cnorgate

It really depends on the type of customer you're targeting, but for most web apps and sites these days, I doubt someone still using IE6 is also a target customer for your service.

Ha ha ha! nice.

Priority #1 is to remain genuine. That's what you stand for.

Restaurants might actually be more open to offering coupons to travellers - in a sense, those customers are not repeat business, so they shouldn't be worried about impacting their long term pricing with the local market.

Ultimately, I think you need to focus first on building enough value here with consumers - I don't like to suggest making things free, but in this case I think it's something you have to give away and monetize in other ways. There's nothing bad about that approach (Google does it), but it does require a higher volume of users for it to make sense.

Good luck!

I think your business model might be wrong. As Iaks points out below, the $5 price point is not far from that of a used travel book.

Perhaps offer the content free, then work with top restaurants and retailers on the 'tours' you recommend and get them to offer coupons / deals or advertising, of which you can get a cut. People touring a city will get hungry, and if you can point them to a great place, they'll thank you.

This will simply lead to more piracy of content... there is no way to justify that an e-book should cost more than a physical one, under ANY circumstance... there are no printing, distribution or sales costs involved... I expect this will just lead to increased piracy of content. So sad.

Yea, I don't think he's hit everything spot on, but the sentiment is definitely on point.

I hope he's correct in terms of the evolving consciousness, because what the world needs is less glorification of conspicuous consumption and a greater appreciation for things of true worth. Less flash, more substance.

Ha ha ha - Amazon hasn't changed! They're still stuck in 1995 UI / UX.

Too true. Some guys over at college humor are on to this problem already... Anyone who has spent time in Silicon Valley will find this clip awesome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4

Enjoy!

It's an interesting post, because there are probably two types of 'pivots':

1) Change the solution to the problem you're solving 2) Change the problem you're solving

(1) is a lot easier than (2).

I think the key here is to love the problem you're solving - if you've chosen a big enough problem (or important enough), then there should always be a market for a solution... don't get discouraged when the particular solution you tried doesn't work... you just need to find a new one that will.