Austin Allison Q&A On The Biggest Failure & Learning

11 Feb 2024 · 2 min

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This content was created by Max Brun. This content was uploaded by Max Brun. This is a YouTube Q&A titled "Austin Allison Q&A On The Biggest Failure & Learning" (created 2024-02-11T00:48:26+00:00). The excerpt captures Austin Allison answering a question from a moderator/founder about a major product/market strategy failure. He describes an early expansion into Spain (specifically Marbella) where the company—referred to as Picasso—lacked the necessary brand awareness in feeder markets (e.g., London) to drive buyers to the destination market, and he highlights the broader lesson about the relationship between feeder and destination markets (comparing to San Francisco → Napa/Tahoe/Monterey).

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Hey, Austin, I actually had a question from a founder that sent it to me in advance, and it was, what's the biggest, would you say, strategy or product failure that you've learned the most from in the past?
I mean, we fail all the time. So hopefully everybody on this call can relate to that. I mean, success is just a byproduct of a lot of failures, you know, whereby you didn't give up at the end of it. So I don't know. I mean, one big one with Picasso is probably, We created a, well, actually I could, actually I could think of a better one. So Spain. So we went into Spain pretty early in the company's life. We went into Europe, you know, generally, but Spain was one of our markets in Europe. And in order for us to really do well in Spain, we would have to have really strong brand awareness. in the other feeder markets in Europe because where we chose in Spain, which was Marbella, which is, I think it's south of Spain, there aren't a lot of US buyers that are buying or interested in buying homes in Marbella. And most of our brand awareness is with US buyers. So what ended up happening is we do really well within our US, you know, customer base in places like London, Or like Paris, but Marbella, in order for us to do really well in a place like Marbella, you know, we need a lot of brand awareness in places like London, you know, as the feeder market as opposed to the destination market. So that, that was a big learning. And I would now the way that I would kind of summarize it, it's like, we just have a lot better understanding now of the relationship between feeder markets and destination markets. Like in San Francisco and Napa is a great example, like, or Tahoe, like most people in San Francisco are going to either Tahoe, Napa, or the Monterey and surrounding areas like those 3 destinations. So understanding the relationship between feeder and destination is really important for us.