Don't be like a Chickensh**t VC. Embrace Collaborative Trip Planning.

They hated it.

When we invented collaborative trip planning, we were excited, pumped up, feeling bullish. So, we sought out the bright lights in venture capital, and said, "We've invented real time, multi-party trip planning! Lots of users can simultaneously build a trip plan—think Facebook® for Trips. Let's make a unicorn."  

And they said, "People don't like to collaborate. People love toast and hate humidity. That's why we're putting our funds into AI driven IOT appliances, toasters talking to humidifiers, that sort of thing. But let's stay in touch."   

Suffice it say, they did not invest. But it made us think…why would people in a social age be afraid of collaborating?

Off to the blogosphere we did go, searching for reasons.  Our favorite piece is 5 reasons why collaboration fails and how to overcome them written by Aaron Orendorff.  

While it focuses more on the problems of business collaboration—tool selection, for example—it was instructive, and it inspired us.

Thusly, we offer Relovate's Trip Collaboration vs. Common Collaboration Fears

We get it, one group, too many goals. Trip Ambition run amuck. Someone is solving for budget, someone else for adventure. One friend wants to zip line across jungle canopies and your 2 buddies want zzzzzs on a beach, within arm's reach of adult beverages.

Relovate solves the GolaPuzzala! problem this way: create a trip for each possibility. Build one around a budget, consider items and see how they impact your target spend. The result is, like Jeprady, "we'll look at trips for $2500."  Set one around beaches, beers and everything sunny and sandy. Create one around Adventure. And so on.  

Relovate is no limits planning, so we don't care how many trips you build. At some point, it would be swell, if you would book one, but no rush. Really.

Our little start up at Relovate is filled with egos and c-suite titles. What kind of people do you think start start-ups, anyway?  We deal with it by distributing accountabilities, embarrassingly through a white board and less so with Redmine. Relovate facilitates the same approach for trips.

Within any collaborating trip, you can distribute the work. For example, Erica handles flights, Josh covers accommodations, and so on. Relovate's "consider" feature enables each collaborating party to save items, so everyone can view them, weigh in, comment. 

Internet access and a keyboard are all your trip collaborators need to tap Relovate's capabilities. Relovate requires no downloads, installs, updates or some new icon on your desktop or smartphone. Essential actions are a registration, just email and password. 

Inside, Relovate looks and feels like other online travel sites, EXCEPT, it is advertising free and popup free and has everything in one place.

Every collaborate trip comes with its own, private trip chat. No need for chasing emails or texts or downloading new stuff. Its embedded inside the trip planning.

For trip planning, your friends, family and colleagues are natural collaboration partners. Of course, they may be in different parts of the world, on line at different times and be in different time zones, making collaboration difficult.   

Relovate solves this; your invited trip collaborators can work on the same trip plan, either on line or off line. When online, all changes, edits, suggestions are seen immediately through notification messages. When off line, all changes, edits and suggestions are saved to the trip. When collaborators return, everything is viewable. We call this Trip Timezone Zappering.

No, you won't. Each collaborator has a unique version of the trip in their personal trip library. So, when the collaboration is done, everyone can go their separate ways for booking. And if one member doesn't want the 6am flight, he or she can sleep in, catch a later flight. It's collaboration, not conscription, after all.

So even though our friends in the VC world are afraid of trip plan collaborating, you are now free to embrace its benefits.  

You’re welcome.