Yesterday I hopped on a Google+ hangout on the air because I heard that the legendary Randy Petersen would be a featured player. Thanks to +Mark Koschwitz for bringing the hangout to my attention.
Usually when I am invited to hangouts they are at an inconvenient time, are of a topic that is not of interest to me, or some other reason for meh. This hangout happened to be at a perfect time for me, so I decided to jump on and see what it was all about.
It turns out that the hangout was put on by Wall & Main, a company that is trying to do something near and dear to my heart: achieve crowd funding and offering United Airlines frequent flyer miles in trade.
The premise is that you can purchase up to 1 million United Miles for $30,000 (in addition to other perks). That’s the equivalent of buying frequent flyer miles for $.03 per mile.
At first I assumed that you would be buying miles at this price and receiving equity in the company, but I was sorely mistaken, as evidenced by my Twitter conversation with Jeff at Canadian Kilometers.
That made the idea much less appealing to me. I don’t need 1 million United Miles and I don’t want to spend $30k buying miles. I’d rather buy something tangible for that money. I also don’t find the idea appealing, because I still don’t know what Wall & Main actually do. I think the money goes to them, but I’m not sure what it would be used for. I really don’t understand anything about the business.
The Wandering Aramaen has a better idea than me of course, because he was actually a part of the interview. For a good recap read Should you buy a million United miles via Wall & Main?
I’ll be passing on the deal, but maybe others will find it useful. I wish the best to Wall & Main in their new venture. It’s definitely a unique go to market strategy I have not seen to date!
