1996-2004

In 1996, Microsoft started a travel division, which we now know as Expedia. Priceline followed a year later in 1997. These two behemoths still flourish, persisting as the largest publicly-traded players in the industry, taking in $3.4b and $4.3b in revenue, respectively, in 2011.

Orbitz and Travelocity threw their hats into the ring 4 years later in 2001 with aggressive advertising campaigns and technology that didn’t really get anyone overly excited. Tripadvisor also emerged during this time and they continue to add value by encouraging quality user-generated reviews. A number of travel sites now rely on TripAdvisor’s 50 million+ user-generated reviews to better inform their customers.

So how have these “aggregators” operated and most importantly, how have they survived over the past decade and a half? Well, they have all definitely raised a lot of money, spent a lot on advertising, acquired potential competitors, and failed to do anything notably interesting.

The model has been pretty simple:

• aggregate rates from thousands of hotels
• claim to have low-rate finding superpowers
• leverage sorting, filtering, and comparison tools
• collect roughly ~13% in commission from hotel and airline bookings.

These travel giants rarely plug directly into hotels’ direct booking systems, which means that rates are not realtime. In most cases, when a customer calls a hotel directly, they will match or beat the 3rd party rate so they can avoid paying the hefty commission. As a customer, it is wise to to always call and negotiate a better rate and room, regardless. You may surprise yourself. I do it all the time.

In 2004, Paul English launched Kayak and sparked a glimmer of hope for innovation in the travel industry. Kayak remains as one of the few meta-search engines, pulling rates from 3rd party booking sites as well as the hotels direct booking system, in some cases. The company operates much differently from the bloated travel sites of the late 90s and early 2000s. Kayak has managed to stay lean, with only ~100 employees and relatively modest ad spending. To put the tiny size of their team into perspective, Expedia has 8,900 employees and Priceline has 3,400. Kayak has focused on customer service and building a product that people like. Revolutionary, right? Kayak is a culture where engineers answer the phone and Paul responds to customers’ e-mails. E-mail him – there is a strong chance you’ll get a response, especially if you are an engineer looking for a job.

Kayak receives only about a fourth of the traffic of Expedia and Priceline, along with their subsidiaries. Expedia garners a lot of their traffic from Hotels.com and Hotwire, while Priceline gets a bulk of its traffic from Booking.com. Despite Kayak’s shortcoming in traffic, with only ~133 employees and $225m of revenue in 2011, you can bet that Kayak has seriously growth potential.

2005-2012

While Kayak has seen tremendous growth during this period, we have also seen new players emerge.

Last year, Room 77 launched their hotel search engine at Jason Calacanis’ LAUNCH conference. Room 77 pulled in $3m in angel funding from the conference and four months later, raised $10.5m in Series B. Their angel round came with lots of other perks too like rockstar advisors, Sam Shank (Hotel Tonight) and Pejman Nozad. Room 77 launched with the goal of providing a little extra for their users, going beyond the traditional hotel search engine. Their team helps you find the best room in your hotel of choice with detailed floor maps and satellite views from each individual room. If you’re booking a 4* of 5* hotel, they’ll even pair you with one of their “Room Concierges” who work with the hotel to find you the best room, based on your desired criteria. I gave it a test-run in the Dream Inn in Santa Cruz. The booking process was pretty easy, although their signup form thought that “t@teddy.is” was an invalid e-mail. Shame.

Since the Dream Inn is a a Joie de Vivre Boutique Hotel, Room 77′s concierge helped me sign up for their loyalty program so I would receive points for the stay and a free flight of wine when I checked in. Most 3rd party booking sites don’t really make an effort to ensure that you receive loyalty points when you’re booking through them. I stay in Starwood properties more often than not so this is a feature that I really appreciate.

Room 77 also pulls in AAA rates, Senior Rates, and a little birdy told me that they will soon pull in Military Rates. Over 50 million people use AAA and very few hotel search engines pull in these rates. Room 77 doesn’t earn commission when someone books one of these discounted rates but since they are so customer focused, they do it anyway. There are about 200,000 properties on Room 77, half of which pull directly from the hotel’s direct booking system. Their Room Concierge service is handy but the direct booking advantage is definitely their “secret sauce.” Room 77 is definitely a company to watch as they continue to innovate in an otherwise boring space.

HotelTonight launched in early 2011 and raised a $3.25 Series A five months later in May. Last month, a year after raising their Series A, they closed a $23m Series C and are absolutely tearing it up. With a recent London launch, just in time for the Olympics, they are making a dent in the last-minute mobile booking space. I’ve probably used the service about 5 or 6 times now and I absolutely love the experience. The days of worrying about booking a hotel weeks in advance are far over. The convenience and low rates on HT make it easy to painlessly book a hotel on the day of your stay. I also appreciate the curation – the candid reviews and classifications (Hip, Basic, Charming, Luxe) ensure that I never strike-out.

These past few years, with players like Room 77 and HotelTonight emerging, I have serious hope for the future of online travel booking. Let’s cross our fingers that neither company succumbs to a sweet offer from the likes of Expedia and Priceline. I’m thinking that they won’t!

2012-future

What is the next big thing for booking travel online? We have seen AirBnb and HomeAway making a serious dent in hotels’ revenues, prompting hotels to get their acts together. We’ve seen mobile last-minute bookings on the rise. What is the future?

Eric Nakagawa of the famed Cheezburger Network has jumped into the travel space this year with SimpleHoney, a beautifully designed survey-based hotel selection engine. I haven’t used it yet but my only fear is that survey-based personalization can only go so far with hotels. I personally wouldn’t leave my hotel choice up to machine learning.

HipMunk also launched their hotel location-based mobile app this year.  It is very well-designed but I’m really not feeling it. The experience needs to be more simple on mobile with hotel curation and minimal effort required to toggle filters and location. That being said, if Hipmunk’s goal is to take the agony out of travel, it needs to be more like HotelTonight!

Would love to hear what companies/concepts you think will replace the old behemoth travel search engines. Let me know: t@teddy.is

I was in the market for a solid city bike so Zack invited me to stop by the shop to scope out their operation. I stopped by without any intention of making any sort of purchase that day but needless to say, an hour later, Zack and I had meticulously picked out every part needed for a fully custom-built bike. I pulled the trigger and the bike is currently in the queue to be built.

I left the shop with serious respect for the Mission Bicycle team for providing an exciting, technical, and painless experience. I also left the shop with a new hope for the future of brick and mortar commerce. I think it is fair to say that Mission Bicycle is the Apple Store of  bike shops. They value design, customer service, and from what I’ve gathered, Mission Bicycle customers are fanatical about their bikes. How do they garner so much fandom? They clearly run Mission Bicycles like a startup, valuing design, service, and to top it off, a rockstar e-commerce platform built on top of Drupal, which I’m sure uses a well-tailored set of funnels to ensure the online bike building process is exactly what the customer wants and needs.

Here is what I think every brick and mortar store should value, whether they are selling soap, furniture, bikes, iPads, or anything really:

Design

Your product is a thing of beauty. You’ve put blood, sweat, and tears into it from concept to shelf. Why not show it to your customers in the most effective, aesthetically pleasing way possible?  A/B test your storefront, your shelving, displays, it’ll probably make more of a difference than you think. In the case of Mission Bicycles, the customers that go into the shop to build their bike rather than build it online, likely value that extra personal touch of face-time with the staff and the culture of the store. Make the “UI/UX” of the shop consistent to the online shopping experience but definitely give the customer that extra personal attention. Mission Bicycle did exactly that.

source: mission bicycles facebook page

Personalization

The bike-building process at Mission Bicycles may seem intimidating to an amateur cyclist. What the hell is a Technoglide headset? This process is akin to building a new Macbook – my parents, for example, don’t really understand what an SSD is. Both Apple and Mission Bicycles guide the customer through the customization process, explaining every singe little part of the product and its function. Customization is important. You cannot assume that your customer might not want something because they don’t know what it is.

Service

Providing insanely good customer service seems obvious, especially in the age of Zappos and Apple. However, it’s also easy to overlook service. Bi-Rite Market, the famed Mission neighborhood grocer, understands customer service like no other in their cohort. It’s an easy cop out to hire cheap labor, especially as a grocery store. Bi-Rite didn’t build their reputation with careless hiring practices. In fact, I often leave the little store wondering if they hire sommeliers and cheese connoisseurs. They probably do and that makes me much more likely to purchase anything there. Customer service is probably the most important investment that any brick and mortar store could ever make.

source: flickr user thomashawk

I have no experience working or running a brick and mortar store of any kind but I know that Mission Bicycles is an exemplary model that should be followed by all. I am extremely excited to see and ride my bike and I don’t mind waiting over a month for it to be built. They even let you build the bike with them in their warehouse, if you’re getting antsy. Awesome? Yeah, I thought so. Anyway, my praise for Mission Bicycles is over. Next time, I will be sure to post pictures of this impending work of art.

We were very close to booking a room at the Vanderbilt Grace but we opted to use Hotel Tonight to book Forty 1° North

instead.  This was my first experience booking with Hotel Tonight and overall, it was a pretty seamless process. When we arrived at the hotel, we had a very friendly receptionist who brought us up to our room. Unfortunately, since we booked with Hotel Tonight, we were given a room overlooking the parking lot (not the ocean) with 2 queen beds. We opted to switch rooms but were stuck with a 45 minute wait until we could get into a room with a king size bed. We decided to hit up Christie’s, a casual tapas spot owned by the hotel, in the meantime. The décor and waitstaff were very fun and the food was splendid.  I have heard amazing things about Forty 1° North’s other restaurant, The Grill, which is actually inside the hotel, where Christie’s is in a building next door. Daniel Leahy, co-founder of Savored, recommended The Grill’s wine pairing menu, available at the Oval Bar every Wednesday at 6:30.

After our early dinner, we headed back to the hotel so the concierge could closely inspect our new room to ensure that it was in tip-top shape for our stay. Everything was great but the “Intimacy Kit” was missing from the guest that had stayed the night before. Whoops. The receptionist had the housekeepers bring an Intimacy Kit to the room so that we wouldn’t be charged for it. Awkward.

The minibar was stocked with the necessary amenities and large goblets for your drinking pleasure. We put these goblets to good use.

The new room was infinitely better than the the original room, with an electric fireplace, gigantic bath tub, and windows overlooking the ocean. We were thrilled with the upgrade and even more thrilled with the quirky and fun vibe of the room. Every room comes complete with a different Dr. Seuss book, iPad, and iPod touch that sat on a dock integrated into the wall. Have they overdone the “hip-factor?” For me, no but for the typical 50+ Newport go-er, the added tech and fun quirks might come off as a bit tacky. I rarely turn on the television when I stay at hotels but for those who want in-room entertainment, most rooms are stacked with a host of A/V inputs integrated in the wall.

I think the bathroom was the most impressive part of the room, with an incredibly large bathtub, (MALIN+GOETZ) bath products, and a spacious standup shower. The glass above the bath is tinted white and you’re able to see the silhouette of someone standing on the other side. Overall, the bathroom stood out as larger and more luxurious than most hotels that I’ve stayed in.

In addition to the gorgeous high-tech room with an amazing ocean-view, we were also very impressed with the concierge. She organized a car for us very last minute to get us to our evening engagement. When we returned in the wee-hours, we were greeted by the night-time receptionist who gladly pushed our checkout time to noon. Thanks man, we needed it!

If you are looking to hit up Newport this summer and wish to stay in a hip, luxurious yet unpretentious accommodation, you must look up Forty 1° North.

I know it’s probably a bit cliché to post a breakdown of the traffic garnered from an HN post but I’m doing it anyway. The post went live at 4:41 PM EST on Monday (4/30) and by 6:00 PM, it had already received 2,042 unique visitors. By 7:00 PM, 5,459 visitors. Seven hours later at midnight, 14,858 visitors.

The next morning, I received an e-mail from Gizmodo asking for my permission to syndicate the post. Despite receiving over 135,000 visits on the Gizmodo-syndicated post, very few people ended up on my blog from the link to my post in the footer. I thought the breakdown was interesting so I’m going to share it with you. Let’s start with the HN stats for Monday.

Hacker News – 4.30.2012

How many unique visitors ended up seeing the post on Monday? 

14,858

How did people get to the post?

What countries are these people from?

Most popular cities? 
San Francisco: 5.20%
New York: 4.66%
London: 1.83%
Seattle: 1.69%
Chicago: 1.68%

What about the rest of the week?

Despite falling in the rankings, the rest of the week yielded 4,064 more visits from HN, totaling 17,598 HN visits from Monday to Friday.

Gizmodo – 5.01.2012

How many unique visitors came from Gizmodo to my blog on Tuesday?

2,067

How did people get to the post?

What countries are these people from?

Most popular cities?
London: 4.25%
New York: 3.66%
San Francisco: 1.69%
Chicago: 1.54%
Toronto: 1.09%

What about the rest of the week?
The bulk of the Gizmodo traffic came on Tuesday when the post was syndicated. Only 332 more visitors came to my blog through Gizmodo from Wednesday to Friday. However, as of Friday, 137,847 visitors read my post on Gizomdo.

Conclusion

Throughout the week, 25,574 unique visitors stumbled upon my post on my blog. Most of these visitors came from Hacker News, despite the ~138,000 visitors that read the post through Gizmodo. Aside from the raw statistics, here is what this post yielded:

Twitter Followers:

Facebook Subscribers:

Radio Interviews:
1
Pete the Planner, an Indianapolis radio show, interviewed me yesterday (Friday) about the post. The interview will go live tomorrow (Sunday) at 10AM EST.

Job Interviews:
1
Undisclosed SF-based startup.

 Free Stuff:
1
A pair  of headphones in an attempt to get me to review them on my blog.
Overall , it was an interesting learning experience and I hope to continue writing. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me via e-mail / twitter/ fb. Happy Cinco de Mayo.

“I’m not telling you this as an authority but as say, an uncle figure: you need to stop what you’re doing.” – An undisclosed Apple attorney

When I was 15, my 3rd generation iPod had broken. This was a tragedy as music has been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember. With no funds to purchase a new iPod, I was determined to fix it. After scouring eBay, I purchased a logic board and read countless tutorials on how to crack open my iPod and surgically replace the logic board. The operation was successful and I felt triumphant – functioning iPod, new awesome skill as iPod-surgeon, and none of my music was lost. I grew very curious as to how frequently out-of-warranty iPods malfunctioned and simply required a new part or two. Everyone knows that out-of-warranty Apple repairs are absurdly expensive, often costing as much as a new iPod. I found that 2nd and 3rd generation iPods broke a lot and people rarely bothered fixing them. Word spread amongst my friends that I could fix broken iPods and soon after, people flocked to me to fix their iPods. The supply for parts was scant and as a result, prices were very high. I started buying broken iPods in bulk and salvaging the functioning parts, accumulating a surplus of parts to fix friends’ iPods.

A hobby and good deed turned into an obsession and I started buying huge bulk orders of broken iPods and selling the parts on eBay. By the time I was 17, I had purchased over a hundred iPods, turning a spare room in my house into an iPod graveyard.  From 2005-2008 (15-18), I had taken in more than $65,000 in revenue from my iPod and eBay ventures before I could even legally hold a Paypal account. I saw the 3rd generation evolve into the 4th generation and then the 4th generation color, and eventually the beautiful 5th generation, arguably the biggest leap in technology of any of the iPod generations. Generation after generation, as the components shrank, repairs became harder and harder. I hated working on iPod Minis. Nanos? Forget about it. The parts became so integrated and hard to replace that the market for parts deteriorated.  I had a good 2-year run but I wasn’t making much money off of parts anymore. Instead of buying and selling parts, I started to buy broken iPods that were still under warranty, mailing them back to Apple and receiving brand new refurbished iPods for the cost of shipping. This was the most lucrative venture of all but it was the primary reason why an Apple lawyer had called me that day. Understandably so, they did not like me taking advantage of their transferrable warranties. They knew that I was a kid and let me off the hook but it hurt to have Apple crush your income stream, the income that had allowed me to avoid a high school job while my cohort was slaving away at part time jobs.

I learned so much peddling iPod parts. From customer service, to accounting, to shipping logistics, it was my foray into how a business functioned. I made a lot of silly mistakes but they were all part of the learning experience. My profit margin was not monstrous but the hard work and the lessons learned were invaluable. I differentiated myself by offering international shipping, a service that few sellers bothered with at the time. Receiving orders from China, Eastern Europe, Australia, and numerous far flung regions was incredibly exciting and eye-opening. The  power of e-commerce allowed a high school student to offer an affordable way for someone across the world to repair their iPod. It fascinated the hell out of me. Once you experience this power first-hand, it becomes addicting. The internet had won me over one iPod at a time.

I think it’s fair to say that the Hype Hotel was one of the hottest venues at SXSW. The line was crazy every night. Sally and I were fortunate enough to snag Industry passes from our lovely friends at the Hype Machine. Thanks, guys! Oh yes, this meant that we queued up in the VIP line with the fancy music industry folks. It saved us a ton of waiting time.

We didn’t see everyone that we wanted to see, including The Shins, M. Ward, Of Montreal, and Waterville natives, Black Taxi. However, of the bands that we saw, here is my top 5:

1. Chairlift
   I’ve always liked Chairlift and I knew that they would kill it at SXSW but their show at the Eventbrite Arcade Party was easily my favorite show of the week. I think a lot of it had to do with the venue, an old converted auto garage with a relatively small capacity (~200 max). She seemed so into the show and it was a really great crowd.
   
   
2. Tennis
   We saw Tennis perform at the Stage on Sixth, where he had gone to see Apparat and to our surprise, Tennis went on shortly after. Tennis is a husband/wife duo from Denver and they are amazing. Stage on Sixth was a pretty small venue and they sounded great.
   
3. Fanfarlo
   We caught Fanfarlo twice, once at the Hype Hotel and the other time at the Brooklyn Vegan party, which was an outdoor venue. They are a London-based band. Sally was familiar with them but I had never heard them before the show. I really dig Fanfarlo and I’m definitely looking forward to jamming to them in the future.
4. Friends
   We saw Brooklyn-based Friends at the Hype Hotel and their lead vocalist, Samantha Urbani, was incredibly entertaining, pulling her friends up on stage from the audience and just being quirky in general. Stereogum named them a “Band to Watch” and described them as “ESG-style polyrhythmic post-disco on a tropical-pop trip, with some Lykke Li in the mix.”
   
5. Saint Motel
   Sally and I were walking down the street to catch a show and I heard “Puzzle Pieces” playing from outside of a tiny bar. We obviously checked it out and caught Saint Motel playing in front of a crowd of less than 50 in true SXSW form. Although, we only caught Puzzle Pieces, it still made my top 5 of the week.

So there you have it, my top 5 shows of SXSW. We did see Miike Snow that week at the Hype Hotel but I have to say that I wasn’t impressed. Animals was solid but they seemed tired and unenthusiastic about playing. Needless to say, you should just check out the aforementioned bands in my top 5 and even try to catch them live.

source: instagram (thestylespy)

Each year, there seems to be a new location-based app to facilitate networking with the thousands of SXSW attendees. This year, it would be an understatement to say that there was hype around the Highlight app. It’s a lot like Sonar, locating people in the vicinity with 2nd degrees connections or mutual Facebook interests. Needless to say, the general consensus was that it was a big fail, a channel for nonconsensual networking and creepy encounters. Whether it was Highlight, Glancee, or even Sonar, all of these apps caused enormous battery problems for everyone. Even with charging stations in the convention center, Mophies, and human chargers, re-charging affected everyone’s schedule.

source: instagram (easartin)

Is this a sign that devices need better battery life or that we need to put down our phones and actually enjoy SXSW? It’s a little of both. I’m guilty of being glued to my phone but SXSW would be far more productive and enjoyable if we all gave our phones and iPads a bit of a rest next year.

After introductions, we were tasked assembling teams based on everyone’s pitches and skill sets. I thought that this process was one of the harder parts of the journey. Walking up and down the aisles of a cramped bus to meet people, hear their ideas and what they are good at, and ultimately decide that you want to team up with them for the next 3 days to build a product is not an easy thing to do. With anything that involves collaboration, I truly believe that a team should be comprised of people that you want to spend time with outside of working on a project together. I’ve found that the best ideas often come from interactions outside of the “office.” You can have the best engineers, designers, and hustlers all on one team but if there isn’t any chemistry, building a successful product will be a struggle. This appeared to be particularly true on the StartupBus in such a unique environment.

Luckily, I worked with an awesome team on a problem that I found compelling and in demand. Our team built Teacher Tally, the beginnings of an assessment generation platform that allows K-12 teachers to share and rate standards-aligned assessment questions. These questions can be sorted and filtered according to the needs and desired standard of the teachers to generate quality exams and homework. With public K-12 schools shifting toward the “Common Core Curriculum,” teachers across all 50 states will have to teach the same standards to their students. We found that there are platforms that existed that allow teachers to share and rank standards-aligned assessments but not individual questions. We wanted to build a product that allows teachers to seamlessly pick and choose high quality questions and generate customized printable assessments. Teachers should have tools that foster collaboration and efficiency.

Day 1
The first leg of the journey from Boston to Charlotte was the longest leg of all, totaling 18-hours on the road, a great portion of which was spent laying the groundwork for Teacher Tally. In that time, we got organized, outlining everyone’s task. Four of the guys on the team are technical and then there was me. I know my way around a few languages but not enough to contribute much to the development side of things. When I wasn’t hustling, trying to get press and awareness up for Teacher Tally, John (a former teacher and the product guy on our team) and I worked on contacting teachers in our network to gauge interest and gather feedback on what we were working on. We reached Charlotte around midnight and crashed for a few hours before hitting the road again. Next stop: Baton Rouge.

Day 2
We set out for Baton Rouge around 8:30 on Wednesday morning and drove for around 13 hours. On this leg, the engineers really laid down the bulk of the development, setting up the databases and our server. Since we had 4 engineers and myself, we really lacked a designer. Not having a designer really set us back as good design is obviously crucial to any project. I did what I could on the design side, hacking up a logo and setting up the landing page. The logo turned out so so but it’s not “the one” by any means.

When we rolled into Baton Rouge, we went straight to a bar where 4 other buses (Florida, Louisiana, New York, and Cincinnati) were already drinking, eating, and mingling. StartupBus had rented out a whole bar and we were the last bus to arrive. I was too exhausted to be functional – all I could think about was sleep. Baton Rouge is an interesting college town – it seemed rich with culture and naturally had a bustling bar scene. We ended up at the LSU Alumni Hotel for the night, which was surprisingly quite nice. Teacher Tally shared a room. The floor did the trick for me.

Day 3

On our last and shortest leg, we made it from Baton Rouge to San Antonio in about 6-hours. On this leg, John and I really tried to hustle on gathering the teacher survey data before we fully built out the frontend. Over 60 teachers responded to our survey, giving us a really solid data set. We learned a lot from this data, particularly that teachers appreciate collaboration. We also found teachers really want to use a tool that generates assessments at differentiated skill levels. After discussing and hearing feedback, we thought it would be valuable for teachers to be able to generate easy, medium, and hard assessments and let the students openly decide which one they wanted to tackle.

On this short leg, we also started setting up our pitch deck. We were never able to pitch in front of a panel of judges since we didn’t make it to semi-finals but the process of building a deck  was valuable. Outlining the deck raised a lot of questions for us that helped us further hash out our business model and product as a whole. When we reached San Antonio, we  had a welcome party with the 9 other buses from New York, Stanford, San Francisco, Louisiana, Mexico City, Cincinnati, Florida, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Washington DC.

Most of the Teacher Tally team went out for drinks with some of the San Francisco bus. It was interesting to hear the varying social and work environments on the other buses.  In the morning, we went straight to the Rackspace Castle where we were welcomed by Robert Scoble and some of the Rackspace team. I’m not a Rackspace guy myself and I’ve never worked with a team that uses Rackspace but they know how to throw an awesome welcome party. When we walked through the doors of the Castle, an old mall converted into Rackspace’s HQ, Rackspace team members clapped and cheered for us. Their warm welcome was a great way to close out our journey. We spent a good chunk of the day at the Castle, where a few select teams were able to pitch to a rockstar panel of judges, including Dave McClure, Robert Scoble, Guy Kawasaki, Paul Singh, and Luis Robles.  It was great watching the pitches and always entertaining hearing McClure’s vulgar and animated feedback. The whole event was broadcasted live on The Next Web.

After Rackspace, everyone pretty much went their separate ways to Austin for SXSW. The StartupBus experience was tiring but I learned so much and would recommend it to anyone interested in hacking up a project with a group of awesome like-minded people. I will undoubtedly stay in touch with most, if not all, of the StartupBus Boston team.

A number of us got together over the week to attend the Interactive parties. SXSWi is a whole different story and a separate post that is in the works. More recap banter to come. In the meantime, check out BostInno coverage of StartupBus and Teacher Tally!

stops along the way, including an overnight stay in San Antonio / stop at the Rackspace HQ. Participants must build a prototype to pitch at SXSW.  Each team generally has a designer, engineer, and  a sales/marketing/bizdev person. I will mostly be partaking in the latter role, pitching and marketing the team idea.

The bus “conductor,” Igor Lebovic, has started organizing the logistics and connecting all of the “buspreneurs.” It will be interesting to see how everyone’s skill sets are matched up and what ideas transpire.  There is no question that the ideation stage of the process will be one of the most crucial and time-sensitive aspects of building the prototype. There is only so much building and iterating that can be done over a 3-day period.

The whole journey will be filmed and in some cases, journalists hop on at different points to cover the action. There will even be a StartupBus stock exchange, where anyone can buy shares in the teams, which fluctuate based on growth rate. It’s all for fun but it’s a great way to keep track of the teams’ progress.

Needless to say, I’m pretty stoked to be part of the Boston bus and even more stoked to start hacking something up. I will be sure to post some updates on here on the journey.

I have said to myself for quite some time now that I want to be more mindful of what I put into my body. Well, starting last Monday, I have adhered to a strict pescetarian gluten-free diet. It is a diet that I want to continue for the foreseeable future since I think it’s a fit for me. Fish provides a rich natural source of Omega-3, there is a lot of variety and flexibility in the preparation of fish, and I am less at odds with the commercial source of it. It has only been 8 days but I feel great and I don’t find it that challenging, aside from the occasional feelings of hunger and cravings for a juicy steak. These are things that I know I will adjust to as I learn to appreciate new foods.

Mindful eating is one way that I hope to gain a stronger appreciation for new foods, as well as reduce my caloric intake, which was likely above average before I started being more conscious about my eating habits. Mindful eating is the practice of dedicating your full attention to your food to reduce the speed at which we eat and the distractions of multi-tasking. In America, especially, eating is often a chore with an end goal of being 100% full. We try to achieve this as fast as possible, often while working or doing other things. Mindful eating is one thing that I still have to work at but so far it feels great to close your eyes and taste a fresh piece of fruit and appreciate the quality of the food and the benefits to your body.

My first hurdle in this new diet: SXSW. Austin, the land of pulled pork, beef brisket, and all things that are good will be staring me in the eye, tempting me. I’d like to think that by that point, I won’t be craving such things but we shall see come March 8th.