Model
Guests use it free. Hosts pay to be in the decision.
Yoocal does not sell the ticket. The organizer keeps the price and the checkout. Yoocal sells placement on a desk people already open, and a reach report so the host can see it worked.
Every dollar below is a plan with assumptions written next to it. The product records a host order. It does not charge a card yet. There is no revenue number to report.
Prices in the product
Three ways onto the desk.
| Offer | Price | What the host gets | Why it exists |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic listing | Free, after an editor approves | A real page. The printed price. A place in search, the day, and the feeling. | Libraries, supper clubs, and one-night events will not pay a ticket fee to be findable. The long tail is what makes Tonight true. |
| Featured | $0.99 per day | Placement for a chosen stretch of days. View counts. | A weekend is about three dollars. A host can try a festival week without a sales call. The rate stays flat. Peak season is more traffic, not a higher price. |
| Partner Sponsor | $9.99 per day | A recurring lineup, a monthly reach report, a multi-event season. | The inn, the nightly music room, and the marina who need the whole season, not one Saturday. |
Beachhead math
Six towns are a proof. Forty towns are a business.
| Plan | Assumption | Math | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Featured, 6 towns | 25 hosts per town, 40 days each, $0.99 | 25 × 6 × 40 × 0.99 | about $5,940 |
| Partner, 6 towns | 8 hosts per town, 90 days each, $9.99 | 8 × 6 × 90 × 9.99 | about $43,157 |
| Beachhead together | Both of the rows above, no overlap counted twice | 5,940 + 43,157 | about $49,100 |
| Featured, 40 towns | 30 hosts per town, 30 days, $0.99 | 40 × 30 × 30 × 0.99 | about $35,640 |
| Partner, 40 towns | 12 hosts per town, 100 days, $9.99 | 40 × 12 × 100 × 9.99 | about $479,520 |
| Forty-town mix | The two rows above | about $515,000 |
Forty towns is not “every city in the registry.” It is forty destination towns that each have a season, a split calendar, and a local who stays. Big-city desks stay held until that kind of town retains.
A later line, not the wedge: once Going is common, a referred booking can be a fee the organizer opts into. That fee waits until the placement product is something hosts renew. Building it first would make Yoocal a ticket app in a market that already has ticket apps.
Who else answers “what’s on”
They each own a piece. The town owns none of them together.
| They | What they are good at | What Yoocal is for |
|---|---|---|
| The tourism bureau calendar | Official visitor events, often in a CMS the town already updates. | We read it. We add the library, the valley over the hill, and the local free list, and we let a person plan. |
| Facebook groups and events | The local rumor and the last-minute change. | A structured day, a printed price, and a list you can send to someone who is not in the group. |
| A single event when you know the name. | The evening you have not named yet, filtered by kids, free, and time of day. | |
| Eventbrite, Dice, Fever | Ticketed events, especially music and cities, with checkout. | The mixed town calendar, including free and community, with the ticket left at the organizer. |
| Bandsintown and similar | Tour dates for artists. | The rest of the day around the show: the hike, the family hour, the late room. |
| Hotel concierge and the paper binder | Trust, for one property’s guests. | The same trust as a desk the whole town can open, including the guest who is not at that hotel. |
| Airbnb Experiences and activity marketplaces | Bookable activities with a host and a price. | The town calendar those activities sit inside. Many of the best nights are not a bookable product. |
Eighteen months
From a live desk to a desk we can copy.
| When | Work | The number that matters |
|---|---|---|
| Months 1–3 | Charge the host card. Fill Midway. Put the quiet-season headline on the lakes. Instrument Park City: open, return within 14 days, Going, itinerary created, itinerary opened by someone else. | A repeat in Park City. A paid featured order. |
| Months 4–6 | A host report with view counts a person can trust. The same habit metrics in Jackson and the two lakes. iOS good enough for a weekend trip, with login if the account is how saves persist. | A host who buys a second week. A lake town that is useful in a quiet month. |
| Months 7–12 | Write the host motion from the first paying hosts: who bought, which week, which town. Salt Lake joins only if the Wasatch habit is real. | Partner renewals across a season change, May or November. |
| Months 13–18 | The next mountain or festival towns, one at a time, from the held list. Each one gets a season of inventory before it is called live. The gather and the desk are the machine. The town voice is the local work. | Time from “start this town” to “Tonight is real,” and a host in that town who pays. |
Risks, and the response
Said in advance, so the pitch matches the product.
| Risk | What we do about it |
|---|---|
| The catalog is full and nobody comes back. | That is the actual risk. The next build is measurement, not more towns. If Park City does not retain, we fix the desk before we add Salt Lake. |
| Hosts will not pay $0.99 because the listing is already free. | Free is being present. Featured is being placed on the days people decide. If hosts will not pay for that after they have seen a view count, the price or the placement is wrong, and we learn it in one town. |
| Midway is live and empty. | It is the first content job. An empty live town teaches visitors that the desk lies. |
| Lake winter looks abandoned. | Show the quiet season on purpose. A thin true week keeps the year-rounder. A fake busy week loses them. |
| A bureau or a platform publishes a cleaner official calendar. | Our desk is the plan across sources, the local list, the corridor, and the host’s paid placement. One official calendar is an input. |
| Scraped public pages are messy or unwelcome. | Prefer official feeds and host submits. Keep the rule that a rumor stays off. Move source by source onto APIs when a key exists. |
| We go national because the registry already has 49 names. | The registry is a map of future desks, not a launch list. Held means held. |
| Card payments, view counts, and login on the phone are unfinished. | They are named as partial on the product page. The pitch does not call them revenue. |
The company is a copyable desk.
Beachhead revenue is small on purpose. The thing YC would be funding is the machine that makes the next town dense, and the discipline to wait until this one retains.