Today, the company's chief executive says the strategy is starting to pay off.
"We're getting more customers on board every month," Mike Volpe, CEO of Lola.com, said in an interview earlier this week. "We've had no customers start to use the product and then stop using it."
Last year, revenue from the company's core product, business travel management software "Lola Travel," went down 97% from February to April, as the travel industry sharply felt the impact of the pandemic. To face the drop in revenue, Lola.com launched a new product based on the same security, e-commerce and user interface capabilities of Lola Travel, but with the aim to track all business expenses in real time.
Since October last year, customers have been using the new software, "Lola Spend," without paying any subscription fees. However, Lola.com has been making money as a portion of credit card swipe fees on Lola Spend, Volpe said, and is planning on starting a subscription model for a more advanced version of the software that will include accounting integrations.
Revenue for Lola Spend has grown 50% month-over-month, Volpe said. By mid-2021, Lola Spend and Lola Travel are each projected to account for 50% of total revenue, he said.
Since April, revenue from Lola Travel has been recovering, and is now down about 65% or 70% a month, Volpe said.
"There's definitely some travel happening. We see less airfare and a lot more hotel and rental car and things like that," he said. "But our travel customers are traveling, especially in the construction, manufacturing, any kind of non-digital industry."
Susan Sobbott, a former president of American Express Global Commercial Services, joined the board of Boston-based travel startup Lola.com in October last year. Lola.com announced the appointment on Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2020.
Lola.com
This week, the company also announced a new board member with fintech expertise: Susan Sobbott, who spent over three decades at American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP). Sobbott actually joined the board last October, around the time of the company's entrance in the new field of online payments.
Sobbott is the seventh board member of Lola.com, the second female member, and one of the people the company consulted about its pivot, according to Volpe.
Lola.com has 68 employees, including 46 in Boston area. Its lease at One Financial Center, a corporate office that was inaugurated just before the beginning of the pandemic, is up at the end of this year. Volpe said they still have a lot of work to do to figure out their real estate plans.
See inside Lola.com's new HQ at One Financial Center
Lola.com, a corporate travel startup started by Paul English (left) in 2015, moved to a new office space at One Financial Place in Boston. A celebration of the new headquarters was held on Thursday, December 12, 2019 with Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and MassTLC President and CEO Tom Hopcroft.
The 120 people currently on the team of Lola.com are now based on the whole 20th floor of One Financial Center, next to South Station, an open office that can be home to max 230 employees.
Mike Volpe, CEO of Lola.com, said that the new office is three times bigger than the old space at 250 Summer St. "I remember doing conference calls out, near the elevator, in the lobby, and trying to keep my voice down because there were three other people doing the same," he said about Lola.com's previous office.
CTO Paul English said that the previous tenant of the space, insurance and employee benefits company MetLife Inc., had a number of closed offices, while Lola.com was looking for an open environment.
CEO Mike Volpe said that Lola.com is now close to 1,000 paying customers, approximately 10 percent based in Massachusetts; one of them is chatbot startup Drift, which recently opened an office in Tampa.
As a company’s name, “Lola” - which stands for “longitude” and “latitude” - was CTO Paul English’s first option for the travel search company that ultimately became Kayak. To acquire the name “Lola” for his startup, he ended up paying half a million dollars, he said.
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