If you were looking for a single company that exemplified the dot-com era, you could choose Priceline.com. It was founded by Jay Walker, an entrepreneur with a clever solution to a real problem: every day, 500,000 airline seats were going unsold. Priceline offered these seats to online customers who could name the price they were willing to pay. Consumers got cheaper flights; airlines sold excess inventory; inefficiencies were ironed out of the market; and Priceline took a cut for facilitating the process: your garden-variety win-win-win-win that only the internet could make happen.
Launching in April 1998, Priceline was a dot-com “overnight success,” growing from 50 employees to more than 300 and selling more than 100,000 airline tickets in its first seven months of business. By the end of 1999, it was selling more than 1,000 tickets a day. It attempted to expand into hotel bookings, car rentals, home mortgages, and Walker's intention was to take the Priceline idea to every applicable market.
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