Rewards
November 19 2019
The average consumer wants everything to be as simplified as possible. Every widespread innovation can be traced back to a need for simplicity. Wheels made for easier transportation. Farming made it easier to maintain food supplies. Aqueducts made for easier city building due to access to water. Gunpowder made it easier to kill.Anyone who is able to update a system to the level of “easiness” that humans enjoy in the era of the computer is bound to find success.
This is the basic premise for why the internet has swept through every facet of human life. It makes things easier. Communication, navigation, social interactions, dating, banking, research, shopping, education, the list goes on.
Although the internet has made life easier in uncountable ways, there are still systems that are archaic. One such system that is in need of a drastic refresh is the entire flight/hotel/rental car/credit card rewards machine. Huge unnecessary buildup to get to this point I know, but this system’s inefficiencies and purposeful aim to confuse and profit off of consumers has been infuriating me for a while.
Here’s the original idea:
Recently, I applied to Y Combinator, an incubator in the Bay Area, for the company I built around my app, Clubhouse. One of the questions on the application was, “Are there any other ideas that you want to build?” After thinking about the question for a while, I realized that there is a service that people really need.
Most people don’t know how to use their credit card points or how to choose the credit card that's right for them. Credit card companies make massive amounts of money off of consumers’ lack of knowledge about the system. Also, consumers aren’t able to make the most efficient decisions because of confusing terms and policies for rewards programs that the average person wouldn’t understand.
I want to build a website that fights that accepted system. Companies shouldn’t be able to make obscene amounts of money solely due to lack of consumer knowledge. A website that analyzes spending patterns and the specific economic situation of consumers is able to suggest the most cost-effective credit card and the best way to utilize credit card rewards is necessary, and inevitably become profitable.
The problem is that the credit card system isn’t the only system stacked against consumers. Airlines, rental car companies, hotel chains, any company with a rewards systems, they all operate on consumer illiteracy and lack of attention to squeeze out more profit.
I'm about to travel quite a bit in the next two months, and recently I have been booking flights, hotels and rental cars. All three systems have loyalty programs that favor the most loyal customers, but this system disenfranchises the majority of travelers, those who are traveling on a budget. It's not cost efficient to use the same hotel chain, airline, and car rental company every time, when you are worried about short term expenses. Loyalty programs are further complicated when you think about the interactions of different loyalty prgrams and points that all have different values. Furthermore, when you add in a credit card that has its own points system that can be transferred to travel loyalty programs at different conversion ratios.
You can understand from this small extrapolation why most travelers don't concern themselves with the world of loyalty or points in travel, and corporations love those types of customers. The ones where they don't have the time or resources to spend on learning the specifics of the system. These are the customers that are the biggest profit area for companies.
Consumer lack of knowledge is not an area where corporations should be allowed to make mass amounts of profit. A website that tells consumers how to protect themselves and, at the same time, gain loyalty points, travel better, and make more educated financial decisions, all in an easy way, will be successful.
I explained in my introduction blog post that all of my ideas are published as public domain, so if this idea seems reasonable to you, please build it. I want to help in any way I can, so shoot me an email. Conversely, I guarantee that if no one starts on the website in the next year, I will build a team to start to start working on this goal.