Trip-planning site UpTake hired a couple of executives with Yahoo ties and actively is mulling acquisitions to scale the company.
The new-hires are Lesley Kao as vice president of product and Chris Hickson as vice president of revenue. Kao most recently was senior director of product management and product marketing for Yahoo’s listings businesses. And, Hickson most recently was vice president of business development at Boku, a mobile payments site, and previously served as general manager of Yahoo Travel.
UpTake also brought in Russ Fradin, a former executive vice president at comScore who later ran business development at FlyCast and Wine.com, as an independent board member.
With the personnel changes, Yen Lee, UpTake co-founder and president, will leave some of the day to day operations of the business, such as consumer acquisition and monetization, up to Hickson, while Lee says he will focus on “deepening partnerships and strategic acquisitions.”
Lee, formerly general manager of travel at Yahoo, says UpTake is on track to be profitable by the Summer and wouldn’t have brought in senior talent such as Kao and Hickson unless the company would be in the black.
In November, UpTake acquired RealTravel, and Lee said UpTake would be vetting additional acquisitions “if I can find something that makes sense.”
Hinting at his acquisition aims, Lee says UpTake has no holdings outside North America, and no mobile or social sites.
UpTake has received some $14 million in funding to date from Shasta Ventures and Trinity Ventures.
Kao, who helped globalize Yahoo Answers, will handle UpTake’s further investments in the consumer experience, Lee says, hinting that there is much work to do.
“We want to simplify your experience,” Lee says. “We want to provide answers, not information. When you are asking where to stay in New York, you are not looking for a list of 30 hotels,” Lee says.
With Kao now in her post as vice president of product, UpTake co-founder Gene McKenna, who was vice president of product, will run search in the back end, Lee says.
Meanwhile, Fradin, UpTake’s newest board member, has focused on “turbo-charging how to scale a company” and “is great at starting and selling companies,” Lee says.
Might he be positioning UpTake for a sale?
“It never hurts to get one of the best at it,” Lee says. “He is world class at that.”
Related posts:
There certainly seems to be a charged energy around UpTake world head quarters with these big hires. Looking forward to the progress ahead!
@alison o – you would say that, you work there!
That’s right, Kevin…which is why I am especially excited about the progress ahead!
Those are some incredible new hires. I’m looking forward to UpTake’s next moves!
I especially like Lee’s quote about providing Answers, rather than just the information – or options – that the site now generates for visitors. Can they provide the right answers? That would certainly keep people coming back.
Mobile app from Uptake? That would be cool…
Exciting stuff!
Great news, looking forward to seeing where all this leads.
I especially like Lee’s remark about providing answers rather than a list of information. That’s going to differentiate them from the rest of the market. Looking forward to what happens next at Uptake.
It’s always interesting to see how content sites define “answers vs. information” – and how that might vary from the answers the users are looking for.
Uptake clearly giving Apple a run for its money with all the fanboys out there
To our fanboys (who appear more to be fanladies
, thank you for your support.
Please don’t hestitate to send us specific suggestions about our products
Dennis & Kevin – thanks, and we’ll be back with progress later this spring
Best, ¥
Congrats Yen from a real “fan boy”. I guess you’re not using the Giants’ strategy of building a team of misfits, but instead more like the Phillies’ strategy of building a team of stars! Go get em, see you in the playoffs!
Congrats to Uptake on the great hires.