Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Kaufer: TripAdvisor reached 400 million monthly unique users

Steve Kaufer · Tripadvisor: Steve Kaufer · Oct 31, 2022 · at 1:11:08

Steve Kaufer, co-founder and former CEO of TripAdvisor, reflects on why he stayed at the company for 22 years and the scale of reach the platform achieved.

0:00 / 0:24exact quote · 24.0s
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“The thing that I craved personally the most was the level of impact that the company had, and like four hundred million unique users a month, yeah, with a lot of duplication, you're still counting of impacting the lives, the vacations of A couple of billion people, and that's with a B”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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Opinion
Kaufer: Selling TripAdvisor in 2004 was financially a crazy bad decision
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Steve Kaufer Oct 31, 2022 ▶ 54:24 Tripadvisor: Steve Kaufer
Assertion Contradicted
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Steve Kaufer Oct 31, 2022 ▶ 1:05:41 Tripadvisor: Steve Kaufer
Assertion Supported
Kaufer: Expedia let TripAdvisor operate autonomously and sell to direct competitors
“We were moved from IAC into the public company Expedia when that was formed about a year later. And again, we were division within Expedia and to their infinite credit, they let us continue to operate on our own, you know, even though we were selling our leads…”
Steve Kaufer Oct 31, 2022 ▶ 56:10 Tripadvisor: Steve Kaufer
Insight
Kaufer: Hospitality operators who cannot handle feedback are in the wrong business
“If you are in the hospitality business this is your life. Don't be in the hospitality business if you can't take feedback. And if you can't take feedback, some of which is good and some of which is not living up to Expectations, however unreasonable they might…”
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Assertion Not checkable as stated
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Assertion Supported
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Steve Kaufer Oct 31, 2022 ▶ 37:36 Tripadvisor: Steve Kaufer
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