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PairUp: Social Networking Meets Business Travel
By Rob | April 2, 2007
We normally don’t cover companies in and around the Valley, simply because they already get lots of attention. This site is meant to profile and help entrepreneurs who aren’t in cities saturated with technologists and VCs. We are making a special exception today to cover PairUp - a service that connects business travelers - because the company is a great example of how an entrepreneur could start something outside the valley.
According to the site, the purpose of PairUp is to:
PairUp is about empowering the business traveler to reinvent his/her business trip by introducing the concept of connected travel, allowing businesspeople for the first time to easily share travel plans and instantly search for potential business connections at their next trip destination or industry event – across companies and across booking engines.
This is a very cool idea, one that is somewhat similar to AirTroductions. Business people spend a lot of time on flights and in airports, and anything that can make them work more efficiently (like having a quick meeting with a business contact) is likely to add value.
The reason Pairup represents an interestingcase study for OTV readers is that founder Estebar Sardera outsourced almost all of the work. He’s a one-man band serving as the CEO, and he hasn’t taken any funding. Given that his team was all over the world, he could have lived in Topeka, KS and made just as much progress. Sardera ran his startup like he was outside the valley, and for that reason we consider him a kindred spirit.
Topics: Startups |
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