I often hear from readers that they love the geeky startup stuff (like this) I write from my own experience with Oh Hey World / Horizon. So here’s another one of those.

I came across Kipo tonight via a posting inside a Facebook group I belong to. I think the landing page is very clear as to what the product is, and why I as a business owner would want such a service. Take a look:

And see the video:

Why do I mention this, and how does it relate to startup life?

I think we have our consumer positioning for Horizon very, very close:

Stay With Someone You Trust. Horizon uses Facebook groups and mutual friends to help you find people and places to stay

Everyone in our 18-30 target market who sees our home page pretty much gets the concept instantaneously.

But positioning Horizon in a business context is a different ballgame.

The main business model we’ve been testing is a $3.99 booking fee plus optional donation back to charity (supplementing or replacing the house gift). Beyond that, we’ve been working on validating an enterprise offering for membership associations (colleges, fraternities, service & religious orgs, professional networking orgs, etc) — and we have work to do positioning the product as it relates to the business opportunity of increasing engagement & community.

Here’s our current thinking of how our product is poised to address a few major pain points membership associations face:

  1. Engagement – increasing in person friendships by facilitating hospitality exchange, which is the quickest way to form strong bonds among members.
  2. Fundraising – by tying value creation by connections made within the network directly back to making a donation
  3. Member analytics to better understand where the network is and where they work/travel

Our current enterprise landing page for membership associations can be seen here:

I noted Kipo as a landing page done well and shared it with the team on Slack (which I still love). Our landing page is most certainly NOT there, in either visuals or written copy. But I’d love your feedback nonetheless. Please leave a comment with any thoughts you may have as to how you think we should improve it. Rip it apart, please. I assure you — I, and we, can handle it.

PS: If you know people who are actively involved with a membership association (particularly if its Peace Corps), work in alumni relations for a university, or just love building community, would love it if you’d put Horizon in front of them and see what they think.