ITN Taps Top Techies For New Management Team

<B> ITN Taps Top Techies For New Management Team</B>

By Mary Ann McNulty

<i>Palo Alto, Calif.</i> - Wasting little time putting his mark on online booking startup Internet Travel Network, Gadi Maier, named president and CEO in January, today announced his "A-team" of technology veterans assembled to take the company to the next level.

Tapping the talent pool in Silicon Valley, Maier has hired John Metcalfe, with 25 years of management and marketing experience at Genesys Telecom, Silicon Graphics and Hewlett-Packard, as its new vice president of marketing; Ken Pelowski, with 18 years of technology and online travel work at Preview Travel, General Instrument Corp. and Intel, as COO and CFO; William Kohrs, with 21 years of management and technical experience as vice president of services; and John Anderson, with eight years, as vice president of human resources. They join former Litton Enterprise Solutions executive Richard Kerr, hired as vice president of sales last month, and Eric Sirkin, formerly with Apple Computer, as vice president of engineering.

Although Maier and the board worked together to draft ITN's growth strategy, even Maier appeared surprised by the "amazing confluence of talent" he's been able to assemble. "It's important to understand why people at these levels are coming to ITN," he said. "We have technology that's in a strong position, with great growth opportunity in three vertical markets--corporate, airline/car/hotel and other partnerships, and consumer--and to grow in other e-services beyond travel."

To those conjecturing that ITN is bringing on the top talent to attract Wall Street in a long-awaited initial public offering, Maier acknowledged that the company "would like to take advantage of an IPO, when we're ready."

But new marketing VP Metcalfe said taking the company public is the easy part. The challenge for the new team is to expand the technology ITN developed for travel into other service areas.

ITN is conducting a search for one other management executive and hiring other professional services employees to help with its growth. Company founders Bruce Yoxsimer and Dan and Al Whaley continue to work with the new management.

One area to watch is how ITN evolves its corporate offering to allow a hybrid of online and live agent servicing, perhaps involving some Web telephony, Metcalfe said.

Refuting rumors that the company is seeking financing, Maier said ITN is in a "high-growth mode and in a strong financial position. There are no active efforts to raise money." Since its founding in 1995, ITN received at least $10.7 million in venture capital financing from The Contrarian Group, Brentwood Venture Capital, Norwest Venture Capital, Bayview Investors Ltd. of Robertson Stephens & Co., U.S. Venture Partners and Charter Ventures. Last year, United Airlines also took an undisclosed minority stake in ITN.

ITN's corporate product is used by Boeing, Nike, Texas Instruments, the World Bank and Chevron, while United Airlines and Virgin Atlantic use the product for their Web sites.