Episode 41: Booking.com with Jetsetter & Room 77 CEO Drew Patterson
Acquired26 Heinä 2017

Episode 41: Booking.com with Jetsetter & Room 77 CEO Drew Patterson

Acquired trains its lens on the “second or third best acquisition of all-time”, Priceline’s 2005 purchase of Booking.com. Our heroes are joined by friend-of-the-show and former Jetsetter & Room 77 CEO Drew Patterson to help understand how this little-known startup from The Netherlands grew into the largest travel company in the world, with nearly $8B in annual revenue. Was this deal even better than Instagram??? We debate, hotly.

Sponsors:


More Acquired!

© Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLC


Topics covered include:
  • The biggest startup you’ve never heard of (in the US), Booking.com, and its parent company Priceline (yes, the William Shatner Priceline)
  • Booking’s founding in Amsterdam in late 1996: by recent college graduate Geert-Jan Bruinsma
  • Skift.com’s Definitive Oral History of Online Travel
  • The travel industry's GDS's (“Global Distribution Systems”) and the development of Sabre
  • How Bruinsma raised the initial money for Booking: by emailing anyone he know who had an email address
  • OTAs ("Online Travel Agencies”) and how they operate; the "merchant model" versus the “agency model"
  • The role of search in online travel
  • Bill Gurley on Conversion: The Most Important Internet Metric of All
  • Expedia’s early flirtation with Booking, and decision not to acquire the company
  • Priceline head of M&A Glenn Fogel’s vision for how powerful the agency model for OTAs could become in Europe
  • Priceline and Glenn's 2004 acquisition of Active Hotels in the UK, followed by the 2005 acquisition of Booking for $133M and the combination of the two businesses into Booking.com
  • Booking’s incredible growth in the decade since the acquisition, from less than 20M room-nights to over 500M, and $7.8B in revenue in 2016

The Carve Out:

Jaksot(212)

Google: The Origin of Search

Google: The Origin of Search

We tell the story of the single greatest business ever created: Google search. From its origins as a Stanford research project called BackRub, Google became the front door to the internet. Today it’s ...

30 Kesä 20253h 37min

The Steve Ballmer Interview

The Steve Ballmer Interview

We sit down with Steve Ballmer, the legendary former Microsoft CEO and owner of the LA Clippers, for an epic conversation covering his 34 years at Microsoft. Steve listened to our Microsoft episodes a...

2 Kesä 20252h 57min

Epic Systems (MyChart)

Epic Systems (MyChart)

What if we told you that the most important company in US healthcare was run from a farm in rural Wisconsin? And that farm contained the world’s largest subterranean auditorium, as well as Disneyland—...

21 Huhti 20253h 55min

Indian Premier League Cricket

Indian Premier League Cricket

When you saw this episode pop up in your feed, you either jumped for joy and hit play immediately (in which case you’re not reading this), or you said “Huh. That’s a surprising episode.” Well, if you’...

24 Maalis 20254h 26min

Rolex

Rolex

Rolex is a series of paradoxes. They sell obsolete and objectively inferior mechanical devices for 10-1000x the price of their superior digital successors… and demand is stronger than ever in history!...

24 Helmi 20254h 59min

TSMC Founder Morris Chang

TSMC Founder Morris Chang

We flew to Taiwan to interview TSMC Founder Morris Chang in a rare English interview. In fact, the last long-form video interview we could find was 17 years ago at the Computer History Museum… conduct...

27 Tammi 20252h 56min

TSMC (Remastered)

TSMC (Remastered)

We dive into the unbelievable and unlikely history behind the quietest technology giant of them all: the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Founded in 1987 by the then-56 year old Morris Chan...

21 Tammi 20252h 29min

Mars Inc. (the chocolate story)

Mars Inc. (the chocolate story)

M&M’s, Snickers, Milky Way, Double Mint, Ben’s Rice, Pedigree, Whiskas, VCA, Banfield… all the brands you know, owned by the company you know nothing about: Mars, Incorporated. And Mars itself is 100%...

16 Joulu 20243h 52min

Suosittua kategoriassa Liike-elämä ja talous

sijotuskasti
mimmit-sijoittaa
psykopodiaa-podcast
rss-rahapodi
pomojen-suusta
ostan-asuntoja-podcast
rss-rahamania
rss-draivi
herrasmieshakkerit
rss-myyntikoulu
rss-sami-miettinen-neuvottelija
rahapuhetta
inderespodi
salkunrakentaja-podi
juristipodi
rss-lahtijat
rss-bisnesta-bebeja
rss-seuraava-potilas
rss-set-for-life-sijoita-ja-vaurastu
rss-rahataito-podcast