As a follow-up to his company pitch (LocalBigwig: 8/9/10), StartUp Beat reconnected with Local Bigwig founder Ray Madronio, the company’s founder and CEO, about the private home rentals business, its budding online community, funding, and advice for entrepreneurs based on his experience.
SUB: Who do you see as your primary competition?
Madronio: There are the established hotels and motels that have been providing the bulk of both business and holiday travel accommodations for years. Naturally, all legislation that they endorse to limit types of private home rentals would limit our business.
Second, other online communities that offer short-term home rentals are another source of competition. We know we need to continue to evolve our site and highlight our positioning to be the top-of-mind online destination for short-term accommodations around the world.
SUB: The site has been self-funded to this point, but are you seeking or do you plan to seek outside funding in the near future?
Madronio: We realize that additional funding can help fuel a much faster rate of growth. Even though the company has been self-funded to this point, we are very open to outside funding so we can pursue our other great ideas sooner rather than later.
SUB: How many people are currently members of Local Bigwig?
Madronio: There are currently 11 total members of Local Bigwig. This is comprised of both local and offshore resources.
SUB: You went into this a bit in your pitch, but can you expand on what differentiates Local Bigwig from other short-term home rental websites?
Madronio: We are passionate about creating an online community with the best set of higher-end home rentals and infusing relevant, fresh content to highlight the local life within the neighborhoods where our home listings are located.
A couple of similar websites only want their members to communicate within their systems. However, we encourage transparent and meaningful communication outside of our site. If our members want to chat via Facebook or personally meet over coffee to discuss, we are all for it. We know that this helps both parties be more comfortable with the transaction.
We have a flat-free subscription-based model as opposed to one that is commission-based. This will lead to a more engaged group of members and a fresher set of home listings. For other websites, their inventory of homes is stale because they are not deactivated after a certain time period.
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