Limo.com Inc.

Then and Now, a Historical Prospective

Welcome! I'm Doug Rauen, the original domain registrant and founder of Limo.com Inc. Let me take this opportunity to give you a little background on myself and my time in the Limo Industry. Many years ago as a senior at a local Oregon College, I got my first taste of driving a Limo. After college, I spent the next few years working my way up the company ladder. It's obvious by my resume that the Limo and Transportation Industry was my passion pretty early on. In fact, to this very day I still own and operate a mid- sized limo / town car company.

How Limo.com Inc. came to be: In the spring of 1995, I attended a workshop on The World Wide Web. In that very workshop, by pure chance, I searched on the name "limo"... and fortunately, the domain www.limo.com was available! I registered the domain then and there, it was such a long time ago that I actually had to mail a check and fax in the completed form. Far cry from the vast array of sites you can go to today and register any name that may still be available.

In the early years I simply sat on limo.com and watched others in the Limo Industry try to formulate online business plans and make those sites with similar names work. Those businesses are not here today. In the midst of the dot com explosion, 1995 to 2001, I hired IBM to do a feasibility study on a new type of online reservation system and various operator enhanced services; I simply needed them to verify the revenue potential. The outcome was a big yes; this could be a lucrative site. Just when the team was ready to invest more money and seek VC funding I sat back and took a big breath. Something told me it was time to put on the brakes. The next month (October 2001) the dot com bubble burst. My intuition was dead on.

Over the years I researched several low capital site development scenarios, all the while wanting to find the best way to serve the Limo Industry and its Operators. We decided to build an Advertising Directory Service and offer various Limo Operator Utilities. The goal was to create a site that was easy and affordable for the Smaller Limo Operators, but also offer a service that was beneficial for the larger Limo Companies. It worked for a while, slowing building, then gas prices spiked, forcing many Limo Operators to re adjust their spending. In an effort to help my fellow Limo Drivers, Limo Manufacturers and Limo Companies, I offered as many deals and promotions as I could. Owning my own Town Car Service made the need to help the others even more important, I knew if my bottom line was affected, theirs certainly was too. Then the double whammy...a slowing economy.

In the spring of 2008 at the annual National Limousine Association and Limousine Chauffeur and Transportation (NLA - LCT) show in Las Vegas I introduced myself to the new owners of limos.com. They had just bought limos.com and were new to the Limo and Transportation Industry. Although, they did have a travel background and had many members of the original Hotwire Founders Team. We had a pleasant talk and threw out that two great domain names like ours would work better together than working against each others. Talks began four months after that initial meeting. A co-branding deal was reach in the spring of 2009. We are all confident and enthusiastic about this new co-branded alliance.

"This was a strategic move to equip us to better serve our customers and the transportation industry," said Doug Rauen, founder and CEO of Limo.com. "It secures our future by allowing us to leverage the knowledge and strength of Limos state of the art technology and stellar customer support. At the same time, this independent partner model lets us retain the unique qualities of our business culture and environment that have driven the continuous innovation, entrepreneurial agility, and customer-oriented solutions which have positioned us as a thought leader in our market."

The merger has added dimension to our business, our history and experience defines us and with our new site structure and new strategic partnership, we have confidence that we will stick with a traditions that continue to boost this amazing industry and offer so much to our valuable consumer.

Thank you for reading this, I would like to hear from you, contact me directly at Doug Rauen if I can personally answer any Limo Industry related questions.

Doug Rauen

Founder and CEO of Limo.com Inc.