The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 15 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Kaufer: Fake review farms target Google but explicitly exclude TripAdvisor
“We see these review places offering to write fake reviews on Google and some other sites. And then they say, except TripAdvisor. Cause like, yeah, if like, if they try, we catch them, we shut them down.”
Kaufer: Selling TripAdvisor in 2004 was financially a crazy bad decision
“Financially, it was a crazy bad decision. But given everything I knew at the time with the risks you outlined before, the fact that it was kind of a life-changing experience for everyone at the company was absolutely the right decision.”
Cuthbert Predicts Viator Will Surpass $4B in Gross Revenue in 2024
“They'll do, I think, over four billion dollars in gross revenue in 2024.”
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…”
$20M More Capital Could Have Yielded a $1 Billion Viator Exit
“It would have been great if we'd held on to Viator for just a few more years, tossed another twenty million dollars into the bucket, and turned it into a billion dollar exit.”
TripAdvisor's first quarterly revenue-share check from Lycos was only $500
“That first revenue check, dot, dot, dot, was 500 dollars.”
Kaufer: A critical mass of user reviews builds an unassailable defensive moat
“And the faster we could get to critical mass of enough reviews everywhere, the harder it was going to be for anyone else to come in and offer reviews as a major service.”
Kaufer: TripAdvisor stayed profitable every quarter from March 2002 until the pandemic
“March marked our first month of profitability. Since we didn't know how long it would take to turn things around, if we could turn things around, we had cut back on everything non-essential, and so our burn rate was about 70, and March we made it a profitable …”
Kaufer: TripAdvisor reached 400 million monthly unique users
“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 p…”
Kaufer: I have one more non-travel startup left in me at 59
“I want to do it again. I want to not travel not in software tools. But I figure I have one more startup left in me. And as I turn. As I had turned 59 years old, I look around and say, okay, better get moving. And so I am just open for another adventure that ca…”
Kaufer: TripAdvisor reached $20 million in revenue by 2003
“I think we closed 2003 with over twenty million in annual revenue.”
TripAdvisor sold its first 20,000 clicks to Expedia for $10,000 in 2001
“And we sold our very first, you know, real revenue client, 20,000 clicks for 10,000 dollars in the month of December, 2001.”
Kaufer: Expedia was TripAdvisor's biggest client before IAC bought it
“Expedia was our biggest client at the time. Expedia was owned by IAC.”
Kaufer: Platforms must profusely thank users to drive repeat reviews
“The first thing you do is you thank them. The second thing you do is you thank them profusely. And then the third thing you do is you let them know how much other travelers really appreciate their comments. And all of that's just like, it's the dopamine. It's …”