Needham-based TripAdvisor was founded in 2000 with a mission to help people make better travel decisions. The destination site organized, made more searchable, and ranked hotels based on reviews written by travelers themselves.
Co-founder Stephen Kaufer came up with the idea after being frustrated in planning a family vacation. He and three other co-founders invested their own capital and raised $4 million from Flagship Ventures in building TripAdvisor. Today, the company is credited with being an early leader in performance based ad-targeting, comparison shopping and leveraging the power of user-generated content. They are also known in Boston for making a pretty exit of over $200 million back in 2004.
Two years after the four co-founders set out, travel was the largest e-commerce category and TripAdvisor enjoyed over 1.3 million monthly uniques in the segment. The site featured user-submitted reviews on over 75,000 hotels worldwide, and augmented that content with information, articles, and guidebooks it scraped and aggregated from across the web.
After many pivots around their business model, in 2002 TripAdvisor signed Expedia.com as a client for their ad targeting technology, InventoryLink. The technology served ads and offers based on what a visitor was researching on TripAdvisor. It delivered a 40x increase in response rate against banner ads. Expedia’s parent company acquired TripAdvisor two years later, when online travel represented 23 percent of all travel purchased.
TripAdvisor grew over 300 percent into 2003 to 3.9 million monthly uniques. The company’s growth garnered the attention of Forbes which named it a Top Pick for travel sites on the web. By early 2004 the travel resource boasted 18 million users and 3 million reviews. It was acquired by online property conglomerate InterActiveCorp (Nasdaq: IACI) for $200 million that year, around the same time AOL made a minority investment in Kayak (another featured Boston tech-mafia, who filed for an IPO just last week).
Now a division of Expedia, TripAdvisor has continued to grow and thrive here in the greater Boston area as an independent arm and brand. It is now one of the largest Web 2.0 companies in the northeast, employing nearly 500 people. TripAdvisor has remained one of the world’s largest travel communities, in part by acquiring or making investments in at least one innovative or up-and-coming company a year. The company boasts over 36 million monthly visitors across a portfolio of 15 travel brands.
Below you can check out what the early TripAdvisor team (in order of joining) is up to now. You’ll find many continue to work at the company today:
Stephen Kaufer | LinkedIn
Then: Co-founder and CEO
Now: President & CEO
Along the way: Kaufer has since made investments into companies like Contact Networks and most recently Abroad101, a MassChallenge company. Kaufer sits on the board of CarGurus.com (see below, a company his TripAdvisor co-founders went on to build), Glassdoor (job review site), DigitalAdvisor LLC (which owns and runs www.digitalcamera-hq.com and www.beathat.com), Caring for Carcinoid Foundation, and is an advisor to WeddingBook.
Langley Steinert
Then: Co-founder and Chairman
Now: Steinert went on to found and now leads Cambridge-based online automotive community CarGurus.com as CEO. The company is sporting a pretty growth curve this year, approaching a million monthly uniques.
Along the way: In April of this year Langley invested $1.25 million into Ohio-based Blue Frog Gaming, a 2007 Techstars software firm focused on building games for leading social networks and mobile platforms.
Thomas Palka
Then: Co-founder and Senior Architect of Search Technologies
Now / Along the way: Senior Architect of Search Technologies (we believe). Palka has done a great keeping his name off the web!
Nick Shanny | LinkedIn
Then: Co-founder and VP Engineering
Now: VP Software Engineering at Smarter Travel Media, a portfolio of online travel brands like BookingBuddy, Airfarewatchdog, and oneTime that represent a total audience of 22.2 million. Shanny is also CTO at CarGurus.
Along the way: After over 7 years with TripAdvisor, Shanny left with Steinert to build CarGurus.
Lesley Carlin McElhattan | LinkedIn
Then: VP Content (joined in 2000)
Now: Executive Content Strategist
Robin Ingle | LinkedIn
Then: SVP Advertising (joined in 2001)
Now: SVP Advertising & Sales
Along the way: According to an interview, Ingle also led much of TripAdvisor’s International Development.
Keith Fitzgerald | LinkedIn, Twitter
Then: Senior Software Engineer (joined in 2002)
Now: Director of Engineering
Along the way: Fitzgerald moved on to be the Engineering Lead for TripAdvisor’s Social Applications, and on to lead TripAdvisor’s Platform Group.
Sara (Gagnon) Barbato | LinkedIn
Then: Director, Product Strategy & Development (joined in 2003)
Now: VP Content & Community
Along the way: Barbato also held a role as Director, Brand/Content Distribution at TripAdvisor.
Stephen Ostermiller | LinkedIn
Then: Software Engineer (joined in 2003)
Now: Ostermiller left TripAdvisor this past summer and since joined Care.com, a platform that helps people fine services like babysitting, pet care and elder care, as a Software Engineer.
Who else did we miss from TripAdvisor’s very early days? Let us know in the comments!
