Hi everybody!
It’s only been 4 days, but they’ve been exciting ones! Oddly enough, it already feels like a lifetime ago that I was working at Stripe.
My boyfriend Andrew and I launched a meaningful project this week called Talk With Umesh. Ten people have gone on virtual tours so far, learning more about India’s history and daily life in Jaipur.
We’ve gotten some nice reviews too!
"We started talking and it went by fast. He’s good at giving a personal first hand story of what it’s like there. It's extremely interesting because he lives in a multigenerational household. It made me feel less lonely and it was comfortable talking to him. I didn't feel like I was being judged."
This is the only business I’ve ever collected money from so I’m excited we’ve received $300, which we all passed on to our friend Umesh to help him and his family.
Background
3 years ago, my boyfriend Andrew and I visited India for a friend’s wedding, and we had an incredible experience.
India is so vibrant, with bright colors everywhere and markets just buzzing with activity. While there is insane chaos of motorbikes, cars, cows, and elephants navigating the roads, there is also an amazing calm in everyone you meet.
When we told friends we were going to just show up and take Olas (Uber equivalent) around, one generous friend booked us a tour to see the sites. We are so grateful they did, because it gave us the opportunity to meet great people.
One of them being Umesh!
We got to know him over two days as he gave us a great tour of Jaipur’s sites. He regaled us with stories of historic royalty, painting a vivid picture as we visited palaces. Interlaced were stories about his daily life and his religion.
Every year since then, he’s wished us happy birthday (even on my mom’s birthday, who he didn’t even meet!) and has sent us photos from time to time of life in India.
We realized that Umesh hasn’t had work in over a year, and with COVID surging in the region, he wouldn’t have work for another year.
We had sent him something to help earlier this year, but wanted to do something more sustainable to help.
Launch
Andrew and I thought with Umesh’s ability to tell great stories and connect with anyone, and people being lonely during the pandemic, there could be a great match.
People also are eager to travel internationally but still can’t, and want to help people in India while the pandemic surges there, so we thought there could be an opportunity.
We asked Umesh to give us a virtual tour to test out the concept. It was his first one ever, and he crushed it. He sent us beautiful photos beforehand and walked us through, as if we were visiting.
We thought other people would love the break during the week to imagine being in a palace of mirrors, lit by candlelight. His friendly spirit cheered us up for the rest of the day.
Learnings
First off, people have really been enjoying learning about India!
"Just finished call. Amazing information. He knows so much history. Wonderful."
But, we were pretty surprised to realize that many people actually didn’t want virtual tours, but wanted to just chat.
Some friends after the tour would ask him questions about the caste system, or what it was like with COVID. They appreciated learning something beyond the deaths shown on the news.
"I enjoyed all the parts of the tour, but my favorite was after the tour, when we had a more freestyle approach and I could ask him questions about India I was interested in. So I asked him about the caste system, standard of living, etc."
Some particularly eager friends would commandeer the tour to do market research on what it’s like to live in a multigenerational household.
Since we learned this through customer interviews, we’ve pivoted a bit, now asking people in the Calendly whether they’d like a tour or a Q&A and are getting good results. Their integrations are amazing! In addition to booking a time, I’m able to ask questions to personalize the tour, accept payments (with Stripe 🎉) , and send email and text reminders!
What’s next
We plan to pivot the site to being less about helping our friend, and more about giving people the opportunity to learn about someone’s culture and daily life around the globe, with Umesh being just one of our many approved guides.
Now that we’ve given Umesh 1 month of pay, we are going to figure out if this idea has legs and if it’s something we enjoy working on enough to pursue.
It seems like people like spending 30 minutes meeting a tour guide to hear about their life, but we have some work to do to establish trust so that people we don’t know believe in our tour guide picks.
I’ve had friends from 10 years ago sign up for a tour, and friends sharing the website without me asking, but nobody outside of our network signing up without a referral.
I’d love to hear any feedback and ideas from you. Let me know what’s missing that would convince you to talk with Umesh, or any other guide around the globe!
And more 🌊
We joined the Central Park Zoo and have really been enjoying making spontaneous visits there— we saw a seal sneeze, check it out here!