Blog homeThere are *so* many companies that are focussed on aggregating and sharing travel itineraries or assisting with trip planning (around web based itineraries). Just this week 3 sites are preparing launch plans:
- YourTour – who will be presenting at the forthcoming GetFundedShow
- Duffel – who just presented at Techcrunch 50
- SightSi – who are not much more than a blog at the moment – but look like they have plans in this direction
According to reports, Dopplr (one of the category leaders) has sold to Nokia for 15 million Euros (15 -22 million USD). No reaction from Dopplr yet to confirm these rumours.
Om Malik on his coverage stated
I’m happy for the founders and backers of Dopplr, after all it is a nice financial outcome for a service that hasn’t grown beyond a base of passionate users
Lukas Zinnagl, a Techcrunch EU editor, stated
10M$ seems adequate for a hyped product, with low traffic and very focused usage #dopplr #nokia #fail
….and…
jesus, how come people are so stoked about this? this is really not a good deal for any of the investors or stakeholders.
this is a present to nokia and some nice pr.
Interesting that an exit of this size creates such different opinions.
Thoughts
This is an interesting moment in my blogging career. Dopplr are one of the first European online travel startups that I have covered from their inception through to final sale from the founders. Whilst not many people read my blog in 2007 I did, in October, cover their FOWA presentation (1 month after Dopplr got their first round of funding).
See blog post [Good historical perspective]
Ummm – Interestingly I seem to have got one thing right – and one thing horribly wrong. At the time I thought their competition was going to be WAYN. But I don’t think WAYN are in that game still and have their own challenges in the hyper competitive online travel space. Instead the main competition is TripIt.
Still, as I wrote in 2007, I had the Dopplr strategy down as to work with the digital thought leaders (probably due to their backing from Silicon valley expert VCs). I compared that to WAYN who had travel industry backers and seemed to talk (and still do!) at many travel industry conferences.
A classic battle between web people / web VCs and travel people / travel VCs…. dukeing it out in the online travel space. Swap WAYN for TripIt in my 2007 blog post and it has pretty much gone to form.
And here we are a few years later and Dopplr, in Om Malik’s opinion, have failed to break out of their digital thought leader strategy and achieve full adoption phase.
API battles
Both TripIt and Dopplr have web APIs. TripIt is a complex API that is sooo powerful it reminds me of back end travel reservation system APIs that I often come accross. Not for the faint hearted BUT it has meant they can work with many different devices and many services have been successfully built on the TripIt platform. Solid.
Dopplr however is much more lightweight. The level of detail stored on their platform was sufficient for most social purposes but is insufficient to start getting clever with providing travel services from the data. It just isn’t detailed enough. Hence I bet that it didn’t lead to that many travel industry services that could be integrated with it (hence restricted monetisation plans). This could well be down to the Dopplr folk being highly competent web people, just not travel industry folk. A warning for other entrepreneurs entering the travel industry who propose startups without having spent a few years working for existing travel companies.
Dopplr have seen that they need to enhance their API but very little has happened. In early June 2009 Dopplr announced that there were plans to launch a new version of the API “soon” (during this summer). On September 18th 2009 Dopplr announced that they have had to postpone the launch of their new API. [Source]
If you look at the change log of the Dopplr API wiki you will see that in the entire of 2009 only 3 or 4 edits were made (most recent change 5 weeks ago so it is still currently maintained). This rate of change (and their announcements about the delay in the new API) are not the signs of a company that is continuing to innovate rapidly within the online travel sector, sadly.
A good sale?
Yes. Brilliant. I am very happy for Dopplr. It is fantastic to get any company to give a return back to VCs and for the founders to presumably walk away with enough to buy a house each after 2 years work.
However the Dopplr folk are heavyweight web / mobile people. This was a golden opportunity to reach further than being able to buy a house. And I bet the VCs were wishing for more too.
But that is life. I think the Dopplr folk have done well. I know how tough this game is within the current hyper competitive online travel market and the travel industry conditions.
Expectations are tough to manage – I feel bad when we have only grown to be 3 times as large this year as we were last year. Most other people would be jumping for joy!
Finally
Oh, here for a bit of fun, is a Dopplr parody (created by Mahalo in 2007)
!
I think the sites you mention, ie. WAYN will be rubbing their hands at this news. €15m for what? Okay, I like the look of the site and I like the CEO, he’s passionate about travel and that came across at the Travolution summit, but there’s nothing unique about Dopplr.
You do not hear people talking about it, but then you don’t hear alot of conversation online about WAYN.
Not sure what Nokia will get out of it. Good for them because they have obviously put a lot of hard work in to it and they have reaped their rewards.
Well, first off congrats to Dopplr, but as per DC, E15m for what exactly?! Co-founder Ahtisaari used to be an exec at Nokia so there are probably some synergies there, but even with that on board, I’m struggling to see where the value for Nokia lies in this deal — they certainly didn’t by it for the Bangkok Eats section that’s for sure! Interesting deal.
Hi Stuart
Dopplr is a technology that works today. If a big company built (rather than brought) would be risky, take 6-9 months etc. By that time the market could have moved on and TripIt would be even more entrenched!
Hence it makes sense at that price as is only a small factor over what it would take to build (assuming a build project goes perfectly)
And before someone says “ah, I could build that in 2 weeks” – well although I described the API as more simple than TripIt….. really, its still a complex project creating any kind of web project at Dopplr scale. Also complex because the agencies who can supply tech teams who can build that kind of project have to pay top dollar for staff – because many staff who can actually do this kind of development are doing their own web startup projects now (rather than working for agencies)
The response to this on Tech Crunch is really interesting. Given the recent economic climate this is an awesome result, surely? Like you say Alex, after a relatively short period it’s a good exit
Interesting that people are questioning the value of a niche loyal community over large member numbers – unsurprisingly, I’m of a quality over quantity mentality and believe times are changing on that front. We’ll see what follows, will be interesting for sure…
BTW, hilarious video!
I’d wait for the financial details to come out, there’s probably less to this than meets the eye
An exit at this level does seem curious. While traffic volume isn’t doing gangbusters – and I think it’s quite doubtful Dopplr’s revenue warrants this buyout level – there must be some other “special sauce” that led to this purchase.
Whether that be pre-launch technology, upcoming partnerships or their investor network, who knows. Probably a combination of the three.
In any event, congrats to their team for making it happen!
For me a more interesting question is: was it a good bargain for Nokia?
I’ve been commenting on this a lot today… I really think the “leaked” sale price is exaggerated. I’ve seen it done before with startups I’ve been involved with. I expect it was sold for much, much less. None of the stakeholders are commenting or showing any sort of enthusiasm with the deal and the team has been scaled back significantly over the last few months.
I think Dopplr collapsed sometime over the last few months, spent their last breaths looking for funding and then liquidated the company to Nokia under the agreement the remaining founding team could have some job security with an old employer.
I doubt Nokia gets much out of this other than the PR buzz a few good people and some interesting datasets and product research…
Being a bit simple, can someone explain, in simple terms, what on earth these sites are for? Apart from being useful to those people who don’t use a half decent travel agent using Sabre or even Amadeus, I mean? These Dopplr sites et al may be, technically, very clever though apart from that, pretty much from a buiness travel perspective, pointless – unless someone can explain to me otherwise. I have been wrong in the past
Hi Murray
From a travel perspective they could be super-pnrs over multiple, independently booked, booking transactions. Must be some value in that, but perhaps not obvious today.
There is a lot of kite flying going on…. you chuck an idea into the air – and see if it takes off or not. Hence best not to be too quick to judge why these types of site exist and what they are about…. as they can only really be judged against existing ways of solving the same problem.
And often times the site 6 months after launch is never the same as what was originally proposed. Hence why VCs tend to back teams rather than ideas…. as good teams can fix bad ideas!
WoW! A super-pnr! Never heard of one of those! I would have thought, then, very much leisure based. Most business travel is still essentially agent based (on or off line) therefore, these sites are really copying virtuallythere.com or checkmytrip.com or (can’t remember the GAL version).
I would have thought that, if there was that much mileage in such a project, Sabre, Amadeus or Gal would have done this ages ago, after all it would not exactly be a great leap to go from system generated to “enter your own”. All the other features have been long up and running with the customer facing CRS systems – and more, I would suggest. Given that most major airlines are on one of the above systems or at least use one of the main systems and that the booking engine behind most travel websites are powered eventually by one of the above systems it seems your Dopplr’s et alia are, basically, re-inventing the wheel. Ergo, Ron is more than likely right.
Keeps you techy types in a whirl, though!
… unless, of course, Sabre, Amadeus or Gal just want to let others have a pop at it to do their marketing for them and then they could steam in if the market is there. Highly risky, for new entrants, then. No wonder finance was/ is hard to come by!
Hi Murray
Well the agent systems are about distributed bookings. I believe over time that we will still have agents, but it will be about distributed marketing, centralised bookings (on supplier sites). e.g. the hotel transaction will be communicated to the hotel site, the flight to the airline site etc
At that point it will be much harder for a super-pnr to exist because a single booking may invoke separate transactions on several systems (rather than several on the same system, a GDS, today)
Hence at that point TripIt and Dopplr etc become very handy indeed.
Problem of course is that if you build a startup based around this very very future looking principle – and the future never actually happens (or doesn’t happen soon enough) – they you are a bit stuffed!
Great thing about the future is we can discuss, for ever, what it will be! (er, a circular argument that one!)
Can’t see that.
What you suggest, is taking everything that is presently on a one stop shop system and going back to multiple sources – a retrograde step, if anything. The GDS systems are a long way from being purely agent based (Travelocity, for example) Certainly, say, Sabre have the knowledge, the technology and the systems to do whatever a (Dopplr sort of start up) could ever achieve. What is more, they can do it now with almost no additional cost – and better. Re-inventing the wheel is hardly futuristic – or am I missing something here?
Hi Murray
Thing is with distributed marketing (rather than distributed transactions) you resolve 2 key issues in one go
- PCI compliance
- Bonding / financial protection
The point is that the consumer may not know that is what is actually happening…. depends on what the industry ends up doing! It could look, on the surface, just like it looks today.
The problem with my idea is that its more of a revolution than evolution – and can’t see existing players going for it as a natural course of action. PCI compliance / travel agent merchant accounts could just about be a tipping point though…. and so could bonding / financial protection. We shall see
And no, I don’t have a crystal ball!
Murray – Sabre are a recognised investor in TripIt.com (one of Dopplr’s competitors)
Having worked at a GDS, I can promise you that risky projects like this don’t often get funding (everything needs a business case and many VIPs need to sign off on them), so actually it is easier to run such an effort as a start-up if you believe in the premise. But as Alex says, the demand needs to be there and there must be a way of making money if it is going to succeed. I’m not sure these barriers have been overcome at the present time by Dopplr.
The current silence from the Dopplr staff is a comment in itself & open to much interpretation. It’ll be interesting to see what they say and when they say it…
May I assume, therefore, I’m right – Sabre have thrown it into the stew to see what happens and keep half an eye on anyone else, (@Edd – And I did not know Tripit was a Sabre thing)? Anyway, virtuallythere is effectively distributed marketing AND distributed transactions all in one neat system – and could easily be made either/ or, given a few tweeks. Better, if Tripit works, just role the two into one and take out any competition with commensurate ease – Why make a lot of work for oneself!
I have always felt that Sabre was the benchmark for all other GDS systems. I just wish we could get back on it! Ho! Hum! Wishful thinking, I fear….
… the sort of GDS that Harrods would sell….
Sabre were not one of the original investors in TripIt, but invested once TripIt had been established for a while (and so, were a lot less risky!)
More info here from Tim Hughes: http://tims-boot.blogspot.com/2008/05/tripit-raises-money-and-sabre-is-one-of.html
Not sure Murray is going to like this post….. but I have written about my version of a cloud super PNR over on Tnooz
No I didn’t invent Super PNR (the GDS concept) but I am referring to a web version of it (cloud based). Which is kind of new.
http://www.tnooz.com/news/dopplr-sale-illustrates-cloud-super-pnr-opportunity/