The day we were offered $1M dollars for an idea.
One day my phone rang. This guy says, “Matt Zito, the IPOguys"...I am building the next generation Initial Public Offering brokerage platform to distribute shares directly to individual investors. I’ve got patents. I am going to pay you boys $1M. How soon can you get...
Travel Startup Founder Series: Peter Conway Founder TravelBuddy
Sponsor: Eye For Travel Social Media & Mobile Strategies For Travel, March 17-18 San Francisco, CA. In this interview you’ll learn; How Peter Conway is building a mobile and online booking engine for things to do (tours and activities) in Ireland. How Travel Buddy...
What Startups Can Learn About Travel Photo Sharing.
This is a guest article from Drew Meyers. The travel photo sharing space is a very, very crowded one. I've been a skeptic of travel photo sites for quite some time. Between Instagram, Flickr, 500Px and the thousands of other photo sharing sites, there are photos...
Travel Startup Founder Series: Andy Peck Founder TrustedHousesitters.com
Interview Sponsor: Digital Travel Summit April 1-3, Green Valley Ranch Resort, Spa and Casino Las Vegas. Digital Travel Summit is the digital marketing, eCommerce strategy and customer engagement event for travel, hospitality and leisure companies. In this interview...
Travel Startup Founder Series: CEO David Millili Pegasus Solutions
Interview Sponsor: TravelStartup Professionals Do you have professional expertise in a specific vertical or discipline within the travel industry? Do you have educational or knowledge based digital products that travel startups and travel companies would be interested...
Amazon’s “Mayday”…for Travel?
This is a guest article from Drew Meyers. Amazon's Jeff Bezos is considered the most brilliant tech executive since the late Steve Jobs, by many. That's why I put so much weight on the most prominent part of Kindle's new commercials being...the Mayday button. Click...
Travel Startup Founder Video Series: Founder Kirby Winfield Dwellable
Sponsor: Press Pack - The TravelStartups.co press pack is an effective and affordable avenue to gain visibility and media attention within the travel industry for your travel startup or B2B service/product for travel companies. The press pack will get your company in...
Think | Create | Execute
Lake Wales High School Entrepreneur Group, me in the blue shirt, entrepreneur/instructor Bill Lockhart 1st row far right + 25 future entrepreneurs. Today was a great day. I am a mentor to 25 students at the Lake Wales High School Entrepreneur Group. This morning I got...
Travel Startup Founder Video Series: Luca Perfetto Co-Founder Freeppie
Sponsor: Press Pack - The TravelStartups.co press pack is an effective and affordable avenue to gain visibility and media attention within the travel industry for your travel startup or B2B service/product for travel companies. The press pack will get your company in...
The Starting Point to Real Time Travel Advice: A Location Based Content Delivery Platform
This is a guest article from Drew Meyers. I arrive in a Chiang Mai on a Wednesday morning. Turn on my phone, and am greeted with a push notification, "You have 6 personalized gems waiting..." I click. I see a promotion for 20% off ZIP lining with Flight of the Gibbon...
Travel Startup Founder Video Series: Raj Beri Co-Founder WanderWe
Sponsor: The Booking Conversion App - Help's increase online bookings by getting travelers to come back to your website to book. Your prospective customer is visiting on average 38 websites. That means your website is 1 of the 38. The Booking Conversion App’s secret...
Are you living a balanced life?
My wife Nicole, My Mom Pat, Me and Fenway in Daytona Beach at the USTA state championships. My tennis family and friends competing at Daytona Beach, Florida. I started playing tennis 2 years ago. When I started I wasn’t that good. Ok, I stunk. One of the senior...
Travel Startup Founder Video Series: Robert Brown Founder OptionsAway
Sponsor: Press Pack -An effective and affordable avenue to gain visibility and media attention within the travel industry for your travel startup or B2B service/product for travel companies. This video interview with Robert Brown the Founder of OptionsAway is part of...
Does Mobile = Money and Desktop = Road Kill?
This is a guest article from Drew Myers. So, you're building a new travel technology startup. Do you build for desktop or mobile? Mobile is the future, without a doubt. Don't listen to me; take the word of Rich Barton and Bill Gurley at the GeekWire Summit. Yet, often...
Travel Startup Founder Video Series: Tedd Evers Founder TripTuner
Sponsor: Travel Pitch- Get your pitch, opportunity, message or deal in front of of thousands of travel CEO’s, founders and travel professionals. Travel Pitch has received over 4,000 views with new partnerships and deals being done. Check it out. This video interview...
The future of the travel industry looks bright + 10 key takeaways from the Eye For Travel Distribution Summit.
On September 22 and 23 I attended the Eye For Travel Distribution Summit in Chicago. It was a jam packed two days. I formed around 30 new relationships, judged the 2013 Innovation awards and interviewed 5 travel startup founders and 2 leading travel CEOs. I’ll be...
Dirty little secrets about NET rates.
I am working with a new client and we are analyzing moving their hotel contracts from a commission rate-contracting model to a net rate-contracting model. Here are my thoughts about NET rates and why I think NET rates are the best contracting model for travel...
You know your travel startup has arrived when they try to take you out.
We were finishing up our second ski travel season when a letter arrived in the mail from an attorney in Fairfax, Virginia. Our main competitor was trying to stop us from conducting business. The travel competitor was a mature travel company that had been around for...
Travel Pitch – the one, two, three-punch pitch deck for B2B.
To the point, heavy with sales messages, personalized, visual, social, an effective lead generation tool for business to business. As a travel startup you're constantly pitching. Pitching is selling and messaging your need for something. Pitching is also a form of...
Travel Startup Founder Series: James Street Founder MyDestination
Sponsor: AdventureLink - We are looking for 5 affiliate travel partners. We are the largest aggregator of tour and activities globally. Sell adventure travel. Full API, Java Script Widgets, Wordpress Plugin, White Label. Free licensing and integration support for the...
Fear and greed kill travel startups.
Fear and greed are a travel startup entrepreneurs two archenemies. The key to managing your fear and greed is to recognize it, acknowledge it and then find a balance with each one. Make decisions that are not based in fear and know when enough is really enough. It’s...
Travel Startup Founder Series: Sam Shank Founder HotelTonight
Sponsor: Learn how to contract direct hotel inventory and negotiate killer room rates. Video Training Course. 30% Off. HotelTonight is a last minute hotel deals mobile booking app for tonight only. HotelTonight is building one of the next big brands in travel using...
Help shape the future of TravelStartups.co
In March I launched TravelStartups.co as a blog to help inspire travel CEO’s, founders and entrepreneurs with business advice and stories from my 19 years experience as an online travel entrepreneur. Since launching TravelStartups.co I’ve received many emails saying...
Live for what you believe.
If you live for what you believe, you’ll live a happier life. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become happier. Following and acting upon my entrepreneurial beliefs helps me live a better life. I call this my entrepreneurial philosophy. Your entrepreneurial philosophy is...
Travel Startup Founder Series: Michael Noble, Founder Apruve
Sponsor: Ulmon FREE download day July 25th. Mobile city guides to top global destinations. The next Paypal. Gone are the days where you pass around the corporate credit card, scribble credit card numbers on post it notes and pester your boss because you need approval...
5 techniques to create the next hot travel startup.
In this post you'll learn 5 techniques you can use to take your current or new travel startup idea and iterate the core components into a singular-use travel product. I see a product trend in the consumer Internet space I call “singular-use,” products. Popular...
Travel Startup Founders Series: David Litwak Founder Mozio
Sponsor: Apruve Travel merchants, add an Apruve payment button to your travel website today. Learn more. You need to bag an elephant. You want one key high-profile investor to say yes. If you convince him or her to invest in your travel startup you know the tide will...
I want to buy your travel company.
These are 7 of the sweetest words a travel entrepreneur will ever hear. When you hear those words, spoken exactly like that, you know you have a buyer, a real buyer on your hands. As entrepreneurs our dream is to build it, scale it, sell it. I heard those 7 words one...
Eye For Travel Distribution Summit September 23-24 Chicago
I'll be attending the upcoming Eye For Travel, Travel Distribution Summit North America in Chicago September 23-24. As a thank you for subscribing to TravelStartups.co I have included a $200 off coupon code for you to attend the conference. Coupon Code: TS200 If you...
Travel Startup Founders Series: Prateek Sharma Co-Founder MYGOLA
Travel Startup Founders Series are inspirational short stories direct from travel startup CEO’s, founders and entrepreneurs. The Travel Startup Founders Series is an exclusive from TravelStartups.co. Sponsor: Canadian360.com airfare deals for Canadian domestic...
Without her I’d be nothing.
I sat down next to this beautiful girl. Her name was Nicole Spotswood. I had seen her on college campus but never met her. We chit chatted. She was a golfer and an athlete. She was smart. I really liked her. I wanted to date here right then and there. I had to figure...
Travel Startup Ideas: Social by Design Travel Startups
Social by Design Startups Can entrepreneurs and companies build more authentic enterprises, with long-term value, reducing the risk of failure by designing a company or new product socially? Travel Startup Ideas is an exclusive at TravelStartups.co where CEO’s,...
Pull the covers to your side of the bed.
“Matt, you’re pulling the covers to your side of the bed.” I’ll admit, when I was a young travel startup entrepreneur I was a taker. I tried to take at every corner. I felt that the only way to succeed was to be a ruthless and take as much as I could. If you let me...
Travel Startup Founder Series: Andy Steves’ Weekend Student Adventures
Travel Startup Founders Series are inspirational short stories direct from travel startup CEO’s, founders and entrepreneurs. The Travel Startup Founders Series is an exclusive from TravelStartups.co. Sponsor: Rezgo -Take your tour or activity business to the next...
The tour bus was flipping. I thought it was over for our travel startup.
As CEO and founder of your travel company you are going to be making tough choices in the face of adversity. These decisions will impact the short-term bottom line and have consequences for years to come. The travel business is fluid, always changing. Your customers...
Travel Startup Founders Series: Leo Le Bon The Godfather of Adventure Travel
Travel Startup Founders Series are inspirational short stories direct from travel startup CEO’s, founders and entrepreneurs. The Travel Startup Founders Series is an exclusive from TravelStartups.co. When the godfather of adventure travel speaks, I listen. I recently...
These four words can change your entrepreneurial life forever.
It was Spring 1992. I was walking out of my last communications class in my senior year at George Mason University. Professor Robert Conley taught me communication and entrepreneurial skills, how to think for myself and take initiative. He forced us to write as a way...
Travel Startup Founders Series: Steve Kaufer Co-Founder & CEO TripAdvisor
Travel Startup Founders Series are inspirational short stories direct from travel startup CEO's, founders and entrepreneurs. The Travel Startup Founders Series is an exclusive from TravelStartups.co. Sponsor: ChooseToTravel Group - 80 destination-domain names for sale...
Stop the Aggregation Madness and Build a More Profitable Travel Business with the Owned Inventory Merchant Model.
The Owned Inventory Merchant Model is an inventory model and a hotel contracting strategy alternative for travel startups and travel companies that sell hotel rooms as any part of their travel product. I've been consulting with travel startups for the last three years...
The travel industry is building less authentic travel start ups.
Is it me or are you noticing more travel start-ups that are really just technology businesses or media companies operating under the disguise as a leisure travel business? These new start ups are companies termed as social travel, meta-travel, affiliate-travel...
A global mobile booking platform is the next big opportunity in the $27B Tour & Activity Market.
This article was edited and originally published at Tnooz. At the Travel Business Academy, a professional online course teaching entrepreneurs, how to start a travel business, we have been researching and analyzing the in-destination mobile app travel business. This...
Quote at MSNBC about entrepreneurship and online travel.
I was quoted this week by MSNBC for a story about an online travel entrepreneurs new mobile travel app. Join TravelStartUps.co
A U.S. Federal Agent calls me on my cell phone.
Recently I was reminded of something that you don’t read about or actually even think about and that is a person’s character. As you go through life as an entrepreneur you’ll be challenged with many decisions along the journey. Some decisions will be big but most will...
The Travel Startup Path
TravelStartups.co you'll learn to: *Build a more profitable travel company. *Connect with key people and companies in the Travel Startup Path. I am developing a unique social media marketing service for travel companies to acquire travelers and customers. You can help...