I have been working on Hostup, with which I recently got accepted into Antler's residency program.
It's currently an upsell management and fulfillment platform built for hosts and property managers who list on Airbnb, Booking.com, and other travel websites. My goal is to make staying at Airbnbs as great as staying at a hotel (without the downsides) by building experiences for guests.
This currently includes the ability for the hosts to offer things like meal plans, at-home massages, etc. In the future, it will help them offer a faster check-in process, make personal recommendations, add interactive guides, and maybe even neighbourhood treasure hunts that involve other travelers.
I'm a CS Grad turned Product Manager with over seven years of experience building B2B and B2BC products used by millions worldwide. Since I have had the opportunity to join product teams early, I have led impact over product management, design, and growth. This intersection of disciplines is something I have enjoyed in my previous roles, and it's something I believe the team can benefit from as well, especially at this stage.
Having worked remotely throughout my professional life, I'm used to effectively collaborating with team members situated in different time zones and continents and like operating in these timezones: CET, GMT, EST
Some highlights:
- 2x Founding (& First) PM
- 2x Founder
- 2x Angel Investor
Looking for Product Manager and/or roles where I'd be customer-facing and get to work on product and ops.
I have been working full-time on making staying at Airbnbs cool again with Hostup (https://www.hostup.ae)
We are doing this by providing 5-star amenities like massages, access to local experiences, events, and even essentials. Currently on the MVP stage, and only piloting in Dubai.
I have been working on Castup, a podcast editing startup since Jan 2019 and it's been an amazing journey so far. We crossed the $500/month profit mark after the first six weeks and now the team has expanded quite a bit.
I did, and it boosted my confidence 10x at my day job as a PM.
I still work full-time at another startup (again, I like making money) but now I have a good safety net to fall back on (if required) and I know my opinions can lead to successful outcomes.
I did (& it’s been brining in good money for the past 2+ years)
I built the Castup[1] website using Webflow, use Outgrow for onboarding, Stripe for payments, Slack for communication. It’s a productized service startup in the podcasting space but I have enough knowledge of no-code tools to build a SaaS as well.
My startup[1] works with a good amount of podcasts on a daily basis and here’s what we have seen work for them:
- SEO is still king (publish transcripts as blog posts, write detailed episode descriptions, tag each episode properly)
- Cross promotion works wonders (appear on other podcasts, plug yours)
- Reel them in with Clips (share multiple clips of each episode on all your socials, have a separate clips channel on YT if possible, ask your guests to promote with Clips or audiograms)
This advice can be applied to all podcasts and we have really seen podcasts benefit from them. Let me know if you (or anyone in the thread) has some specific questions about any of these points. You can reach out to me on Twitter (in profile) if you want to discuss everything a little deeper!
Just my 2¢: For better results, change the channel name to something relevant to what you are doing and start adding relevant (to the video) information in the video descriptions.
We build and work with software that cuts the editing time by 70% which allows us to offer our sevices at (somewhat) cheap rates while keeping the quality super high.
Started with a team of freelancers, now we have both freelancers and people working full-time.
Edit: I lead product for SF based startup as my full-time job.
I think your misunderstood my initial comment. It was regarding the fact that service based companies are expected to not reach scales that VCs look for, so my question was more so regarding how they plan to approach that problem when the time comes.
Thanks for your answer. Maybe, I have too much of a Bootstrapper mindset but when I see a service based company (like my own), I assume VCs won't be interested because it cannot scale to $1B or whatever number investors look for.
Again, great idea and I hope you guys succeed and prove me (and people who think like me about venture capital) wrong.
Cool idea, though I'm interested in how you're thinking about scaling this? I co-founded Castup[1], a podcast editing startup and while we deliver quite a few episodes a month, I can't ever see it scale enough to require venture capital.
We are profitable and have been since our second week of operation.
> Visual Mind summary report for http://usecastup.com - 72% of users are expected to like your site. Your site is visually awesome. You can further improve it by using better images and considering little denser layout.
Well, although I'm happy with the comment, that "72%" seems made up entirely.
I run a startup[1] in the space that provide hands off podcast production experience to podcasters and I recommend that you (or anyone who wants to start a podcast) read this blog post at least once: https://www.podcastinsights.com/start-a-podcast/
With my own side project[1], a lot of people still find us via Product Hunt (even 1+ year later), I personally try to engage with people on Reddit, Twitter and IndieHackers. I don't necessarily promote our website but answer their questions and they follow the username.
The site's also listed in a few directory tools for Podcasting (I had nothing do with it)
It's currently an upsell management and fulfillment platform built for hosts and property managers who list on Airbnb, Booking.com, and other travel websites. My goal is to make staying at Airbnbs as great as staying at a hotel (without the downsides) by building experiences for guests.
This currently includes the ability for the hosts to offer things like meal plans, at-home massages, etc. In the future, it will help them offer a faster check-in process, make personal recommendations, add interactive guides, and maybe even neighbourhood treasure hunts that involve other travelers.
[1] https://hostup.ae [2] https://antler.co