Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
Jim Kovarik, president and co-founder, C2G, LLC - former general manager of AOL Travel with 20 years of online experience.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
So far I have personally bootstrapped the business.
What problem are you trying to solve?
90% of long-distance trips taken in the US are by car, and yet the majority of travel sites are oriented toward air travel leaving consumers with few choices outside of AAA to help them plan car vacations.
Describe the business, core products and services?
C2G stands for ‘cost to go’ and our business is focused around helping consumers easily discover the cost of going places.
Our first product, Cost2Drive.com, makes it easy to determine the cost of driving anywhere in the US-based on real time gas prices along a route.
It also identifies the cheapest gas at refuelling points and provides a nifty flight comparison feature for trips over 200 miles so consumers can quickly see if its cheaper to fly or drive to a destination (to our knowledge, we’re the only site on the Internet to provide this flight versus drive cost comparison).
We also include the environmental cost of driving via a carbon footprint calculator that provides an option to purchase carbon offsets from TerraPass.com.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
We feel our sweetspot for users is the soccer mom demographic as they often take on the travel planning role in the household. We do subtle things with design to address this audience which appears to have been effective as we’ve been featured in a number of blogs targeting this demo.
However we know our appeal is likely broader as we’ve recently been featured in the AARP Bulletin and saw a nice pickup of traffic and positive user feedback from that audience as well.
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
Yes, I used my own personal capital to build the site and validate the market over the past 18 months.
It’s been a tough haul but we’ve received a great deal of attention in the press and can feel the momentum build heading into this summer travel season.
With virtually no marketing our average daily traffic is up 50% Y-O-Y so far in 2010 resulting in over 50,000 visits from what’s proving to be a self-selected travel audience as evidenced by the following 2010 data:
50% of the routes entered are over 1,000 miles in distance (one way)
Disney World and Disneyland have been entered as destinations over 1,000 times
Orlando and Las Vegas have been entered as destinations over 4,000 and 2,500 times
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
We have an advertising-based revenue model that is built on the unique targeting capabilities of our ‘galculator’ technology.
For example, we’re able to serve up flight offers from Kayak based on the origin and destination pairs entered by the user, and because the offers are so contextually relevant the CTRs can reach 5% or higher.
Our next step is to integrate lodging, followed by attractions and dining in logical points along the route.
In effect we’re inverting the traditional booking module by starting first with driving directions and then allowing users to add services like lodging and dining on top of them.
8)SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
Industry expertise, market-leading technology, extremely capital efficient and scaleable business model
Weaknesses:
Distribution, Capital
Opportunities:
Macro trends (rising gas prices, dissatisfaction with air travel, down economy), mobile and social networks
Threats:
Competitive responses by companies with access to far more resources.
Who advised you your idea isn't going to be successful and why didn't you listen to them?
There were – and are - many who believe this market is too small to be of any consequence, however the data indicates its quite vast and actually dwarfs the fly-to market. What keeps me focused is the continual steam of positive feedback from our users who almost universally praise the product. Below are some examples of user comments we’ve received in the past few weeks:
This is a very useful site, and I use it quite often. Thanks again...
Fantastic website!! THANK YOU!!!
Your site helped to decide where we will go on vacation (miles). Thanks for the flight info. It helps to determine how we will travel.
what a great helpful site. great idea and a big help.especially with the map rout included. thanks.
Right on the money!!!!!!!!!!
Hi cost2 drive. great website, and very useful for consumers.
I like the site and very simple to use.
Awesome!
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
Secure angel round of funding, staff up accordingly and blow through the numbers.
TLabs focus on startups featuring Virginia-based C2G, the company behind
Cost2Drive.com.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
Jim Kovarik, president and co-founder, C2G, LLC - former general manager of AOL Travel with 20 years of online experience.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
So far I have personally bootstrapped the business.
What problem are you trying to solve?
90% of long-distance trips taken in the US are by car, and yet the majority of travel sites are oriented toward air travel leaving consumers with few choices outside of AAA to help them plan car vacations.
Describe the business, core products and services?
C2G stands for ‘cost to go’ and our business is focused around helping consumers easily discover the cost of going places.
Our first product, Cost2Drive.com, makes it easy to determine the cost of driving anywhere in the US-based on real time gas prices along a route.
It also identifies the cheapest gas at refuelling points and provides a nifty flight comparison feature for trips over 200 miles so consumers can quickly see if its cheaper to fly or drive to a destination (to our knowledge, we’re the only site on the Internet to provide this flight versus drive cost comparison).
We also include the environmental cost of driving via a carbon footprint calculator that provides an option to purchase carbon offsets from TerraPass.com.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
We feel our sweetspot for users is the soccer mom demographic as they often take on the travel planning role in the household. We do subtle things with design to address this audience which appears to have been effective as we’ve been featured in a number of blogs targeting this demo.
However we know our appeal is likely broader as we’ve recently been featured in the AARP Bulletin and saw a nice pickup of traffic and positive user feedback from that audience as well.
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
Yes, I used my own personal capital to build the site and validate the market over the past 18 months.
It’s been a tough haul but we’ve received a great deal of attention in the press and can feel the momentum build heading into this summer travel season.
With virtually no marketing our average daily traffic is up 50% Y-O-Y so far in 2010 resulting in over 50,000 visits from what’s proving to be a self-selected travel audience as evidenced by the following 2010 data:
- 50% of the routes entered are over 1,000 miles in distance (one way)
- Disney World and Disneyland have been entered as destinations over 1,000 times
- Orlando and Las Vegas have been entered as destinations over 4,000 and 2,500 times
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?We have an advertising-based revenue model that is built on the unique targeting capabilities of our ‘galculator’ technology.
For example, we’re able to serve up flight offers from Kayak based on the origin and destination pairs entered by the user, and because the offers are so contextually relevant the CTRs can reach 5% or higher.
Our next step is to integrate lodging, followed by attractions and dining in logical points along the route.
In effect we’re inverting the traditional booking module by starting first with driving directions and then allowing users to add services like lodging and dining on top of them.
SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
- Industry expertise, market-leading technology, extremely capital efficient and scaleable business model.
Weaknesses:
Opportunities:
- Macro trends (rising gas prices, dissatisfaction with air travel, down economy), mobile and social networks.
Threats:
- Competitive responses by companies with access to far more resources.
Who advised you your idea isn't going to be successful and why didn't you listen to them?There were – and are - many who believe this market is too small to be of any consequence, however the data indicates its quite vast and actually dwarfs the fly-to market. What keeps me focused is the continual steam of positive feedback from our users who almost universally praise the product.
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
Secure angel round of funding, staff up accordingly and blow through the numbers.