Pivoting: Why We're Bringing Unsexy Back | Hacker News Reader

Pivoting: Why We're Bringing Unsexy Back

blog.ravn.com

85 pointsyosho31 comments

Okay, weird, possibly unrelated story I guess. I've been thinking about this problem a lot. Especially in the context of travelling and exploring new places. I was originally thinking along the lines of businesses offering experiences but after a little research online, I ran into Skyara. Like you said, it seemed to be the fun / hip thing to do and the original idea sounded boring after that. It somehow fell off my mind after a while and haven't thought about it till today.

Amazon for activities is such a good analogy. Great going and good luck!

Yep, there is no Amazon for activities right now, we want to change that :)

I love the fact you didn't give up on your original idea, you wallowed in it! We run a pretty unsexy business too, and despite having tried "sexy" quite a few times, we eventually embraced the notion that there are a ton of hard problems to solve for the core market and we should just wallow in them instead of trying to be one of the cool kids. The difference in the business is night and day, and now we're setting the standard in the industry.

Hi, I"m the author of the blog post.

I definitely think there are too many people these days chasing the sexy trends. What they fail to realize is that by the time something is sexy, it's often too late to catch up. Take Groupon and all the clones out there.

Solving a real problem is definitely the way to go. cheers!

Agree. My gut says that some founders may look at sexy as a way to shortcut the hard work of marketing and being remarkable, probably not an explicit choice, but I can definitely see how one might lean towards trendy as a way to light up the rockets on market acceptance.

How can you get sick of Costco food, it's so good!

In reality, good for you for realizing that it was a difficult sell in the first place. Innovative and sexy, yes, but I figured you would run into those problems before you mentioned it.

I love outdoor activities and nature getaways, and you were right: their websites are HORRIBLE.

However, creating a really easy way for them to have a website AND book through that website? Money.

What I got from this is to solve real problems. Do your customer development and validation, or you'll find out you have a product without customers.

Ravn is still a work in progress, but it is something we’re committed to working on for the years to come

This is the right attitude. You can do one millions little things, but one project must be your life's work. Something you commit to.

Definitely, I think it's the main thing I heard from speaking with investors; you have to be really authentic and the problem you're solving has to be personal.

It was what really helped Airbnb and Etsy make it through the struggles of building a true sustainable marketplace that impacts peoples lives. If not, it's just like another corporate job.

Feel free to check out RAVN, would love to hear your feedback. You can use my invite code JWU.

Awesome. Glad I got in.

I was curious to try Ravn, but it requires me to register and login before even trying it out. Why?

according to their site, they're still in rate-limited beta (which is fine). however, when i entered my email address to get an invite, it told me i could move up the invite queue by entering the email addresses of three friends, which definitely had a bit of a scummy feel to it.

I didn't see any mention of beta on their front page - they probably should explicitly say it there.

oops, yes, i think my brain saw "invite code" and automatically interpolated "beta".

Thanks, we changed it

Oops, yah that is great feedback, we're going to change that now. For some reason, I guess we just naturally assumed people know we're in Beta.

WARN - if you sign up w/ FB and say "you've been there" on an experience, it will automatically comment on your wall without permission saying "I just did this, check it out"

overall tho I like, ravn - congrats on the pivot folks

Hey bomatson.There actually is a checkbox right under the done button to not post on FB. I think a lot of times, people just click out without looking at the modal. The whole doning and wanting experience is definitely something we're looking at. Of course we want people to share on FB but at the same time, we don't want to give anyone an unpleasant surprise.

I'll let you know what we come up with for that one. Thanks for the feedback.

Hey guys, thanks for the help and I much appreciate you making the adjustment. Be careful about posting forced copy on social graphs, I'd learn from Chill here http://www.observer.com/2011/08/facebook-is-slightly-less-ch...

There's actually a checkbox that says "Share this on my Facebook wall". You can also just not give RAVN permission to post on your wall when you first sign up (in the Facebook authorization dialog).

Hey Bobby, so made the share on facebook checkbox more visible. Also, clicking out of the modal now automatically unchecks that box. The only time it will share now is if you click "Done", with the checkbox checked, in which case, it should be very clear that you've seen the checkbox and know what you're doing.

Deployed and tested. That should eliminate any unwanted surprises, so feel free to mark all the things you've done!

Sexy captures the imagination, but good execution is decidedly unsexy. The hyperbole of the valley and it's entourage is a siren's song; don't let it suck you in.

Cloud9Living.com shows this concept definitely has potential. Instead of going with the daily deals model, I would suggest going with the DailyCandy model (before they ventured into daily deals). Suggest experiences to pursue near the city you live with a weekly or daily newsletter

RAVN still seems to have an identity problem. I know it aims to be more than this, but the first thing I thought of when I signed on was, "Ooh, all the Groupon/LivingSocial/Google deals aggregated in a box layout"

I think you've highlighted one of the difficulties in this space. Nowadays, a lot of people expect any new ecommerce site to be some sort of deals site. It has become the default and you actually have to do work to show that you're not a deals site.

Couldn't agree more, so many companies are a solution in search of a problem.

It's not sexy at all but look at how much money there is to be made running a box factory, or containerized shipping.

I once worked for a company that made a staggering amount of money off producing milk (or other paper) cartons. They were vertically integrated from initial design all the way to dropping it off on your factory floor.

I love stories like this, they probably have a huge moat due to the capital costs of the machines. The vertical integration means the designers likely know exactly what can and can't be made, so it sounds like a great value add. And no one would ever think of going into a biz like that.

A friend of mine worked for a company that bought mud from the ocean floor, it cost something like $5000 for a 5 tonnes of it (mostly for the dredge operators), which they would removed the seaweed and other large particles, and package into 50 mL bottles for around $10 wholesale via an MLM cosmetics company. They had an exclusive contract and guaranteed sales. It was pretty much risk free money.

No outdoor activities in Colorado? I'm surprised.

We're working hard to get there!

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