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Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

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121–130 of 207 posts

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also wonder why the prices are largely in the same ballpark irrespective of the airport. This seems a mostly labor intensive offering, and labor costs are much lower in, say, India.

They are reselling local services. The costs are going to be space in the airport + paying for customers to cut queues, which airports will already be selling to airlines. Staff costs will be a minor component, I suspect.

Fair point.

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a service like this. Domains mean nothing. If they spent more than the price of a .com domain it's a mistake. For consumer facing product, they find you one of two ways. 1. Social (Paid ads) 2. Google search (Paid ads) I am not talking about viral products or brands, I am talking about the average service (like this one). I saw many companies do this mistake, some paid 10K some paid 2m<, all made a mistake IMHO.

Think also about customers who have seen already seen your ad or read about the company somewhere, but did not have immediate need for the service back then. Good and simple domain name might help the end up to the web page right away. If they need to Google, they are exposed to all your competitors.

This is certainly our hope. Thanks!

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#123

This seems incredibly pricey, especially for the services you seem to be promising (which, for all the airports I spot-checked, amounted to Meet and Greet, Custom Assistance, and Transport Assistance). Fast tracking was not covered in the base price for any of the airports I checked. Connecting flight service is $745 per person!!! Your example pricing was for 2 people, but I checked and it looks like the price for 1…

Pricing varies and our goal is to make it much consistent in the not so distant future. When we decided to build Solve, we thought we were building a simple booking engine. But really, behind the scenes, we are taking a ton of data and making it easy to understand. It just ended up being much more complicated than we thought.

Now that we've got a better understanding of price, it will help us figure out how to optimize. The paired pricing is actually just legacy in the space and we'd like to ditch it or at least come up with something better.

We've got some work to do before we're at the 50-100 buck range, but we definitely appreciate your perspective and feedback.

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#124

One of the first things I do when I arrive in a new country is pick up a local SIM card so I can use my phone without roaming charges. Sometimes this is nice and simple where you just walk to a booth in the airport and pick one up, other times it's a real hassle, having to hunt around for a local shop and fill in personal information on sign-up. Have you considered providing local SIM cards as part of your service?

We definitely see the pain point here. It'd be great to be met by our agent and handed a SIM card or hotspot. Thanks for your feedback!

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#126

One of the first things I do when I arrive in a new country is pick up a local SIM card so I can use my phone without roaming charges. Sometimes this is nice and simple where you just walk to a booth in the airport and pick one up, other times it's a real hassle, having to hunt around for a local shop and fill in personal information on sign-up. Have you considered providing local SIM cards as part of your service?

If you (or anyone else) has to travel to Japan I endorse https://www.rentafonejapan.com/ - they will have the phone or cell modem delivered to your hotel and you can drop it to the reception or in a mail delivery box on your way to the airport.

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#127
post #11

Hey Blaine! Congrats on your launch. My co-founder Sarah and I just moved from SF to travel the world while we bootstrap our startup, Canny. I'm also a huge fan of products like Shyp, Instacart, Prime Now, and Gobble that let you trade money for time. I think I could be your target customer. However, $210 sounds pretty darn expensive for HK. I just went there last Nov. It didn't take much research at all to figure ou…

Since you're an international traveler, I'd like your thoughts on our idea. Would you think it's a life saver if the hotel you checked into at your destination gave you a smartphone that gives you access to the Internet, Google Maps, and other travel-related apps while you can also use it to Wifi hotspot your own personal phone?

I've had this option several times, however I never actually used it...

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#128
post #16
post #11

Hey Blaine! Congrats on your launch. My co-founder Sarah and I just moved from SF to travel the world while we bootstrap our startup, Canny. I'm also a huge fan of products like Shyp, Instacart, Prime Now, and Gobble that let you trade money for time. I think I could be your target customer. However, $210 sounds pretty darn expensive for HK. I just went there last Nov. It didn't take much research at all to figure ou…

While I'm here, another concern I'd have is stickiness. With Gobble I'll happily pay a weekly subscription and make dinner all the time. With Solve, most people only travel a few times a year. Maybe this reinforces that Solve is more for (frequent) biz travelers, where it would be stickier. I have a few friends who are management consultants who fly literally every week, their companies might pay $200 for them to sav…

I hear your concerns. The key I found in certain airports is that one day immigration might have no wait, but another day you're stuck waiting for over an hour. For people who travel relatively frequently, especially business travelers going long distances, seeing that line is a nightmare.

To your point, $210 in HK isn't for everyone, but a number of people find the cost quite reasonable for the time savings and safety factor.

We're new and still crafting our pitch, so I definitely appreciate your feedback there as well!

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#129
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I hear, Fi is by no means perfect, it's only available for a few phone models, and I'm not from the USA anyway.

What cell service is perfect? Fi is wonderful for a simple pricing structure and having service in 170+ countries as soon as you land. It allows me to use my phone in the few hours it takes from landing in a new country, to getting to my hotel, to getting to a cell provider to get a local SIM. It is only officially supported on Nexus and Pixel phones, which are great devices. You can get around the limitation by doin…

Maybe you missed the part where they said they are not from the US?

Re: Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time

#130
Hopefully you will have better optimization of providers in the future, allowing for better pricing.

For instance, arriving at SVO (Sheremetevo airport in Russia) you want $735 for meet and greet and transportation help.

Yet local pricing for transportation into Moscow is no more than $75 for the one way trip (SVO is a bit outside of Moscow proper) and, well, very capable translators are available for what, $50/hour or less? I've paid as little as $10/hour, though not at the airport.

SVO already has express lanes IIRC for USA citizens at least. You should either have this info noted or possibly figure out how to integrate this into your service.

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