Just rumbled this thread.
“Reach” is one thing but what verticals like TopTable and (my company)
5pm.co.uk do is the heavy lifting of building the relationships with restaurants, and hence the monetisation.

Best

Ronnie

This Alexa graph is quite interesting.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/io9.com?site0=trustedplaces.com&site1=beerintheevening.com&site2=qype.co.uk&site3=toptable.co.uk&y=r&z=3&h=400&w=700&range=6m&size=Large

The supposedly more niche beerintheevening.com and toptable are still the leaders in reach, Qype growing fast though and overtaking Trusted Places perhaps (go andrew, phil, stefan!)

Now completing our eighth year of operation, toptable is also far from a start up! With over 1.3m uniques users/month and having seated around two million diners in 2007, we are well established as Europe’s largest restaurant booking service.

Though most of our traffic is direct, our partnerships account for a key part of our revenue and include the major news publishers such as Associated Newspapers, News International and Guardian, alongside leading websites such as BA.com, Time Out, Squaremeal and Multimap, and the aforementioned WAYN.

We’re very pleased with the Trusted Places deal, and very much look forward to continuing a successful commercial relationship with them.

Hope that clarifies!

And as for the deal – well you did deals with Zoomf, Nestoria and did these drive significantly more traffic?

Had Trusted Places been in the Valley you would have been given $5m to go and “make it happen”. European VC’s and Angels are useless because they either take most of the equity early in the angel round – I bet TP gave more than 30% to Howzat for their investment – or they wait till it is so well established there is very little risk. e.g WAYN, Viagogo

I would ask TC readers to name 5 startups in the last 12 months that got more than $5m in series A funding. I can only think of a few examples e.g Kyte.TV

Also on a seperate point when is Arrington going to invest in the UK site to offer advertising and a UK version of crunchbase.

We’ll be discussing these issues (although not TPs burn rate) at the next mashup* Event – the theme being: Local

And I’ve invited TrustedPlaces to demo so maybe we can see first hand the TP, TT deal in action.

http://www.mashupevent.com/

Look forward to seeing you all there.

Best regards,
Simon

Good questions on the burn rate, tranches, Howzat etc. If you want we can go for a coffee, sign an NDA and I’ll take you through them, provided there is a valid reason for you asking and not just curiosity.

The best bet is for TP to get as many of these deals as quickly as possible in order to make it attractive as a purchase. They will not get significant organic growth to make a difference. The same true of tipped, qype etc.

I would love to know the cashburn rate of TP and how many tranches they got their funding. How long will the £500k last and will Howzat further fund them.