Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: Flyspy.com

Kayak Eats Sidestep – Thanks, ‘Santa Sequoia’

December 24, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Some of you may recall I’ve posted a lot in the past on the topic of "Travel 2.0."  Here are my twelve posts, which must total something like 20,000 words. I still get a fair amount of traffic to those, even though most are at least a year old.  The subject of many of them was one travel company in particular…a Minnesota startup.  More on that in a bit.

Back to the main impetus for this post today: a big announcement that many of you may have missed, since it occurred over a holiday weekend — when, hopefully, most you are not online. [Sadly, your trusty blogmeister here has to be…one of the occupational hazards of being a blogger!]  Here’s the latest big Travel 2.0 announcement: Kayak.com Secures $196M in Financing Round.

Kayakeatssidestep_2 That’s right — close to two hundred big ones, enabling Kayak to acquire ("merge with") fellow travel metasearch site Sidestep. Sequoia Capital led the round, which included many other existing investors in both firms, and VC superstar Mike Moritz gets a board seat. This is the largest amount of dough in one Travel 2.0 deal that I can ever remember seeing.  I thought ITA Software raising $100M in VC last year was a big deal, but this dwarfs that, all in one big, fat round.  [Interestingly, that ITA deal shares one big investor with the Kayak deal: yes, our Santa Claus friend, Sequoia. Do you get the idea they like Travel 2.0?]

It’s a bold move to elevate the combined entity into what the release labels as one the five top travel brands (by which they mean the amount of Internet traffic).  Moritz is quoted in the release as saying the deal "reshapes the largest sector in online commerce."  He’s right about the size — I’ve seen numbers saying it’s approaching $100 billion. And I was actually quite surprised to hear experts at last year’s "Travel 2.0 conference" call travel, overall, the world’s single largest industry.  So, this is big stuff — I think we have that established now…  🙂

What was the Minnesota startup I mentioned I was writing about last year?  That would be Flyspy.com, a third-generation airfare search engine — still in alpha as we speak (but be patient). Flyspylogo2_2
Keep you eyes open for some news from this startup. I’ve continued to stay in touch with the founder, Rob Metcalf.  No, it’s not about huge amounts of money — the business doesn’t require that now.  But it’s a significant development for a startup that’s been working on its idea for close to five years now. Let’s just say Flyspy is having a very nice Christmas.  Cheers to you. Rob!  (More on this later.)

UPDATE (12/28/07): You say you hunger for more data on this deal? And you just love charts? Boy, do I have a deal for you. You’ll get your fill here: Compete.com’s Analysis of Kayak and Sidestep Merger.

Another Party Post (If You Can Stand It!)

December 18, 2006 / / 1 Comment

Okay, I promise this will be it — for the holiday season, anyway. At the risk of appearing to do nothing else but attend parties, swill wine, and nibble cheese at various and sundry functions, I offer up here my final party post of 2006…well, I think, anyway. We’ll see… 🙂 Christmaspartygraphic_1 This one was the annual holiday function of the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA), held Wednesday evening December 13 at the gleaming new Guthrie Theater along the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis. Again, it was a balmy evening, in the low 40s…with no snow (!).

I was gonna shoot some pix of this hot new venue (my first time there), and did take my little pocket cam with me. But then I realized others have probably shot much better photos than I could. [Oh?] Check out these very cool Guthrie pix I since found on Flickr. [Thank you, “jpnuwat.” Whoever you are, you shoot some really amazing stuff!!] I now think I’m gonna throw away my pocket cam in shame, because my shots, a couple of which are shown below (after one of his), leave….uh, a little to be desired? Guthriecjpnuwat

Oh well, these two of mine show the one thing I wanted to capture Wednesday evening: the great view off the outside deck, which my friends and I decided would be a terrific place to hold a reception in warmer weather.

The event drew what looked to be 100 to 150 people, and was crowded into a long, narrow lounge on the fourth floor. But it was fun, and the food was great, as was the wine. Soon as I walked in, I ran into an old buddy I hadn’t seen in years: Terry Anderson, head shooter at TKA Photography in Edina, who was there to capture some shots of the occasion for MIMA. Guthrieview1_1
I also met some other really interesting people, including James Schmit of Greater Web Traffic, a state IT employee and former longtime Carlson Companies staffer, who’s doing some SEO/SEM work in his spare time. Let’s hear it for moonlighting! Guthrieview2_1
Then, after running into friends Tom Borgerding (the original MIMA prez) and Jason Bakker of Campus Media Group, Bloomington — the best darn college marketing firm on the planet — I met Jennifer Meyer, CEO of Web Emarketing, who not only is an accomplished search-engine marketer, but a surfer, too — I kid you not! She’s spent time at Surfer’s Paradise near Brisbane, Australia, and also frequents the Pacific side of Costa Rica in her spare time. [Naturally, we’re gonna exchange some surf pix links while on our respective New Year’s vacations.] After hooking up with MinneDemo colleagues Rob Metcalf of Flyspy and Jeff Pester of Slivercast.com, I was introduced to Martin Davis, principal of Ratchet, an accomplished interactive development shop, spun out of Fallon in 2004, that now serves a large part of the downtown ad agency community. Martin also has really cool business cards, designed by Duffy Design — seriously, you should stop by sometime just to get one! 🙂 Finally, I had a chance to chat at some length with another fascinating guy, Andrew Ecklund, CEO of Ciceron. I’d known his name for a long time, and had briefly met him once in the early days of MIMA, in like 1997, but we’d never had a chance to really talk. He was a font of information, a funny guy, and his firm is doing some excellent web marketing work for clients such as Andersen Windows, US Bank, and Target Center. In particular, he’s really excited about web video, and especially about Brightcove, which I’ve written about before — a company that kinda/sorta has Minnesota roots, since it was founded by Jeremy Allaire and friends, formerly of Allaire Corp., which was founded here. Andrew’s firm is working on some really cool, new video stuff, with a group of well-regarded local film and video talents. I’ll definitely be watching for more news on this….

Well, that’s it from the Minneapolis web marketing and Internet startup party scene for another holiday season….Whoops, no, wait! What’s this? Why, it’s another invitation to a little gathering of players in our local startup community, on Wednesday the 20th downtown. Just an impromptu get-together for beer to meet an out-of-town VC visitor from California. But how can I miss that?… 🙂

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