Travel site Peek raises $10 million

LOS ANGELES — Travel recommendation company Peek raised $10 million in new financing to help it manage its massive growth.

The company, which includes big-name investors like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, has some new ones. Pete Flint, the founder/CEO of real estate listings site Trulia has invested and joined the board of directors, along with Gigi Pritzker and Michael Pucker (Hyatt Hotels).

Ruzwana Bashir, the co-founder of Peek, calls the site the Open Table of the travel industry, offering tools for consumers to book tours and activities, and for small businesses to offer their wares to online customers.

The company, which started in 2011, books “hundreds of millions” of dollars worth of tours, and has seen sales increase 400% in 2016. The new funding will “allow us to handle the pace and growth,” she says.

Based in San Francisco, Peek recently opened a second office near Salt Lake City.

Bashir's inspiration for starting Peek began with trying to plan a trip to Istanbul.

“I wanted to find something to do,” she said. “I didn’t understand why there wasn’t something like Open Table that would allow me to book online. That’s why I started the business.”

Some $18 million in financing has been raised for Peek to date.

Other new investors include  David Bonderman (the founding chairman of venture firm TPG) and Ray Lane the former President of Oracle.

Flint, who sold Trulia to Zillow for $3.5 billion in 2014, said he saw similarities between Peek and Trulia, “as both companies empower small businesses.”

Additionally, Peek has a new partnership to offer booking directly on reviews site Yelp, which begins today. Bashir says this gives Peek customers access to the 160 million monthly visitors to Yelp with instant booking. Peek will split commissions with Yelp.