How Would You Beat?

How Would You Beat Airbnb Using Jobs-to-be-Done?

• thrv • Season 2 • Episode 7

Share episode

In this episode, we're going to look at how you would beat Airbnb using Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD). Airbnb has obviously become a major company. In the travel industry, its market cap is about 110 billion just to put that into perspective. Marriott, obviously a leading provider of hotels and hospitality, has a market cap of about 50-60 billion or so. Airbnb is almost twice as big as Marriott. So what explains this? And additionally, what are the threats to Airbnb? If Marriott, another competitor, or new venture were trying to take share from Airbnb and trying to grow larger how would they do it? How could you use Jobs-to-be-Done to beat Airbnb?

✅ Download our Executive White Paper: "How to Use JTBD To Grow Faster" 👉 https://www.thrv.com/jobs-to-be-done-white-paper

Key moments from today's topic on how you would beat Airbnb:

00:00 Intro to Airbnb and why it beat Marriott on market share

04:25 Customers want a place to stay as a job-to-be-done. 

06:36 Segmentation in the Market for a place to stay

09:43 How Airbnb chose a great business model and experience for JTBD 

15:49 Why founder-led companies outperform when it comes to customer empathy 

17:50 Competitive threats to AirBNB: Digital Travel

25:23 Can Airbnb invest in Digital Travel? 

31:32 Can Airbnb start to create successful "experience" job domains

✅ Download our Executive White Paper: "How to Use JTBD To Grow Faster" 👉 https://www.thrv.com/jobs-to-be-done-white-paper

Learn more about JTBD: https://www.thrv.com/jobs-to-be-done
Youtube: youtube.com/channel/UCEKeVWAeyQeMPzq9HfbUa5w
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thrv-com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thrvapp
Follow Jay Haynes on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayhaynes/
Follow Jared Ranere on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredranere/

Jay Haynes:

Hey, welcome back to how would you beat where we discuss how you can use jobs to be done innovation methods to beat your competition. Remember to subscribe and like to this podcast. In this episode, we're going to look at how you would be Airbnb. Airbnb has obviously become a major company. In the travel industry, its market cap is about 110 billion or so just to put that into perspective, Marriott, obviously a leading provider of hotels and hospitality has a market cap of about 50 60 billion or so. So Airbnb is almost twice as big. So what explains this? And additionally, what are the threats to Airbnb? If Marriott or another competitor or a new venture were trying to take share from Airbnb and trying to grow larger? How would they do it? How could you use jobs to be done to beat Airbnb?

Jared Ranere:

To it's a great question, and one that I think is critical to a lot of important companies. And I think the place to start is to figure out what the market is. So if you think about Marriott, as the incumbent, and the company has been the most under threat from Airbnb, you could see if they define their marketing correctly, why they dismissed Airbnb in the first place. Because if they think you know, we're in the hotel market, then why would Airbnb be a threat? You know, how is renting out a home a threat to a hotel? They're totally different products. But is that the right way to define the market? And is there a bigger market than the hotel market that Airbnb has accessed?

Jay Haynes:

Yeah, and I think these are all really great questions, if you are starting this journey down to figure out how to beat really any competitor, the first step is defining the market. And this is just so critical. Because if you think the market is hotels, you might go out and build hotels, and you could you could potentially take share. But if you think like your customer, and you really empathize with the customer, you have to think outside of the box, as the cliche goes, and in this case, you would literally want to think outside of the hotel, hotel, being the box. And the reason is that the market should be defined, based on the customer's goal, this is where jobs done innovation theory is really useful is that goal that your customer has, is very, very stable. So clearly, a huge number of travelers are using Airbnb, you've lost their growth in their market cap, you know, twice as big as Marriott. And the reason is, they didn't want to hotel, the hotel was just one solution. In the same way, you know, we see this, in every market, no one wants an iPod, they want to create a mood with music, you know, etc. No one wants a navigation app, they want to get to a destination on time, you know, etc, etc, you can redefine every market using this perspective. And this is an incredibly complicated industry and very complex and the jobs, it's not just find a place to stay when you that is the goal, you know, stay, you know, find accommodations while traveling. That is a whole domain that encompasses so much. And in other words, there are so many variables and there are so many customer needs, you need to analyze in that market to determine maybe hotel is the best solution. Maybe not maybe there are alternatives. And there's other areas to focus. And of course, you know, one of the huge advantages of Airbnb, of course, they have no assets, you know, Mary wants to build a hotel, that's a lot of capital expenditures, that they have to create a return on and they have to maintain etc. I mean, Airbnb doesn't have any of those costs, they're effectively a software company. And so so there's advantages there just from a business and capital expenditure and business model and return on invested capital and all those all those numbers that create value in a market. But there's also just, I think, a much much bigger market for people who are looking to travel and are not looking to stay in hotels. So it's, it's the market definition would be the first step.

Jared Ranere:

Yeah. And so so find a place to stay is one of the jobs in this larger domain that you mentioned, Jay. And you can think about how finding a place is just the first step right then once you once you reserve it, you've got to go and you've got to stay there and that has to be nice. And then while you are in that different location, you need to experience the location right so so the finding the place to stay is a stepping stone towards you know, maybe having a great vacation or experiencing another culture. And I actually remember, there was a time in my life pre Airbnb, old enough to travel as an adult before Airbnb existed. And where, you know, hotels were the way to find a place to stay the dominant way. And this was like right around right after college I had studied abroad. And so I had friends in Europe that were inviting me to stay at their homes. And I realized that was a far more enriching way for me to travel. You know, if I stayed at somebody's home versus a hotel, I got shown the city through the eyes of a local, and they show me where they like to hang out, and things I never would have discovered, had I been just a tourist. And that was one of the original value propositions of Airbnb, I think they actually had a tagline, which was like travel like a local or something like that. And so that the needs that they were satisfying existed long before Airbnb ever decided to rent a room out of somebody else's apartment to try to encourage homeowners to rent their own home or rent their own room. And I think that that's a really, really salient point, because you could have measured, how big is that segment of people who are looking for a more out there who are struggling with their ability to find an authentic experience, while traveling and found a hotel to not be a good solution for that. So so you can measure the size of the segment, and realize how big the opportunity is.

Jay Haynes:

Yeah, and I think that's incredibly important is, is really segmentation here in the market. So once you define the market correctly, who are the people that are struggling in a way that hotels just don't meet those needs, that was really the opportunity, there clearly was a big segment of customers who were struggling, they had unmet needs, that hotels weren't satisfying. And you could have identified those. That's, that's really, you know, the power of the underlying theory. And I think you're right, that segmentation is just critical. But also, this is a two sided market. Airbnb, of course, created a market place for buyers and sellers of combinations. So the other part of this, that Marriott would have never thought through, if they define their market as the hotel market, they would just look at the travelers who are looking for accommodations. And essentially, they might have internal customers for their hotels. But even before going to try and take share from Airbnb, you would want to then go look at the providers of accommodations, the homeowners and apartment owners and renters who want to take some of their capacity, essentially an extra bedroom, or they're away from their house, or whatever, and generate income from it. So what about putting your home into a market is underserved where people struggle when they're trying to put their home on the market, because there's a lot there, too, you're inviting a stranger to stay in your home, you know, and of course, there, there have been terrible stories about hosts, you know, bad things happening. And guests as well. So those are, those are real considerations. So it's very complicated on both sides of this market for the buyer, essentially, the buyers and sellers. And this is where jobs done is can be really, really powerful too, when you're trying to analyze your competition and figure out how to compete, because what you've you've got to do is see that overlap, because if the travelers, the people looking for accommodations, the buyers are underserved in a way that the sellers, the people providing the accommodations, can they can overlap, so you will satisfy needs on both sides of the market. That's a huge win. It may also be that you can't you know, you could have Airbnb, you know, obviously, solve this problem. But if you, if you if you couldn't figure out where the buyers and sellers can come together, you would also say this is not a market opportunity I want to pursue, right, right, because it may be that you couldn't convince homeowners or apartment owners to ever rent out their places. And in that case, you wouldn't have a marketplace. Now, clearly, I think there is a market for that. And people do want to make extra money, obviously, by renting out their places. But it's a way to begin this competitive analysis by defining a market on two sides, the suppliers and the sellers and the buyers.

Jared Ranere:

Yeah. And that's an interesting thing that we don't talk about all that frequently on this podcast, which is how your business model can put you in a position of having to serve more jobs than just the primary job for which your market exists. So I think we can we can agree that consumers who want to have a who want to travel in an enriching way, have a great vacation, however you define that job, or you wordsmith it. That's the reason this all exists. If there were no consumers who wanted to travel, you wouldn't read hotels, Airbnb, their flights or anything like that,

Jay Haynes:

like during a pandemic.

Jared Ranere:

That's right. That's right. You didn't have any of this stuff didn't matter. And, and but when you choose your business model, in the case of hotels, your business model is essentially leasing real estate, to the people who want to travel. And Airbnb, it's to create a marketplace that invites other jobs that you have to serve. This is also true in markets like media, if you want to inform people of the news, well, you could do that with a subscription, which means that that's the one job you have to focus on. Or you could offer it for free to consumers, and then try to make money from advertisers. And once you choose that latter business model, you have another job you have to serve, which is you have to help advertisers acquire new customers and grow their sales. And this is really, really important. I think a lot of companies will say, well, there's just the main customer we have. And then we have these people who we monetize from, like, just, they're just the monetization engine, don't worry about them too much. And I think news is a classic example of this, and they lose their revenue stream, when they don't honor the customers who are paying the money. You know, it's kind of like, well, if we just slap ads on the primary product and primary customer experience, then those will eventually make money, right. But if you don't think through how you're helping advertisers grow sales and what I met needs your solving and comparison to the other ways they could get that job done. You won't have advertisers and your business model won't work.

Jay Haynes:

Yeah, yeah. Or, or you might be the inventory of advertising you have is so cheap, you can't make money at it, or your you know, your price down to where you're not really generating profitability and growth, right, because you got to drive revenue, but you also have to generate profits at the end of the day. And yeah, I think that's, that's such good analysis. And, and this, this jobs to be done thinking really enables teams to expand their universe in powerful ways, and de risk the idea that they should pursue other markets. So the of course this is this is true for Airbnb is that you're not only doing helping the jobs on the accommodation side for the buyers and sellers of accommodations, but you're also trying to change the experience. And I believe they have been expanding into these types of experiences, which is, you know, there's a whole bunch of stuff you're traveling to a foreign city and you know, you want an itinerary, you you're not just there to hang out in one room, you obviously want to experience the culture, as you said, and some of that is you know, your host might tell you about the local Italian town you're visiting or whatever. But they could do a lot more. Right there's there's opportunities for those types of scenarios. And of course, you have to get to and from the place which is you know, its own unique unique struggle and and, and there's a lot you need to do that you need to eat, you have to run a car if you're traveling right is there's a ton of jobs in this what we would consider to be a job domain around travel, which is obviously you know, a huge industry.

Jared Ranere:

Yeah, and Airbnb is terrific at identifying the other jobs their customers are trying to get done. And, and in fulfilling those essentially, like the the experiences is a great example, they invested in an experience marketplace, where what you know, as soon as you book a trip, they start recommending, hey, hire this person to take you on a food tour or hire this person to give you a bike tour of the city, there are all kinds of experiences through it and they've created another marketplace, they've taken their business model, and they've applied it to the experience aspect of taking a trip and now they're getting the job done of the call them the guides, and the consumers who are on that trip. And you know, I don't know this to be true, but it does seem like they take a jobs to be done approach. They're looking at the whole experience, whether they call it that or they just think like that, and they're, you know, job after job after job and they're, they're segmenting their customers this way to you know, they now have Airbnbs that are rated as good for business trips, because they realize that there is a segment of your customers that's going on a business trip instead of a leisure trip. And that trip has different needs. And they've done a good job at you know, surfacing how are we going to satisfy those needs? And I think if you're Marriott, you got to think about that right? Like they they provide essentially one physical product they do have, I think something Unlike 15 different brands, and I think there is some segmentation in the way they think about who is staying at each of those different hotels. Marriott? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. They have, you know, they've shared in that which they bought. There's like a loft courtyard residence courtyard. Yeah, there's so many different brands. And I think they have an idea, it seems like they do anyways of what the segment is, and a slightly different job like residents in his for a longer term stay, you have some different needs around what you need in that room, etc. But it's very hard for them to be agile, on how they satisfy needs and enhance those experiences to get more of the job done. Because it's, it's physical. You know, it's very, very hard to have a sprint to improve a building.

Jay Haynes:

Yeah, no, and that buildings there, and if no one rents the room, then no one rents the room and you still have to maintain the cost, obviously, it's the right seat in the Airline plane takes off, whether someone's in that seat or not, you know, the day goes by and someone's in the room or not. So yeah, those are all such good points. And, and it's true, that I think companies like Airbnb, and this is why founder led companies really, really do often outperform because the, their founder just has this kind of customer empathy built in. And I think that's true, in why longer term founders can really help a company build a culture around this customer empathy, you know, jobs to be done is really a way for big companies and small companies to systematize, this tough this, this stuff, so that, you know, you can gain agreement with your team faster, you can pick the optimal product strategy faster, you can make sure your roadmap stays on track, you know, all those things that like big teams are hard to get working effectively. And effectively. What a founder, like Airbnbs founder does is can create that culture that's just got, you know, empathy, which is what jobs you've done really is. It's it's quantitative empathy. But it because you're trying to really quantify this stuff. Yeah. And I think that's, you know, super important that you're you do have to systematize this stuff through as you grow. And a lot of companies hit that ceiling, they just plateau, and they can't get to the next level of growth. And it's because they had like an initial good idea. And it was it probably there was a market need for it. But they didn't really continue to expand it in the way that I think Airbnb has done a you know, obviously a fantastic job, right. So what would be what would be where would some competitive threats,

Jared Ranere:

I was thinking about that, as you said, you know, how companies can calcify essentially as they grow. Because you can see it even in Airbnb use case, they applied the marketplace model to every job they tried to serve. Right, just like Marriott applied the hotel to their different segments, you know, they created different segments for different brands for different segments and tried to serve those jobs differently. But they still have this fundamental thing that they think they build. And it's interesting to look at competitors that are non traditional for both Airbnb and Marriott. So one example is this startup that I think just raised about 20 million called hago. And hey, go is essentially a virtual travel app, where you can you sign on and you know, there's, there's some you can choose from various tours in different cities around the world. And there's a person on the other end who's walking around with his phone, or her phone, and they're, they're videoing their experience, and they're describing what they see. And you're experiencing another culture through your phone. And that's just the beginning, I think of virtual experiences that are trying to make headway on these jobs.

Jay Haynes:

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's, that's exactly right. You, you can see what can happen in this market, especially when those virtual experiences become, you know, essentially photorealistic like they're, you know, 4k 3d, which is, which is here, you know, I mean, there's still a lot to do to get that to be the kind of standard virtual experience but it's coming. You know, processors are getting faster as networks are getting faster. So when you have that kind of immersive you know, you can go to Italy because it's just a Tuesday afternoon and he wants to go visit you know, Italy, that is also obviously much lower cost and probably way more frequent execution of the job. You know, Clay Christensen obviously, used to call this non assumption like there, there are a lot of people who just cannot get on a plane to travel from, you know, California to Italy or wherever, you know, because it's incredibly expensive. And also, there's obviously a lot of carbon output, you know, getting on planes driving around. So there's lots of opportunity for those people that that have never visited Italy and are never going to visit Italy, to do it virtually in a way. That would also be classically disruptive. Because if the product today is get on a plane, go stay at an Airbnb or hotel in Italy, disruption will be a product that comes along that's much lower cost and worse. So a virtual experience, obviously would be worse. But then it improves over time, and becomes the dominant way that people do it. And way more people would obviously have the financial ability and the time to go visit Italy in some really beautiful virtual tour. And even even even not Italy, but like made up land. Right? Because there's going to be these meta, meta, you know, whether, you know, we want it or not, there's going to be these virtual worlds there are they already exist, right? Yeah. In a cartoonish kind of fashion. But that that's very similar to what we talked about with Zoom. And the airlines, it's exactly analogous because zoom actually did help salespeople, you know, acquire customers. And one way was to hire an airplane in an airport and go talk to customers. The other was to have a Zoom meeting with them. And this is almost exactly analogous here that Airbnb may or may not think their competition is the metaverse.

Jared Ranere:

Yeah. And there's a huge company investing heavily, of course, and trying to get people to not travel and they literally call themselves meta in order to get these jobs done. And so I think it's a really important question for Airbnb who's very well capitalized? Do they start building virtual experiences? And if so, how do they approach it?

Jay Haynes:

Yep. Yeah, that's great. And I think this, this is a question that can be answered with jobs to be done. Because it does, even though it's a it's a very, very good example, because a Metaverse seems like an entirely new thing. So that would bear be where people said, if you've checked like industry analysts, they would say there's a new market for metal prices, right? That would be the kind of language they would use. That's not accurate than the market for metal. Versus is the market for the experiences that you want to have? What are you going to do in a metaverse? And if it's visit a foreign country and learn about a different culture, you know, whatever, there's lots of jobs in there. Those those jobs exist today. So regardless of the metaverse, the humans, human goals, the jobs they need to get done exists today, and are analyzable, even independent of whether or not the metaverse as a technology exists. So there is no market for the metaverse in the same way. There's no market for, you know, iPods or replication apps, or whatever the market is the underlying human goal you're trying to achieve. And those are analyzable. So if Airbnb, or if you were a competitor, if you were hago, and you wanted to compete with Airbnb, you would want to look at those jobs around having new experiences. And where do people struggle in those new experiences? Why don't they have more of them? You know, what, what is holding them back? What are the non consumers frustrated with that you can convert them into consumers, you know, that's the customers.

Jared Ranere:

And one exam, once it's harder that you've identified is getting to the destination, right? That that's expensive enough and difficult enough that hey, go and meta have identified that as an opportunity for them to essentially eliminate jobs steps in what would normally be seen as a travel job, if you see it as a, you know, getting enriching cultural experience. They say let's eliminate that step of getting there. So what do you do if your Airbnb do you invest in making that easier to get there? Do you partner with an airline for discounted rates to make it available to more and more people, so that you lean into your current solution of real life experiences? Do you throw in the towel and build a virtual experience? That's a really good question. Right? So then you'd have to say, well, how successfully can that virtual experience satisfy all the other needs in the job? And if it's, if it cannot do it better than you've just got to figure you can isolate the problems is essentially the point, right? So you can say, okay, the metaverse today is really good at helping you with those steps around getting to the destination that you want to experience. How can we compete with that with our car aren't experienced that's really good at all the other steps in the job? Yeah. And and how do the different segments experienced that differently? You know, right. There's, there's certainly a segment that says, I'm happy to get on a plane, no big deal for me. Is that segment big enough to achieve your growth goals? Or do you have to add these other segments who struggle so much to get there that they never even engage in your product?

Jay Haynes:

Yeah, I think that's great. And and you would, you would definitely want if you were Airbnb, or a competitor, Airbnb, to look at these jobs independent of your solution first, of course, and then really start to say, Should we be in this market in this business for these different types of experiences? And I think for Airbnb, the answer, of course, is yes. And there's a few reasons why reasons why, first, is that the technology is getting much better. I mean, it's incredible that, you know, I grew up watching, you know, 1970s and 1980s, television was the quality was so unbelievably low, I mean, it's just, it's normal. To watch it just a fork, HDTV is just, you know, it's an increase, and that that leap is, you know, accelerating. So, in these virtual worlds, it's going to be an incredible experience, a century, you know, visual experience, auditory experience, and, you know, potentially even touch, which is maybe a little creepy, but it'll happen. So getting in the, in this part of the business, this way to think about it in early is important. And you know, why? No, you know, this, but we've been saying, for years and years that the airlines should have bought web conferencing companies. Back when web conferencing was still lower quality, you know, it wasn't as good you didn't have as reliable internet, you know, but but you could still do video conferencing. And it was clear that the exact same path was going to happen that video conferencing was initially disruptive, it was worse, you know, acquiring a customer for salespeople are a whole host of immediate, immediate or whatever, but it got better and better and better. And then, of course, we had a global pandemic, where it was just incredibly obvious that like, you could use these tools for lots of jobs that you were hiring Airlines for. And now the airlines, I mean, it's the other way around. Now, Zoom should by the airlines. I mean, it's, there's so much, you know, growth and market value in zoom. And you know, video conferencing, generally airlines couldn't buy zoom. I mean, this is like, you know, there, there isn't an airline that has a market cap close to zooms I believe I have to check the markets. But I think that's generally accurate.

Jared Ranere:

It's kind of an interesting m&a to think about because No, how do you integrate zoom with an airline? Maybe the answer is you don't just own it, and don't touch it and enjoy its growth as an asset, because every customer they take away from you, because they're a competitor threat on certain jobs, you benefit from that. And that's why you have it. And so there'll be a segment that continues to want to get in your airplane, and there'll be a segment that's totally happy with with videoconferencing, there'll be segments that go back and forth between the two. And you'll benefit from all of the above. And so it's not even that you have to integrate the products and create this new thing. Because that's, that is always confusing, right? Yeah, we're an airline? How are we going to run this? This, you know, technology company? And the answer is let them continue doing it and you just own it.

Jay Haynes:

Yeah. And and I think that's right. I mean, you could, you could look at, you know, blackberry and Kodak and Kodak clearly should have been building a phone or a digital camera, you know, and Blackberry should have been building a, you know, touch interface, you know, all sorts of examples like that. But, but I would say as well, there are possible ways for integration, and even zoom could do this, you know, even even without buying an airline, obviously. But this is true for Airbnb, were certainly in the let's call zoom, and the virtual meta experience these virtual experiences to get the job done. There's a point at which that translates into the real world. So you can get people for example, to experience Italy, you know, through your medic experiences, and then eventually, they're like, I want to go there. And now right, you know, friends in my virtual, you know, Italy, that live in actual Italian cities, and I want to go there so that, that, that they can go together and resume it's the same thing. You're you could have a salesperson who's trying to close a deal and they're having meetings, you know, on Zoom, and then all the flags that the Zoom sales application could could flag and say, okay, you know, Sam, you need to get on a plane right now because this is, this is this is the type of deal where the next step is You should actually get on a plane, right? You need to run closer. Yeah, you need to rescue this or, or it will speed up the closing by 30 days or whatever, you might not need to get it. So helping you make that decision is that's that's what jobs be done does it helps you realize that your platform even if your resume is not just like host a video call, you've got to build something. Why are you in the video in the first place? I mean, maybe you're just with friends, because you're endemic. Sure. But but for for other needs, whether you're you know, whether you're teaching people or you're learning a new skill, or you're acquiring customers, whatever jobs you're using video conferencing for the video conferencing system should help you with that job, not just the video and

Jared Ranere:

credit be today, I think or have yesterday, they launched a sales application on top of their platform that helps it has a bunch of features that helps with specific needs that salespeople have when they're trying to close deals through video conference. And so they're on the path. That makes sense. And then if I love this idea that you know, Hey, you gotta get a plane go rescue, if you've ever carried a sales bag before, you know that you have to do that sometimes. And it's hard to figure out when it's when it's appropriate. So that's a great idea.

Jay Haynes:

Yeah, and that, that's, that's one of the things that even if you were an equity investor, you could look at zoom and say, Is that is that an insane idea? Like, zoom? Why is zoom building, you know, sales tools, you might you might believe me, companies go off track a lot, right? They start building things, and they put things in a new product development that, you know, make no sense at all. And they lose money on that new product development, because, you know, they're essentially spending money with no accelerated growth or revenue return or profit return. And that that happens, you know, all the time. And we talked about the Google graveyard before, right? All those guys failed. So if you're an equity investor looking at that, saying, like, that could be a crazy idea what is zoom doing, and what with jobs to be done, it helps you look at that, that effort on the part of the company say that makes a lot of sense. Because what salespeople are using the solution for is the job of acquiring customers. And if they can help that, that's going to lead to more resume usage, more users, more satisfied customers, you know, all all good stuff, because you're getting the job done. Now, that also means, you know, Salesforce and other CRM companies should be looking at this and saying, Well, wait, our sales tool has nothing for them to do with video conferencing. It's just you know, tracking our notes and you know, leads and all sorts of other you know, parts of the customer acquisition process. But but should should Salesforce, take that as a threat and then you know, build into it. Yeah, great question. So but But back to Airbnb, this does apply to Airbnb, because if you were to compete, you'd want to look more broadly at this experience, job domain, the experiences people are looking for beyond just, you know, should I stay in, in someone's extra bedroom or in a hotel?

Jared Ranere:

Yeah, and I think this point about multiple products can work together to get the jobs done at different levels of satisfaction is is really important as we enter a technology space that I personally am thinking, Boy, I really don't hope that my vacations don't get replaced with like sitting in the same couch where I watch Netflix, you know, in the metaverse, virtually socialising with friends and family and experience like, that sounds terrible to me. I would appreciate it for those moments where I just can't travel. But it this is it's a reassuring idea that as long as there are enough people like me and my segment, that's a you know, there are needs I have in this travel job that are not being satisfied by the metaverse, there's a market for Airbnb to still provide places to stay for for airlines to provide ways to get there. And I think that sometimes gets gets lost, right? Where people wouldn't there's a technology wave, you know, we start to think, Oh, well, they're going to take over everything and the things that I like, are going to go away. And unless you're a totally unique person, presumably the things you like, are liked by other people, you have needs that are in common with others, and there's a market there. And as long as companies see that market, they'll find a way to help you satisfy those needs.

Jay Haynes:

So yeah, this is an example. I think you're right. And I agree that I think the it's it's not accurate to look at this as a total replacement market, meaning everybody who's going to Italy today is all of a sudden just gonna sit in their couch and go to Italy virtually. That's not the way to think of Josie Don, to people who are going to want to go to Italy. In fact, you could think of it the other way. is that this virtual experience of going to Italy can drive demand for that group that may think they can't afford it, or they didn't want to do it because it's too complicated or, you know, too expensive, too time consuming or whatever. But after they experience virtual Italy, in a positive way, they run a go to actual Italy. So it can really be an expansion of the market by helping people get the job done. You know, better. I think that's, that's a good way to think about it is not entirely, you know, either or, and in addition, the what you really might take share from is people spending time in front of a television set. Right. Yeah, I mean, we just think it's normal that like, I mean, the hours that Americans miss and spend in front of a television set is, I mean, frankly, it's a little depressing. And we have an epidemic of loneliness. Alright, so right, sorry, maybe this can be a solution to say, okay, engage with people in the metaverse and then you actually want to go be with real people in the real world, which, which will be good. So yeah, at the end of the day, the way to think through this is to be very empathetic with customers and look at their jobs, you know, more broadly independent of the product.

Jared Ranere:

Yeah. And if you see a competitor threat, the question is, could that enhance our solution? Could that help us serve customers that we don't serve already? Should we build or buy that solution? I think that's a critical mindset. You know, if your current solution doesn't solve them today, it doesn't mean your business is dead. It means you you can add to it or change it.

Jay Haynes:

Yeah. And those can be very, very big growth opportunities. Well, great. Well, thanks for listening. Remember to subscribe and like to this podcast. If you want to learn more about jobs. He done innovation methods, visit us@thrv.com