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MyVR (YC W12) raises $1.4M to attack the vacation rental industry

53 points| jonmurray | 13 years ago |techcrunch.com | reply

13 comments

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[+] onedev|13 years ago|reply
Congrats, but I cannot forgive the terrible name.
[+] buro9|13 years ago|reply
Branding is terrible, especially given that vacation is an extremely American term and they mention the European market.

In Europe people have rented out holiday homes for as long as I know. There are some big incumbents in the market, this one for example: http://www.novasol.co.uk/

Novasol specialise in the Germanic, Scandinavian and Eastern European.

The problem myvr will have isn't just persuading advertisers that they can deliver customers (margins are slim and they can only afford to advertise in one place), but also to convince holidaymakers that the risk is virtually non-existent.

That's one of the things the incumbents work hard on, visiting every property each year and auditing it to ensure that it is as advertised and hasn't dropped in standard, and that all of the safety things (contracts, insurance) are in place.

[+] truebecomefalse|13 years ago|reply
Agreed. I thought they were some sort of virtual reality company.
[+] jonmurray|13 years ago|reply
ha! fair enough. well, at least we didn't waste a ton of time on it???
[+] phil|13 years ago|reply
Yeah, they totally picked the wrong 4-letter domain.
[+] vizzah|13 years ago|reply
Looks like 'VR' in relation to 'vacation rentals' is actually more widely used than it seems at first. VRBO.com from Homeaway (since 1996). So perhaps a valid choice, albeit not so customer friendly.
[+] jonmurray|13 years ago|reply
I do think most VR owners get it...