Tan Rasab: How WCities nearly conquered the world

Tech Business History

WCities was a London startup that provided local reviews written by a global team of freelancers - a kind of precursor to TripAdvisor. Its young founder, Tan Rasab, jumped on the dot com bandwagon early, hoping that his website could make money with banner advertising. When, along with many other startups, he found that wasn't going to work, he switched to the new idea that was exciting investors: sending information to mobile phones. At the time, that meant text information in black and white. Tan did some big deals to licence his content to telecoms companies. An IPO was in the offing which would have made Tan and his wife fabulously rich. Then 9/11 happened and the bottom fell out of the market, especially for any business connected with travel. Tan Rasab tells the story of the rise and fall of WCities - a classic tale of the dot com era.