S08.E17: Toy Mail, Bitsbox, ēdn, Hotels By Day

[Tara Ariano]

Quote

Two former Google employees from Boulder, Colo., have developed a subscription service that teaches kids how to code; and a woman from New York has designed a voice mail app for children. Other pitches come from a self-proclaimed plant killer; and two New Yorkers who boast about changing a dynamic in the hotel industry. Finally, an update on the InstaFire fire-starting kit, which Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner invested in during Season 7.

[annewithaneee]

Even before they fell flat on their faces in negotiating with Sacca (blergh), I wasn't getting a great feeling about the coding guys. I mean, as a woman working in tech (often finding myself as one in a half dozen women in a team over one hundred strong, trying to scrabble for promotions in a sea of overconfident and under-skilled young men), I want to like their product. I love subscription boxes, too! But I wanted to see something in their presentation that wasn't just profit-driven education. As in, ultimately I think their product is going to be most-used by kids who are already learning this stuff (like Grace, who I could have only loved more if she'd told Sacca to shove his jokey job offer up his faux-cowboy ass), and already have a leg up in life and have a computer science degree well within their grasp without a fun learning activity delivered to them monthly. I just don't see it as something that would be easily sold, and easily accessible, to children who aren't already into STEM. I guess I would have liked to see them express a desire to be able to, at some point in the future, have a discount and/or outreach program launched to gift subscriptions to kids who can't afford it or wouldn't even know it exists otherwise. Otherwise, I kinda see it as a fun little monthly present for the children of well-off programmers. Still fun, and a good idea, but not as noble as my bleeding heart wants it to be.

I was so glad hotel guys were thrown out on their asses after basically refusing to drop the schmooze and answer simple questions about how their application works. I'm still confused on that, granted I was at best paying 25% attention. If the answer is that they're relying on someone else's middleware, not only is it not proprietary but it's also likely to be an unscaleable piece of crap. Your application sits on a third-party platform to run purchases through yet another external layer that you can't control? Sounds really stable.

[KaveDweller]

I think this is the first time they had a product on this show I'd heard of before (Bits Box). Robert is right that they have a lot of competition, but I thought Sacca was a huge dick to them. He offered a valuation, they tried to counter, so he went out? He could have been nicer about it and just said it was a firm offer and there was no reason to try and counter. Sometimes the Sharks are fine with counter offers so how are they supposed to know when it is okay and when Sharks will yell at them for it?

It also annoys me when the Sharks are all, "I can't believe you'd let X% get in the way of this deal," like it is all the entrepreneur's fault. I get that it's a negotiation technique, but you could say the same thing about the Shark's unwillingness to negotiate. How can you say the coder guys were letting .25% stop a deal, when you are the one refusing their offer? Hypocrisy pisses me off. 

I was surprised they let the girl stay in the room the whole time. Usually when people bring in kids they send them out after the initial presentation, unless it is one of those pretentious kids who actually owns the business.

[retrograde]

2 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

Sometimes the Sharks are fine with counter offers so how are they supposed to know when it is okay and when Sharks will yell at them for it?

Yeah, I feel like the Sharks (and perhaps the producers in their ears) are constantly rewriting the rules. They sometimes lambast people for not hearing out all the offers, but sometimes - like tonight - they punish them for not snapping one up straight away. 

I'm weirded out by this new obsession with forcing 6-year-olds to code in their spare time. Yeesh, just put them outside in the mud. At least wait until they're 12 or something. 

[chocolatine]

Is the premise of Bits Box just that kids are typing code from cards and running it? That's not really "teaching" them how to code, unless there are explanations of data structures, functions, I/O, persistence, etc., for each language they use. I think a kid-friendly version of Codecademy or Treehouse would be a much more effective teaching tool.

I also don't understand why everyone was falling all over themselves for the messaging toy. The entrepreneur said kids that young don't know how to use phones, which is patently false. All the toddlers in my extended family are very familiar with their parents' iPhones and iPads.

[cooksdelight]

Copying code from a card isn't learning how to create your own codes, is it? I have used a Mac since 1987 so I know nothing about codes. I think had those two guys not been blatantly ass-kissing schmoozers, they might have been able to get a deal. But I clapped when they were shown the door. I wish they'd sent Grace out when the negotiations began, she looked uncomfortable a few times.

While the idea the hotel room guys had is a good one, now there's nothing to stop anyone else from doing the same thing. That's the danger of going on Shark Tank when you don't have some type of patented product to do what you're selling. Many times I would have loved to be able to check in to a hotel early and leave a few hours later, just so I wasn't trying to rest my eyes in the Sky Club at the airport.

The plush talking toy messenging system lady is smart and all that, but going with Sacca AND Lori?? LOL, I'd have taken Mark's deal in a heartbeat. Why? Because those two will want to take over and I think they'll all wind up butting heads. 

[Primetimer]

Not every product is made better by sprinkling some high-tech pixie dust on it and calling it a day, as more than a few of the would-be entrepreneurs learn on this episode.

View the full article

[Wings]

I loved Grace comforting them at the end saying, you don't need a famous person to sell this.  Oh yes, I think they do!  The other sharks gave them plenty of warning their deal was going down the tubes.  I know that sometimes it feels things happen too fast and the inventor is caught off guard but not the case here.  Both Cuban and Robert were very clear and loud. 

[cooksdelight]

I enjoyed the hell out of watching Robert playing with the toy, to make it laugh.

[Wings]

On the plush toy, I fail to see the value or need.   My son is a pilot and keeps in touch with his kids on face time, Skype, text or calling.  His 11 year old daughter has had a cell since the age of 9 and both she and her 6 year old  brother have  iPads.  When they were very little their mother kept them in contact.  I may have missed something.  

[starri]

I was really impressed by the woman pitching ToyMail, but a lot less impressed by the actual product.  I understand that it allows kids to voice message people without needing a smartphone (good idea), but I'm less sure WHY that is such a valuable thing.  And while I don't own an Echo, I do have a few devices that have Alexa built in, and I'm at a loss about why Amazon would want to put it into a plush toy.  Literally, the only thing I use Alexa/Siri for is to set timers when I'm cooking because I have stuff on my hands, or occasionally for handsfree texting when I'm driving.  

I'm still not sure exactly what the hotel guys were selling.

Those coding guys sure were idiots.  They need to turn the company over to Grace to run.  And I'm going to say again, Bark Box, Plated, et al are just Columbia House for the 21st century.  There's even one that keeps advertising on my true crime podcasts that's some kind of game where you catch a serial killer.  Which seems really dark to me.

Let's be honest, people are going to use Edn to grow weed.

[theatremouse]

The bitsbox guys annoyed me before they started negotiating: 1) was I hearing it wrong or did they open by explaining what the word "coding" means? I get maybe they planned it for the benefit of the home viewing audience, but if I'm a shark and I hear that, it's condescending as fuck. 2) when they started to say "one of the largest internet companies in the world" I expected it be because they were trying to avoid saying it on TV, but then they immediately said "google". They think anyone doesn't know what google is? Again, condescending as fuck. So their presentation style alone would make me not want to work with them.

 

The toymail lady threw me off because I'm pretty sure her demo were faked, which I guess isn't the end of the world, maybe the point was to illustrate what it's like, not intending to literally be a real live demo, but the sentence she said into the phone was one word off of what the toy said when they pressed the button. So the toy was clearly preprepped.

[bilgistic]

Quote

I do not require an app to help me grow cilantro.

I think you mean "CHI-lantro", Philip.

[Mumbles]

Quote

I also don't understand why everyone was falling all over themselves for the messaging toy. The entrepreneur said kids that young don't know how to use phones, which is patently false. All the toddlers in my extended family are very familiar with their parents' iPhones and iPads.

I googled the woman pitching it and it seems like she's spent the last few years pitching one gimmicky shticky product after another. Leave it to Chris to actually negotiate against himself and end up giving her more based on a higher valuation than she has placed on the crap itself.

The Coder guys fit the stereotype of not picking up on social cues when they tried to take the earlier deal after Chris pulled the plug. I suspect they had had an agreement with their existing investors not to dilute their share of the company, hence the specific haggling.

[ClareWalks]

In my small city, we have a coding club for kids that's free at the library. I imagine these sorts of things are easy to find.

[Wings]

3 hours ago, starri said:

Let's be honest, people are going to use Edn to grow weed.

Brilliant!

3 hours ago, starri said:

allows kids to voice message people without needing a smartphone (good idea),

I would have thought young kids having a cell phone was not a good idea until I saw what my grand daughter has been doing on hers.  She makes very creative videos.  So nifty I gave her a tripod and a green screen for xmas. 

2 hours ago, theatremouse said:

but the sentence she said into the phone was one word off of what the toy said when they pressed the button. So the toy was clearly preprepped.

Wow, good catch!

Edited February 18, 2017 by wings707

[Jamoche]

5 hours ago, cooksdelight said:

Copying code from a card isn't learning how to create your own codes, is it? I have used a Mac since 1987 so I know nothing about codes.

No, it's not. It's learning how to type :)

I've been programming Apples since 1980. The best way I've found to pick up something new is find some nice simple example and build off of it. There's plenty of sample code on the web, often with nice tutorials about what's going on, but every so often you get one where they expect you to do the typing of the bare bones of the app, and that's just pointless. But at least with a website you can copy-paste all the fragments and get on with it.

Edited February 18, 2017 by Jamoche

[cooksdelight]

2 hours ago, starri said:

 

Let's be honest, people are going to use Edn to grow weed.

HAHA!! Yes, for beginners. Pros know better methods. Not that I know anything about that.... :)

[LADreamr]

Quote

Let's be honest, people are going to use Edn to grow weed.

For what it costs, they're going to have to sell weed to afford it.

[zxy556575]

Toymail: As someone who recently had to return an Echo Dot because I could not get it to connect to my wifi network, yeah. In addition to network security concerns and fundamental "why" questions, even a supposedly simple set-up is going to require some fiddling. I also wonder if there's an automatic cutoff, because if left to their own devices, I can easily imagine four-year olds sending multiple messages long after the parents' interest has waned.

[theatremouse]

1 hour ago, Mumbles said:

I suspect they had had an agreement with their existing investors not to dilute their share of the company, hence the specific haggling.

However, if they'd ever watched the show, they'd know they could just say that. Normally I'd be thinking, well maybe they did and it was edited out, but since the plot point here seemed to be Sacca feeling insulted, they clearly didn't say it. If it truly were the reason, they could've un-offended him by just saying they made an agreement with the other investors not to go over X, so they're not haggling him over fractions of a percent to be nickel-and-dimey, they have a hard limit but otherwise would like to negotiate. Not that they seemed to take social cues well enough to grasp that, so it's still possible that was the reason and they were just being idiots in not being transparent about why they were negotiating in the manner they were. He still might not have wanted the deal, but he'd have had the real reason behind it instead of just thinking they were being assholes. (not that the two are mutually exclusive)

[Jamoche]

The smaller Edn planter seems to be about the same price as other similar products that are made of cheap-looking plastic, and I wouldn't mind having one - there's no zen gardening in my home, just plants that die from insufficient sunlight. They don't say if you can use other sources for their grow medium, but they've got better prices on it than their competition - $12 for 12 pods vs $19 for 3 pods+seeds.

Not that I'd rush out and buy one, but it's been a while since we've had something I'd even consider.

[basiltherat]

With the daytime hotel deal, I was surprised no one brought up that the hotel might turn into a high-class no-tell motel that rents by the hour for, ehem, horizontal entertainment.  If a hotel wanted to participate in such an app, they had best be prepared to have the sort of clientele they might not desire.  It might not be the business executive that wants to take a "nap."  Plus, they would have to have maid service after every "guest."   Hey, I guess they can look up that deal from a while ago where mattresses would be irradiated to kill bed bugs and such other cooties.

[ClareWalks]

I really don't know how the "day motel" concept would work. Most hotels allow the occupant to check out at 11 AM, maybe noon. You'd have to *know* the occupant was checking out early, by 8 AM, then get housekeeping in there immediately, then know that the NEXT person to occupy the room wasn't coming until after 6 PM, with enough time to get housekeeping in there AGAIN. All to make, what, fifty bucks? Maybe a hundred in a nice city? It just seems like there is no way to book like this, because they would have to know exactly what times a lot of people who book their rooms are checking in/out.

[PepperMonkey]

Chris. Sacca. Stop it, Shark Tank. Just stop it.

Also, Robert is not interested in plants? He's never been my favourite but that dimmed his "star" a little bit more for me. I felt he could have said that in a way that didn't seem like "Go to hell, nature!" Also the braying over Sacca's comment about Mark's original idea dying of lonliness? I know they (Robert and Mark) have had an "up and down" relationship. Remember when Mark first came to Shark Tank? Robert made comments all the time about Cuban thinking he was better because he's a billionaire... But seriously, Robert, don't encourage Cowboy Shirt. It's beneath you.

All the ideas this week were shite, to some degree.  Team Grace FTW!!

[theatremouse]

I was puzzled by the day hotel dudes less because of their shenanigans in basically refusing to acknowledge that their hack is a hack, and more than their example seemed to be business person in town for a meeting and not staying overnight? The whole reason my company might send someone morning of and back the same night was to avoid the cost of the hotel, either to the company if it were a sales thing or to the client if it were not. This as a convenience to business travelers makes no sense to me, unless their desire to take a shower and a nap before whatever meeting is such that they'd be willing to pay out of pocket, which I would not. 

[sourpickles]

I've never commented on this show before and I only watch it because my daughter is obsessed, but I had to chime in this time. Regarding that stuffed toy thingamajig, I would swear there is another one out there already that does something similar. I remember seeing the (non stop) commercials for it on NICK or Cartoon Network (or both) a year or so ago. It would have been one of those As Seen On Tv things. Does this ring a bell for anyone else?

[KaveDweller]

3 hours ago, ClareWalks said:

I really don't know how the "day motel" concept would work. Most hotels allow the occupant to check out at 11 AM, maybe noon. You'd have to *know* the occupant was checking out early, by 8 AM, then get housekeeping in there immediately, then know that the NEXT person to occupy the room wasn't coming until after 6 PM, with enough time to get housekeeping in there AGAIN. All to make, what, fifty bucks? Maybe a hundred in a nice city? It just seems like there is no way to book like this, because they would have to know exactly what times a lot of people who book their rooms are checking in/out.

Yeah, it seems like it would only work in hotels that had a whole ton of extra rooms that weren't being used the prior night or the next night. In that case the hotel would probably prefer to make $50-$100 on a day room than have it sit empty the whole time.

[cooksdelight]

I'm surprised not one of the sharks brought up the clientele this might attract, as Basiltherat pointed out. HA

[Spunkygal]

Did the Day Hotel guys say (a) the specific daytime hours applicable for the room rental and (b) what that rate is? I would think that the rate would be pretty pricey to discourage the horizontal hustle clientele and to justify the extra housekeeping fees. I remember one of the guys used "arriving at 9 am for a 1 pm meeting" but don't recall specific details of the daytime check out.

[Latverian Diplomat]

20 hours ago, retrograde said:

Yeah, I feel like the Sharks (and perhaps the producers in their ears) are constantly rewriting the rules. They sometimes lambast people for not hearing out all the offers, but sometimes - like tonight - they punish them for not snapping one up straight away. 

I'm weirded out by this new obsession with forcing 6-year-olds to code in their spare time. Yeesh, just put them outside in the mud. At least wait until they're 12 or something. 

I  think a lot of these shenanigans are for added drama. It's weird to pitch to multiple VCs simultaneously, but I think most VCs would understand that you are shopping for the best offer and have talked and will talk to other folks in the future.  

I prefer the Dragon's Den Canada model, where they even have a little corner the entrepreneurs can retreat to, to consider competing offers. 

The problem with teaching coding so young, is that for most kids, abstract thinking doesn't develop until middle school or high school. It's not uncommon for students to be mystified by algebra, say, until suddenly they get it. It's not anything the teacher or textbook or tutor did, it's just brain development.

[annewithaneee]

10 hours ago, ClareWalks said:

In my small city, we have a coding club for kids that's free at the library. I imagine these sorts of things are easy to find.

This is a really good point. Our (large city) library doesn't appear to be offering anything like that at any branches, however the company I work for participates in a "teach young girls how to code" charity and has the girls come in and take classes and generally get an impression of the kind of job they may want to strive for. I want to see more of that, people founding charities and free educational programs so it's accessible to all kids and there's more emphasis on the foundations of programming than plug-and-chug on lines of code. I don't see much value in what they were doing.

[cooksdelight]

8 hours ago, Latverian Diplomat said:

It's not uncommon for students to be mystified by algebra, say, until suddenly they get it.

I never got it. I'm an artist, my brain doesn't function that way. :)

I was wondering if coding was too early for some ages.

[Latverian Diplomat]

1 hour ago, cooksdelight said:

I was wondering if coding was too early for some ages.

It depends on the kid (obviously Grace was ready for it) and it also depends on what you mean by "coding" which is what some of the concerns expressed here about BitsBox were about.

[KaveDweller]

It sounded like the kids were given code at first, and then had chances to write their own.

Otherwise, yeah, what's the point? 

[marny]

As for brain development, it depends if coding is more like a language rather than like math. Studies show that a person is more likely to be able to truly become fluent in a language if they start learning it pre-puberty. If coding is more like learning a new language (which arguably it is), then early familiarity is really important.

As for Toy Mail, I really just don't see the point. I get not wanting your kid to be in front of screens all the time, but letting your kid call a loved one on the phone to leave a voicemail message isn't harmful. I feel like it's a product a kid would get bored with almost immediately. But I guess as long as the parent buys it, who cares if the kid ever uses it?

[candall]

Every time I watch this show (infrequently) Lori makes an offer that competes against another offer, then jerks the rug out so the inventor is screwed wrt both offers.

And then all the Sharks wag their fingers and smug-splain about how the inventor needed to be taught a lesson.

[cooksdelight]

2 hours ago, marny said:

I feel like it's a product a kid would get bored with almost immediately.

They didn't go into it too much, but the toy laughs and says things, so I guess it's like a stuffed animal that you can pull it's string to make it talk -- I had a Caspar the Friendly Ghost that never left my side -- and this one you shake to accomplish the same thing. The added feature of being able to send and receive messages is pretty cool, according to my 6-yr old great-nephew.

[Amarsir]

10 hours ago, candall said:

Every time I watch this show (infrequently) Lori makes an offer that competes against another offer, then jerks the rug out so the inventor is screwed wrt both offers.

And then all the Sharks wag their fingers and smug-splain about how the inventor needed to be taught a lesson.

Lori likes to hear herself talk and has interfered with other people's offers purely for the purpose of saying she wasn't making an offer.

On 2/18/2017 at 1:48 AM, chocolatine said:

I also don't understand why everyone was falling all over themselves for the messaging toy. The entrepreneur said kids that young don't know how to use phones, which is patently false. All the toddlers in my extended family are very familiar with their parents' iPhones and iPads.

That reminds me of a cute story. A kid whose parents had shared an iPad but didn't have a TV was visiting his grandparents who did. When he wanted to change the program he went up to the screen and started swiping left and right, then said "Grandpa, it's broken!"

On 2/18/2017 at 6:51 AM, cooksdelight said:

Copying code from a card isn't learning how to create your own codes, is it? I have used a Mac since 1987 so I know nothing about codes.

To a certain extent there's always a bit of copying because the first time you use a tool you need to see exactly what it does. It seemed like they started with 3 graphics functions and then added bit by bit. As in "Here's a section that makes a loop. Add it to your code and watch. See how it happened 5 times? That's what a loop does."  So that's not unreasonable. An inquisitive kid might then make it loop 6 times, or change the numbers on the random size, or other variations to see what happens.

Here's my problem though: It's a subscription box. Either:

• Everyone gets the same boxes in the same order regardless of when they sign up. This means they're basically selling a course, but portioned out so shipping expenses are higher, inventory management is much more awkward, and pacing is forced.
• Everyone gets the same boxes each month regardless of how new they are to the program. That means when I'm getting my 10th box I'm still getting stuff targeted at kids who are seeing it for the first time.

So either way, they did a subscription box service because it's the trend for startups not because it actually suits the customers.

On 2/18/2017 at 1:00 PM, theatremouse said:

However, if they'd ever watched the show, they'd know they could just say that. Normally I'd be thinking, well maybe they did and it was edited out, but since the plot point here seemed to be Sacca feeling insulted, they clearly didn't say it. If it truly were the reason, they could've un-offended him by just saying they made an agreement with the other investors not to go over X, so they're not haggling him over fractions of a percent to be nickel-and-dimey, they have a hard limit but otherwise would like to negotiate. Not that they seemed to take social cues well enough to grasp that, so it's still possible that was the reason and they were just being idiots in not being transparent about why they were negotiating in the manner they were. He still might not have wanted the deal, but he'd have had the real reason behind it instead of just thinking they were being assholes. (not that the two are mutually exclusive)

Yeah, I was thinking "They just don't want to do a down round. I get it. Just say that." But they didn't, and then their 4th counter was at something like 5.25 million which was above his ask but below their last round.  It's weird to me because this seemed like "negotiating by begging" which we see a lot on this show by inexperienced "momtrepreneurs" or whatever. But they had prior funding and should know how to close.

On 2/18/2017 at 3:46 PM, ClareWalks said:

I really don't know how the "day motel" concept would work. Most hotels allow the occupant to check out at 11 AM, maybe noon. You'd have to *know* the occupant was checking out early, by 8 AM, then get housekeeping in there immediately, then know that the NEXT person to occupy the room wasn't coming until after 6 PM, with enough time to get housekeeping in there AGAIN. All to make, what, fifty bucks? Maybe a hundred in a nice city? It just seems like there is no way to book like this, because they would have to know exactly what times a lot of people who book their rooms are checking in/out.

Very good point. Also it seems that their method was not to hack the existing system (as Sacca claimed) but to reserve their own inventory from hotels. How'd you like to be a hotel manager knowing you're completely booked except for two "daytime-optional" rooms that you can't book because they're not even in your system? And I'm also imagining the customers who book through "hotels by day" and show up at the front desk only to have an employee check the main system and not see their reservation.

It all sounds like a lot of headache for a small market. Maybe in the future when cleaning robots have replaced maid service the remaining 5% of humanity that still has a job can use this on their business trips.

[ddawn23]

Hotels by Day's target market is hotels that cater to business travelers and its biggest selling point is that you'll be able to use a room without having to pay for the whole night.  This displays a fundamental lack of understanding of how the industry works.  There's a reason mid-range hotels offer free wifi and business traveler hotels charge $40 a day for it.  The kind of business traveler that would rent a hotel room just to freshen up before a meeting is the kind of business traveler with a corporate credit card and an expense account.  They'll pay full price for the room anyway because they'll just expense it to the company.

 

On ‎2‎/‎18‎/‎2017 at 11:06 AM, ClareWalks said:

In my small city, we have a coding club for kids that's free at the library. I imagine these sorts of things are easy to find.

Librarian here.  This is exactly where the industry is heading right now.  Maker spaces, 3D printing, coding classes, and more are popping up all over the place.  Libraries are buying more ebooks and fewer physical items, and they're using the extra space to change the library from a place where information is consumed into a place where information is created.  There's really no need for a subscription service to teach kids to code when there are more and more places they can cultivate those skills for free.  Hell, I taught myself python by watching tutorials on youtube, and even Google is in the teaching coding to kids space.

[MrSmith]

On 2/18/2017 at 0:37 AM, retrograde said:

Yeah, I feel like the Sharks (and perhaps the producers in their ears) are constantly rewriting the rules. They sometimes lambast people for not hearing out all the offers, but sometimes - like tonight - they punish them for not snapping one up straight away. 

I'm weirded out by this new obsession with forcing 6-year-olds to code in their spare time. Yeesh, just put them outside in the mud. At least wait until they're 12 or something. 

I agree, unless the kid is really interested. I work as a software developer for a university and, to my mind, the largest part of coding is being patient and being able to think logically through a problem to solve that problem and then also be able to identify points in the logic where the user could make it go off the rails. Actually writing syntax tends to be the easy part, in my opinion. And kids don't get really patient or capable of logic until they're about 10, from what I've observed of nieces, nephews, their friends, and random children at shopping malls and such.

On 2/18/2017 at 8:57 AM, wings707 said:

On the plush toy, I fail to see the value or need.   My son is a pilot and keeps in touch with his kids on face time, Skype, text or calling.  His 11 year old daughter has had a cell since the age of 9 and both she and her 6 year old  brother have  iPads.  When they were very little their mother kept them in contact.  I may have missed something.  

My wife and I couldn't understand who the target audience for this was, either. The only thing I could come up with is military parents on deployment, but then why wouldn't regular voicemail work perfectly fine without the need for expensive hardware dressed up as a plush toy?

On 2/18/2017 at 2:40 PM, basiltherat said:

With the daytime hotel deal, I was surprised no one brought up that the hotel might turn into a high-class no-tell motel that rents by the hour for, ehem, horizontal entertainment.  If a hotel wanted to participate in such an app, they had best be prepared to have the sort of clientele they might not desire.  It might not be the business executive that wants to take a "nap."  Plus, they would have to have maid service after every "guest."   Hey, I guess they can look up that deal from a while ago where mattresses would be irradiated to kill bed bugs and such other cooties.

My wife and I thought of this almost immediately. I think that's a primary reason hotels don't rent their rooms out for day hours only. Plus, I can't imagine that they'd make any money when you factor in the extra cost of housekeeping. I also think that renting rooms for day hours only would dilute the hotels' brands. Finally, why should hotels engage in this? Business travelers are already booking an overnight stay or an extra night when they're booking a hotel, which is a little more cash in the hotels' pockets. There's zero financial upside and tremendous potential liability and financial downside to what the hotel guys were pitching. Plus, it would be additional software the hotels would have to run (according to my understanding of what they're doing) and, if the hotels wanted this ability then, as soon as the hotels decide they want to do this, they'll just get the developer of their property management software to upgrade the software's capabilities - which would immediately write these two guys out of existence in that industry.

[needschocolate]

Toymail seems like a good idea, until you really start thinking about it.  But it is "only" $50, so there would be plenty of people who buy it without thinking about all the details, they just know that their kids would be able to leave voice messages without having to give them your phone. 

It works using wi-fi, so does that mean that you can only use it for sending messages when you have the wifi password or the wifi is free? 

On 2/18/2017 at 7:30 AM, theatremouse said:

The toymail lady threw me off because I'm pretty sure her demo were faked, which I guess isn't the end of the world, maybe the point was to illustrate what it's like, not intending to literally be a real live demo, but the sentence she said into the phone was one word off of what the toy said when they pressed the button. So the toy was clearly preprepped.

I thought it sounded different - like she used a contraction one time but said the words separately the other time.  

On 2/18/2017 at 6:20 PM, Spunkygal said:

Did the Day Hotel guys say (a) the specific daytime hours applicable for the room rental and (b) what that rate is? I would think that the rate would be pretty pricey to discourage the horizontal hustle clientele and to justify the extra housekeeping fees. I remember one of the guys used "arriving at 9 am for a 1 pm meeting" but don't recall specific details of the daytime check out.

I would imagine that, unless your hotel has a bunch of empty rooms and you figure any rent is better than no rent, that they price for a room for part of a day would be pretty close to the price of the room for the whole day. They will have to do just as much cleaning, the guest will use as much electricity and water.  

[Blue Plastic]

None of these ideas seemed very good to me, but what do I know?  The Toy Mail toy is probably just a novelty that is going to be used a couple of times for its actual purpose and then forgotten about.  I guess they can make some sales on that basis, but it probably won't be a long-term, classic success IMO.

I liked the little planter idea actually.  Would love to be able to have some little flowers and maybe some cooking herbs without having to have a big yard or go outside and do heavy duty gardening.  But the $500 price tag was out of my range, and the little mini size (forgot the cost on that one) looked kind of crappy.

The day-stay hotel guys didn't seem to have a fully fledged idea.  The Sharks are rude and unreasonable a lot of times, but they were right about these guys not being able to explain why hotels couldn't already implement the day-stay idea if they wanted to.

[Ottis]

On 2/17/2017 at 9:06 PM, KaveDweller said:

It also annoys me when the Sharks are all, "I can't believe you'd let X% get in the way of this deal," like it is all the entrepreneur's fault. I get that it's a negotiation technique, but you could say the same thing about the Shark's unwillingness to negotiate. How can you say the coder guys were letting .25% stop a deal, when you are the one refusing their offer? Hypocrisy pisses me off. 

It's all about drama and mood, there isn't hypocrisy so much as intentional inconsistency to create drama on a TV show. They are inconsistent on a number of things. Sometimes they allow the puny humans making the pitch to politely ask if any other shark has an offer, other times they say "I'm out!" if you don't say yes within five seconds. Sometimes they go out, and then come back in.

This whole episode overcomplicated life.

[hkit]

Frequent business traveler here. I hate killing time in a Starbucks when I'm in town early for a meeting, and sometimes just want to freshen up. I've gone and asked hotels if I can use a room for a day. Sometimes they say no (in which case, off to Starbucks), sometimes they will charge me the overnight fee. Every once in while, I get a room for free due to my loyalty status. Point being - there is no market for the Hotel by Days. I'm their target audience and I found a workaround just fine. 

[KaveDweller]

9 hours ago, needschocolate said:

Toymail seems like a good idea, until you really start thinking about it.  But it is "only" $50, so there would be plenty of people who buy it without thinking about all the details, they just know that their kids would be able to leave voice messages without having to give them your phone. 

Toymail seems like something a parent could give a kid if they were going on some long business trip and the kid wasn't used to them being away. Then they'd surprise them with the toy so the kid can be excited about leaving a bunch of messages instead of really seeing their mom/dad. Then after the trip, the toy gets set aside. I don't know how many people would spend $50 for something like that though. 

It really was just a messaging device, right? Or could you actually talk if the person was available?

7 hours ago, Ottis said:

It's all about drama and mood, there isn't hypocrisy so much as intentional inconsistency to create drama on a TV show. They are inconsistent on a number of things. Sometimes they allow the puny humans making the pitch to politely ask if any other shark has an offer, other times they say "I'm out!" if you don't say yes within five seconds. Sometimes they go out, and then come back in.

This whole episode overcomplicated life.

Yeah, I guess it is just for drama, but that's annoying too.

Am I the only one suddenly seeing Bits Box ads show up on Facebook or other random sites?

Edited February 21, 2017 by KaveDweller

[starri]

1 hour ago, KaveDweller said:

Toymail seems like something a parent could give a kid if they were going on some long business trip and the kid wasn't used to them being away. Then they'd surprise them with the toy so the kid can be excited about leaving a bunch of messages instead of really seeing their mom/dad. Then after the trip, the toy gets set aside. I don't know how many people would spend $50 for something like that though. 

At that point, why not just Skype?

1 hour ago, KaveDweller said:

Am I the only one suddenly seeing Bits Box ads show up on Facebook or other random sites?

One site I visited threw up an ad for a different hotel-room-by-hour service.

[Jersey Guy 87]

On 2/18/2017 at 3:46 PM, ClareWalks said:

I really don't know how the "day motel" concept would work. Most hotels allow the occupant to check out at 11 AM, maybe noon. You'd have to *know* the occupant was checking out early, by 8 AM, then get housekeeping in there immediately, then know that the NEXT person to occupy the room wasn't coming until after 6 PM, with enough time to get housekeeping in there AGAIN. All to make, what, fifty bucks? Maybe a hundred in a nice city? It just seems like there is no way to book like this, because they would have to know exactly what times a lot of people who book their rooms are checking in/out.

You could look at business travelers who are checking out that day - typically you'll check out early to either go to your meeting for the day or catch your flight.  But it seems like there would be some risk (my flight is at 1 PM so I stay in the hotel until 10:30, etc.).

On 2/18/2017 at 4:16 PM, theatremouse said:

I was puzzled by the day hotel dudes less because of their shenanigans in basically refusing to acknowledge that their hack is a hack, and more than their example seemed to be business person in town for a meeting and not staying overnight? The whole reason my company might send someone morning of and back the same night was to avoid the cost of the hotel, either to the company if it were a sales thing or to the client if it were not. This as a convenience to business travelers makes no sense to me, unless their desire to take a shower and a nap before whatever meeting is such that they'd be willing to pay out of pocket, which I would not. 

 

20 hours ago, hkit said:

Frequent business traveler here. I hate killing time in a Starbucks when I'm in town early for a meeting, and sometimes just want to freshen up. I've gone and asked hotels if I can use a room for a day. Sometimes they say no (in which case, off to Starbucks), sometimes they will charge me the overnight fee. Every once in while, I get a room for free due to my loyalty status. Point being - there is no market for the Hotel by Days. I'm their target audience and I found a workaround just fine. 

Another option for frequent business travelers is to use the airline lounge, that's what I did when I was a frequent business traveler.  The cost of joining the airline lounge club is usually around $500-$600 per year, a one day use might be $75.  They usually have showers available, free wifi, some sort of food (bagels, crackers and cheese, etc. - not real meals), workstations, etc.  And, if you've just flown into town you don't have to go to the hotel, deal with checking in for a couple of hours and then leave - you're already at the airport.  I found the club especially useful when I was taking a red-eye flight - land, grab a shower, head out for my meetings.  If you're in a city that you drove to you could try what HKIT suggested.  Or just time your drive a little differently...

[needschocolate]

22 hours ago, Ottis said:

It's all about drama and mood, there isn't hypocrisy so much as intentional inconsistency to create drama on a TV show. They are inconsistent on a number of things. Sometimes they allow the puny humans making the pitch to politely ask if any other shark has an offer, other times they say "I'm out!" if you don't say yes within five seconds. Sometimes they go out, and then come back in.

This whole episode overcomplicated life.

Whenever they do that "Decide right now, before you have heard the other offers, or I am out" crap I always think that the shark must feel that this is such a great idea that the other sharks are going to jump in with better offers.  

I want to her one of the entrepreneurs say, "Well, you certainly don't want to do business with someone who wouldn't consider all their options, would you?"

[psychoticstate]

On 2/17/2017 at 10:48 PM, chocolatine said:

also don't understand why everyone was falling all over themselves for the messaging toy. The entrepreneur said kids that young don't know how to use phones, which is patently false. All the toddlers in my extended family are very familiar with their parents' iPhones and iPads.

Exactly.  I swear, my 3 year old niece can do things with my phone that I can't.   Plus, all I could think of is your kid constantly sending messages to you all day long.  That would get old very quickly.

I think the woman chose wrong - - she should have gone with Mark.  Why everyone falls all over themselves to get a deal with Lori is beyond me.  

I did like the planter/garden thing.  Seems like a good idea for people in apartments or small spaces without a dedicated outdoor space and/or frequent travelers but the price is way out of my league.

Otherwise, meh.  Getting more and more underwhelmed each week.  Robert is basically ignored these days and Kevin is there solely as a punchline.