By Guest Author Saad Fazil In an earlier post I argued that Google would benefit from acquiring search engines in verticals such as travel, jobs, and products. By doing so, Google can retain “rich” traffic which otherwise might directly go to those search engines for specific needs.
In the recap mode, here’s a list of the top 20 serial entrepreneurs I have spoken with: * Philippe Courtot – a very young 63-year old CEO of Qualys.
We have covered online travel extensively over the last couple of years, beginning with the in-depth analysis, Web 3.0 and Online Travel. Here is an overview of the online travel startups to watch:
I have done numerous interviews with entrepreneurs on this forum. Here’s a list of 10 Web entrepreneur interviews that I think have the most interesting strategy discussions on how each of them are building their companies:
In case you are reading today, Happy July 4th. And here’s some reading to catch up on: Vision India 2020: Renaissance, Gangotri, Maya Ray, Elixar, Bioscope. Entrepreneur Case Studies: Carol Realini (Obopay), Steve Hafner (Kayak), Ramu Yalamanchi (Hi5), Francisco Martin (Strands), Samir Arora (Glam) and Jacob Jacobsson (Blaze DFM).
SM: What is your read on some of the other travel and ad network players out there? There are some vertical travel ad networks which have been reasonably successful so far. SH: There are three things you need to do to have a viable vertical ad network. You need to get a set of publishers,
SM: The major gains from purchasing SideStep were adding their display advertising business and their email marketing platforms? SH: That is right.
SM: Obviously you made a big departure from established business models in the travel industry. Can we discuss that in terms of growth? SH: Our business model is very similar to Google’s. We get paid for the referral. We are unbiased which is great for consumers because when you have an advertising driven model the