Hey everyone, I thought I'd include links to what I wrote for Hacker Noon. Here's the article announcing the prelaunch: https://hackernoon.com/announcin...
And here's a piece on the political economy of the sharing economy, and why we can be optimistic about the future of sharing, IF there's enough platform diversity to keep companies from acting like oligopolists: https://hackernoon.com/sharings-...
Thanks so much Andrew! We think wander+ is an important doubling down on the values of the 'sharing economy.' We're super-excited to get it in front of the PH community. I'm a political economist and I've been an Airbnb host for three years. I think that the hollowing-out of the ideals of the sharing economy is a huge deal - but the right tech can prevent it from happening.
A real quick description of our MVP: You can find people with the same travel plans, check out their Instagram and Airbnb profiles, message with them, and coordinate booking a place on Airbnb, HomeAway (or wherever) together. You can also find your ideal vacation home - the kind you could never afford by yourself - and post a link to it on the "global itinerary" wall with hashtags; like, say, #MexicoCity #January, or #myConferenceName. That way whoever is planning a similar trip can find you.
Because larger homes are SO much cheaper per bedroom, this simple coordination functionality is actually pretty profound. It allows people who otherwise couldn't afford to travel to do so and in a more pro-social way than traditional homesharing; or it allows you to have the type of epic vacation that otherwise wouldn't be affordable. Finally, it's most powerful when it's needed most: if a big convention is in town and hotels are gouging you, sharing with the very people you're there to network with is a pretty cool solution.
Post MVP, I've been theorizing a lot lately about how blockchain & cryptocurrencies can be designed to build out really powerful sharing platforms that incentivizes the creation of communities of service providers (hosts, in the case of homesharing). To be clear, I don't mean to approach this as an almost ideologically cryptocurrency-focused project. I'm talking about building a smooth, mainstream consumer web app that also motivates hosts and developers to contribute and govern in a way that builds community and local economies. Like what Kik is doing with Kin, but with the underlying economics of homesharing allowing for more immediately profound creativity.
Part of that story is crowdsourcing of host services (e.g. strike a deal with a local gym and all the guests on the platform can get gym passes; or replace "gym" with a culturally rich, important unique local... anything). Another big part of the story is structuring locally-governed communities of hosts (decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs in blockchain world parlance) by letting them own the local company, and allow them to create their own settings within bounds sound at a global level. So, for instance, a small community DAO could profit share up to, say, 20%, to smooth out returns. Or they could leverage local economies of scale to design cool features or hire cleaning staff. It would be up to them. An example of restrictions placed on such activity would be that cleaners will have to be paid a high living wage. In conjunction with an international company that uses massive economies of scale for things like insurance, and sets standards and governing rules, this could provide a level of service to mainstream consumers and hosts that the Airbnb and Ubers of the world couldn't compete against - unless they evolved in a direction more in keeping with the ideals of the early sharing economy.
My best friend from my PhD program studies cooperative ownership structures & innovation, so bending tech in that direction is something I've been thinking about for a very long time, and using that to revive the 'sharing economy' is very exciting. I can't wait to hear what you all think, and I hope you'll be down to help, and help get the word out!
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Awesome Nick. Can't wait to use this on my next trip.
@designersblock Thanks Chris! Would love your feedback as you use it!
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I really like the idea of this. One of the coolest parts of traveling is meeting new people and this not only lets you meet new people, but save money by staying in a local place with a new group of friends. If this gets some traffic I can see it really taking off and become as popular, if not more popular, than AirBnB.
@pamroni Thanks, Alex! I think we're at an inflection point: people are still kind of wowed by the innovation of Airbnb, and that lets them build out pretty boring, typical standard corporate based services. But if we keep pushing on creating platforms that organically incentivize the people doing the actual work - hosts and developers - while coming up with things like this MVP for the consumer-traveler side, I think a couple years from now could be pretty amazing: economic activity that builds community self-autonomy.
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Just what I need to get rid of that fear of traveling without people I know! And I also like the idea of getting to know the people that share the same itinerary before going on vacation. What if you guys from Wanderplus could also propose a trip and then people that don't know each other could join it? Or maybe that would suppose turning into a travel agency...
There's a french startup called Triptrib and they let people post their itinerary announcement and ask people if they want to join them. It is a bit similar to what you are doing.
Nice work!
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