Dinner with the Competition

We met up with two accomplished webheads at our Times Square hotel tonight. We are here in the Big Apple through Sunday for the Adventure Expo, and we thought it would make sense to get together with the owners of Bootsnall.com, one of the most successful alternative travel websites. We invited Sean and Donovan to our hotel here and talked about our businesses.

The most important comment of the night came while we were in a cab heading down to the Half King, the bar in lower Manhattan owned by writer Sebastian Junger. I was telling a story about how one website owner I had talked to wasn’t interested in anyone else’s ideas…that in fact, since he felt that he knew more than anyone, any idea from somebody else was quickly rejected.

This brought a strong reaction from Sean, who said that he feels like everyone has something to offer, and this solidified my respect for him. I thought, who really knows it all and if someone is closed to ideas, they won’t go far. Sean’s philosophy revolves around making the web experience positive for his readers and to creating win win situations for all. That’s why Bootsnall is so successful.

It was a powerful experience to share our ideas and to spend time with people who actually live and breathe the web like we do. We are sure that this partnership will prove fruitful to both of us in the months ahead.