Hungry For More From Whttl? Come And Get It!
We just served up a tasty new feature.
Tim & I started building Whttl in early September. We subscribe to the philosophies of both Build In Public and The Lean Startup, so we made a point to launch after only 30 days. On October 8th, Version 1.0 of Whttl went live. Beyond providing a directory of sharing economy companies, we’re really proud of our filters that allow users to whttl down all of the options to find the perfect fit. In the few weeks since then, we’ve had about 2,000 users check out the product. We’ve gotten a lot of love for what we’ve built, but alas, we are just getting started.
We are really excited to announce that, starting today, we are introducing our first real time inventory category. For those who provide a San Francisco ZIP code, you’ll see that our “Chef Meal Delivery” category now aggregates all of the dishes, snacks, treats, and drinks from the top three providers. We hope you find our platform to be a super convenient, quick, and easy way to compare all of the options available to you.
Background
The amazing startups Sprig, Munchery, and SpoonRocket are the three that we integrate with. All services deliver a freshly prepared meal to your home, office, or favorite park bench for a relatively reasonable amount. They differ from the incumbent companies like GrubHub, Seamless, and Eat24 because they aren’t coordinating the delivery of restaurant food. Rather, they prepare and deliver their own fresh dishes daily.
So what’s the use case?
To reach economies of scale, each provider offers only a small number of meal selections per day. Sometimes you may not be in the mood for any dish from a certain provider. If you use Whttl, you’ll be available to see all the menu items under one digital roof, so to speak. Instead of 2 or 3 dinner options, now you have 8 or 9. Click on the dish you want, and we’ll direct you to the order page on the provider’s own site.*
How much will it cost to use?
Nothing at all. You’ll pay the same exact prices you would if you went directly to one of the providers.
What problem have we solved?
Kayak famously illustrated how much of a pain-in-the-butt it is to go to dozens of travel sites individually to get the best deal. They built a product that compares them all for you. “Search one and done” is the tagline. This is very analogous to our model. We think you shouldn’t have to check the menu at Sprig…and then Munchery…and then SpoonRocket. Instead, you should be able to compare all the dishes at one spot.
What’s next?
We plan to introduce real time inventory to many more categories. We haven’t made up our minds on what category will be next, but we’d love to hear from you. Should we do peer-to-peer rental cars? Adventures? Hosted in-home dinners? If you’d like, tweet us with what category we should roll out next.
What’s asked from you?
Your patience. We’re still building, and although we work as hard as we can to make the product flawless, you may experience some bugs along the way. If you see anything at all, or have an improvement suggestions, drop us a line. We’re happy to dive in and improve the product for you, and in turn, all of our users.
If you found value in this, it would be tremendous if you scrolled down a little further and hit the “Recommend” button.
Greg Muender is the founder of Whttl, described as the “Kayak.com for the sharing economy.” Use it to compare dozens of different providers and marketplaces at once, including RelayRides, DogVacay, and HomeJoy. Drop Greg a line via greg<at>whttl/dot/com. For further reading, check out the Official Whttl Blog.
Sprig is currently mobile only. If you find a dish you’d like to select, you’ll have to jump onto your mobile device to place an order. Also, we’re still fine tuning, so feel free to send us a tweet if you see any improvements we could make.
