• ALICE

  Led · Series B · Aug 2017

  ALICE offers hotels a single platform to run operations and manage guest interactions via mobile and cloud tools. Its services include digital check-in, amenity and room-service requests, and communication with the concierge. Customers named in the article include Triumph Hotels, Sixty Hotels and Nylo Hotels. The company reported nearly 200% growth in its hotel customer base over the past six months. With the new funding ALICE plans key hires across development, product sales and customer success. The startup has raised a total of $39 million to date, including a $9.5 million Series A led by Expedia earlier this year. ALICE provides hotels with a mobile suite that lets staff manage and complete guest requests across service departments and enables guest engagement via native apps, SMS, and web. The platform is positioned as a hotel operating system that places hotel services into guests' own devices. ALICE uses a SaaS pricing model, with most hotel partners paying between $500–$1,500 per month and a limited promotion offering $250 per month with a free 30‑day trial. The company says funds will be used to continue building out the technology and to significantly expand the team, hiring in sales, engineering, product, and account management. ALICE stands for "A Life-Improving Customer Experience," and company leadership emphasizes operational detail and cost and manhour savings for hoteliers. ALICE offers a consumer-facing mobile app that lets hotel guests book restaurants, shows, spa services and submit requests for room service and housekeeping. On the back end it provides hoteliers a monitoring and management tool that tracks requests, room service, cleaning and other operations, giving managers a 360-degree view of hotel activity. The app is already in use at luxury hotels including Shangri-La’s Hotel Jen, Bespoke Hotels, The Setai, The Gansevoort Group, Standard Hotels and Sixty Hotel Group. The company was built with input from hotel chains and emphasizes ease of installation and data collection for managers. With the recent seed round the team is expanding its operations and sales headcount and planning geographic expansion to Berlin and into Asia.

• Alice

  Led · Series B · Aug 2017

  Alice offers a hotel operations platform that centralizes communication, drives cost savings and supports revenue generation while simplifying guest service by connecting all points within a property. The product targets hotel operations teams and is used by major brands including Two Roads Hospitality, Dream Hotel Group, Grupo Posadas, SIXTY Hotels, NYLO Hotels and Leading Hotels of the World. Founded in 2013 and led by CEO Justin Effron, Alice has a longstanding commercial relationship with Expedia that began with an equity investment in 2015. In August 2017 Expedia made a further investment, becoming the company’s majority shareholder. The new funding will be used to build out Alice’s development, product, sales and customer success teams. The company has raised $39M in total funding following the latest round. Alice, led by co-founder Alex Shashou, provides a platform for hotels to receive, manage and execute guest and internal staff requests across all departments and offers a suite of mobile solutions for guest communications and staff mobility. The company serves customers including Gansevoort Hotel Group, The Setai Miami Beach, Viceroy and Dorint Hotels. Alice raised $9.5M in a Series A and intends to use the funds to continue building out its technology. The company plans to expand its team, hiring sales, engineering, product and account management roles. It will also continue to roll out ALICE lite, a lightweight model that lets hotels test the Guest Experience Management service at lower cost. Alice is a New York-based hospitality app that allows hotel guests to discover and request amenities and services from their digital devices. The platform pairs a guest-facing discovery and request interface with a back-end task-management and analytics system designed to increase property operational efficiency. The company announced a $3 million funding round led by Tishman Realty Principles and the Founders of NeueHouse. The announcement did not specify the financing instrument or list any additional participating investors. No prior rounds, founding year, revenue figures, or other operating metrics were disclosed in the report. The news was published as part of a funding roundup and linked to a press release.

• Traveloka

  Led · Equity · Jul 2017

  Traveloka operates a travel platform serving about 50 million users, offering end-to-end travel products and financial services such as PayLater and insurance. The company emphasizes a seamless, connected travel experience and partners with tourism boards and global organizations to support recovery and drive demand. Traveloka built PayLater in-house using proprietary data and AI/ML to model creditworthiness, and supports multiple payment methods including bank transfers, credit cards, PayPal and internet banking. It has taken leadership roles in regional initiatives, including coordinating a G-20 digital economy working group and partnering with the Global Sustainable Tourism Council to promote sustainable tourism and train hoteliers. Market dynamics vary across Southeast Asia—Traveloka said its business doubled in Vietnam compared to pre-pandemic levels and noted airline seat capacity in Vietnam has grown more than 30%—and the company plans to deepen localized offerings and expand partnerships across the region. The company intends to expand PayLater and insurance penetration, roll out sustainability training in additional markets, and continue investing in product relevance and global partnerships. Traveloka is an Indonesia-based online travel and lifestyle company that began as an online travel and accommodation platform and has developed into a superapp. It now offers bookings for travel, tourism, healthcare, financial services products and food delivery. The company operates in Indonesia and has a presence in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines. Traveloka has raised a total of $1.2 billion to date and was last valued at $3 billion. After a planned SPAC deal did not proceed, the company was reported to be in talks for another funding round of more than $200 million and has explored a traditional U.S. IPO. Traveloka says it aims to expand services and collaborate with partners to capture regional demand and create opportunities for merchant partners. Traveloka is an Indonesia-based online travel portal and aggregator offering flights, hotels, activities and other travel & lifestyle services. The company has launched initiatives to adapt to COVID-19, including flights that bundle COVID-19 tests, flexible open-date vouchers (‘Buy Now Stay Later’), online experiences, flash sale livestreams and standardized hygiene protocols for bookable accommodations. Traveloka has shifted focus toward domestic and short‑hop travel and plans to deepen its Travel & Lifestyle portfolio and expand financial services offered to ecosystem partners. The pandemic severely hit the business — Traveloka says it has experienced the lowest business rate since its inception — but reports improving demand: Vietnam is approaching pre-COVID-19 levels, Thailand is “on its way” to surpassing 50%, and Indonesia and Malaysia show week-to-week improvement, especially in accommodation. The company was founded in 2012 and had previously raised roughly $950M across five funding rounds prior to this latest injection. Traveloka is an online travel portal founded in Indonesia in 2012 that serves Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines. The platform sells travel products and accommodations and has partnered with Expedia to add international hotel inventory beyond Asia. Expedia invested $350 million for a minority stake, valuing Traveloka at more than $1 billion. Traveloka also raised an additional $150 million over the past year from investors including East Ventures, Hillhouse Capital Group, JD.com and Sequoia Capital. Prior financing included seed rounds from East Ventures and Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital, and its most recent public round was in 2013. The new capital and the Expedia partnership position Traveloka to expand international hotel offerings across its six primary Southeast Asian markets.

• Wingz

  Led · Series B · Jan 2016

  Wingz operates a scheduled airport ride system that lets travelers book private, fixed-price, door-to-door rides in advance. Its mobile app links to the airline flight schedule grid, automatically suggesting pickup times and matching passenger loads and baggage with drivers who have the correct car size. The company works with thousands of local drivers—who undergo background and DMV checks, vehicle inspections, and are covered by a $1M per-incident liability policy—and serves most major airports across the western U.S. Founded in 2011, Wingz has more than 20,000 active customers. Wingz recently closed an $11M Series B and plans to use the proceeds to extend its U.S. footprint and further develop its technology platform. The product aims to eliminate unexpected costs and unpredictability associated with on-demand transportation by offering scheduled, predictable rides. Wingz, founded in 2011 and led by CEO Geoff Mathieux, is a San Francisco-based airport ridesharing service that lets travelers schedule private, fixed-price, door-to-door rides. The service connects passengers with local drivers who use their own cars; drivers are handpicked, trained, and undergo background and DMV checks. Wingz inspects vehicles and provides drivers with a $1M per-incident liability insurance policy to enhance safety and trust. The company secured $2M in funding in April 2015 from a round led by Florence Venture Partners, Binux Capital, Blue Angel Ventures and angel investor Larry Marcus, with participation from Ocotea Holdings, Big Bloom Investments, Olive Tree and other angels. Proceeds will be used to expand the company's U.S. presence to approximately 40 airports by the end of 2015 and to continue investing in its technology platform and customer experience.

• Room 77

  Participated · Series C · Jan 2013

  Room 77 is a Mountain View, California-based search engine focused on finding the lowest prices on hotel rooms and booking at the room level. Launched in February 2011, the company provides granular room details—square footage, bed type, elevator proximity, and whether rooms are connecting—and generates a Google Earth-based “Room View” showing the window vista. Its narrow focus on room-level search and booking has driven rapid adoption: the engine facilitated the booking of “hundreds of thousands” of hotel rooms in the past nine months. Room 77 cites industry data that the hotel vertical generates more than $165 billion in gross bookings annually, highlighting a large market opportunity. The company closed a $30.3M Series C that brings total invested to $43.8M and says the new capital will be used to scale its product globally. Investors in the round include Expedia and existing backers such as Sutter Hill Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, Felicis Ventures, Concur Technologies, Rich Barton, Erik Blachford, and Spencer Rascoff. Room 77 indexes and crowdsources data on individual hotel rooms, including room category, square footage, bed type, elevator proximity, and whether a room is connecting. The site has collected data on more than 500,000 hotel rooms across 2,500 properties and generates a virtual Room View using Google Earth–enabled technology. It also crowdsources reviews and ratings from travelers to augment its room-level information. The company recently added the ability to book rooms on-site, surfacing prices in search results from Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Hotels.com, CheapTickets and others and allowing grid-view price/category comparisons. Room 77 launched a public beta in February and was founded by Brad Gerstner. The article reports a $13.5 million fundraising total and notes an additional undisclosed investment by Concur. Room 77 indexes detailed data on individual hotel rooms and crowdsources reviews and ratings to deliver personalized room recommendations. The site has collected data on more than 500,000 rooms across 2,500 properties and maintains property and room data in 24 markets. It generates virtual Room Views using Google Earth–enabled technology and ranks rooms with a proprietary Room Rank algorithm that scores matches by traveler preferences. The service shows room attributes such as category, square footage, bed type, elevator proximity and connecting-room status, and offers tips for requesting desirable rooms from hotels. Room 77 officially launched in public beta in February and is focused on indexing every room at three- to five-star hotels worldwide (about 25,000 properties). The company recently raised funding and plans to use it for further international expansion and to expand its core search platform for online and mobile hotel shopping and booking.

No current team members are available.