Jay Walker was a prominent figure in the dot com boom of the late 1990s. The then 43 years old tycoon’s claim to fame and fortune was centered around Priceline (in which Walker had a $4.7Bn stake) and the idea of “buyer driven commerce” that Walker claimed on one occasion will “reinvent the environmental DNA of global business”. Priceline was founded in 1998 as one in a series of Jay Walker’s entrepreneurial projects. The website was marketed to consumers as the first business ever to allow for bidding of travel services like plane tickets and hotel rooms, implying that consumers will have greater control over the process and receive a better price in exchange for some restrictions on airline choice and travel time. In reality, the business was developed as a way for airlines to fill empty seats at …show more content…
From the very beginning, founder Jay Walker had a tough time convincing large airlines to participate in its program, securing participation from only two mid-sized airlines at launch [insert names]. While consumers rushed to the website after its launch, the company was unable to fulfill demand [insert exact figure] and had to subsidize bids by purchasing tickets at market price while selling closer to the consumer’s bid price. The company’s fortune finally changed for the better when founder Jay Walker brought on more experienced managers such as Citigroup’s Richard Braddock and AT&T’s Dan Schulman. With these personnel changes, enthusiasm from the market [need more information on cause and effect], and beneficial terms [such as…], Walker was also able to secure participation from more prominent airlines like Delta followed by Northwest and Continental, thus partially solving its supply problem. With its latest successes, the company was able to complete a successful IPO in 1999 where its price jumped from $16 at opening to $162 one month