A quick story to share. Some time back, the First Round team was having some difficulty getting our email delivered. Our messages weren’t winding up in Junk folders, they weren’t showing up at all. So, I reached out to former colleagues who were now with the major webmail brands. I wanted to know whether or not we had somehow been blacklisted. I also connected with our service provider and ran through our set-up with them. On all fronts, things seemed to check out. Except our messages were hitting the floor. No fail notifications. Nothing. Was this some sort of VC email karma? For the better part of a week, we had no idea whether or not our messages were being received. We turned into those guys, who send emails and immediately follow-up with a phone call, “Did you get my message?”
Luckily, this was right around the time I met with Patrick Peterson. Pat has a long history in email. He was one of the earliest people at IronPort and later, after the company was acquired, became one of 13 Cisco Fellows. Before Pat could even begin his pitch, I had begun pleading with him for some free advice about our email predicament. It turned out, that was all the pitch he needed.
Email is an opportunity for big data. Think of the information each message contains. To, From, Subject, Time, IP address, DKIM, SPF, server data, the message itself. And now multiply that by the volume of messages sent every second. Pat recognized that this data could be used to protect not just consumers, but brands too.With Pat’s help, and the help of billions of email messages, we were able to identify and shut down a spammer who had hijacked our domain.
Today, we’re thrilled to announce that after that, First Round went back to business as usual and along with Alloy Ventures, Battery Ventures and Greylock Partners, invested in Pat and his company, Agari.
If a chairlift spins in the woods but nobody is around to ride it, does it make a sound? Does it turn a profit? Does it make a skier happy?
There are few multi-billion dollar industries that have yet to harness the power of the Internet. At First Round, we thought car services was one of them and we were lucky enough to seed Uber. We later saw that the hospitality industry was ready to embrace the mobile web and we were thrilled to invest in HotelTonight. We think the ski industry will be the next massive market to embrace the Internet. We’re thrilled to be investing in Liftopia along with Chris Sacca, Dave Morin, and Erik Blachford,.
Even as a lifelong skier, I’ve taken the business of skiing for granted. It wasn’t until I met with Liftopia’s Founders, Evan Reece and Ron Schneidermann, that I wrapped my head around the scale of the industry. It’s massive. In the US alone, lift ticket sales are $2.6B annually. Lessons and rentals are another $1B. Ancillary on mountain spend is yet another $1.6B. In the US alone, that’s $5.2B before lodging, transportation, soft goods or hard goods. The Japanese market is roughly the same size. Europe is larger still.
And yet, ask a skier about the last time they used the Internet to plan a ski trip and they’ll most likely give you a quizzical stare. They’ll probably tell you that they were able to book their airfare and lodging online but purchased their lift tickets in person. Think about it. You pick a resort you want to visit. You book your flight online. You book your lodging online. But the the core elements of your trip - your lift tickets, lessons and rentals – you wait in line to purchase these after you arrive. Or, maybe if you’re savvy, you buy discounted tickets at a convenience store near the mountain. This is insane.
Step back and wonder what the world would be like if the other aspects of your vacation were handled in the same way. A walk-up airfare? Walk-up lodging? Airlines and hotels provide customers with better rates in exchange for a commitment from consumers that they will spend. This results in better demand forecasting for the service providers and better pricing for consumers. Liftopia lets ski resorts do the same and the results are powerful. Liftopia customers ski more days, spend more money on mountain, and explore more resorts. So if you’re daydreaming of a trip to a place like Mammoth, Sun Valley, Park City, Deer Valley, The Canyons, Kirkwood, Alpine Meadows, Killington, Stowe, Mount Snow, Keystone, Snowbird or just about any mountain in the US, check out Liftopia. You’ll save time, money and have more fun.
Every chairlift should be heard, profitable and generating smiles.
