By Hannah Sampson
Frustration fueled Gareth Williams’ interest in creating a better flight search product after he found himself spending too much time looking for air travel options to visit his brother back in 2001.
“I spent a week writing a tool that would save me half an hour,” he said in a recent interview.
Skyscanner, an Edinburgh, Scotland-based travel search company that Williams co-founded with two partners in 2003, came out of that tool. The website, Skyscanner.com, compares flights, hotels and car rentals to find the best deals and the flight app has been downloaded more than 25 million times, Williams said.
Now, the company employs about 300 people with plans to grow to 500 in the upcoming year. Sequoia Capital invested in Skyscanner in October, valuing the company at $800 million.
The company has six offices around the world, including Edinburgh, Barcelona, Beijing, Glasgow, Singapore and an Americas hub in Miami that opened in summer of 2013. That office has seven employees; the company plans to have more than 16 based there in 2014.
Williams has not had much time to spend in Miami, but during a visit in November, he said he planned to return.
“In two days, I have had more vitamin D than a Scottish winter provides,” he said.
We spoke to Williams in the company’s Brickell office, and sent him some follow-up questions to answer by email.