thank you for your comment
re: variety of trips -- we think the magic lies in providing our users with suggestions they may have never thought of themselves, but that end up being exactly what they've been looking for. We hope to do so by learning as much as possible about exactly those destinations out of the 'mainstream' (like Paris, London, Berlin) and subsequently translate that to the categories of interest we offer. We currently serve 220 destinations and think that achieving a certain level of variety will certainly be possible, especially as we learn more and more about our users and how they like our suggestions.
re: making money -- We don't plan to rush monetization. Volume is key in the travel industry, so we plan to focus on building a great, differentiated, user experience first. Once we've ramped that up significantly, we aim to move down the funnel (from the 'inspiration' phase towards the 'transaction phase'). Having said that, we're exploring multiple paths to monetization. For example, we think that Wanderlust will have an interesting advertising opportunity, with 1) high ARPU, 2) high purchase-intent, and 3) a user still open to suggestions (a bit like Pinterest's opportunity). One other stream we're thinking about is offering hotels an annual/monthly flat-fee to be featured on our platform.
re: similar attempts -- Wanderfly did this in the US (we're in Europe), but got acquired by TripAdvisor and shut down. There's quite a few different start-ups that launched either this year or in 2015. We feel they haven't quite gotten it right for several reasons, but it probably comes down to a not being able to translate technical complexity to a pleasant user experience.
re: user acquisition -- definitely a key point. As pointed out above, I think no-one has gotten the concept quite right so far. I think there's some mindshare to be won if we're the ones who manage to do so; if we're able to connect to the feeling of 'I know that I want to travel, but don't know where to go'. Initially, we'll be focusing on the channels the bigger players won't/can't focus on because of their scale (e.g. blogs, offline communities).
