The Journey in Building a Business around Memorable Experiences
poolhop
In the summer of 2015 I was finishing up my courses on iOS Development. I wanted to build a company but needed a vision. Anyone that has started a company knows the challenges and doubts you face along the way. Sometimes to keep putting a foot forward you have to remember why you started the company. The pain in your life that your business is trying to solve.
For myself, it was the social challenges of living at home. For me I needed to keep costs low while I pivoted my career and built long term skills, but that creates serious pressure in the near term. For homeowners the joys of sharing your home with close friends for an experience together can be overlooked. It has been a given likely much of their adult life, but now that is no longer the case in America. Their is a sense of individuality/pride that can be lost, when you cannot attain home ownership. Much of the sharing economy was built around these pains. The idea that if we can’t own something, we sure as heck should still be able enjoy them.
In Arizona the simplest of summer pleasures is the pool. That is where we began, as poolhop. The idea drew tons of support from users, but the legal/homeowner concerns drew too many question to build a company around. As I tried to rectify these issues, I looked at what we were actually trying to solve and we made our first pivot…
Yardhop
We thought we were on to something from the positive user feedback, but had to rectify that with the supply side. So we asked the questions: Why did people like the idea? Why did people want to rent a pool? We could discuss the macro issues of underinvestment in our public spaces, the rise of suburbia or financialization of housing as middle class security gone astray but we simply wanted to look within the current constraints and determine how can we provide value in people’s lives NOW.
People wanted the ability to have fun/exciting experiences with their friends, which is straight forward. But they wanted to share in the joys of homeownership, they wanted to build an independent life and they wanted to take part in what we still view as the American Dream: family, friends, and a home.
Within that vision we built yardhop 1.0: the personalized experience marketplace, where you can rent out intimate spaces by the hour (coffee shops, backyards, garages, etc). We knew that the atmosphere to create memorable event experience includes 3 parts: ambiance, location, and food. Our plan always included the other 2 elements but we to focus on location at first, coming from our poolhop roots.
Reboot
Going back to the start: when you’re bootstrapping and building a company from the ground up you need to understand the pain point, but really understand if your solution is the best way to solve it.
At times building a space rental market in the suburban Sonoran Desert could feel like swimming upstream in a summer flash flood. We knew we were providing value in user’s lives but why did the challenges exist and could we solve the issue in a more efficient way? That is when we looked at the 2 other elements of memorable experiences: specifically food.
The more we discussed, the more we realized that who you are with and what you are doing creates the memory, not necessarily where you are at (though it of course helps). For the element of what you are eating, we wanted to see how our business could provide value to both sides of the market: people looking for unique foods at their event and restauranteurs wanting to work those events.
Future
Looking at the current environment for catering, private chefs, or the simple search/rating functionality we see a disconnected market. Companies focused on corporate accounts, those trying to be on-demand business, those that just sell internal software, and businesses that maybe don’t have the real challenges of a user or vendor at their heart.
That became our focus: to centralize this market and provide a seamless experience for both parties. We see the marketplace model as the future of the localized food industry and Yardhop will be at the forefront.
Our vision for Yardhop is simple when it comes to food: help people discover the best local foods and create a straight forward quoting/ordering process. With that simple idea comes many different aspects to help users and vendors.
The yardhop marketplace was always built around trust and we want to maintain that as we think the food industry could benefit greatly from it. To do to that every vendor on yardhop was initially picked by us or referred by a current partner. We look for the best local and new businesses only. Once they are on the platform our discovery algorithm helps users find the best fits for their event: No more searching, calling for prices and then just taking the top rated choice you see.
To maintain consistent quality we will leverage our reviews as the tool to determine if a vendor stays on our platform. Their is no need to shame vendors for trying their best; users vote with their wallets and struggling vendors will be removed.
We are going to make food the heart and first step in building our events planning platform. We hope everyone will leverage our referral program to build bonds with these community businesses and make the vision of Yardhop a reality.
As we roll out additional features our goal is to answer all the question marks that come with planning your event.
Take control of your experiences, build genuine relationships, and help local businesses.
Welcome back to Yardhop.
Eddie
Founder of Yardhop
