Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Day 15 – “Traveler Data Aggregation” Company?? – HUH?
Tuesday March 21., 2017
Just 15 days ago we launched with a Facebook page and some newly registered domain names.
The Stats: 235 is today’s score, up from last score of 180
204 Followers on Twitter
https://twitter.com/MyTravelUpgrade
12 Participants in
NPTA.com linkedin Group.
2 in Facebook group
17 Travel Score applications:
…and we continue to learn – an internal discussion here has been about: “innovation and the how the first mover has an advantage of being first, while the second mover benefits from the mistakes and miss-calculations or the first mover.” We’d thought we were the first mover and had to figure everything out. We were the “innovators,” and had to think up everything from scratch.
Back in 2010, I read a book titled: Copycats: How Smart Companies Use Imitation to Gain a Strategic Edge, published by Harvard Business Press.
To quote from the Forbes article; “Books these days regularly cheer innovation. You rarely go to a conference without hearing how important it is. Copying others has a bit of a stigma. Yet despite all of that talk, successful imitation rather than innovation may be a better way to make money. Even better, borrowing from others and combining that with your own creativity, can build strong competitive advantages.”
Then burning the mid-night oil and surfing the net last night, I find out we are not the first. There was a 2011 news release from a company called Traxo, to offer their “Traxo Travel Score”. See the archived release at PRnewswire here:
We don’t know why they killed it, but they don’t offer it as a going concern at their website today or can be found with search. But being able to see what they did six years ago will be helpful in figuring out what we want to do in the future.
Then I noticed TRAXO just took in a big Series “B” funding
December 13, 2016
TripAdvisor Invests in Traxo, Leading $5.2M Series B Round for Traveler Data Aggregation Company
So our little project is really another entrant in the field called: “Traveler Data Aggregation.”
Who would have known, with $2,000, two weeks, and a few off the shelf programs, and timing that allowed a visit a leading industry trade show we’d be playing in this big sandbox?
Lots of promotion today, as we move out of beta today with a PRnewswire release.
Do check back in on Wednesday, and let’s if we’ve bumped that 245 score up.
--Mitchell Davis
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