History of Famous Startups. TripAdvisor

of chapter four

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of chapter four is being the most popular travel site in the world

we don’t have

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we don’t have those either. So on the subject of hiring, I don’t look at a
head count budget when I think of hiring people. I wait until I see the need for
someone—when I can carve out a job description that’s 80 percent full on the
day someone starts—and that’s when I’ll open up a new req.
For receptionists and executive assistants, it’s something of a running joke
because, well, what are they going to do? Make travel plans for us? We already
know how to do that. Answer the phones? Well, I can answer my own phone; it’s…

every single department?

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every single department? Well, you tap out of your friends pretty quick; but
absolutely, go hire your friends.
As I advise other startups from time to time, if you find someone you like,
pay what it takes to get them to come to your company in options or in salary,
depending on the company’s stage. But getting the right people—especially in
that first dozen—is so much more important than getting the req filled.
Unfortunately that slows down the hiring process a lot, which slows your
growth a lot, which is how I circle back to say, “In the next company,...

and complete failures

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and complete failures on the site, and I make fun of myself in company meetings
when I talk about those. Then I look at each group and say, “Hey, I’m
hoping every one of you—in addition to all the successful ideas you’ll come up
with—aren’t afraid to come up with some resounding failures.” You just want
the failure to cost you a couple of weeks, a month or two—it depends on the
industry—a small, fixed cost. It’s the old adage: if we’re not failing at something
on a regular basis, we’re just not trying hard enough.
Livingston: Obviously your story…

can iron all

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can iron all that out before you actually start the company, or pick different
founders, it’ll improve your chances of success.
Tip number two: you can’t get too attached to your vision in a startup,
because things may change. It’s not a sign of failure to change your vision. I
remember in a previous company, we wanted to be this, but we were offered a
consulting contract to do this, that, and the other thing, and, yeah, that wasn’t in
the plan, but we’ll take that, because that’s going to add $50,000 to our startup
capital, and it’ll only take…

reservation at a

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reservation at a place you’ve never stayed at, called up the local Better Business
Bureau to find out how many complaints were lodged? None. So here you go to
TripAdvisor and you look up the place, and you see that seven out of the last
eight reviews all gave it a 1 out of 5 rating and talked about smelly carpets and
rude staff. You’re just not going to stay there unless it’s the only place in town.
That’s the impact that five or six people had. Total strangers. But the hotel
owner that wants to run this crappy place,...

so they were

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so they were aware of it, but our response was a polite, “We verified that
the review meets our guidelines.” End of story.
In 5 years, we haven’t been sued by anyone—because, when you actually go
look up the law, we’re protected. There may be some hotel owners with a legitimate
beef, but there are some hotel owners that are really just not very bright.
They’ll complain about how terrible this review is and their email is from
abc@yahoo.com, and then the next day a review will appear on their property,
written by an email address of abc@yahoo.com, saying, “I…

monetize their existing

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monetize their existing travel channel as opposed to improve the content by
licensing with TripAdvisor.
It wasn’t until around 2004 that we looked at Yahoo Travel as a competitor.
It didn’t change in 2000; it didn’t change in 2001. I mean, the ads changed.
They got better at extracting more money, I guess. But the actual content—the
reason to go there—didn’t change for 3 years straight. It was great to have them
as a competitor, in the sense of, you know, pathetic. In 2004 they said, “Whoa!”
and really made dramatic improvements, and they built a much better product.
Livingston:...

dealing with customers

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dealing with customers and what they want that I can bring that back to
shape the product. Look at me 20 years ago, and at best I was a smart engineer.
I didn’t know much about business, knew nothing about selling, and unless you
have somebody who has an interest in talking with whoever you’re selling your
product or service to, your product isn’t going to turn out to be what the customer
wants.
In almost all circumstances I can think of, if not a member of the founding
team, you want to say, “With the money I hope to…

The notion that

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The notion that I take all of my time and energy, build up a business, and
then hand another company who is going to be a competitor the crown jewels
of the business—fundamentally the business, except for the people—after I
thought about it, that ended up making it a reasonably easy decision. “No. I’d
rather go out of business than take everything I’d worked for, for so long, and
hand it essentially for free to somebody else.”
In hindsight, we clearly made the right decision. But at the time it wasn’t
obvious, so we kept negotiating with them. My tip…