Building a community one traveler at a time

Our last post talked about Oliver Samwer and his marauding band of idea stealers.   One of those ideas is airbnb.

Crashing in someone’s pad used to mean you had no dough.   Now it means you’re on the fun, progressive, pennywise edge of travel.

If you think Airbnb (and all of it’s countless imitators) is successful because people can comfortably stay in big cities across the world for far less than big city hotel prices, you’d be right.

If you said it’s also successful because visitors get to see interesting unexpected neighborhoods and enjoy the quirky comforts of artsy (and sometimes downright crazy) apartments, you’d also be right.

But the key insight you may be missing is a craving for community in a digitally fractured world.

So much of what we do happens in the ether between faceless people with handles instead of names.  Any chance we can have to connect face to face with a stranger who becomes a real-world friend is invaluable.  That’s why staying in youth hostels made European travel that much more special.

Airbnb brings this benefit to life.  It enables two people to sit over coffee and talk. Make a connection.  Start to buold community.

Ironically enough, it’s all due to technology, beginning with a simple, brilliant idea, brought to life as only the internet could, sparked by one of the greatest of all travel-related questions:

Can I crash in your pad?

Make your ideas brilliant and unique. Oliver Samwer is watching.

One of the best things about the digital world is that it fosters ideas.  

If ideas were democratic before the internet, now it’s as if they grow on trees, just waiting to be plucked by the next ballsy entrepreneur who leaves college to become a multigazilionaire.  

It’s today’s version of  Bill Blazejowski, who constantly dictated his ideas into a tape recorder (“What if you mix the mayonnaise in the can, WITH the tunafish? Or... hold it! I got it! Take LIVE tuna fish, and FEED 'em mayonnaise!”).

Today, the tape recorder is the internet, the mayonnaise is an accomodating VC, and up pops another amazing, creative, functional, lucrative idea.

My old boss, who said that there are only seven original ideas in the world, has been proven wrong again and again.

Although Oliver Samwer might agree with him, he of the deceptively peaceful blue eyes above.

Mr. Samwer steals ideas for a living, clones and repackages them, and makes billions doing it.  He plays by the rules and does things legally.   He has no reservations and makes no apologies.

And he often makes an idea better, through design, packaging, promotion; the wrapping that we all see. 

So the lesson for all of us crazy hopeful dreamers with the next Big Thing rolling around in our heads:  

If your idea is brilliant enough, Oliver Samwer will want it too.  Make your idea smart and strategic, and make it bulletproof.  Think it through, take your time, and make it thorough. Cover as many bases as you can.

And most of all, make it as unique as possible.  The more unique you make it, the more people will want YOUR version of it.

And raise as much mayonnaise as you can.