for W3c validation

Any entrepreneur will tell you that visions, and how those are articulated, get refined over time. We’re no different. The vision we’re chasing is largely the same as I mentioned in Part 1, yet the way we’re articulating it has changed as a result of dozens of discussions with avid as well as infrequent travelers. At this stage, shifting is a good thing — if you set your product and messaging in stone too early and ignore your users’ feedback, that’s a recipe for disaster in a startup.

In part 1, our over-arching goal was to “connect you with nearby people and things that are relevant to you.” That gets at the main component, but we’ve decided to really focus on the people aspect of that vision. We’ve shifted a bit, and the vision now centers around “Giving you the Inside Connection to Your Next Destination“. A great inside connection is certainly different for everyone. They are based on friendships, passions, experiences, and values. Our premise is that if we connect you with the right individual(s), whether that be leading up to your trip or on the ground once you get there, you’ll get the information you need. Travelers don’t ultimately want to spend hours researching every aspect of their trip; they’d rather speak to an individual extremely knowledgeable about the area(s) where they are going and get  their specific questions and concerns addressed quickly. A knowledgeable expert to cut through the information overload problem is worth money to a large segment of travelers.

We think “LinkedIn for Travel” is a great analogy. When I think about LinkedIn, I think about it as a central network of all my business connections who can help me either get a job (when I wanted one), strike a business development partnership for my employer (when I had one), or grow my own business. Travel is an adventure. We are focused on connecting you with the people who will make your adventure as awesome as possible.