Who we are

Hey folks, welcome to Zicasso’s blog. We’ll be using this blog to post information about our company as well as share travel tips and insights from us and travel experts from different parts of the world. This is also where we’ll post random musings on the state of the travel industry, technology, and personal updates. It’s a good place for you to interact with us and leave comments.

“So what is Zicasso all about? Yet another online travel website?,” you might be asking. Well, yes…but a rather unique one! I’m really excited to tell you all about it. But it’s kind of hard, like really hard, to talk about what our solution is before we launch. So first, I’ll talk about what problems we want to solve.

My wife, Yuchun Ku, and I are avid travelers. She’s been to 42 countries and I’ve to 36. When it came to trip planning and booking, we noticed a trend: If we were taking a simple trip with say, one or two stops in a familiar destination, there were lots of good solutions on the Internet today, ranging from online travel agencies like Expedia and Travelocity to travel search engines like Kayak and Sidestep. But many trips were not so simple, resulting in 30+ hours of research and planning and booking everything we needed.

So Yuchun and I started Zicasso a little over a year ago to take all that hassle out. We’ve got a great team to build a company on a unique idea: getting the vacation you want, no matter what your requirements, can be hassle free. Finding quality at the best prices can be easy. Knowing where to go for authentic travel experiences can be simple.

A bit more about us. We are based in Mountain View, California—the center of the tech universe (and also home of Google). Inspired by the search giant’s doggy-friendly campus, we too have our own golden retriever to keep us company and sane during all our long start-up hours. Here’s a picture of me with Rico:

Rico’s original title was Director of Non-Human Resources but recently got promoted to Chief Play Officer. As CPO, his main duty consists of coming over to humans working at a desk with a tennis ball in his mouth and asking if you’d like to play fetch.

We’re a bunch of Silicon Valley geeks and MBA’s with a passion for travel. We have an ambitious plan to build one of the Internet’s most useful travel websites. There’s a lot more to our story, so stay tuned!

Brian Tan
Founder and CEO