Stephen Kaufer on founder liquidity
From The Travel Giant Built on Billions of Reviews | Steve Kaufer on TripAdvisor · · Kleiner Perkins
“It was a combo of money and risk. So that none of the founders were kind of independently wealthy. The notion of venture buying out x% of founder shares wasn't common back then. It was more seen as oh founders becoming risk adverse or founder isn't all in if they've sold some of their shares. Truly ridiculous. Glad that's changed. If I could have sold, you know, half my shares, we would and, you know, to to pull that money off the table, of course, I would have been as much all in and we would have stayed independent.”
On , Stephen Kaufer, Former President & Chief Executive Officer at TRIPADVISOR INC, spoke about founder liquidity during The Travel Giant Built on Billions of Reviews | Steve Kaufer on TripAdvisor on Kleiner Perkins.
About Stephen Kaufer
Stephen Kaufer, co-founder and former CEO of Tripadvisor, was inducted into the Phocuswright Hall of Fame in 2023 for his role in shaping the online travel industry. In a 2024 interview, Kaufer discussed his philosophy of prioritizing speed in company culture, stating he placed a "speed wins" sign on his office door and encouraged employees to give optimistic deadlines without penalty for missing them. He also emphasized that a CEO's primary job is to prevent underperforming employees from joining the company in the first place, rather than relying on performance systems to remove them later. Kaufer has continued to comment on industry dynamics, including Google's influence on travel search. In a 2019 interview, he said Google should "stay a search engine" and argued that concentrated competitive landscapes burden innovation. He also addressed Tripadvisor's past content moderation policies, noting that the company initially removed a review about an assault at a Mexican resort because it violated a "G-rated" policy, but later changed the policy to allow such firsthand accounts. Kaufer has since launched a new venture, Give Freely, which redirects commissions from online purchases to users' chosen charities.