After some period of stealth we are back with some strategic analysis posts, the first one being a review of the recently launched – Tripit.
Who’s on Tripit board? Gregg Brockway, Former founder of Hotwire and Scott Hintz, a former junior vice president at the firm are holding the president/vice president positions and form an impressive managerial lineup.
How liquid? – The company raised $1M from AlphaTech Ventures.
What they do? – Tripit is a travel organizing system that works on a simple principle that allows any user to forward its trip itineraries to plans@tripit.com which organizes all the itineraries together in a convenient and sense making method. This information can later on be updated with trip changes and reviewed by family and colleagues.
How will they create revenues? As accustomed these days with web 2.0 companies, Tripit shows no direct signs of revenue generation, so we’ll just have to guess: 1. By selling the subscription to corporate customers. 2. By adding location based specific ads/product sales. 3. By storing this information to create data on customers preferences and actual travel links (for instance: a business class traveler to Beijing is likely to stay at the Raffles, while a first class traveler is more likely to book the Presidential Plaza, information that would be interesting for resellers in the segment).
What the future tells? Tripit might not have a great value as a stand alone business, but they could become a great complimentary tool to any travel search engine. If they realize that on time, they could create several partnerships with the leading bunch and source their traffic from these. If not. A travel search engine might end up purchasing them for for an amount in the range of $5M-$10M, or even worse (for Tripit): copy the exact model and add it to its services.
That is the weak point of this (sweet) product. It is not likely to be defensible, and not adding enough value to survive as a stand alone operator. But, Brockway and Hintz have probably thought it over too, future will tell if they managed to answer these weaknesses.
2 Responses to “Tripit review”