Rich Barton built Expedia on a simple idea: give people the information to make their own choices. He's spent his career chasing that same theme across startups, believing autonomy matters more than anyone admits.
Chapters
My story of startups, there's a common thread through all of them, and that is power to the people, okay? And this is this kind of fundamental ring zero acknowledgement that freedom is primal, that we want control, we want all of the information we can, we want to make decisions for ourselves, especially ones that are entertaining, and ones that are financially important, we want to make these decisions ourselves. Okay, there is no industry where we the people, we consumers don't want to have more information in our fingertips so that we can be better informed, okay. And so Expedia is an instance of a startup that kind of typifies this transparency of information idea. It ended up catalyzing a new industrial, kind of a technology-driven industrial revolution in the travel industry, and the travel industry has never been the same since.