Splitty won the Start-up Award at the EFT San Francisco Summit on Monday April 24th. The OTA splits your stay into multiple reservations for the same hotel to get you the lowest rate. Packetzoom a new technology protocol, speeding the load of a mobile application came in 2nd place. Both startups have been funded with millions in capital.
Splitty 1st place. Avi Wortzel CTO, Eran Shust CEO, Matt Zito Moderator, Meidan Hengel COO.
The EFT San Francisco Summit Startup Village kicked off on Monday April 24th. There were two panel sessions followed by 12 travel tech startups pitching for the awards. For the 3rd year in a row, EFT invited Travel Startups Incubator to be the moderator for the Startup Village and award sessions.
Panel #1: “Meet the Entrepreneurs,” succeeding in travel tech. We heard stories and great insights from Andy Peck, Founder and CEO Trusted Housesitters, Daria Rebenok, Founder and CEO Grabr.io, Snehal Shinde, CTO and Co-founder Mezi, Christian Wolters, North American MD Tour Radar, Bruce Rosenberg, COO HotelPlanner.
Panel #2: “Meet the Investors and Judges” for the Startup Pitch competition. Judges included Brian Harniman, Managing Director Brand New Matter, Tim Gunstone, Managing Director EyeforTravel, Bruce Rosenberg, Chief Operating Officer HotelPlanner, Jeena James, Global Head for Travel & Local, Apps, Business Development Google Play, Nancy Hayes, Managing Director Golden Seeds, Seth Rosenfield, Managing Director Petsky Prunier, Kurien Jacob, Principal, Highgate Ventures Highgate Hotels, llana Golan, CEO Golan Ventures, Amir Amidi, Managing Partner Plug and Play, George Arabian, Co-founder Steelhead Ventures, Nathan Bobbin, Sr. Director, Product Innovation Travelport, Utpal Kaul, Head New Products Carlson Wagonlit Travel and Matt Zito, Managing Partner Travel Startups Incubator.
A few takeaways from the conference included:
- There is now more investment capital, pre-seed stage, $25K-$100K in the startup ecosystem than ever before due to the corporate travel companies entering the market with new incubators, accelerators and venture arms.
- When raising capital at the Series A stage you should be asking for more than you really need.
- Building a B2B travel tech startup is much easier to gain traction and less competitive than B2C.
- Google is now the largest travel company in the world doing $12B in revenue in travel more than Priceline, Expedia and TripAdvisor.