Hoberman will become non-executive chairman of the already profitable WAYN.com — the initials stand for where are you now? — when he steps down as chairman of Lastminute at the end of the year.
Esprit Capital Partners, a firm formed from the recent merger of Cazenove Private Equity and Prelude Ventures, has put up most of the investment funding for WAYN. Others investing with Hoberman include the founders of some of Britain’s most successful online businesses: David Soskin and Hugo Burge of Cheapflights; Adrian Critchlow and Andy Phillips of Active Hotels (which was sold in 2004), and Constant Tedder of Jagex, an online games company.
WAYN is a networking site that allows users to enter details of where they are and where they have travelled in the past. They can then contact one another to share information — for example, to help find the best skiing in the French Alps, or the best bars in New York.
After a slow start in 2002, WAYN took off after a relaunch in March last year. Pete Ward, 28, one of three friends who founded the firm, said the number of users had since grown from fewer than 50,000 to 7m, with 650,000 more registering last month.
“We are looking to be the next MySpace or You Tube but in the travel sector,” said Ward. “The possibilities are endless. This time next year, it’s going to be very interesting to see where we are because of the growth.”
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MySpace, now owned by News Corporation, the ultimate owner of The Sunday Times, has more than 100m users and is reckoned to be worth billions of dollars.
Unlike MySpace, WAYN has been able to convert about 100,000 users into subscribers paying up to £7.50 a month — ensuring that it does not need to rely on advertising.
Hoberman said: “The numbers speak for themselves. It has eclipsed people like Friends Reunited. WAYN is the next big brand that nobody’s heard of.”
Unusually for a venture- capital investment, Esprit has allowed Ward and his co- founders, Jerome Touze and Mike Lines, to cash in some of their shares.
The initial £25,000 of seed-funding for WAYN.com came from another internet entrepreneur, Steve Pankhurst of Friends Reunited. However, Pankhurst had to sell his shares in WAYN.com when he and his wife sold Friends Reunited to ITV last year.