Late Stage Venture: TripActions

In May, a16z announced our inaugural Late Stage Venture (LSV) fund. Today, I am thrilled to announce our newest LSV investment, leading the Series D funding for TripActions, a travel platform for enterprises. We led the Series C round for TripActions only seven months ago, so why are we doubling down on our investment already?

The LSV fund seeks to back bold entrepreneurs with an unusually big, long-term vision as they hit an inflection point of growth. In potential investments, we look for founders with the grit to execute on a product vision and business model that tackles a critical pain point within a large and growing market.

Corporate travel is a nearly $1.5 trillion global market, but the existing tools for booking and managing trips are notoriously frustrating. TripActions has the vision and plan to change that by focusing on the user:

1. machine learning to better match travelers with flights, lodging, rail and car rentals that fit their needs;
2. a network of global travel options and real-time availability for flights, lodging, rail and car rentals; and
3. 24/7 support that fixes travel issues like re-bookings or flight changes before a traveler even knows about them.

It’s a win/win/win: a modernized experience for the traveler, savings for their company, and more business for partner airlines and hotels. And I’ve had a front row seat as Ariel and Ilan have surpassed their (lofty) Series C goals. I have seen them build an exceptional management team, scale their employee base while maintaining their culture, and deepen their global network over the last few months. They have continually amazed me with their ability to gain traction at unprecedented levels for a B2B company.

The results speak for themselves. To date, TripActions manages over $1.1 billion of annual travel budgets for over 2,000 customers. Booking a corporate trip used to take travelers up to 1 hour, but on TripActions takes an average of six minutes. Companies who switch to TripActions save up to 34% on lodging, and employees are incentivized to save their employers money. TripActions boasts 90% traveler adoption, 93% traveler satisfaction, and best-in-class retention.

Such a step-change improvement in user experience is rare, especially in such a large, expanding market. I give Ariel and Ilan tremendous credit for their early focus on building an exceptional business model with durable competitive moats. At the crux of TripActions’ competitive moat is their global network of supplier integrations, deep base of highly loyal customers, and data that allows them to keep improving the customer experience.

With this fundraising round, TripActions can invest in customer-driven innovations to its platform, add to its network of global suppliers and resellers, and expand global operations–all to accelerate its 5x year over year growth with a focus on landing and serving new enterprise accounts while delivering the best experience in business travel.

For all these reasons, we are honored to welcome TripActions to the Late Stage Venture portfolio and excited to deepen a16z’s partnership with Ariel and Ilan!