Helping You Book Vacation Rentals: FlipKey CEO T. J. Mahoney (Part 7)

SM: There are certain types of metrics which are in your hands which you could provide. How many hits does any given property get? What kind of click through rates do they get? TM: We absolutely care about those statistics. That is entirely how we measure our value for some of our clients. They are

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How A Warren Buffett Protégé Built Overstock.com: CEO Patrick Byrne (Part 7)

SM: Let’s talk more about your financials. Overstock.com started slowing down in 2005. In 2008 you went back up to $800 million-plus in revenue but are not very profitable and the market cap is pretty low. What is your take? PB: We reached $800 million in 2005 and stayed there through 2008. We are starting

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Helping You Book Vacation Rentals: FlipKey CEO T. J. Mahoney (Part 6)

SM: What percentage of property managers do you think understand your value proposition? TM: Any property on our site with guest reviews understands. If you went to FlipKey.com right now and tried to leave a review of a random home, you could not do it. The only way you can leave a review of the

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How A Warren Buffett Protégé Built Overstock.com: CEO Patrick Byrne (Part 6)

SM: There is another nuance which is very relevant in your business, which is organic search. Organic search remains relatively unleveraged. What has been your experience with that? PB: It is a great area if you can get it right. The first people who seemed to get it right were fringe buyers such as porn

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Helping You Book Vacation Rentals: FlipKey CEO T. J. Mahoney (Part 5)

SM: What were your statistics after you had completed your deal with TripAdvisor and gained access to 32 million users? TM: As of today there are 110,000 properties on the FlipKey TripAdvisor vacation rental network, and over 150,000 guest reviews. We have by far the largest collection of authentic reviews in the industry.

How A Warren Buffett Protégé Built Overstock.com: CEO Patrick Byrne (Part 5)

SM: When did you first see significant decline in your growth? PB: Our growth slowed dramatically in 2006 and remained that way in 2007. We lost a lot of money those years. It took us a little while to figure out that it was not just computer malfunctions.

How A Warren Buffett Protégé Built Overstock.com: CEO Patrick Byrne (Part 4)

SM: Did you go public on the strength of the bankruptcy inventory? PB: No, that inventory was in 2000 and 2001. By the time we went public, bankruptcy inventories were not carrying us. We had the Safeway deal, and we had stable lines of supply.

Helping You Book Vacation Rentals: FlipKey CEO T. J. Mahoney (Part 4)

SM: How did you initially populate your reviews? Did you crawl the Web for those as well? TM: No, the reviews came from guests. We had created the accounts for the property managers, but in order for them to use our service effectively they had to upload guest records, which allowed us to invite guests

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