You can find the transcript for the interview below the video:

In part of 1 of our interview, Drew talks about:

• where the idea for JetSetter came from
• how JetSetter is different from Priceline, TripAdvisor and Kayak.com, where Drew headed up online marketing for a number of years

Transcription:

SEAN: So we’re here with Drew Patterson, founder and CEO of JetSetter. So, Drew, thanks for coming.

DREW: Thanks for having me.

SEAN: So tell us a little bit about you and your background and, you know, how JetSetter came to be.

DREW: Sure, I created JetSetter having spent five years at Kayak.com, and before that spent a bit of time at Starwood Hotels. That kind of company is really born out of the success of the Gilt Groupe. Gilt, sort of, taking off last year and it was clear that this kind of ecommerce model had something to it and it’s particularly interesting for discretionary lifestyle businesses where taste and fashion sensibility is critical to the consumer.  And travel seemed like an extension consumer on Gilt by be interested in travel.

SEAN: And for someone who doesn’t know what Gilt is, it’s flash sales for consumer brands. Is that a good way to put it?

DREW: I would, uh, luxury brands…

SEAN: Luxury brands…

DREW: …better…

SEAN: …luxury brands, better than flashy brands. Consumer …

DREW: It’s not a NASCAR race.

SEAN: So what Gilt is.. you’re a member, after you’re a member you get an email everyday and it’s a limit to the things you’ll get an opportunity to purchase.. luxury brands for a period of time and in inventory, I guess.

DREW: Yeah, that’s right. The channel as a whole is a great marketing resource, that’s why they positioned it that way. It’s a way for consumers to discover or get access to things that they otherwise wouldn’t see.

SEAN: Yeah.

DREW: So in our case, we’ll have a mid-number of sales, typically 10-15 every week and we’ll have a finite amount of inventory. So off-road channels where you have practically unlimited access to whatever the products happen to be. We’ve got a finite amount of rooms, we’ve got a finite number of hotels that we’re selling or travel experiences that we’re selling.  The mass consumer you’re constantly exposed to new things. We spend a fair amount of time and energy and money in telling stories and helping to explain the uniqueness [INAUDIBLE] value for consumers is the discovering new things.  Of course there’s the ability to get access these things at prices that otherwise wouldn’t be available.

SEAN: Since, again, you were at Kayak for a really long time, I imagine you saw all kinds of really interesting travel opportunities, which, you know, it’s very perishable right.. so if a room doesn’t get filled that’s it, it’s off the market. I imagine there’s a lot of hunger on the other side for the luxury  travel market to fill these rooms. How about first class, you know, airlines? Does it work as well?

DREW: Definitely something we’ve looked at. You know air has its own complexities — totally different than other forms of travel. I think there’s two ways to look at the business that we’ve put together. One is, of course, you know we help suppliers liquidate inventory. Like, these homes are distressed that otherwise wouldn’t get sold. I think the second, more interesting way to think about what we’re doing is really the marketing channel. It helps in customer acquisition. You think about Priceline, for example. It’s a distribution channel.  Right?  And it’s a way for its top suppliers to get access to a different slice of the demand curve that they otherwise wouldn’t see. You can segment out the highly price-elastic customer who otherwise didn’t exist. What we’re doing, I think, is very different. What we’re doing is we’re introducing suppliers, and more than that, consumers to an experience that they haven’t, previously, seen before.  And so, we have heavily editorialized emails, we have very rich, photographic display. You know, spent a lot of money on primary research and making sure that we’re telling consumers a sort of true-to- life story and sort of helping them appreciate, whether it’s insider knowledge, or access, or experiences that they wouldn’t have otherwise seen.

SEAN: I think I like the way you said it. The contrast between Kayak which is, you know, breadth. You want to be able to discover everything in one place rather than look for it. JetSetter is contrasting in that you’re selective; hand-picking the partners with whom you want to create these opportunities. Right?

DREW: Yeah, absolutely. I think editorial or curatorial (that seems to be a word in favor these days) is a part of a lot of these new models. You know, and I think, what you’ve seen is, on the one hand, there’s so much information out there — Google, Kayak, TripAdvisor, Trulia, and a range of very powerful search engines that are premised on the idea that consumers know what they want and put together queries that help them discover that information.  And then you go to the other end of the spectrum – which is where we fall – is for certain kinds of lifestyle categories. What consumers want is a guide that also discovers things that are important, things that are new, things that they’re going to care about. In a sense, breaking the news in that category. I think as you look across categories, you’ll see JetSetter’s certainly in the travel space. You’ll also see things like Thrillist, UrbanDaddy, DailyCandy, TastingTable.  A range of these kinds of newsletters…DailyBeast, HuffingtonPost.. all sort of focused on giving you a very narrow set of things. A “short list,” in fact, that matters in that area.

Don’t miss part part 2, where Drew talks about

• the explosion of new email commerce sites like Groupon and how JetSetter is different
• what synergies JetSetter is able to leverage from Gilt.com, from which JetSetter was spun.