TrustedPaces signs deal with TopTable
January 8 Mike Butcher
In evidence that a year on from launch it is not standing still, UK ’social reviews’ startup TrustedPlaces has signed a deal with TopTable, Europe’s largest online restaurant booking service, allowing users to book restaurants online via the site. TopTable has access to 3,000 restaurants across Europe. TrustedPlaces members can review restaurants, bars, hotels, cafes and share information and profiles. Founded by Sokratis Papafloratos and Walid Al Saqqaf in May 2006, Trusted Places won £500,000 venture backing from HOWZAT Media, the investment fund started by Cheapflights’ David Soskin and Hugo Burge. In February 2007 TP was named “One of the Top 10 British Dotcoms to Watch” by the Guardian in July last year. For more on the site see here and here.
Comments
January 8th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Sorry this is a non-deal. Two struggling startups hoping that 1+1=3
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.
January 8th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Guy - Fair point and as I previously point out there are startups out there in the ’social reviews’ space with no backing, and revenues, with more organic traffic
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/01/04/is-this-the-biggest-uk-social-network-youve-never-heard-of/
January 8th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
You got to love anonymous comments.
but TopTable have been going for about 7 seven years now and have 150+ partners so I doubt they were waiting for us to do the 1+1=3.
Guy, we’re definetely a startup (not a struggling one at all, thanks
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.
January 8th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Happy New Year to all!
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
January 8th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Sokratis sorry to sound negative but I think the UK/European scene is going to face tough times in 2008 and if Howzat are not in it for the long haul then you might find it hard to raise further monies.
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.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Guy - Advertising is alive and well on TCUK, and our first client is Olswang, as you can see from the banner on the site. If you’d like to advertise on TCUK , please just contact me direct and I will provide you with our advertising contact.
January 14th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Hi Guy,
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!
January 14th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
This is a pretty interesting deal, for me it speaks to a really key dynamic in the UK local web today - how “horizontal” sites like trusted places, qype, and gumtree are in co-opetition with “vertical” specialists like toptable…
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!)