Steve Murch brings significant vacation rental experience to Escapia, as co-founder, President, CEO and Chairman of VacationSpot.com, a pioneer in the online reservation of vacation rentals, which was sold to Expedia in January 2000 for approximately $87M. At Expedia, Steve led the vacation package and destination services team, creating two patents on the first dynamic vacation packaging system on the Internet, which now represents over $2 billion in annual transactions. Steve has keynoted multiple times at the Vacation Rental Managers Association (VRMA) annual conference since 1998. He is an avid renter of vacation properties, and his own family has owned multiple vacation rentals in North America. Steve worked for Microsoft Corporation in a variety of senior marketing and executive positions from 1991-1997, and led the creation of the MSN Gaming Zone, with several patents related to online multiplayer gaming. Steve is also on the board of online travel startup Adventure Central Inc., which is powering the adventure travel market with an on-demand reservation platform. Steve holds a dual BS in Applied Mathematics / Computer Science and Industrial Management from Carnegie Mellon University, an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was named a George F. Baker Scholar. |