A couple of years ago, Randy Petersen and I traveled to Mountain View, CA to meet with a couple of young entrepreneurs who were preparing to launch a site called Flightfox.com. Lauren and Todd, the two young entrepreneurs, had an idea to help travelers find the cheapest/best itineraries and Randy and I were scouting them out to see if they might make a good partner for Milepoint.

Frankly, I was skeptical heading into the meeting. There are no shortage of ways to search for flight and hotel deals, and the chances that Flightfox would represent a game changer and carve out a niche in the market seemed remote to me. And if I’m being completely honest, I’m still not sure that I was wrong about that.

But I must say that Lauren and Todd turned out to be extremely impressive. We had a fantastic lunch, they are both very bright, and Flightfox is certainly an innovative and worthwhile venture – no matter its ultimate fate – and I’m confident they will put everything they have into it to make a go of it.

And it seems that several member of the Australian Frequent Flyer forum have found the Flighfox site to be quite useful. Some of them, like Boris spatsky, have even made a nice little sum as an expert on the site.

Randy did eventually sign Flightfox up as a Milepoint partner. I’m not entirely sure if that partnership is ongoing, but regardless – Lauren and Todd, if you read this I wish you both the best of luck. And thanks again for the awesome t-shirt. Though my wife won’t let me wear it out of the house when I’m with her, I LOVE it and sport it every chance I get 🙂