Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

TourWrist is developed by SPARK LABS.  SPARK, founded eight years ago, is a nationally–recognized leader in integrated marketing and branding. With combined team experience stretching to countless national brands (Nike, Herman Miller, Firestone, etc.), our team knows the importance of a well–organized and managed identity.

Under the SPARK umbrella, we’ve reinvented HSN, boosted Florida’s tourism industry (Visit Florida), and introduced the world to a new supermarket brand (Sweetbay).

During the first five years of this period, we also took stock of a widely unmet need: user–centric product development. Thus, three years ago, we introduced a sister agency dedicated to this.

SPARK LABS is an application development company with an appetite for the new and innovative.  From the LABS
side, we’ve accomplished many things others considered impossible. From web to mobile apps (and even including a few tangible products), our greatest value lies in our ability to optimize business, technical and creative objectives in balanced products that put the consumer first.

As CEO of SPARK LABS, Charles Armstrong balances creative vision, cutting-edge technical expertise, and strategic business insight. From national award-winning website projects to revolutionary, new product IP, his is a proven record of groundbreaking concepts and successful implementations.

In recent history, Charles has overseen the launch of Tour Wrist, a powerful, new mobile platform which allows users to view and share locations in immersive 3D.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

Tour Wrist development has been entirely financed through revenue from SPARK LABS client projects.

What problem are you trying to solve?

To better engage people in search of remote places. To provide a better user experience, and to leverage undervalued new technologies.

Describe the business, core products and services?

At its core, Tour Wrist is a location search engine. By allowing users to search for places via geography, keywords, and popularity, it’s our intent to make the world remotely accessible in tactile, engaging new ways. Presently, Tour Wrist offers a remote viewing app available for all iOS devices.

Soon, this will be supported by Tour Wrist Capture, a recording app that allows anyone with an iPhone 4 or iPod Touch 4 to capture and share their surroundings as virtual tours on the platform.

Furthermore, Tour Wrist Manager is on the way, offering a powerful toolset for content providers with large libraries of listings. This product will allow for batch tour creation, interactive hotspot annotations, property detail updates, and much more.

For a quick overview of the TourWrist App, watch this video:

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Still in its infant stage, Tour Wrist has seen incredible adoption from the panoramic photography industry, which is helping fuel end-user adoption. As our content base continues to grow, we expect our value proposition to increase equally, further supporting a “search anywhere” approach to discovery.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Our product has seen the interest of multiple Fortune 100 companies and large government organisations, which has certainly added credibility to our claims. No outside capital has been solicited.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Many entities stand to gain from better connections between people and places. Whether from CVBs, hospitality companies, property owners, travel companies, or the photographers documenting them, we’re at the forefront of what we believe to be a very fruitful new industry.

Specifically, we have the following programs in place to monetize this marketplace:

• Photography service commissions
• Capture application sales
• Tour Wrist SDK (engine) licensing
• Private labeling
• Hotel booking commissions
• Contextual advertising

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

At risk of sharing too much about our company, we’d prefer not respond in great detail. Broadly however, we’ve identified the following:

Strengths:

• Unique, valuable, timely

Weaknesses:

• Heavily reliant upon content

Opportunities:

• Further means of engaging and empowering users in search of inaccessible places

Threats:

• New market entrants

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

Many people suggested that our viewing experience was not possible on non–gyro devices. After a year of development, we proved many people to be wrong.

What is your success metric 12 months from now

150,000 tours, 150,000 users.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Tripline is an online application that makes it incredibly easy to create map-based plans and share map-based stories.  Tripline is also a place where people can discover, compare and book packaged trips created by professionals.  Tripline launched on August 6 2010.

Tripline was founded by former Yahoo! Video product director Byron Dumbrill.  Prior to Yahoo!, Byron was head of product at Jumpcut – the award-winning online video editing application that Yahoo! acquired in 2006.

Today, Tripline is a team of three people working out of a converted garage in Los Angeles, Calfornia.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

None. Tripline is self-funded.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Fundamentally, we believe there is an unmet need for an online application that makes it easy to put a list of places on a map, attach related content and present a story in an engaging, easily shareable experience. We built Tripline to fulfil that need.

Who has this need?

• Travellers planning a trip
• Travellers who want to share their travel stories with friends
• Packaged travel companies & tour operators who want to market their trips
• Professional travel planners who want to market their services
• Travel suppliers who want to better engage their customers
• Travel publishers who want to enhance their online content
• Entertainment companies with TV shows that involve moving across the map
• Reporters covering map-based stories
• Promoters of events that involve moving across the map
• Authors and bands going on tour
• Teachers and those with interest in geography and history
• Non-profits whose activities involve moving across the map

Conceptually, we think of “trips” as a new type of media object. Tripline is what you use to create and share trips.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Tripline’s initial business offerings are focused on providing packaged travel companies, tour operators and professional travel planners a way to market and sell their products and services.

Our application provides an easy way for these companies to create a catalogue of trips and an exciting way to reach a younger, online demographic.  Most importantly, Tripline provides a natural way for these businesses to extend their brand into their customers’ social networks – they become part of the story people share with their friends.

We launched with basic partner capabilities and are expanding our product to offer Pro Accounts with additional creative features, catalogue search, branding and featured placement.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

We launched the beta with Toronto-based GAP Adventures as a packaged travel partner.  They have an amazing catalogue of trips, a well-developed online presence and are simply  great to work with.

We’re developing partnerships with a number of additional packaged travel companies and tour operators, both large and small.

On the user side, we consider adventurous travellers to be the early-adopters in the leisure travel space; they tend to love maps, they certainly love to share their stories and we believe they are most likely to be the people who friends go to for travel advice.

For those reasons and more, we felt they would be the best people to attract first and we’ve targeted Tripline accordingly.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

We don’t have investors, but all of the packaged travel companies we’ve talked to have responded very well to Tripline. We think our product is a natural fit, and a great marketing platform for any travel company seeking to engage their customers online.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

• Phase 1 of our business/revenue model is affiliate commissions on sales of packaged travel, augmented with branded sponsorships and promotions.
• Phase 2 is an expansion into a-la-carte travel purchases (flights etc.) as well as premium listings for tour operators, travel suppliers and local travel-related businesses.
• In our Phase 3, we plan to become a transactional marketplace where our users find and do business with with professional travel planners directly.

In order to achieve any of this at scale, Tripline must become a travel starting point – ie, become a place where people go to find things vs. being only a place to document plans and tell stories.

However, our strategy to achieve that goal is based on first being the best place to tell stories…for the following reasons:

1. Travellers have many more stories in the past than they have upcoming plans.  For us to serve our target users, we need to provide a place for those stories.  We believe these satisfied users will likely use Tripline to create new plans.
2. Advice from friends and family is 3 times more influential on travel decisions than anything else.    One of our key features therefore is the ability to see where your friends have been and what they liked/disliked.  Without stories, that’s not possible.
3. Plans become stories. We think of planning as a creative process that often starts with a sketch and becomes a plan.  In-turn, that plan becomes a story.   We built Tripline to support this full life-cycle so people only need to enter information once.
4. On the business side, “stories” are what travel companies create to market and sell their trips.  We seek to enable a self-sustaining cycle:  “Their stories become your plans, your plans become your stories, your stories become your friends’ plans”.
5. Stories are critical to our traffic strategy and sponsorship business. Travel publishers, travel-based TV shows, travel-based consumer products companies, authors, bands, journalists, teachers, non-profits…they all want to create and share map-based stories.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Social-media experience, technical capabilities, new approach

Weaknesses:

• Resources, content, experience & connections in travel business

Opportunities:

• Brand sponsorships, partnerships with travel content companies

Threats:

• Other startups and/or big companies with similar offerings

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

We wanted something like Tripline to exist for ourselves, and we thought others might also have such a need – we’ve yet to see how big of a need it is, but initial response has been great.

During the conceptual stages, several people said they didn’t see the point, and said that if we wanted to build a travel-related service, we should just focus on cheap flights and hotel deals.

That wasn’t interesting to us. We wanted to create something new, something that allowed people to be creative – that’s where our passions are.

Startups require intense personal energy and sacrifice., so you’d better enjoy what you’re building.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

In addition to our target visitor  and booked trips metrics, we will be tracking the number of re-used waypoints vs. the number of newly created waypoints, and the number of copied trips vs. newly created trips.

When the former exceeds latter, we will have crossed a key milestone on our way to becoming a travel starting point – meaning we will have become a place where people go to plan vs. just a place to document plans and tell stories.

That transition is key to our long-term success.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

We’re Fenn Bailey, Tom Howard and Andrew Tipton.

Fenn and Tom are developers and longtime collaborators from Melbourne, Australia, who’d worked for a few years in the ISP/telco industry then as freelance web/software developers before founding Adioso in 2008.

Andrew is also a developer, who joined the team in early 2010. He’s originally from Tennessee, but moved to New Zealand several years ago, and has worked in a variety of freelance and startup roles.

We’ve all been avid travellers for many years, particularly in South-East Asia and Europe.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

Adioso started out as a self-funded side project, until we received $15,000 Y Combinator funding in January 2009, which was followed by a $70,000 round from a group of Silicon Valley angels in March 2009.

In early 2010 we raised $270,000 from Australian angels, of whom most are from travel tech backgrounds.

What problem are you trying to solve?

A few problems:

Existing flight search websites don’t work the way increasing numbers of people actually want to travel. If you’re looking to take a vacation or visit family and don’t have an individual specific destination airport and departure/return dates, you either simply cannot search for flights or the manual effort required is intolerably cumbersome.

Significant numbers of of travellers are willing to go anywhere, any time if they can find a great deal or an interesting new destination, but no flight search tool properly lets people search with flexibility on dates or destinations.

Usability and aesthetics in travel search and booking sites are almost universally very poor.

LCCs offer travellers the ability to take long-haul trips very cheaply by interconnecting flights from disparate airlines, but as they’re sold as separate tickets, it’s not possible to find these options on traditional flight search engines or GDSs.

Travel search websites and OTAs don’t cater to the needs of LCCs.  The most common objection is that they divert traffic away from the carrier’s preferred direct channel, and erode margins by making it easier for customers to compare fares on popular routes while doing nothing to help airlines find new customers and fill capacity on their long tail. Others charge commissions and booking fees that LCC margins cannot accommodate.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Adioso is a flight search engine with a natural language interface that supports broad and open-ended queries. For example:

• SF to NYC late September
• LA to New Zealand
• Atlanta to Vegas Friday
• Boston to California
• London to Spain early November
• Melbourne to Port Douglas next week
• Los Angeles to Anywhere next month under $150

So far our inventory includes a selection of LCCs in Europe, Australia, SE Asia and the USA, but it’s a priority to expand this rapidly.

A major new feature and core technology asset is a custom-built fare search & routing engine that can assemble itineraries for optimised routes consisting of segments from disparate carriers, independent of any codeshare or interlining agreements (which generally don’t exist with LCCs).

This engine is additionally optimised for answering queries over very broad, multi-dimensional date and destination criteria, eg, the best possible routes to all airports in all countries in western Europe in the month of December.

These capabilities have some major impacts on the economics of providing flight search results. Whereas flight search services like ITA’s QPX or Amadeus are usually charged on a per-query basis (with a month-wide date comparison charged at many multiples of the cost of a single day), Adioso’s engine allows us to evaluate large slices of our dataset at very low computational cost.

Additionally, our dynamic fare assembly or “virtual interlining” capability exposes regional or domestic LCCs (ie: JetBlue, easyJet amd VirginAmerica) to entirely new markets by allowing customers living outside of their network to find their fares as part of dynamically assembled multi-segment itineraries.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

We have a loyal user-base of travellers in Australia, that has grown organically over the past 2 and a half years.

We have a partnership agreement with one major airline in Australia, and are in discussions with other airlines around the world who have expressed strong interest in using the technology once it’s available.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

When we conceived and launched our first version in early 2008 we didn’t intend it to be our primary commercial venture; it was an experiment in building a consumer-focused web-app.  It was only the enthusiastic “where have you been all my life?!” response from users who discovered it that made us realise there was something in it.  We continued developing it and gauging users’ reactions for about 8 months before pitching it to YC.

In the past 12 months we’ve been actively engaging with leading LCCs in Australia and Asia, and taking advice from highly experienced individuals from various airline industry backgrounds. This has enabled us to develop the product in a way that aligns with industry trends and best satisfies LCCs stated requirements.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Initially we’ll go for the low-hanging fruit of referral commissions on accommodation and flights where they can be easily negotiated.

Longer term, our ideas for revenue are all about offering LCCs more effective ways of attracting new customers; inspiring people to take trips they hadn’t been planning, reaching customers located outside their own networks by virtual-interlining with other carriers, and making it easier to fill long-tail capacity and move distressed inventory profitably.

Operating on a very low cost-base is built into the fabric of the company, so we can become profitable quite quickly once we start tapping into revenue sources.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Exceptional engineering capabilities, combined with strong UX design capabilities.
• As outsiders to the travel industry, we’re able to look at the industry objectively and build things they way they should be, rather than being constrained by convention or preconceived limitations.
• As avid budget-conscious travellers ourselves, we have an intimate understanding of the style of travel we’re trying to facilitate.
• We’re addressing a growing market; the momentum in the airline industry is away from traditional airlines and towards low-cost. Spontaneous, adventurous travel is increasingly popular among people from more diverse age-ranges and lifestyles.
• We have investors and advisors that believe in what we’re doing and are supporting us all the way.  Our investors offer a good balance of experience from the Silicon Valley tech world and the travel industry, and we have a strong network of well-established travel industry advisors who continue to offer tremendous guidance and encouragement.

Weaknesses:

• As outsiders to travel, getting the attention of industry insiders can be more challenging, and it’s taken quite some time and effort to understand how the industry works, and where it makes sense for us to start trying to add value.

Opportunities:

• We have an opportunity to resolve the disconnect between the way modern travellers want to discover and purchase travel products, and the way airlines and other travel suppliers are able to offer them.

Threats:

• We’re entering a space occupied by powerful players with deep pockets.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

Plenty of people, including senior players in the travel industry, that don’t believe that the types of people who want to be able to search for flights without having already decided exactly where they want to go and when, constitute a substantial or important segment.

We ignored them because we already had tens of thousands of users each month doing just that and loving Adioso for making it possible.  And most importantly, they were telling us they were travelling more often because Adioso existed.

Others point out that Kayak or SkyScanner or some other metasearch site or OTA already does what we’re trying to do, and are already too dominant for us to have a hope of competing.

Quite simply, they don’t do what we do from either a technical or a market perspective.

We’re servicing a different market and a different style of travel, one that to date has not been catered to by existing players.

We know we can succeed because we have a far deeper understanding of this style of travel than the incumbents have demonstrated, as well as the engineering capabilities and backing to execute well, and the persistence to see it through.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

Brand awareness and sentiment among passionate travellers. Desire among talented, travel-obsessed engineers and designers to want to join the team.

Naturally, web traffic, booking volumes and revenue metrics are very important but in the early stages we consider the intangibles equally important in setting ourselves up for the long term.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

JumpFlight is an international online marketplace for second-hand flights. Persons unable to travel due to medical, professional, or personal reasons, can offer their flight tickets for sale without a commission on our platform. Travellers looking for cheap flight offers can scroll through the database and contact the sellers about flight exchange.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

This project was launched without financial support.

What problem are you trying to solve?

We are trying to gain awareness that many flight tickets are transferable and can be sold to someone else. Every day, thousands of passengers have to cancel their flights, and the airlines fly with empty seats. It’s a waste of money, there is no reason why other travellers shouldn’t use these flight tickets.

Furthermore, we want the visitors of our site to know that a holiday cancellation does not have to be a complete financial lost. If you can’t find a buyer for your flights, you can still reclaim taxes and service charges from the airline.

Describe the business, core products and services?

We offer travellers a simple and user-friendly platform for posting flight offers. JumpFlight is a free service, you just have to be a registered user to be able to add flights to our database.

For persons looking for flight offers, we’ve implemented a search field right on the welcome page. In addition, the sections “All flights” and “Latest entries” give you a good overview of the current flights posted on our site. If you want to be informed about new flights on JumpFlight, just follow us on Twitter.

You can contact flight offerers by using an internal JumpFlight mailing system. If you would like to buy a flight ticket but you are unsure about transferring money to a stranger, you can choose to use the commercial JumpFlight mediation service. The financial transaction will then be processed by us.

As we want to reach travellers worldwide, the site is available in English, German, French, and Spanish.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Firstly, travellers around the world wanting to sell their transferable flight tickets. Secondly, spontaneous globetrotters and bargain hunters looking for cheap flight offers.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Not really. But anyone who has faced the problem of having to cancel flights knows how difficult it is to get a compensation for the unwanted tickets. After a thorough market research, we were convinced that travellers need an online marketplace like JumpFlight. The fact that we are getting new flight offers on a daily basis is a pleasant validation of our idea.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

We want to provide our users a free service without obligations. Thus, we concentrate on financing our site through advertisements.

For our commercial mediation service, we charge 10% of the ticket price.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• JumpFlight is an international and dynamic platform, covering a market niche.

Weaknesses:

• Unfortunately, not all flight tickets are transferable.

Opportunities:

• Every day, thousands of passengers have to cancel their flights. So there are plenty of flights out there which can be re-sold.

Threats:

• Big market players might start to offer second-hand flights as well.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

The feedback we’ve received so far has been solely positive. Many of our users run in to our service by coincidence and are surprised to find a new to way save money on flights.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

We want JumpFlight to become the online marketplace for second-hand flight tickets. Our site should not only be the number one address for travellers wanting to sell their flights, but also a site always worth a visit for anyone looking for cheap air fares.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

TruPrice has four founding members with very distinct areas of responsibility.

Our backgrounds reflect significant aviation and travel industry expertise through a combination of long-time airline employment, elite frequent flyer status, or extensive airline technology experience. In addition, we also have several external advisors with substantial industry background.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

The initial funding for TruPrice came mostly from its founders and was used for development and bootstrapping the launch.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Our goal is to fill a consumer, corporate, and B2B demand by aggregating and creating displays of accurate, ancillary travel-related fees in a dynamic environment.

Describe the business, core products and services?

TruPrice is a consumer and business solution that combines technology algorithms and mined fee data as scalable products.

Fees and technology can be customized to meet a particular business’s demographics based on demand and/or can be used on a much wider basis by the travelling public.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

B2B solutions include corporate travel departments using TruPrice data to track business trip expenses and itemization and enable travel budget forecasting and prediction.

Travel agents can integrate TruPrice fee data into their ability to quote accurate, comprehensive trip pricing with all fees included with base fares and taxes allowing them to offer their customers the most efficient travel experience with all-inclusive pricing.

And, the flying public can conduct transparent comparisons of all-in pricing on their travel choices prior to purchase.

Also contemplated are partnerships with vendors using TruPrice data to enable predictive consumption patterns thus aiding in controlling inventory through just-in-time supply chain decisions and meeting customer needs on a more personal level. We see unlimited expansion opportunities.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

In many cases, discussions with potential investors were in fact discussions with customers as TruPrice routinely was hailed by everyone we spoke with as a B2B and B2C solution with limitless application and growth potential.

Everyone, to a person, from whom we solicited advice and financial guidance said of our idea: “I could definitely see the demand for TruPrice and I’d use it myself.”

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

The business model is comprised of bundled (no pun intended) technology and data solutions for seamless integration into existing travel forecasting and budgeting technologies.

The same applies for the travel agent population. This can be accomplished through a partnership with one or more Global Distribution System (GDS) providers or through direct sale to interested parties.

On the B2C side, TruPrice.net, with GDS fare and schedule availability, will offer opportunities for click-through revenue, and to a lesser extent advertising revenue, as a one-stop travel decision portal.

In any scenario, we are both a technology solution provider and fee data provider.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Agility and innovation: Unlike the cumbersome corporate environment of many of the monoliths that serve the travel sector, TruPrice is extremely nimble and can provide customized solutions and get them quickly to market. This provides tremendous opportunity to meet specific sector needs.  It also allows TruPrice to expand its offerings – for example, ancillary fees in multiple consumer-related areas, to meet the growing market paradigm of unbundling.

Weaknesses:

• Airlines and other travel providers could begin re-bundling or make fees so conditional that the proper identification of them under most scenarios would become extremely difficult.  TruPrice accesses information from publicly available sources such as corporate Websites, contracts of carriage, in-flight magazines, and press releases. If major travel providers began consciously hiding their fees or making fee rules so complex as to be undecipherable, the data mining process would be compromised.

Opportunities:

• There is a substantial void in the areas of consumer, business, and travel technology.  TruPrice’s solutions enable  access to accurate, ancillary fee data customizable to existing technology platforms. From travel agents to corporate travel planners to meta-search engines and even OTAs, without accurate fee data, the consumers of travel information are making full purchases with partial information. Our technology solutions and fee data fill that void.
• Plenty of markets and industries which have ancillary fees: airlines, rental cars, hotels, ticket resellers, credit cards, etc.
• Growth opportunities into other ventures

Threats:

• Potential competition: OTA and metasearch engines.
• Regulatory framework changes: current legislation in the United States is framed to force airlines to be more transparent about their fees. While the language now pertains primarily to baggage and to the airlines’ specific Websites, full disclosure of all ancillary fees to the GDSs may be the next area targeted by legislators. We consider this highly remote, but still possible.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

No one [with background in this industry] said that the venture is not going to be successful. Some of them did mention potential issues (the kinds that would be filed under SWOT Weaknesses/Threats), but no one pulled a ‘hard stop’ on the venture concept itself.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

Our goal is market penetration and continued supremacy as the most comprehensive provider of ancillary fee information for multiple industries.

We are the globe’s first provider of comprehensive, dynamic airline fee information.  We will work hard to maintain that lead.

We see fertile ground in several sectors where fee aggregation and parallel technology solutions can be monetized both to the private and public sector.

We are positioning TruPrice to be a verb as well as a noun.  One year from now, everyone should be TruPricing their airfare, their rental cars, their…

As the strategy develops, that ellipsis will replaced by even more commas.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

In fact, I had been so busy the only way I knew about Hipmunk was when two different people both told me I should try it out. Since then I’ve seen a huge number of mentions, so whoever is running their PR probably deserves a medal.

Plenty of others have written on the benefits of the website itself, so I’d prefer to instead follow the PR angle a little – there is no doubt the world of public relations is changing, and I’m not the only non-PR person trying to claim some insight into a field in which I have never worked.

When I look at some travel tech startups, I think of companies like TripIt and Hipmunk that really seem to have tapped into the non-travel industry Silicon Valley-types as a launch pad for building hype both within and outside of the travel sector. Nadav Gur of Worldmate made a similar point in reference to Tripit back in January 2010.

Anyway, the first press mentions I can find for Hipmunk were on August 17 in Venture Beat, TechCrunch and Lifehacker. A day later Hipmunk was given a TLabs Showcase on Tnooz, and then other travel sites picked up the story.

A few days later Read Write Web gave Hipmunk a good review as well – being covered so extensively by the non-travel press is rare for a travel startup, but it really helped Hipmunk get the message out to thought leaders in non-travel technology and the more general field of website innovation pundits; indeed, it is these people who then spread the message virally to other influencers and their followers.

After the influencers and their followers, you then had various people coming and telling me I have to try out this new site.

In the case of Hipmunk, by this stage the hype genie was well and truly out of the bottle and it seemed like I must have been living under a rock for a few days, having not already heard of it.

I can’t help but think that Hipmunk is really a very similar type of user experience to Wotflight, and a somewhat similar business model to Wotflight as well; except that Wotflight was first, and in many ways is actually better.

Too bad Wotflight is closer to Fortitude Valley than Silicon Valley, so the PR hype is never going to get anywhere near what Hipmunk founder Steve Huffman can generate.

I’m sure Wotflight would love to be selling $70,000 worth of tickets a day, as Hipmunk reportedly did only eight days after launch.

At the other extreme to Hipmunk on the hype-o-meter, you have a new travel inspiration start up called Wanderfly trying to generate some pre launch buzz.

PC Mag gave it a positive writeup, Tnooz also got in with a TLabs Showcase, and I too had been given special access to the site prior to launch.

I first asked a non-travel industry type to review it, but got back the response after a few searches, that it wouldn’t stop them using TripAdvisor as a preference.

At this point I decided to take a look for myself. They are really pushing their integration with Foursquare, Facebook, Yelp and the like, but spending a bit of time on the site really got me thinking about how difficult it is to get travel inspiration right.

Social integration is one of the keys, but given that the future of travel search and travel inspiration are morphing into the one stream, I can’t help thinking that to really generate some buzz in this space (and then the subsequent traction with repeat users) some serious filtering from a large cache done within the user interface layer combined with a totally fresh approach to user experience is required.

And, of course, be hooked into the Silicon Valley personal networks. A big ask I know, and hence why the opportunity is still wide open on this.

Qantas launched an inspiration tool called Trip Finder over six months ago, but I haven’t seen too much mention of it in the press other than a few early stories.

The user interface contains some nice filters in an effort to help guide and then sell to undecided leisure travelers but once again, unlike Hipmunk, the PR machine will have a hard time getting out of first gear being so far from Silicon Valley.

Maybe the next best alternative is to substitute Silicon Valley for a day at the Hunter Valley, an excellent wine region less than two hours from Sydney!

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Onefinestay.com is London’s first “unhotel”. Guests can live like a local in a London home for a few days while the owner is out of town, while owners earn a hassle-free income. onefinestay offers a new category of accommodation that is spacious, characterful and better value than a hotel.

The company was founded by three serial entrepreneurs with property management, logistics, investment and technology experience.

• Greg Marsh (CEO) was previously on the investment team with venture capital firm Index Ventures. Prior to that he had management roles, most recently as product manager, at GF-X. He has an MA from Cambridge, and an MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School, where he was a Fulbright Scholar and graduated top of his class. He also works with Amnesty International where he’s an elected member of the charity’s Finance and Audit Committee.
• Demetrios Zoppos (COO) has previously held leadership roles at several businesses, including a property management company. He was the operations director and managing director of GF-X, the leading trading exchange for airfreight capacity, which raised £50 million and was acquired by Descartes. He was a former consultant at McKinsey & Co. He has an MA first 1st class honours in Economics from Cambridge and an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School where he was a Fulbright Scholar.
• Tim Davey (head of technology) was co-founder and CTO of SnapTalent, a web recruitment ad marketplace based in San Francisco, which raised funds from Y Combinator and other leading investors. He has seven years of graphic design, web application and open source software development experience. Tim has a BA in theoretical physics from Imperial College.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

The company raised some money from friends & family prior to launch.

What problem are you trying to solve?

We are creating more accommodation in an overcrowded city, but using the resources we already have: people’s homes.

Instead of building more hotels on space we don’t have, we are meeting the demand for city accommodation while offering a more characterful experience for those who are bored of staying in hotels.

For people who are often away from their homes, we deliver extra income on their greatest asset. Because we handle everything from marketing to insurance, cleaning to maintenance, they enjoy the benefits of that income without the inconvenience of short letting or trying to find their own house guests while they’re out of town.

A million UK households have bought second homes over the last decade. This means tens of thousands of central properties stand empty for weeks on end. For owners of those homes, onefinestay offers an ingenious and safe ‘turn-key’ solution, providing cash without hassle.

Describe the business, core products and services?

For guests, our services provide an alternative to a traditional hotel. Nobody wants to be a tourist, so our homes come with recommendations from the people who live in them.

We’re on call 24/7 for anything a guest needs, and provide all guests with our 5* hotel linen, fluffy white towels and toiletries from The White Company. Room service and concierge services are set to roll out over the coming months.

We want guests to live like a local while they’re in London. We lend them an iPhone which we to make local calls and get info about the area and the home.

We put small barcode labels on things like paintings or set-top boxes. You press the scan button in our app, point the phone at the barcode, and a short video plays automatically of the host explaining the history of the painting, for instance, or how to use the TV.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Our guests are sophisticated travellers who can afford a boutique hotel, but seek a more unique experience. We appeal particularly to regular business travellers to London, professional couples seeking a unique way to experience the city, or for families with children,

Our hosts are occupants of distinctive homes who spend time away from town, but lack the time to handle the complexities of managing their property while they’re away.

What they most value is having the home returned to them in just the state it was left – or maybe even a little bit cleaner!

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Definitely! One of the great things about our business is that unlike a hotel, we don’t have to build the whole thing all at once and cross our fingers that people will like it.

Rather, right from the start we have been actively evolving our service based on feedback from guests and hosts.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

We’re a bit like a hotel in that guests pay us a deposit to guarantee their booking, and we then take the balance of payment by credit cards when they arrive.

With hosts, we agree a fair rate, which is usually similar to the long let rental value of their home, and take care of all of the hassle.

We’ll reach profitability when we have enough hosts and enough guests!

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• We hearing from guests and hosts that they regard our service as something new which differs from what others are offering. Guests tell us they greatly value the opportunity to live like a local, in the comfort of a home, and with the services of a hotel. Hosts tell us they value the convenience of the service.

Weaknesses:

• We’re a start-up with limited resources and far too much to do! Having too much demand is a high class problem—but it’s still a problem. So hiring great people to scale up our service, finding great new homes in London, and ensuring guests have a fabulous stay is a juggling act!

Opportunities:

• We want to see an unhotel in every major world city. We think it can be a whole new category of accommodation.

Threats:

• We keep our eye on several other companies who we think might start to do what we’re doing. But our business is a bit like an iceberg and we think that many potential competitors will be put off when they realise what needs to happen below the surface to make it all work!

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

From the very start, people have loved the concept, but some have been scared of the logistics complexities. When Greg first thought up the idea, one of his close friends asked him, “are you really sure you want to run a hotel?”

What gave him the confidence to take the plunge was the commitment of his two co-founders, Demetrios and Tim, who bring engineering prowess, technical ability, property management experience, and logistics expertise.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

12 months from now we want enough homes and enough guests to be comfortable profitable in London. We want to have an even broader range of guest services launched and ready. And perhaps even another little unhotel on the way…

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

We’re Steve Huffman and Adam Goldstein. Steve previously co-founded Reddit, one of the most popular social news sites on the Internet. Adam just graduated from MIT, and is the author of AppleScript: The Missing Manual.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

We have angel investments from Y Combinator and SV Angel.

What problem are you trying to solve?

It can take hours to find the right flight buried deep inside one of the results pages of a metasearch site or OTA. We’re trying to help people get a feel for the reasonable options in a matter of minutes.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Our business is pretty simple: two of us working in our living room on code all day.

In our current version, our core product is our interface. We use data from Orbitz to power our search and provide booking links

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

We’re targeting sophisticated travelers and web surfers—people who are eager to try out a different site if it can help them save time

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Not formally, but we showed some early prototypes to some friends and they liked it a lot.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

At the moment, we’re going the commissions path—in the future, we’re going to be exploring all options.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Features you can’t find anywhere else, like instant sorting, automatically hiding terrible flights, and intuitive filtering.

Weaknesses:

• Unknown brand, missing airlines like Southwest.

Opportunities:

• Acquiring a large sliver of the sophisticated traveler market.

Threats:

• Lack of brand loyalty, large and well-funded competition.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

We didn’t get any complete rejections, but plenty of people told us, “it’ll be a lot harder than you think.”  They were right.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

This: Have we made the experience of flight search less painful for tons of people?

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Tripping is a hospitality network where travelers meet locals for travel tips, shared cups of coffee and even home stays. Our members believe that cultural exchange makes the world a better place and they use Tripping to connect with each other around the world.

Tripping was founded by Jen O’Neal and Nate Weisiger, who were among the first employees at Stubhub (an online marketplace acquired by eBay in 2007 for $307M). We launched the site launched in January and already have thousands of members from over 90 countries.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

Our founders had equity in StubHub and so – thanks to that eBay acquisition – they’ve been able to bootstrap Tripping from Day 1.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Hospitality-based organizations have existed for over 50 years, though few have been successful at migrating online and providing safe, technologically advanced platforms for travelers.

The largest hospitality site, CouchSurfing, has 2 million users and has shown that there is high international demand for this type of network, but its users seem to be increasingly frustrated with its outdated interface and lack of safety mechanisms.

Tripping is a better, safer and more user-friendly network for travelers. We’re building advanced travel tools, innovative mobile apps, direct links to travel resources and higher security measures for both travelers and hosts.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Built on a social networking platform, Tripping is an online hospitality exchange for travelers who want to enhance their trips by meeting local people.

For example:

Imagine flying halfway around the world to Paris where you visit the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and Notre Dame before hopping back on a plane. While you probably enjoyed seeing the Mona Lisa in all its miniature glory, you completely missed seeing the real Paris.

Now imagine arriving in Paris and being welcomed by a local who shows you around her neighborhood, takes you to her favorite wine bar along the Seine and invites you to share a meal together in her home.

By the time you fly out of Charles de Gaulle Airport, you’ll have a much deeper understanding and appreciation of the local culture and people.

Tripping is about connecting people and encouraging understanding beyond borders. It’s about making travel affordable and accessible to everyone, everywhere. And it’s about making the world a better place through cultural exchange.

Travelers can use Tripping to:

• Host travelers and/ or meet locals for coffee, meals and even homestays
• Expand professional and personal networks based on similar interests
• Keep track of travel plans, using our automated calendars
• Send messages and free SMS text messages
• Get tips from other members in our forums
• Travel safely with access to references, anonymous ratings, TripSafe (an emergency hotline available 24/7).

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

The majority of our Beta members are hardcore travelers who are already familiar with hospitality exchange. They live in over 90 countries and travel several times a year on average.

With such a loyal and active global user base, our members are particularly eager to provide feedback and so we’re able to constantly tweak and improve the site.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Yes – in addition to the fact that there are millions of travelers who engage in hospitality exchange every day, we did a ton of market research before launching.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

While Tripping will remain free for members, we have several distinct revenue channels. They’re in development now so we can’t go into much detail, but they’ll involve being a travel affiliate and offering text-based travel alerts, mobile apps and premium memberships.

As a social entrepreneurship company, our revenue will go towards supporting the community, funding safety initiatives and continuously improving our site technology.

We’re also setting up a foundation: supported by a percentage of revenue, we’re going to create study abroad scholarships, fund travel-based volunteer opportunities and find other ways to give back to travelers and the communities they visit.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strength:

• Beyond Tripping’s advanced travel tools and safety mechanisms, our management team has extensive experience building successful startups in the States and internationally. Given that we have a solid understanding of business, technology and travel, we’re poised to disrupt the hospitality industry in a very positive way.

Weakness:

• Our biggest challenge is differentiating ourselves from other hospitality exchange sites.

Opportunities:

• Just as Facebook overtook MySpace by offering a better product, we have a very real opportunity to become the leading hospitality network. That said, our ultimate opportunity is to legitimize hospitality exchange as a standard way to travel, thereby encouraging new levels of cross-cultural awareness that ultimately serve to make the world a better place.

Threats:

• Our biggest threat is that some travelers are afraid to meet strangers offline. By providing more safety tools than any other hospitality site, we are actively working to mitigate this fear and create a safe community for our members.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

The response to Tripping has been overwhelming positive, from both travelers and large organizations combined.

That said, we occasionally encounter resistance from people who work in the travel space, as they misunderstand our mission and believe that we want to compete with online travel agents.

We’re not looking to become the next meta search engine or online booking tool – the online travel world already has hundreds of websites that offer unique tools and features.

Our clear goal is to become a strong global community of travelers seeking to enhance their trips through shared personal experiences and cultural exchange.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

Membership growth! The more members we have, the more we can learn from them and build the tools and features they want most. Our members will always be our top priority and we read and respond to every email and phone call we receive.

TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

DayZipping is a site that helps user find and share day trips. Our core team consists of the following four individuals:

• Webb Brown, CEO, background in software development and investment banking. Most recently worked for a SunTrust Robinson Humphrey investment banking coverage group.
• Paul Godfrey, CTO, over 12 years of web development experience. Previously a senior web designer for a leading foodservice provider.
• Emily Brown , CMO, approximately ten years in the advertising industry. Previously represented Martha Stewart and National Geographic.
• Dan Cho, social media consultant, five years of experience in the digital advertising industry

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

Our business was initially seeded by our founding partners. However, we quickly acquired capital commitments from a group of angel investors to support our growth.

What problem are you trying to solve?

We are trying to help people that have a short period of time in a city that they are unfamiliar with.

Currently, people are likely to call or email friends that know the area.

Our experience has been that this leads to forgotten details, inaccurate directions, and valuable information that is quickly lost. DayZipping attempts to solve all three of these problems.

Describe the business, core products and services?

By using Google Maps technology, our site allows users to geographically search for daytrips.

The social aspect of our site lets users see which activities in the area their friends recommend.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

At launch, we had approximately 400 test users. These users are located across the United States with approximately 75% between the ages of 25-34.

We were in discussions with the North Carolina Department of Tourism along with numerous regional companies to provide services to our users.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Yes, we had 30 users in our initial focus group. These users ranged in aged from 24 to 60 years old and were spread across the eastern United States.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Our revenue modal is to provide local discounts and promotions.

Additionally, our discussions so far have shown us that departments of tourism and commerce are interested in sponsoring the site.

Our business model is to remain agile by building our services around an active community of users that provide the majority of our content.

We have been able to appeal to these users by providing lesser known travel ideas and the prospect of future discounts.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Agile, versatile skillset, experienced core team.

Weaknesses:

• Limited resources.

Opportunities:

• Many adventure travellers looking for a universal option for planning short trips.

Threats:

• Other geotagging sites focusing more and more on trips.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

Several initial users believed that other travel sites could provide a lot of the information that we were hoping to communicate.

Even if this was the case, we believe that by focusing specifically on day trips without providing excessive travel services brings value to our user.

Also, we feel that our Ajax development makes a much more fluid user experience compared to other sites in the industry.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

Our success metric is unique monthly visits. By focusing on creating a valuable and entertaining user experience, we hope our user traffic will continue to see rapid growth.

TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.