Personal
Steve Kaufer co-founded TripAdvisor in 2000 with the mission to help travelers around the world plan and book the perfect trip. Under his leadership, TripAdvisor has grown into the largest travel site in the world. As CEO, Steve has led the growth of TripAdvisor, Inc., which includes 24 other travel media brands that operate in 48 markets worldwide. Prior to co-founding TripAdvisor, Steve was president of CDS, Inc., an independent software vendor, and prior to that, was co-founder and vice president of engineering of CenterLine Software. Steve holds several software patents.
Big Break
TripAdvisor started with a very different business model in mind. In founding TripAdvisor, Steve Kaufer wanted to take his hard core engineering skills and apply them to vertical search in travel that provided a white label search engine for travel sites like Expedia and Travelocity.
After a year and a half, he had no clients and no revenue and was running out of money. Then, 9/11 happened and the travel industry was decimated. Kaufer began to worry that his start-up would go under. Fortunately, on the side, the company had built up TripAdvisor.com as a demo site to show the prospective clients what a vertical search engine could do. When he saw TripAdvisor.com start to pick up traffic, he decided to pursue an online advertising based business model with banner ads. After a few weeks of watching no click throughs, Kaufer executed his second plan and started a cost per click model. Suddenly, three months into launching the new model, TripAdvisor achieved breakeven.
The company has grown profitably ever since. Kaufer originally hired editors to comb the Web for great travel articles and link to them, and then allowed users to post their own reviews on the site as a whim. When the company saw that user reviews were getting all the traffic, they adjusted to focus on user reviews, such that fresh, authentic content was always available and didn’t cost the company any money to produce. With these adjustments, TripAdvisor grew rapidly and successfully. The company agreed to be acquired by Expedia in 2004 for $210 million in cash and continue to dominate the market.
After a year and a half, he had no clients and no revenue and was running out of money. Then, 9/11 happened and the travel industry was decimated. Kaufer began to worry that his start-up would go under. Fortunately, on the side, the company had built up TripAdvisor.com as a demo site to show the prospective clients what a vertical search engine could do. When he saw TripAdvisor.com start to pick up traffic, he decided to pursue an online advertising based business model with banner ads. After a few weeks of watching no click throughs, Kaufer executed his second plan and started a cost per click model. Suddenly, three months into launching the new model, TripAdvisor achieved breakeven.
The company has grown profitably ever since. Kaufer originally hired editors to comb the Web for great travel articles and link to them, and then allowed users to post their own reviews on the site as a whim. When the company saw that user reviews were getting all the traffic, they adjusted to focus on user reviews, such that fresh, authentic content was always available and didn’t cost the company any money to produce. With these adjustments, TripAdvisor grew rapidly and successfully. The company agreed to be acquired by Expedia in 2004 for $210 million in cash and continue to dominate the market.
Experience
Education
1980 - 1984 Harvard University