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Stephen Kaufer (born September 7, 1962[2]) is an American businessman who founded travel services company TripAdvisor.[3] Kaufer launched TripAdvisor in 2000 with Langley Steinert, and was the company's president and chief executive officer from then until his retirement in 2022.[4][5][6]
In 1985 he co-founded CenterLine Software, a company that made programming and testing tools for software developers. In 1998, he and his co-owners sold half the assets to Rational Software, and the other half became CenterLine Development Systems, which his wife, Caroline Kaufer, headed.[3]
TripAdvisor
That year, when planning a vacation, he discovered how difficult it was to find unbiased information and candid opinions about specific hotels. She suggested he build a website to help other travelers, but he didn't act on it for over a year.[3][9]
When he finally launched such a site, a few years later, his initial plan flopped because he was trying a business-to-business approach, partnering with other travel-related websites, instead of engaging directly with travelers. Eventually, he landed on a formula: make TripAdvisor available to everyone (not business to business), aggregate a lot of information about hotels and attractions, encourage travelers to provide personal reviews, and structure contracts so that his company would earn a fee from travel companies every time a TripAdvisor user clicked to their sites (whether or not it ended in a sale). As the company grew, Kaufer remained at the helm, declining a sale to Yahoo and later leading TripAdvisor through a $210 million sale to IAC/InterActiveCorp, followed, in 2011, by a multi-billion dollar IPO. As of 2022, the site drew more than 400 million visitors per month. In 2022, Kaufer stepped down after 22 years as TripAdvisor's CEO.
Personal life
His wife, Caroline, did not live to see TripAdvisor's full growth and success. She died from pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer in 2005 at age 42, leaving Steve to raise their four children, then aged 13, 12, 7, and 5. In 2012, he remarried a woman with four kids of her own.[3]
Through launching the Stephen and Caroline Kaufer Fund for Neuroendocrine Research (and contributing to the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation), he has supported medical research related to his wife's illness.[3]
Regarding his own relationship with travel, he has said, "Most people assume I'm an avid traveler who'd like nothing more than to roam the world for three months. Not true. TripAdvisor was born of an average traveler’s desire to plan a great trip for a precious week or two of vacation time."[3]
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