🚫 OTAs Suck ✅ Building a Book Direct, Decentralized, Open-OTA ➜ 🚀 Operators Get Direct Bookings ✈️ Travelers Get Rewards for Booking Direct 💰 Anyone Who Refers Travelers Owns Them & the Revenue Stream They Generate.

🐥 I'm a startup founder, launching a direct booking travel platform for the AI agent era.

Why? Today, Online Travel Agent (OTA) commissions are draining 10's of billions of dollars out of the travel ecosystem. They enrich "Big Tech" and "Big Travel", at the expense of everyone else. I know because I helped them do it. For years I was a super-affiliate of Expedia and other big OTAs. I fed $100m+ in hotel bookings to the OTAs, generating $10m in commissions, but adding little of value to the ecosystem.

Now, I'm building a new travel distribution platform and protocol that enables travelers and their AI agents bypass the OTA middlemen and book direct.

👇 Want to be notified when we launch? Leave a comment in the featured post below titled "AI-powered community", or reach out and connect! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Previously...

🐣 I co-founded a venture studio. We launched 3 notable ventures:
 
1️⃣ 3Genius International. Network of travel booking websites. $100M+ in bookings and $10M+ in gross profit.

2️⃣ Moola.com. Multiplayer game. Grew virally to 450k community members, $7.6M economy. PCWorld's “Best Places to Waste Time on the Web”.
 
3️⃣ Locationary. Local data and community platform. Rewarded users for crowdsourcing local business data (eg. like for Apple Maps). $4.5M in funding. Acquired by Apple.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

🧠 Current Interests: AI, community, machine learning, travel, fintech, loyalty rewards, web3 / tokens / blockchain, creator & influencer economy, social commerce, marketplaces, network effects.

Arlen Ritchie

All-In Podcast

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This Week in Startups

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ANGEL, the Book

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Uber

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Inside.com

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LAUNCH

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Sequoia Capital

Entrepreneur in Action

Weblogs, Inc.

CEO and Co-founder of The Weblogs, Inc. Network with Brian Alvey. More information at http://www.weblogsinc.com.

We publish www.engadget.com, www.tvsquad.com, www.cinematical.com, www.joystiq.com, www.autoblog.com, and 70 other leading blogs. 

Acquired by TimeWarner/AOL Oct. 2005.

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Jason Calacanis

When does Product Market Fit turn into Product Market PULL?

We all know how to spot Product Market Fit… there are real customers who are saving time and money by using your product, and they’re even evangelizing to their friends and colleagues.

But then there’s another level even beyond PMF… Product Market PULL, when there’s such high demand for what you’re selling, you can’t even keep up with everyone who wants a piece of it.

Jonathan Swanson of Athena recalls when I recommended the virtual assistant platform on the world’s #1 podcast, The All-In Podcast. While he was delighted to see such intense demand for trained, expert executive assistants, the startup literally could not train fresh EAs quickly enough.

I invest in 100 new startups a year... get a meeting with my team at launch.co/apply, or learn how to start a company by joining founder.university (our 12-week course). watch thisweekinstartups.com if you love startups

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