Stanford University has proved itself fertile ground for sprouting successful Internet entrepreneurs. From Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo! (YHOO ) to Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google (GOOG ), these Stanford whiz kids-turned-businessmen have indelibly shaped the Internet as we know it. Following such footprints may be daunting, but many are game to try.
One of the most compelling attempts of late may be coming from 33-year-old Svetlozar Nestorov, a computer-science grad who studied data-mining with the Google founders. Last year, he and a co-founder launched travel search engine Mobissimo. A so-called "meta search" site, Mobissimo takes a visitor's query and scours about 80 other travel sites and search engines, typically returning a wider array of prices, airlines, and options. The fledgling company already handles about 500,000 travel searches a month -- a blip compared to online travel bigwigs, but solid for a newly hatched search site.
Mobissimo and other travel search engines alike are proving more and more the value in online marketing and using search as a marketing medium. Spreading your advertising budget through the main search engines is important but whats even more important is watching the small players. They can provide a cheaper way to advertise with a higher ROI.
