PHL Inno's weekly "Startup Spotlight" feature highlights founders and new businesses cropping up in the region.
The startup: HopSkip is a two-sided marketplace for hotels and event planners to get the best deals for corporate event planning.
Founded: 2019
Home base: Philadelphia
Founders: CEO Sean Whalin; Chief Technology Officer Greg Leizerowicz; and Executive Vice President of HopSkip’s Eastern Region Luke Whalin.
Sean Whalin graduated college in 2012 and scored a job as a management consultant with Atlanta-based Alexander Proudfoot. The position required extensive travel, and he “lived in hotels” for nearly four years. While at that job, he also was tasked with organizing the company’s annual conference, which exposed him to the operational side of the hotel business process — and the difficulties — of booking a large event at such a venue.
Whalin left consulting and later managed a team with Comcast Business. Through that job he met Leizerowicz, who left his position with Irvine, California-based enterprise technology company Neudesic. Luke, Sean’s brother, also left his sales position with Toshiba to join HopSkip.
The product: Corporate event planners can input their event requests on HopSkip’s website, including the dates they’re looking for, number and types of of rooms they need, capacity, food and beverage details and questions they have. The planner then submits that information to HopSkip and selects from the over 55,000 hotels the startup has in its database. Hotels can then bid on that planner’s event proposal.
“If you were to go on Kayak or Expedia or a Marriott, they have those published rates if you're booking one or two rooms,” Whalin said. “And in our world, [planners] are booking hundreds of rooms or they're booking 50,000 square feet of meeting space. So those rates aren't published and they're negotiated. Our platform facilitates that bidding process.”
HopSkip offers “standard” and “pro” subscriptions for $1,850 per year and $2,950 per year, respectively, that give event planners access to the platform along with functionality that lets them save requests for proposals, compare proposals for dozens of hotels and more. The platform is free to use for 60 days.
It’s free for hotels to be listed on HopSkip and to respond to proposals. HopSkip gets paid the hotel’s booking fee, valued between 3% and 7%, or hotels can opt out of paying the booking fee and instead pay an annual subscription fee of $8,500 per property.
Hotel brands like Marriott, Hyatt, Omni Hotels and Hilton use HopSkip, according to the company.
Funding: HopSkip has raised $555,000 in a pre-seed round from angel investors and family and friends. The startup is looking to raise a $3 million seed round in 2022 to support hiring and product development.
The goal: Whalin is optimistic about the return of live events to help get the startup in front of potential clients at trade shows and industry groups.
HopSkip has had $7 million of bookings through the platform since it launched in October 2019, and Whalin is looking to multiply that by 10 in the next 12 to 18 months. HopSkip is projecting to have nearly $200,000 in revenue in 2021.
“Right now, the phase we’re in, it's like there's so much action on the platform,” Whalin said. “With three people, we're juggling a lot for sure.”
HopSkip is also looking to triple its team from three to nine, with plans to hire in marketing, engineering, sales and platform development.
