Portaga’s TripSync: Simplifying Business Travel (Part 2)

Robert Kost is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Portaga. In the early 1980s, he worked as an analyst with the Office of Technology Assessment of the US Congress. He later joined Prodigy (IBM/Sears/CBS) in the mid-80s, securing patents that are today at the heart of Internet innovation, and writing the first online banking, grocery shopping and airline reservation contracts. While with Prodigy, he also led development of the first Windows-based “B2B” online service.

Also on the team is COO Evan Newman, who began his career in 1984 at Macpherson Travel as Travel Operations Manger for Columbia University before moving on to Goldman Sachs’ in-house travel department as the Vice President of Travel Operations and Technology. During his tenure, he was responsible for overseeing the transition from in-house travel to an outsourced mid-west facility and back again, running the largest call center in New York City and rolling out SabreBTS.

SM: Under what circumstances did the company get started?
RK: We originally developed the “Book Avis” product, allowing their customers to book a rental car via a button on their Outlook toolbar. The application then placed the rental car into the user’s calendar. Once that was done, we realized the potential of creating an application that could book air and hotel as well as car and place the entire itinerary in the users’ calendar. Nobody had done that yet and we got very excited. Imagine, here we are today and we’re still the only app out there that has full calendar integration.

SM: Who financed the company at the very beginning?
RK: First Round Capital and Cove Harbor Group.

SM: Did you raise Angel money? How much? From whom?
RK: Yes – approximately $1 million from 20 angels.

SM: Did you raise Venture money? How much? From whom?
RK: Yes — $3.5 million from Ascend Venture Partners and another $1 million from assorted investors.

SM: What stage are you at now?
RK: Series B.

SM: What kind of traction do you have?
RK: 15 signed distribution partners and thousands of users.

SM: Is your team complete? Does it have depth?
RK: It has depth but is not complete. More personnel are required in marketing and operations, as we move out of a primarily development phase.

SM: What is the business model of your company?
RK: Portaga makes its money from bookings – commissions from hotels, cars and ancillary services. Booking fees from our supplier distribution partners. We have 3 primary distribution channels: Suppliers (airlines, rental cars and hotels), Integration (Salesforce.com, ExpenseWire.com, etc) and Web Partners (sites that want to become “travel enabled”). Suppliers and Web Partners have the choice of white labeling TripSync or not.

SM: What is the revenue & profitability status of the company?
RK: We are pre-profit.

SM: Are you looking to raise another round of funding? Timeframe?
RK: Yes in 3-6 months we’ll start Series B.

SM: I chose to cover Portaga because I like their vision. They have only implemented car rentals and hotel reservations so far. Airlines are not yet part of the offering, but are expected to go live in Q3. However, the vision of being able to go to my Calendar and move an airline, hotel or car rental entry to a different day, and an automated set of procedures dealing with all the associated changes, seems like magic!

This segment is part 2 in the series : Portaga's TripSync: Simplifying Business Travel
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