Founded by two ex-Microsoft engineers (one is a comp sci PhD) who have returned to Australia from the US to found rome2rio.
rome2rio is a travel search technology startup that is developing a door-to-door multimodal transport search engine. Unlike most popular travel search tools, which only permit flight searches from an airport to another airport, rome2rio finds routes from anywhere to anywhere using all available modes of transport.
Our current implementation provides instant searches across a database that is populated with:
- Flights schedules for 670 airlines worldwide
- Trains in Europe, China and India
- Driving directions and ferries in most countries
- Airfares for over 300 airlines provided by Kayak.com
rome2rio saves users time and money, and reduces CO2 emissions by helping them discover the fastest and cheapest route between two places. rome2rio is especially useful in Europe where cities and airports are close together and the train network is extensive. Today, the task of finding the best route into or within European is especially challenging.
rome2rio was launched in April 2011 with coverage on several tech and travel sites.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/07/rome2rio-is-google-maps-with-airfare-train-and-driving-options/
http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/07/rome2rio-launches-travel-search-with-planes-trains-and-automobiles/
http://www.tnooz.com/2011/04/07/tlabs/tlabs-showcase-rome2rio/
Core Team Members
Michael Cameron, Co-founder
Michael is a search engine expert. For his PhD he worked on genomic search algorithms, before moving to Seattle to work for three years as a senior engineer on Microsoft's Bing search engine. He is also an experienced traveller and recently spent a year exploring much of Europe and Asia. Co-founding rome2rio has brought two of his life's passions together.
Bernhard Tschirren, Co-founder
Bernie is an experienced, hard-core hacker guy. He spent five years as an senior engineer at Microsoft working on .NET and Visual Studio, helping build the tools we use every day. Prior to that he spent seven years at TriniTeq, helping it grow from small startup into a global company. He also loves to travel, and spent eight months backpacking around North America and Europe.
Company Vision & Future
We envision growing rome2rio into either a b2c business with high traffic and revenue from commissions, or as a b2b business through technology licensing to existing travel search engines such as webjet, Expedia, Orbitz, Kayak, etc..
Exit Opportunity
The most probable exit is purchase by an OTA such as Kayak, Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, CheapOair, Hotwire or Cheap Tickets. The recent purchase of Zoombu by Skyscanner indicates there is market for door-to-door search technology purchases amongst OTAs.
Another possibility is sale to a web search company such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. Bing and Yahoo already have conventional flight search features, and Google is looking to move into this space with the recent proposed acquisition of ITA Software. rome2rio could also be integrated into Google Maps or Bing Maps.
Since the most probable exit is to a US corporation, and future investment is likely to come from US investors we are in the process of incorporating rome2rio in the United States.
Ideal Investor
Investors with connections to the US startup eco-system or travel industry.
Press Links
Category: Internet Web 2.0
