

Kayak Files for $50 million IPO - ojbyrne
http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/17/travel-search-engine-kayak-files-for-50-million-ipo

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thushan
Does anyone know of any other solutions for this kind of data other than ITA?
Are there any open/cheap APIs for getting at scheduling/price data? I hear
Hipmunk is using Orbitz currently to power their results (or so someone said
on that recent TechCrunch article in the comments). Does Orbitz have some API?
Would be a fun data set to play with if one is openly available, though I love
what Hipmunk is already doing.

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mrduncan
Kayak has an api (limited to 1000 searches / day):
<http://www.kayak.com/labs/api/search/>

I believe that Orbitz will require you talk to someone in order to get access
to their api.

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thushan
Thanks for that info. That's a great start for what I'm looking for.

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dlokshin
TC article keeps referring to revenue and net income as compared to a year ago
which was a notoriously bad year for the travel industry. So these growth
numbers don't really mean anything. Would be really interesting to see where
Kayak stands in comparison to 2007 & 08.

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keenans
Kayak's S1 filing has a lot of interesting nuggets of information. The data
you're after is on page 29:

2007 Revenues / Net Income: $48M / ($4.36M) 2008 Revenues / Net Income: $112M
/ $5.1M

Keep in mind they acquired SideStep at the end of 07.

[http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1312928/0001193125102...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1312928/000119312510262521/ds1.htm)

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krschultz
I didn't realize that the Kayak founders have a member from basically every
other major competitor. I would love to hear that story.

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ojbyrne
I think if you look at any large website in the travel space, that holds true,
it seems to be an especially incestuous industry. When I worked at Tripadvisor
(owned by Expedia) we had significant numbers of people in our group from
Travelocity.

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docgnome
Odd. I wonder why that is. I suppose it has to do with gaining the knowledge
to work in the space. Once you do, it's probably easier to find a job with
other companies in the same space.

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aberkowitz
Luckily for them, flight search is such a small [1] industry.

[1] orbitz, chapoair, hipmunk, expedia, travelocity, farecompare,
cheaptickets, hotwire, priceline, kinkaa, zoombu, cheapflights, etc

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jfarmer
Funny enough, these sites (including Kayak) are pushing users away from flight
booking and towards hotel booking because the margins are much larger.

kayak.com defaults to hotel search now, for example.

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jojopotato
Careful, they default to whatever search you ran last :)

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jfarmer
Well, then the default default is hotels.

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wyclif
The article implies that Kayak may have had privileged information about the
Justice Department's investigation of the Google-ITA deal, or else they would
have held off on the IPO. Now there's a story I'd like to read.

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jedc
Interesting. I've played around with Kayak's API, but has anyone used it for
any projects? I'm curious what others think.

As for the IPO... good luck to them!

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smackfu
Interesting how much money they get from other travel booking agencies. These
are basically referrals of referrals.

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abalashov
Revenue? What's the profit?

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borism
"Net Income was actually down for the first three quarters to $6.2 million
from $10.4 million in 2009."

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rorrr
I'm surprised it's valued that low. We constantly hear about all kinds of
shitty sites getting millions in funding.

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theoneill
50m is not the valuation; it's the amount of stock they're selling.

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rorrr
How is that different from the valuation?

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stonemetal
If they have 100 shares of stock and are selling 2 at the IPO for 50M then the
valuation is much higher than 50M. Just because it is the IPO doesn't mean
100% of the stock is for sell. If they are putting out 20% of their stock then
their valuation is 250M.

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aarlo
so what is kayak's actual valuation?

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louislouis
Looks like a flop.

