summary
Although it started off as a hobby, Matt Daimler and his wife’s SeatGuru.com is now one of the web’s most popular travel websites. The site helps travelers find the best airline seats from over 40 carriers and 275 airplanes.
seatguru’s success story
- In 2001, 25 year-old networking engineer Matt Daimler was on an international flight. He noticed a passenger who had enough legroom to use his bag as a leg rest. Matt realized that some seats were better than others, and resolved to make a website to show the best and worst airline seats.
- Matt launched SeatGuru.com in October 2001 with a single, color-coded seating chart of a United Airlines 757-200. A few months later he was unemployed and decided to focus on developing the site.
- By summer 2002, SeatGuru had charts for the six largest US airlines. This was thanks to Matt’s research as well as submissions from other fliers and the community at Flyertalk.com.
- SeatGuru got its big break in October 2002 when his site was featured in the Wall Street Journal; it was at the time seeing at most 200 visitors per day. Matt added text link ads in 2003 and this allowed him to make a few hundred dollars but as he was now employed, SeatGuru remained a hobby for him.
- In the summer of 2003, he signed up for Google Adsense which allowed him to place targeted ads; Matt was very surprised to make over $100 in his first day.
- One year later, his wife quit her job in April 2004 to run the site; she managed to double the site’s business in two years. By 2006, SeatGuru.com was making $10k-$20k per month and featured 40 airlines and 275 airplanes.
- In March 2007, SeatGuru was acquired by Expedia subsidiary TripAdvisor.com for an undisclosed sum, believed to be in the six figures. Matt and his wife now work as consultants for Expedia.
did you know…
- … the site served over 800,000 visitors in January 2008, and was viewed nearly 6 million times in that month alone? Most visitors are from the US, and are evenly divided between leisure and business travelers.
- … SeatGuru has a database of nearly 20,000 reviews? Visitors can comment on any aspect of the flight experience from the comfort to in-flight amenities such as Audio, Video, AC Power and Food.