I find small group travel magical from an interpersonal and experience standpoint but organizing trips is absolutely brutal. With Villagers, I wanted to see if software could overcome some of those planning challenges with financial incentives, social features, and automation -- especially around messaging.
I love climbing, so I've built a trip to co-work and climb in Red Rocks (Nevada) in November.
https://villagersapp.com/t/gkkfv
I'm looking for 4-8 high EQ tech folks who'd like to co-work and climb. Everyone's identity will be verified and I'll make sure it's a broad culture fit (i.e. polite, respectful, reasonably extroverted, etc.). We'll keep the costs down to less than $500 per person for 3 nights.
For more social proof before you join me on a trip, you can click through my profile on the trip page above to see my LinkedIn work history as an early engineer at Plaid and most recently the founder of a 70+ person company (Tremendous).
Trip Rules
No pets
No parties
Quiet after 11pm
Alcohol allowed
No drugs
No marijuana allowed
I like the focus here on getting commitment from participants. That can be so challenging when putting together a trip.
It doesn't look like Villagers handles everything (and that's ok!) - e.g. when I went to create a new trip I noticed it looks like everything is based on having a single location - you can't set up lodging in location A for the beginning of a trip, have a few days on the trail hiking, and the lodging for the end of trip in location B (unless I missed it).
EDIT: Oh, and it looks like the lodging HAS to be an AirBNB (the field validates that the AirBNB URL contains AirBNB.com). That's certainly limiting.
I had thought that was already eliminated so thanks for pointing that out! I just pushed a fix to remove the AirBnb requirement.
As for more complex itineraries, certainly want to tackle that in the future...
I think that's smart. Honestly, the UI is nice and all, but I don't think that's the killer feature. The great thing here is that folks don't want to be an asshole to friends/family/coworkers. They don't want to nag about getting commitments or on-time payments. They don't want to be a jerk about not giving money back if someone bails the night before a trip, or whatever. But Villagers can be the asshole (in a good way!) and enforce the agreed-upon terms so the trip planner doesn't have to.
I disagree with him about " My best guess is that a truly great consumer service needs to be something that is can be used every day. " I use Wanderlog (YC19) almost every trip I do, a lot of my friends after I recommended this tool started using it. Yet it is kinda right - Wanderlog doesn't seem to be making big progress, although pandemic is probably responsible for that
[0] https://blog.garrytan.com/travel-planning-software-the-most-...
1) I would argue that that perspective misses a number of travel consumer apps like AirBnB.
2) I've bootstrapped this business and, while I do think that it could eventually morph into a regularly engaging social network or a tool for professional trip leaders (who would invalidate the limited usage point as power users), a healthy lifestyle business outcome would be reasonably ok (if not desirable) by me personally. I don't believe that I could have bootstrapped this company in 2012 (the date of that article) given the startup ecosystem and, frankly, this is a passion project after having previously worked at and founded SaaS fintech companies.
3) I do expect group travel to grow a ton over the next few years if people continue to work remotely. The evidence of mass social alienation is clear and folks have previously unheard of flexibility to travel.
2) It most likely won't lead to a successful social network because people mostly think about travel a handful of times per year. That was one of my tough learnings while working on Sherpa[0]. It could be a useful tool though! Maybe there's a solid B2B angle. Bootstrapping is also very smart. We tried to raise VC for Sherpa and ran out of runway.
3) I think you're right. There's probably something interesting there!
[0] - https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/02/sherpa-turns-instagrams-be...
How do I know if I'm interested or not if I can't even read your own description on the page and make a decision?
In most cases, the goal is to have an organizer create a quick video describing the trip to communicate enough info for you to then declare your preferences. Here is an example:
https://villagersapp.com/t/gkkfv
Either way, I just pushed a change to make the modal escapable.
> No drugs
???
> with verified identities (license or passport).
Also, hope you've thought through storing personal info like passports and driving licences mate. Not just for GDPR, but if you don't have liability insurance and a good legal team you are asking for trouble. Hope you don't get any data breaches!
Pick a geographical location. Pick some dates that overlap. Plan your own trip. Keep things decoupled.
Then, just find times that you want to meet up. Just like regular life.
For things that require coordination, like a camping/canoe trip, email works well.
Am I right in thinking that it's essentially Facebook Events but traveling?
It’s more complex than Facebook events in that there are fintech (payment) mechanisms built in. I’d describe it as Kickstarter meets FB events but with a focus on travel UX requirements
Out of curiosity, how does Villagers prevent Fyre Festival-like events?
November mountain biking in Asheville/Brevard NC.
November road biking in Brevard/Hendersonville NC.
The map of the world is split into 3x3 meter squares with a unique three-word ID for each, e.g: twig.fleet.likely