Ask HN: what lifestyle business could I help to create for my mom? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: what lifestyle business could I help to create for my mom?

#31

Post by Uchikoma » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 4:52 PM UTC

vaksel wrote: post #2

She should just stick with what she knows, since she has some expertise in that. A few possibilities there: 1. a business that organizes all these business nomads out there. Does all the necessary research, finds out all the services that are needed etc. Instead of 1 person moving at a time, it'd be a group of 200. Instead of arriving and knowing noone in the area, you arrive with 200 people you know. Instead of gett…

#2 is a great idea. I'd love to work for a year in #NYC as (lead dev, CTO, VP eng or whatever ;-)

Re: Ask HN: what lifestyle business could I help to create for my mom?

#32

Post by blrgeek » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 5:09 PM UTC

She could be a 'virtual guide' - http://guide.mygola.com/

I think they pay in US$ too. Not sure if this'll meet her budget req though.

Re: Ask HN: what lifestyle business could I help to create for my mom?

#33

Post by humblest_ever » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 5:10 PM UTC

joshuaheard wrote: post #26

Combine travel with another one of her interests and make a DVD (a la "4 Hour Work Week"). For instance, if your mom is into wine, make a DVD of all the wineries in a certain region. It could include reference statistics that she could research. People that are going to travel there could use the DVD as a guide or load it into their cell phones as an app.

Do you have personal experience in doing information products? I'm really curious about pricing and sales for that kind of thing if you're willing to share.

Re: Ask HN: what lifestyle business could I help to create for my mom?

#34

Post by miloco » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 5:21 PM UTC

One area where there is an obvious hole in the market imho would be catering for the disabled traveller. If she could provide a service whereby she could organise disabled friendly flights, assistance to and from the airport, guarantee accommodation would meet your requirements etc it would be a great load off the mind of those who fear travelling due to their disabilities. A "disabled holiday planner" effectively.

Re: Ask HN: what lifestyle business could I help to create for my mom?

#35

Post by joelrunyon » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 5:29 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #19

Having been down this road before, in similar circumstances, with multiple family members: be vewwwwwwy careful that she is the one driving this business forward, or it won't work and will only cause you grief.

Agreed. She needs to be the one initiating things. It's very dangerous to help someone out only to find out you're more committed to their success than they are.

Re: Ask HN: what lifestyle business could I help to create for my mom?

#36

Post by eli » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 5:45 PM UTC

I know some guys who run a seemingly successful travel agency that caters to gay vacations. I guess it's successful because their target demographic has disposable income and this type of travel is not yet comoditized. I.e. there's no "Gay Friendly" filter on expedia, at least as far as I know.

Re: Ask HN: what lifestyle business could I help to create for my mom?

#37

Post by beagle3 » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 5:49 PM UTC

Meta answer, which is probably going to get modded down (no love for Tim Ferriss on HN):

Read (and let her read) Tim Ferriss' "4 hour work week". While the goals discussed in that book are different, it has lots of useful advice about how to set up businesses that run themselves, which is probably what your Mom needs.

See e.g. http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/12/11/engineering-... for examples. Of course, these are the successful case studies and there are failures - but there is a lot of good info and interesting ideas in that book.

Re: Ask HN: what lifestyle business could I help to create for my mom?

#38

Post by joeod » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 5:52 PM UTC

miloco wrote: post #34

One area where there is an obvious hole in the market imho would be catering for the disabled traveller. If she could provide a service whereby she could organise disabled friendly flights, assistance to and from the airport, guarantee accommodation would meet your requirements etc it would be a great load off the mind of those who fear travelling due to their disabilities. A "disabled holiday planner" effectively.

The same could be applied for people with eating allergies looking for accommodation.

Re: Ask HN: what lifestyle business could I help to create for my mom?

#39

Post by noodle » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 6:02 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #19

Having been down this road before, in similar circumstances, with multiple family members: be vewwwwwwy careful that she is the one driving this business forward, or it won't work and will only cause you grief.

just to throw in a note, this is how i did things (after a few trials and errors):

simply tell them that you can and are more than willing to help, but if they want your help, they'll have to figure out what they want you to do on their own.

Re: Ask HN: what lifestyle business could I help to create for my mom?

#40

Post by unohoo » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 7:08 PM UTC

beilabs wrote: post #7

Why not get her to set up a niche Deal of the Day website specializing in adventure tourism in your area? She knows the industry, group buying is hot and it could be easily run by a single person.

As someone who works in a deal-a-day startup, I can only describe your comment as naive. Deal a day sites seem very easy to implement technically, but trust me, thats only 10% of the equation.