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As we continue to develop Everlater, sometimes we have to remind ourselves that it isn’t just for solitary or small groups of adventure travelers. One of the advantages of Everlater is that several different people can co-author a trip, while still keeping certain information private (if they so choose).

So besides people like us, who else would be perfect candidates for Everlater?

Bands

Imagine following your favorite musical act as they tour the country. Journal updates, stories from the road, and of course, lots of crazy photos will dot the map. Members of the band can have their own separate pages to communicate privately with friends and family, while pushing up some of the content to the band site, publicly available to all. Rumor has it that Nate and Natty went to school with the Boulder breakout act 3OH!3. Maybe that’s a good place to start?

Families

People, both young and old, are increasingly documenting their lives online so they can easily share the experience (and perhaps avoid retelling the same stories over, and over). Or go all out, like the Cardozo family, and (semi) aimlessly travel the world for an entire year! Families in particular are good candidates to have separate and shared blogs (the children and parents might have very different types of content, and different friends!).

Athletes

NBA players? Yes. Baseball stars? Yes. Rock cimbers? Hell yes! We recently met with Pete Mortimer of Sender Films (the premier rock climbing film production company) who was eager to get his climbers using Everlater to document their worldwide climbing trips. Want to know about Pete’s current trip? Check out the Sender Films blog.

Professional Travelers

Sounds like an obscure category, right? Well, no niche is to small when we fantasize about who Everlater would help the most.

We can’t help but think Matt (of Where the Hell is Matt? fame ) could have used our help before having a custom solution designed for him. Though that ship may have sailed, lucky for us, we were recently introduced to Ian Usher. You may recognize Ian as the guy who sold his entire life on eBay (for $399,300). His current project, which needs little explanation, is 100 Goals in 100 Weeks. We’re excited about Ian’s interest in Everlater, and would be psyched to provide him a way to share his progress with the world.

Stay tuned. If you know how to use a keyboard, and have ever left your hometown…we’ve been thinking of you.

We love developing web applications today, as opposed to say…2001.  This isn’t because the financial state of the tech environment is better now than it was in 2001, or that Natty and I had just graduated from high school in 2001.  It’s primarily because the tools and frameworks available to web developers are just better now.

Gone are the days when you needed an expensive development environment or three programmers with a black belt in Unix and server architecture to run your site.  Instead open source frameworks and hosting services in the cloud make it extremely easy to design and deploy all with an incredibly lean team of designers and programmers.

Web application development is now in its golden era.

Natty and I consider ourselves to be incredibly fortunate that we began working on Everlater right when this golden era came into fruition.  While we are still designing our final architecture, here’s a rundown of the different tools that Natty, Ryan, Charlie and I have used to develop our site:

• Github.  $7/month.  Hands down the best code repository mixed with the best way to socially tackle coding.  Freakin’ Awesome. (And a prime example of what a bootstrapping company of four can do with this exact infrastructure).
• Ruby on Rails. Free.  Super simple web framework — I knew zero about rails and in four months I can develop rich internet applications — I think that says it all…
• RabbitMQ.  Free.  Messaging queue written in Erlang — used by my former employer for their global messaging queue, so I feel good about using it for our backend infrastructure.
• Apache/Mongrel. Free.  This may change shortly to Passenger, but using Capistrano to deploy to our staging server is about the most satisfyingly easy task in the world.
• Joyent hosting.  Free.  Free developer slices for facebook developers — doesn’t get much better than that!
• SQL.  Free.  We use MySQL/SQLite/Postgres in development and PostgreSQL on our staging server currently, but that may change to….
• CouchDB.  Free.  This is going to be awesome — super excited about deploying it across our site in the coming weeks!

So…there we have it — $7/month and our time.  Plus, this software is ridiculously easy to use (and learn for Natty and I).  Moral of the story is that there’s no need to raise a half-a-million dollar seed round to build the next Facebook/Google/whatever, you can now do it in half the time for virtually nothing….

…and I’m SUPER excited to see all of the cool applications that will come out of this golden era!

Happy New Year!  I spent the holidays with my family on a trip to Finland and Russia.  It was my first trip since I returned from South and Central America in July and I quickly caught the travel bug once again.  The experience was a great taste of the cold, dark winters above the 60th parallel famous in so many classic Russian novels.  In addition to the obvious joys of traveling, I spent a great deal of time talking with travelers and locals and wanted to share some quick observations:

• People are still traveling.  Despite the economic woes, people continue to travel and even in Russia, a country arguably hit the hardest by recent events, was full of tourists.
• People love to talk about travel.  Whether actively traveling, reflecting on past travels, or hosting travelers, everyone has travel experiences they want to talk about and share.  From the Russians who can’t get Visas but still tour their own country, to the expert global traveler, everyone has a story.
• The expansion of social networks truly is global.  Even in a place famous for its state-controlled media like Russia, social networking is thriving.  Russians have their own social network and are quickly adopting Facebook.
• Everyday people are the best journalists.  I know I’m preaching to the choir for all Twitter users, but it was amazing to see how much more authentic and accurate information was when provided by the masses as opposed to traditional single-sided media (TV, radio, etc.).  I watched a review of 2008 on state-controlled Russian TV which painted a distinctly different picture than the stories I heard from talking to real people on the streets and in cafes.  The internet is the great equalizer and does, can and will provide the means for people to express their uncensored opinions and stories.
• Internet access is everywhere.  I expected spotty and slow access at best and thus didn’t bring a computer in favor of my iPhone and am pleased to report I found high-quality wifi almost everywhere.
• Couchsurfing again delivered a fantastic experience.  To meet locals and travelers I contacted people through Couchsurfing (which I posted on earlier in this blog) and again I met incredibly interesting, insightful, welcoming people and was treated to unique cultural experiences.

These observations, while not revolutionary, mean a lot to us at Everlater.  After all the work and toil it is a reconfirmation of the power and potential of our idea and our perception of how it can impact the traveler.  Since returning and reflecting on my experience, I am even more excited about our project in both its opportunity to enhance and improve traveler experiences as well as our potential for business success.  Photos from the trip are on my Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nattyz/

Right now, in Patagonia, I am close to the end of the world. Why would I want to spend time on a computer? (Case in point, I prewrote this by hand). Within the first few days of my four week trip to Chile & Argentina, to be honest, I was having doubts about Everlater. Sitting down in front of a computer every few days, I spend only enough time to respond to any urgent emails, let my parents know that I am still alive, and attempt to Skype my wife (sounds dirty, right?). As rushed as this trip feels already, why waste a moment more in front of a computer (seems like Nate was right regarding our real competitor) ?

In many ways that’s the whole point!

If mapping your progress and sharing the information is as easy as sending an email - then you win. You’ve saved time by telling everyone in one fell swoop, documented your trip in a way that is more organized than text buried amongst the lines of an email, and you’ll never have to repeat yourself. Just tell your story once and everyone can read it - a multimedia display that tells the story with that same initial enthusiasm every single time.

I’ve tried this “tell the story once” part with my honeymoon in Peru and Bolivia by blogging about it after the fact. I have good notes, but it is hard to have the discipline to fully re-document all five weeks now that the trip is over!

So please, excuse the sales pitch that is this blog post. The product we are building here is something that I believe in - and something I wish I would already be using to help share my experiences with my friends and family. Lois Griffin once said “it’s not what you do that defines the quality of your life, it’s who you do it with” - and if they can’t be there with you - then we need to build the next best thing.

The last month and a half has been busy here at Everlater.  We have moved into “monk mode” and are holed up building out the backend of the site.  We know an idea is worth nothing, the value comes from the execution.

Ryan and Charlie have made great progress building much of our site functionality and continue to push development.  In the spirit of Thanksgiving, Nate and I are very thankful for their diligence and commitment to our idea.  That being said we still have a long road to travel but each day we move closer and closer to our alpha launch.

Nate and I have also been programming almost 24/7.  Not being programmers by background we have had a steep learning curve but are finally making a significant impact.  We have also been pushing business development and continued innovation of our business model.  We have met many subject matter experts to help build our knowledge base, understand our industry, spread the Everlater word and build local contacts.  We’ve been very busy in the community, thanks to all the people listed below for giving us their valuable time, insight and advice.  Thank you.

• The Silicon Flatiron initiative here in Boulder hosted a session on “Building a Start Up in Uncertain Times.”  The four person panel preached conserving cash and taking a hard look at monetization and the viability of your business model, but also agreed this is the best time to be an early-stage company.  Not new news to us, but still a great event.  Silicon Flatirons also hosted a deep dive on IP.
• Niel Robertson, of multiple successful tech exits and restaurant starts, spent a morning with us providing feedback on our business plan and giving us more insight into how to best monetize our site using advertising.
• Bruce Sanders, head of the senior project at the CU Department of Computer Science met with us to provide feedback on the technical aspects of our site, to help further build the relationship between the school and the entrepreneurial community, work to connect us with talent leaving CU, and to discuss travel, a passion of his.
• Peter-Christian Olivo of Sage Canyon Advisors sat down with us over coffee at one of our favorites, Spruce Confections, and provided feedback on our concept, business presentation deck and our elevator deck.
• Nate met with Macalester alum Dianne of Adventure Central to talk about her experience in the travel space and to learn about potential future partnerships.
• The monthly BoulderRuby group included a presentation about Rails and Facebook led by guru David Clements and a trip to the Lazy Dog for beers afterwards.  Fun times were had by all.
• We attended the CU New Venture Challenge pitch day to learn about other entrepreneurial ventures in the area.  It is a great program promoting entrepreneurs and students at CU.  We appreciate the work Brad Bernthal has put into this program.
• We also met with Brandon Geiger of Swarmforce and Jeremy Boles of Roov to discuss the Facebook development and learned a lot about successes and failures for Facebook developers and James Klein to chat about his start-up experience and the pro/cons of outsourcing.

The next month will be spent much like the last: full focus on development, continued improvement of our business model and more local networking.  Nate and I are splitting time between Boulder and Silverthorne and plan to continue our work, ski, and sleep lifestyle (most likely weighted in 16, 5, and 3 hour increments respectively).  Natty is off to Finland and Russia at the end of December with his family where he will celebrate the holidays and conduct market research.  Charlie plans to continue being a major workhorse and will be local for the holidays with Nate.  Ryan took off to Argentina this week to hike through Patagonia.  He is working on some on-site development, promotion, and low-bandwidth site testwork.  He will be posting to the blog and sharing his insight on the state of the traveler.

Tomorrow we are excited to meet with Seth Levine of the Foundry Group to review our business plan and get his insight into our path.  We look forward to continued involvement with the Boulder tech scene, plan to see you all around town and hope you all continue to follow our progress.  We are helping Andrew Hyde host Ignite Boulder 2 next week, it is a great event, hope to see you there.

1. Your Cover’s Blown — Belle and Sebastian
2. Middle of Nowhere — Hot Hot Heat
3. Night on Fire — VHS or Beta
4. Chase the Sun — Planet Funk
5. Poster of a Girl — Metric
6. Of Moons, Birds and Monsters — MGMT
7. The Way I Are — Timbaland
8. 93 Til Infinity — Zero 7
9. Don’t Trust Me — 3Oh!3
10. Comfortably Numb — Scissor Sisters
11. Grow Up and Blow Away — Metric
12. Gold — Klee
13. Soil, Soil — Tegan and Sara
14. Painted by Numbers — The Sounds
15. The Others — The Ark

Whenever Natty or I talk to anyone about online travel, we inevitably talk about or reference TripAdvisor somewhere in the conversation.  This is because TripAdvisor (and its partner websites including virtualtourist.com, independenttraveler.com, etc.) has, by far, the most extensive database of user generated reviews and the most active base of users of any travel information site.  TripAdvisor completely dominates the market despite a horrible design, deceptive sponsored links, multiple pop-up ads and disorganized site layout.

TripAdvisor has built themselves to be at the center of the online travel information universe.  We strongly believe that network effects have, at this point in time, firmly ensconced TripAdvisor’s position.  This is because they are the only site that has the depth and breadth of reviews to drive users to their site, and conversly, they are the only ones who have the vast number of users to entice reviewers to review purely based on the impact of their reviews.

There are no less than twenty different sites attempting to unseat TripAdvisor.  However, none are having a large impact and this is directly derived from a classic chicken-and-the-egg problem: they are struggling to attract users to review, and with no reviews, they are struggling to attract users.  Some sites, such as WAYN.com among others, have resorted to enticing users through point systems (sometimes redeemable for real-world services) to write reviews.  Others have resorted to large scale traffic generation schemes to drive users to their site.  Regardless, it doesn’t appear that it’s working.  A post on compete.com’s blog shows that, if anything, TripAdvisor’s reach is expanding after a 2008 site redesign.

Another takeaway from the Compete post is that over 1% of TripAdvisor users contribute reviews.  Given their huge inital base, the expansion of their database is expanding far more rapidly than newer entrants.  Competitors to TripAdvisor will have to drive the percentage of users contributing reviews much higher than TripAdvisors (already impressive) 1%, making the barriers to entry for online travel information sites almost-impossibly high.

They have a huge user base and that drives fantastic results.  According to Expedia’s 3Q08 press release, the TripAdvisor Media Network had revenues of $236m ($314mm annual rate) — nothing astounding, compared to the billions that GOOG generates, the billion that myspace generates or the estimated $300m that Facebook generates.  However, due to the fact that travel advertising is extremely valuable online (something that the Everlater team has not overlooked), TripAdvisor CRUSHED the margins of all of these other online media companies — their reported operating income (actually OIBA per EXPE reporting) margin is 53% (compared to GOOG’s roughly 25% margin, and Fox Interactive Margins of 0-10%), meaning they are on pace to earn operating income of $165m — margins and profit that are almost unheard of in the digital media space.

We (at Everlater) have several takeaways from TripAdvisor’s dominance:

1. Travel advertising is a great place to be. While no one knows exactly where the economy is going to go, and whether online advertising will be worse or better than the whole, we do know that we are positioning ourselves to take a slice of the tastiest part of the online advertising pie.
2. Content is king. We are building a media site, and our content is the most important part.  Because we are not targeting the travel information space, we are targeting an active contributor user percentage much higher than 1%.
3. Paying users doesn’t work. This takeaway is courtesy of TripAdvisor’s competitors.  If we ever have to entice users to contribute content to our site, then our business model is broken, rather than our marketing plan.

In thinking about traveler dynamics, we are very conscious of travel being both a communal and individual experience. A unique and valuable perspective we believe most online travel sites overlook.

When people travel alone they, by definition, experience travel individually.  Experiences are interpreted individually within the context of a participants unique perspective.  However, most individual (solo) travel experiences include interactions with other people, whether in the context of a location (city) or event, where outside participants affect the experience by providing perspective and content, whether desired or not, that help shape the experience.

When people travel with companions or within groups they, by definition, experience travel communally.  Within the group context, experiences are shaped and interpreted by the communal perspective of multiple individuals and desires during the experience.  However, travelers within groups also interpret these experiences individually due to the inherent uniqueness of an individuals perspective.

Therefore travel, whether experienced alone or with a companion or group, is both an individual and communal experience.  It is our opinion that this is an important perspective to take when designing the functionality of our site and by acknowledging this dichotomy we add additional value to our competitive advantage.  Our users will want to share their experience and interact socially with other travelers communally and/or individually - while this is not revolutionary, we have not seen this functionality built into current travel sites.

For those of you who don’t know (and shame on you), Couchsurfing rocks!   Couchsurfing is a community seeking to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance and facilitate cultural understanding.  It is a huge inspiration to Everlater.

More 411 on CS’ing (know the lingo). People from all over the world have created profiles on Couchsurfing, opening up their couches to fellow travelers for nothing more than stimulating conversation and cross cultural exchanges.  Yes, you can Couchsurf from Angola to Afghanistan, and Antarctica to Aruba.  There are no fees or rules, just a commitment from all members to honor the values set forth by Couchsurfing, a communal desire to unite the world and expand cultural awareness and the kindness of anonymous people knowing that a home is better than a hotel and a friend is better than a tour guide.

Nate and I have Couchsurfed all over the world, from Stockholm to Delhi, Buenos Aires to Bogota and even New York to San Diego.  We have met amazing and inspiring people, and more than anything, been overwhelmed at the incredible openness with which people have embraced us, complete strangers, into their homes and told us their stories.  Couchsurfing communities around the world gave us personalized tours and experiences never found in guide books, helped us travel on a budget by reducing accommodation expenses, connected us with local traditions, enabled us to build a global friend network and broke down cultural barriers and stereotypes helping us repair a negative American image around the world.

Couchsurfing is an amazing movement exhibiting the beauty of humanity.  Barriers are nothing but human creations to separate, Couchsurfing ignores barriers and builds bridges.  We are inspired by Couchsurfing and amazed by the community.  Couchsurfing is a non-profit, check them out and if you believe, think about supporting this incredible movement.

1. Heartbeats - The Knife
2. Challengers - The New Pornographers
3. Star Witness - Neko Case
4. Riot Going On - The Teddybears
5. Lights Out - Santogold
6. Son’s Gonna Rise - Citizen Cope
7. The Night Starts Here - Stars
8. Bruises - Chairlift
9. Take Me To The Riot - Stars
10. Don’t You Evah - Spoon
11. Baby When the Lights v Tainted Love - Jameson Hill
12. Chase the Sun - Planet Funk
13. Lover’s Day - TV on the Radio
14. Hit the Heartbrakes - Black Kids
15. Of Moons, Birds, & Monsters - MGMT