🚫 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 to 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

founder.university 
launch.co
https://linktr.ee/calacanis
email jmc@launch.co
visit thisweekinstartups.com for my podcast

Jason Calacanis

Here’s why Alexander Liteplo thinks AI will be a better boss than a human…

The creator of RentAHuman — the marketplace where AI agents can hire humans and pay them in stablecoins — notes that an AI boss is always available to answer questions or settle conflicts.

AIs communicate clearly and don’t lose their temper.
And an AI knows precisely how to allocate resources and people.
When in doubt, an AI agent can still ask a human for suggestions or advice.
Maybe it’s about time to put AIs in charge of the companies? Explore the future of work possibilities in this TWiST highlight.

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

Why are investors worried about software? The reason software stocks are seeing their value fall is that many expect AI, especially AI agents, to replace much of what traditional SaaS products accomplish today.

If SaaS companies want a shot at surviving, one thing they can do today is ensure that their products can interact intelligently and securely with agents. Guests Oliver Henry and Jeff Weisbein agree: You need to agentify your SaaS!

He made an OpenClaw device smaller than your iPhone! Sebastian Volkl was on the show today to show off his viral personal OpenClaw assistant. He built this on a raspberry pi…

It’s a toy now… but what happens when your AI agent can go wherever you go?

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