Working Webware: TripIt Video
Working Webware: TripIt Video Transcript
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>> Welcome to Working Webware, I'm Dan Farber. I'm joined by my colleague Rafe Needleman and our special guest today, Gregg Brockway from TripIt. Gregg thanks for joining us.
>> Thanks for having me.
>> Travel. TripIt obviously is in a very crowded marketplace, so how do you stand out?
>> TripIt is the only service that doesn't care where you book. Most of the services out there are focused on selling you air, car, hotel and we thought that what was really missing in the marketplace was one place that could help you no matter where you chose to purchase your travel. So we bring all your information together regardless of where you book and then we add content and services around them.
>> So it just -- it pulls together all your information for you. That's what it does.
>> All you have to do is take your travel purchase confirmation email and you forward it to us at plans@TripIt.com and then we automatically build a master itinerary online. We add information to that itinerary like maps and directions, weathers and destination information and once you have it online it's super easy to share with the people who need to know, whether they are your fellow travelers or the people in your office or your family.
>> I tried it this morning and I emailed my itinerary from our corporate travel and I got a message back saying, "Sorry you're going to have to input it manually."
>> So, we support virtually all the online travel points of sale, Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz. We support most of the traditional travel agency, so American Express, Carlson Wagonlit, BCD, all the big guys. We don't yet support all of the smaller travel agencies, but when we see a critical mass of users who are using a particular service it's very easy for us to add.
>> What gives you any unique advantage of it? It looks like you're doing some rich text semantic analysis of those emails and is that something you patented? Is that something that you can use defensively?
>> There is some intellectual property protection around the core, what we call the Itinerator, which is the technology that essentially reads your email and turns it into an online travel itinerary. That's understanding emails is actually a harder technical problem than it sounds, between all the different formats, all the different email applications, they all treat emails a little bit differently, but I think what really sets us apart is again, as approach to being an open platform.
>> Look, if you're open, would you open up API, so for example others could just plug right in to your ability to parse those emails or other kinds of documents?
>> We will be opening a platform. We're not there yet. We're a small young company, but that's very consistent with this idea of -- we want to be open both in terms of anyone can put information into the TripIt system and as a traveler, we want to make it very easy for you to take your information and put it into whatever applications are important to you.
>> Now there's a social link you're working on this as well, correct?
>> There is, there is.
>> Tell us about that and how that plays in your strategies?
>> So we think of TripIt as a personal traveler system. There's two pieces of that. One is the travel organizer, that's the ability to bring all of your information together in one place and then give you tools to manage that information. You add it to your calendar. It's available via your mobile device. That's piece one. Piece two is this notion that travel is very social. People like to share their travel information with fellow travelers, with friends, with family, with coworkers and that's we think is really valuable too. And what's interesting about what we're doing at TripIt is we're trying to position it at the intersection of those two where we make it easy for you to bring your information in and we make it easy for you -- if you're so inclined, there are lots of privacy protections in place to share that information with the applications and the people that are important to you.
>> Does this mean that you're also integrating with the existing social networks, such as Facebook or MySpace, others where you can have a widget with your TripIt information?
>> We would like to. We don't currently have one, yet, but what we do have are Atom-based feeds that you can take and add to your iGoogle page or Homepage, you can put it into your blog as a widget. These are the starting points for syndicating or giving you the ability to syndicate your travel information into other applications including the social networks that are important to you.
>> So, let's talk about the business here. So this is a useful utility, arguably. People you know put all their information in one place, but you're not doing the booking, so where's the revenue for you?
>> Sure, so this is -- travel is a very attractive and that there are multiple revenue opportunities even if you're not focused on the booking piece, which is, you know, we're definitely not interested in being a booking engine. So revenue for us is about aggregating a critical mass of travelers and then monetizing TripIt through a combination of media, contextual advertising, lead generation and in the future, some interesting opportunities around premium services.
>> Do you have any revenues yet?
>> Very modest. It's not -- the focus right now is about building a really compelling user experience and we worry a lot more about that right now than we do about the monetization challenge. Monetization is proven in travel.
>> That you came from Hotwire.
>> I did.
>> Big travel site and so what do you consider to be a critical mass of users.
>> Yeah, certainly much smaller than any of the big social network applications. I think, you know, if we can get to, you know half a million to a million unique visitors a month I think we'll have a nice profitable, successful business.
>> And what's next for TripIt?
>> For TripIt. So we just launched our profile feature, which is going back to how we let people share their information is exciting and that it gives you a way to aggregate your information. It's got some travel statistics and it gives you an end point to start sharing information with other people and other social networks, but at the same time, we don't want to lose sight of the fact that TripIt is really about utility, right. It's not just about sharing, it's about helping you manage your travel information and so there are a lot of organizational tools that we think will help make the travel experience easier.
>> Gregg, thanks so much for joining us.
>> Thanks for having me.
>> When we come back, we'll give you our impressions of TripIt and give you our odds for its success in the marketplace. ^M00:06:21 [ Music ] ^M00:06:23
>> We're back and we've been talking about TripIt and what are your impressions, do you think that this is a company that has legs?
>> Well, as product I think that's great. I used it and I liked it. As a company, I think it's going to get snapped up pretty quick. I'll give it 12 months before they acquire.
>> That's not a bad outcome.
>> No. It's a great outcome.
>> But who do you think are the competitors because I see, you know it has one really neat trick, which is this capability to go in and take these emails and then turn them into useful information in an aggregated and filtered way.
>> Yeah, I think that as a defensible position is going to expire pretty quickly. The travel providers will eventually start formatting their itinerary information into a microformat or some XML machine readable format obviating the advantage that TripIt has in parsing that information. When that happens their technical advantage evaporates. So they've got to get in and get the customer base and get the social angle moving before that happens.
>> So that is the big game for them.
>> Yeah.
>> Which is...
>> Move fast.
>> They've got to move fast, they've got to get millions of users and they've got to get their social network wired up.
>> Right.
>> I think the social network piece though is really hard to do. There are several others like Dopplr and a few others.
>> Right, right.
>> That are already trying to do that now.
>> Right.
>> And you know it seems to me that there are so many other social networks that they need to get hook into the existing ones.
>> Yes, certainly if there was a Facebook version of TripIt or you could connect to your Facebook friends to your TripIt itineraries that would work. I think the fate -- the social angle here is interesting because it's a little bit -- it feels like a separate product. I mean, when you're making an itinerary...
>> You know, but everything is social now.
>> Yeah.
>> There's -- you can't launch a product, you can't get funding without having some social dimension to your product. And we were talking a little bit about Facebook and TripIt and so forth and to me, you know Facebook, would do well or even MySpace. But I think Facebook in particular would do well to acquire a product like this. I mean, it's a very natural extension of a Facebook where they decide like we've just about helping people share information, which is what Mark Zuckerberg likes to say and how he describes the company. Well, if that's the case, you know, this is another kind of information to share that I think would be a good addition to a company like Facebook.
>> I think this would be a good addition to Facebook. I don't think Facebook would acquire this company. I don't think this is their core business. I think that's what the platform is for, so companies like this can become maybe more tightly integrated in Facebook. Facebook doesn't have to acquire this company in order to provide that service to its users.
>> That is true, but I also think that as a company like Facebook or Salesforce.com or Microsoft or any other company, at a certain point you decide, is this something that we'd better off owning or is this something that we're happy to let the third parties do.
>> Uh-hum. I still think it's the travel company that would -- a bigger travel company wound-up acquiring this and then they'll partner with Facebook. I don't think Facebook is going to get into travel biz. I don't know, I mean, Zuckerberg might wanna do that, but...
>> Well, you're probably right.
>> So on the scale, on our scale of one to 10, how do you rate this company's odds for success.
>> If you define success as the product continues, people make some money, and we continue to be able to use TripIt and it provides some money to them down the road, I'd say 8 as a stand alone business. Now if for the wrong term, I don't think it will work. I don't think that's the intended outcome.
>> I'm going to have to agree with you, although, I think 8 is a little bit high. I'll gonna go with my usual 7. And I think, you know this is a company where it has very experienced people working there. Gregg Brockway came from Hotwire. He's been around. They've got good funding from companies that I think will give them good advice, so compared to many other companies in the travel space trying to do something new and unique, I think that they obviously are gonna be better positioned to have a good exit on this.
>> Yeah. And it's a great product to use. I will just say that. I've used it, I liked it, I'm going to continue to use it as long as it survive.
>> For Working Webware, I'm Dan Farber.
>> I'm Rafe Needleman.
>> Thanks for watching.
Dan Farber and Rafe Needleman sit down with Gregg Brockway of TripIt.com, a Web site that helps travelers organize and share their travel itineraries.
