How about legal drugs, Pharmaceutical products, etc. I do not know a single person who doesn't ship items with friends. It's not a new idea i'm proposing, but a way for non friends to make money, and for it to be more often.
When Uber first came out i thought it won't work because of all the kidnappings and robberies that would happen. I wonder if you have the same skepticism about travellers becoming carriers.
Edit: not disagreeing, it's a totally valid reason.
> I do not know a single person who doesn't ship items with friends.
Huh? Where/in what culture is that? I don't think I know anyone who does ship items with friends with any kind of frequency. I think I've shipped an item with a friend once in my life (a figurine that I could only find on sale in the US), and there are proxy buyer services that cover that use case in a much easier (and safer for them) way.
Counter-anecdote: I live in Canada, and it is not at all uncommon to ask friends who are visiting the U.S. to pick up items on their behalf (either alcohol and tobacco, which are often significantly cheaper at the border's duty-free stores, or e-commerce purchases that would not ship into Canada--there are several places close to the border that will receive and hang onto such packages for a fee).
Maybe that doesn't count as "shipping an item with a friend" but it's quite similar.
I think a service that buys something for you (from businesses that sell to the public) has a big safety advantage over one that ships custom packages - while I'm sure it would still be possible to smuggle drugs that way doing so becomes a lot more complex. Likewise one that holds it and lets you pick up in person (which usually require you to present ID) rather than shipping it on.
And while it's a fair example, I think Canada, where most of the population lives very close to the US border, probably doesn't generalise to the rest of the world.
There is a pretty healthy "Japan proxy" market, especially for higher-end Japanese designer clothes. You could ship it already, but these would also fit in with that business model.
Shipping is really cheap. It's highly optimised and fast. Only the last mile is a mess, and that's where companies like Yodel have moved in.
Luggage by contrast is expensive. The marginal cost of a checked bag is far more than just posting the thing to the destination.
So the only value might be in ""disrupting"" local customs enforcement. Brazil has a 50% import duty on electronics, for example. So you might be able to do something there - although the customs people are already alert to this possibility.
In Brazil a startup was founded to do this, people travelling would bring packages to strangers. Most common use case was people bringing phones (electronics in general) from the USA, as our importing taxes are real high.
Our "IRS" shut down the company, even with they claiming every traveler would declare and pay proper taxes.
Roadie still has to build the network, and it doesn't seem to be cross-continent. I'm talking about international shipping. It makes more sense for those companies because they already have a huge network.
From tilt's homepage, it seems like they are a mash up of venmo, gofundme and craigslist(?). Is there a particular direction they are headed for or are they just throwing stuff at the wall and waiting for something to stick?
Some comments point out that it would make group payments for Airbnb bookings a lot easier which seems fine. But is that problem worth spending $12 mil in cash + tens of millions in employee retention packages?
Last I heard of Tilt it was mostly a bunch of people using it to fund large scale parties. Enough people committed, and then boom yup we have the money we'll do it.
I think they started their life as a crowdfunding platform but then pivoted to focus on payments. I remember seeing their logo on the ESPN fantasy football site a year or so ago, so I assume they struck a partnership deal for leagues to collect their dues. As someone else has suggested above, the appeal to AirBnB is probably acquiring the tech to make it easier for large groups to split costs.
We have a system like this in Sweden, it is called Swish and works wonderful. The way you recieve money is my connecting your mobile phone number to the app and connect it to one of your back accounts in your banks web interface. Then to send money to me you enter my phone number and "swish" the money and you will have it on your bank account within seconds.
The UK has this as well, it's called Paym here. Mind, bank transactions through Faster Payments are also almost always instant, so it's just a convenience feature, nothing majorly new. In the US, inter-bank transfers are not instant at all, so these middleman services provide direct benefits.
this might be purely anecdotal, but seeing that the quote is about college campuses: a lot of people I know in college downloaded the app and never used it
I wonder if they will integrate it directly with AirBNB or keep it as a standalone.