Getaway
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Getaway designs tiny houses, places them on beautiful rural land and rents them out by the night to stressed out city-dwellers. Team members: Jon Staff (MBA 2016), Peter Davis, Aaron Vomberg, Sarah Ruehlow How did the idea for your company come about? I've lived in all of these weird places -- a boat, the basement of a yogurt shop, a library, and Airstream trailer. When I was living in the Airstream traveling the West I discovered the tiny house. The small living part appealed to me and as someone who grew in an a very rural area in northern Minnesota I've always liked escaping to the country, so the simple version of the story is that I combined those two things. What does your company do? How is it distinct in its product/service category? Getaway designs tiny houses, places them on beautiful rural land and rents them out by the night to stressed out city-dwellers, starting at $99/night. We really look at ourselves as a wellness company more than a hospitality company -- a way to react to and escape the constant beeping and buzzing of our technology and the fact that work now fills every hour of the day and every day of the week. Where do you hope to take it in the future? We're about to expand our pilot in Boston and launch in a new city (stay tuned). With data from that expansion, we plan to raise a Series A financing and begin expanding to several cities at a time. How has your time at HBS influenced your efforts on your company? HBS has been incredible. I've met EIRs who have advised and invested in significant ways. I've been a part of the ROCK Summer Fellows and ROCK Accelerator programs which boosted our progress. I've gone door-to-door to incredible professors who have been generous with their advice. It is not at all clear to me that this company would exist without the support I've received here.
Any advice you’d offer to other young entrepreneurs? Its hard to offer advice that isn't cliche but nonetheless: I've done startups in the past and learned a lot, but the goal before launching Getaway was to find the thing I wanted to spend ten or twenty years of my life on. That's a lot of pressure and to be honest I didn't know if this was it until I got into it (it is), but starting with that question got me looking in the right directions and that has made all the difference. |
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