Business Traveler

[I often wonder when I'll inadvertently start recycling blog titles and whether or not I'll feel any shame when I finally do.  Probably not.]

Following up on my last post, I decided to ask Gemini about potential business ideas in the online travel industry space.  Actually,  my journey wasn't that straightforward.  I started by asking what's a reasonable codebase a single developer can maintain and what type of applications would map to those codebase sizes.  It somewhat dubiously spit out 100K (that's not the dubious part, depending on how it's organized) and an online travel agency as one of those applications weighing down the "larger" codebases (I have no idea what either Orbitz or Expedia settled at it, but it was certainly in the millions).  This is actually an interesting thread to pull.  I don't believe that a single developer can run an OTA (though I do buy in a bit more with the 100K viability - yes, my travel siblings, I expect you to scoff at my naivety, but I need some hot takes), but it got me thinking about travel service ideas again.  I may revisit the 100K == viable OTA question later, but in this post I want to address Gemini's ability to generate ideas, or ultimately its lack thereof, and how, after a brief despondent lull, I ended the day renewed. 

The session started out well.  It suggested a couple of intriguing options: (a) a service that glues together last-mile transit options on trips that larger OTAs like Expedia ignore.  The example it kept referring to was ferry service between Greek islands. (b) a site that points to direct booking for vacation rentals that don't want to participate in larger Airbnb or VRBO networks.

I was really excited by (b) until Gemini mentioned it's already covered by a company named Houfy.  There's nothing wrong with competition, but this company, at least nominally, seems to be handling the space efficiently, so why take on something that's already got a mile head start?  The company's been around for more than a decade and has only 7(!) employees (see my meager ponderings about corporate bloat above).  My dreams of a business idea were crushed today, but my dream of being able to run a slick software shop with a small team lives on.

(a) Still might be viable, but the problem is that schedules for last-mile travel can be highly volatile, so creating a business by promising pissed-off travelers that I won't piss them off and failing in the exact same manner because I have no insight into the scheduling processes probably won't succeed in the long run.

Well, that took the wind out of my sails.  As usual, AI can't generate novel ideas unless via complete randomness, so I sighed and moved on.

After a bit more reflection, though, I realized there's value in documenting my travails.  I've hemmed and hawed here before about publishing an e-book or two.  Most of it hinged on whether it was worth my time and what I should charge.  For whatever reason (maybe because the flux capacitor hit me on the head in the shower 3 days late), my intereaction with Gemini forced me into a minor epiphany.  First - yes, it's worth it to write an e-book or two.  I'm going to bloviate anyway, so why not do it as a PDF?  Second - I think I'll just give them away for free.  If one branch of my business strategy is becoming a high-powered, pinstripe-suit-clad consultant, then an e-book is good low-key advertising.  I guess if my books are enormously popular, I'll charge $1.99 for my next self-published tome and retire a wealthy plutocrat, eating lobster on one of my three yachts.

It also made me enthusiastic about doubling down on documenting the day-to-day process (or reasonable impersonation thereof) I work through.  Enough so that I decided to sit down and write this post about today's discoveries.

Not to let my wins lie fallow, I decided that, from a software project standpoint, Slowpoke (my personal financial app, for the uninitiated) and my HOA app are still reasonable candidates for some sort of income.  I don't know that they'll make income (RIP ExhibitMeh), but I started them to scratch my own itches, so there's at least a customer base of one.  Running through the business idea review above also gave me some fresh eyes on Slowpoke in particular.  Of note, I'm trying to think of ways that users can enter financial data easily if they don't feel comfortable hooking up to an external provider, like SimpleFIN.

That's enough for a Saturday.

Until next time, my human and robot friends.

P.S.

Holy shit!  I know this is likely due to AI's super scraping powers, but to actually Google my site and get a comprehensive plagiarized summary of my own content is a huge dopamine hit:

Holy shit again!