| Acquired by | Kayak |
| Price | $180M |
| Date | 12/07 |
| Terms | Cash |
| Website | sidestep.com |
| Category | Web |
| Phone | 408-235-1700 |
| Employees | 75 |
| Founded | 11/99 |
| Total | $32M |
| Series A, 10/00 Lehman Brothers | $6.8M |
| Series A, 12/99 Lehman Brothers | $2.2M |
| Series B, 1/04 Trident Capital | $8M |
| Series C, 2/07 Leader Ventures Norwest Venture Partners Saints Capital Trident Capital | $15M |
SideStep is a metasearch engine for travel which makes money through advertising and referral fees. It searches more than 200 websites looking for the best travel deals.
SideStep has recently been aggressive in building up its offerings. They acquired TripUp (a social network focused on travel) and TravelPost.com (a hotel ratings site) with the goal of becoming “the leader in online travel related information.” In addition, they have launched two Facebook applications. The Trips Facebook application provides a trip planning service that currently has over 150,000 users. The Extended Info application allows users to add fields and categories of their own choice to a Facebook profile. SideStep is also developing a Facebook App for TripUp that should be launched later in the year.
SideStep was acquired in December 2007 by their nearest competitor Kayak for roughly $180,000,000.
Other popular travel metasearch sites and SideStep competitors include Cheapflights, Farechase, Mobissimo and Qixo.
| Website | sidestep.com |
| Stage | Live |
| Launch Date | November 13, 2000 |
| Tags | travel, hotels, rental-cars, airlines, vacation, wiki |
SideStep’s metasearch tries to help users find the best deals in travel. When you search for a flight the results can be fine tuned based on time, price, airport, airline and number of stops. While there are similar sites out there, SideStep might be worth a few minutes of your time when you go to plan your next vacation.
Sidestep does give users other reasons to visit their site. They offer travel guides on trip planning, restaurants, hotels, shopping and more. They also offer a deals section which lists the best travel deals they find.
