Social Trip Planning App Tripshare Converts Travel Inspiration To Bookings
Tripshare, an iPad application for travel planning, is joining a crowded space. But its CEO knows a little something about the industry – Bob Dana was the former employee #1 and first CFO of Virgin America. He once wrote the business plan and feasibility study for Sir Richard Branson in 2003. And now he’s doing a travel startup. Dana tells us the inspiration for Tripshare was based on a personal experience he had years ago. As CFO, he spent ten hours on a plan each week flying back and forth from New York to California. Back in 2006, Dana was trying to convince his family to come out to California for a vacation, so he put together a proposed itinerary to help sell the idea. “I ended up preparing this ten-page Word document that included text and photos I cut and pasted from various websites. It was intended to be persuasive in nature, and collaborative, too,” he explains. “I thought afterwards, that collaborative travel planning was something that was rather difficult to do.” ...
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Chinese Gaming Publisher Yodo1 Raises $5M In Round Led By Singapore's SingTel Innov8
Yodo1, a Beijing-based company that works intensively with Western game developers to bring their titles to the Chinese market, raised $5 million from SingTel Innov8, the corporate venture arm of a mobile carrier. An earlier investor, Chinese online game maker Chang You, also participated in the round. Yodo1 has a co-production model where they actually get access to the code base of a Western developers’ game. They modify the graphics, virtual goods and music for local Chinese tastes. An example CEO Henry Fong points to is Ski Safari, a game from Brisbane, Australia’s Defiant Development. In the platformer title, a character races up and down ski slopes (kind of like last year’s indie hit Tiny Wings out of Germany). For the Chinese version, they made the architecture of the houses in the background more Chinese, added a zither to the music and put in terra cotta warrior outfits. “We’re a full blown co-production team,” Fong said in an interview a few weeks ago at San Francisco’s ...
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