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Permalink Reply by Aloke Bajpai on May 10, 2011 at 6:58pm

William Shatner was smart enough to accept all compensation for being the brand ambassador of Priceline in stock instead of cash. Turns out it was a sweeter deal for him as he made some $600m from that - so much so that he continues to be their brand ambassador at this age ! Can't imagine Shahrukh or Aamir doing anything like that for a startup  :)

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Permalink Reply by Alok 'Rodinhood' Kejriwal on May 10, 2011 at 7:09pm

WOW !!!! I didn't know that .... AWESOMENESS

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Permalink Reply by Aloke Bajpai on May 10, 2011 at 7:30pm

Well .. forgot to add..  but proves that beauty/fame is a perishable commodity that can be used in the manner you stipulated ;-)

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Permalink Reply by Sugandha Dubey on May 10, 2011 at 9:24pm

A cryptic reply to this post from me !

"...and the jigsaw finally falls in place for me " Thnx Alok, btw, Wer u a witch in ur past life ? :P

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Permalink Reply by Nitin Bharadwaj on May 10, 2011 at 10:59pm

Aloke - I know of Airlines companies in India which offer barter tickets to Hotels/Media companies. For the room nights they use in a hotel or the Ad space in Media company, they give away X no of tickets as free.

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Permalink Reply by SanjoeTom Jose on May 11, 2011 at 9:04am

Interesting thought..

What can Rodinhoods do to promote this phenomenon in segments other than media esp technology, travel and stay facilities which are areas start-ups typically need to spend on in the early stages?

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Sundeep Tibrewal on May 12, 2011 at 2:21pm

Hi Alok, You have made very interesting points. However, in case of hotels and airlines the unutilized capacity is probably not known ahead of time. Bookings can happen till the very end. So how would they commit guaranteed bookings to startups ahead of time. And anyone even though its a startup would require sometime to plan the travel - schedule meetings, etc. 

Based on the past data points of capacity utilization, can hotels and airlines predict underutilized days (time slots too in case of airlines) with decent accuracy and allocate those for startups in lieu of small equity..... 

 

In case of media, probably they always have some excess ad inventory in print in the non prime ad spots... but for prime ad spots or prime time slots (for tv/radio)...even the media has to incur some opportunity cost if the startup wants those spots/slots for sure.

 

Also, they need a team to scout for opportunities and understand some/most aspects of valuations. 

 

The mandate of the PE division needs to be clear.... is it only to max. out the capacity utilization of that industry or can they have complete independence and soar their wings and  keep investing in good startup opportunities...... giving travel credits instead of cash...... At some stage once max. capacity utilization has occurred, it will start biting into their revenue.....

 

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Permalink Reply by Munish Goyal on May 13, 2011 at 11:37pm

Very interesting.

 

I have wondered about similar arrangements many a times, but thought that there must be some strong reasons (i couldnt make out what they may be) of companies not following such.

 

similarly, why dont airlines just auction their last minute seats (if not equity thing, but plain cash for bottom scrapers :) or bargain-hunters )

 if they are doing say 70%  about 1 day before departure, then they should open up tatkal :P  but at lower prices. May be they dont want this trend to follow and loose some of the actual 70% passengers also to this kind of hunting.

 

But how many travel at short notices. whoever has to travel by air will pay up market price anyway. But certainly the 2 AC train traveler (tatkal guys) can be attracted to air by this.

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