Travel is broadening, but what if you could broaden your horizons in your own back yard with local a

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Travel is broadening, but what if you could broaden your horizons in your own back yard with local adventures that are carefully curated by a select group of experts? That's what Vipin Goyal, Minesh luxury cars for rent Mistry, and Mark Webster had in mind when they founded SideTour , a Manhattan-based startup where chefs, sailors, photographers, monks, and a variety of other skilled hosts offering small groups the opportunity to participate in off-the-beaten-track adventures, luxury cars for rent a phenomenon known as  collaborative consumption.   Goyal, 36, came up with the idea three years ago when he and his wife ditched their jobs and cashed in frequent flyer miles for two around-the-world airplane tickets. "60 percent of the nights we were traveling, we spent with friends or friends of friends," he recalls. "And our most memorable experiences luxury cars for rent were those with local hosts."  When the couple returned to New York City, Goyal, luxury cars for rent who had worked for McKinsey consulting firm, wanted to continue "that sense of exploration" on his home turf.  He tossed around the idea with Mistry, a Harvard Business School classmate, and Webster, with whom he had worked at Joost, an online video startup.  Both were intrigued luxury cars for rent with the idea.   Help from TechStars The three decided to start a company together and last summer applied and were accepted into the tech incubator/accelerator program, TechStars. "We wanted to build a marketplace for amazing experiences that aren't offered anywhere else," Goyal says. They spent the first three weeks of the TechStars program defining how they would go to market with the concept, as well as tapping into advice from mentors and fellow classmates. Then the team buckled down and built the first version of SideTour in just two and a half weeks.   Last December, just two months after its TechStars graduation, the company landed $1.2 million in venture capital from Foundry Group, RRE and a handful of angel investors. That allowed SideTour to expand both its team and its offerings to consumers.   Curating Events Each SideTour experience is a small-group event, with eight to 12 participants. The SideTour team curates the offerings, carefully vetting prospective hosts to verify their expertise. With guidance from the company, the hosts set prices for their offerings; SideTour keeps 20 percent of the revenue. Outings have included sledding down the U.S. luge track with a former Olympic medalist, learning the art of graffiti with an artist in Queens and dining with an investment banker turned monk at an East Village monastery. Currently, SideTour operates only in New York City but the founders plan to expand to other cities, using what they've learned locally to inform their expansion.   "We're trying to get the basic ingredients right," Goyal says. "We're constantly changing and tweaking." For instance, the company luxury cars for rent just recently added to its website an app messaging system that allows people who meet one another at events to connect with each other online.   Staying Ahead of the Competition SideTour luxury cars for rent isn't the only company of its kind to launch recently. Berlin-based startup Gidsy recently launched in New York City as well. "This is a business that's easy to launch," says Goyal. "The collaborative consumption space has blown up. But what we've learned luxury cars for rent is that that while it's easy to put up a site, there's a lot of complexity involved in identifying the right people and setting them up for success."  He says that SideTour's experiences have an 85 percent sell rate, which he attributes to "uniqueness and curation."  Someone luxury cars for rent on the SideTour team attends almost every new event, he says. "I've lived in New York City since 2005 and I've explored more of the city in the past year than in the previous six years," he says.   The company's challenge will be to expand to other cities with events as enticing as it offers in New York, something that Goyal says SideTour will do before the end of the year.  "We've actually started to onboard hosts in the next couple of cities," he says. Donna Fenn is a business journalist and co-founder of Y.E.C. Mentors, an initiative of the Young Entrepreneur Council. She is author of  Upstarts! How GenY Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit luxury cars for rent From Their Success  and  Alpha Dogs: How Your Small Business Can Become a Leader of the Pack .
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