TripAdvisor CEO Steve Kaufer (Photo: Thisistravel.co.uk)

Jetsetter, the luxury travel site that Gilt Groupe put up for sale for around $50 million back in October, has been acquired by TripAdvisor, according to a press release published to PRNewswire. A Gilt Groupe representative confirmed the acquisition to Betabeat. Skift reported back in March that Jetsetter was close to an acquisition, most likely by the travel reviews site.

"In a short span of time, Jetsetter has emerged as a premier player in the travel space, and we are proud of what the team has accomplished," Gilt Groupe CEO Michelle Peluso said in the release. "There are strong synergies between Jetsetter and TripAdvisor and we are confident that having Jetsetter be part of the TripAdvisor group will further accelerate its growth."

A report in the Wall Street Journal in October indicated that Jetsetter was having difficulties finding buyers as it had reportedly set its asking price at $100 million. However, a source close to the situation told Betabeat in October that the listing price was actually $30-50 million.

Jetsetter endured a series of ups and downs prior to Gilt's decision to put it up for sale. Its founder and former CEO Drew Patterson faced staffer mutiny last May before Gilt Groupe CEO Kevin Ryan asked him to step down. Mr. Ryan attributed Mr. Patterson's departure to turnover and low staff morale. "More than half of us are looking to leave within the next month, at which point the business won’t be operational,” a Jetsetter employee told Betabeat back in May.

“Too many people have left," Mr. Ryan told Betabeat after Mr. Patterson stepped down. "When you’re the CEO, you’re responsible for that. We’ve had a lot of communication over the last six months on this issue. At a certain point, for myself, you make a change.”

Meanwhile, TripAdvisor is no stranger to acquiring NYC startups. Back in October, it also acquired Brooklyn travel startup Wanderfly.

Update:

A source within the company tells Betabeat that TripAdvisor took the Jetsetter team out tonight to an open bar at Strand and told them "nothing will change." The source also said Jetsetter will be moving out of the Gilt offices "soon," and will keep some sort of relationship with Gilt, though it's unclear what that will be.

Additional reporting contributed by Nitasha Tiku.

Mr. Patterson

Skift broke the news today that former Jetsetter cofounder Drew Patterson was named the new CEO of Room 77, a hotel price comparison startup that raised almost $44 million in funding from investors like Expedia, Concur, Bob Pittman, and General Catalyst Partners.

Mr. Patterson was CEO of Jetsetter--a flash sales luxury travel site operated independently under the Gilt Groupe umbrella--for more than three years until Gilt Groupe chairman Kevin Ryan asked him to step down last May. The move by Jetsetter's board followed an exodus of senior executives, low morale, and fears of a "mutiny" among staffers. 

After leaving Jetsetter, Mr. Patterson, a former executive at Kayak.com, cofounded CheckMate, an app that allows hotel guests to check-in from their smartphone. He's served as CEO there since January, according to his LinkedIn profile and has changed his Twitter handle from @JetSetDrew to the more nimble @DrewPats. Skift reports that Room 77 has "absorbed" CheckMate, as well as Mr. Patterson's cofounder, Adam Rugel and some team members.

Skift also reports that Mr. Patterson been busy raising money for Checkmate and already secured funding from high-profile techies like Twitter cofounder Biz Stone and Twitter's former chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury.

In an interview with Skift, Patterson, who was VP of marketing at Kayak for three years before co-founding Gilt Groupe’s Jetsetter in 2009, said no company has “claimed the mantle of leadership” in mobile and vertical hotel search, which he described as only being “in the second or third inning.”

With all that investor pedigree, Skift wondered whether Room 77 should have "tapped a CEO candidate with public company experience for a possible IPO," posing questions about the motivations of Room 77 founder and chairman Brad Gerstner:

Speaking of spin, some will question the announcement’s back story.

Gerstner and Patterson say the idea to hire Patterson as Room 77′s first CEO only emerged around three weeks ago when the two were having dinner and discussing mobile, hotel search, and Patterson’s fledgling CheckMate.

As chairman and founder, Gerstner has wielded control of Room 77 since its beginnings in 2010. Perhaps opting for Patterson instead of one of the “bigger names” would ensure that Gerstner’s choreography goes unchallenged.

That's the thing about founder/chairman, they tend to like to control.

As for Mr. Patterson's former company, Gilt Groupe put Jetsetter up for sale last October. At the time, the Wall Street Journal reported Gilt had trouble finding buyers and lowered its asking price.

When we spoke to Mr. Ryan in December, he said everything was on schedule for the sale and that he expected "binding bids" due that month. We asked about the status of the sale this afternoon, but a Gilt Groupe representative declined to comment.

Mr. Ryan (Photo: Invoke Media)

Weeks after news broke that flash sales giant Gilt Groupe put its travel deals site, Jetsetter, up for sale, the Wall Street Journal reports that Gilt is looking for a new CEO to replace company founder Kevin Ryan. Sources told the Journal that Mr. Ryan and the Gilt board agreed two months ago to quietly begin the hunt for a new CEO who can help usher the struggling e-commerce site towards a successful IPO.

Despite flailing forays into verticals like menswear and travel, Gilt is still eyeing going public within the next 18 months, and wants a CEO who can revamp Mr. Ryan's business strategy in order to "generate sufficiently predictable profits."

This is the second high-level shakeup in four years for the New York-based e-commerce company. In September 2008, Susan Lyne was brought in to head the company, but was then replaced by Mr. Ryan in 2010 as Gilt was poised to expand into new markets.

Gilt has not been without its stumbles. Back in January, the company laid off 90 employees, closing Gilt City offices in six different markets.

UPDATE 2 p.m.: Betabeat spoke with a source close to the company who offered a different version of events. According to the source, it was never Mr. Ryan's intent to stay on as Gilt Groupe's CEO through its transition into a public company.

Gilt Groupe is one of three companies in the AlleyCorp network, along with 10Gen and Business Insider--both prominent, fast-growth New York startups. Mr. Ryan's business partner Dwight Merriman, a fellow DoubleClick veteran, also does not have plans to stay on as CEO, should 10Gen go public, added the source.

Considering Mr. Ryan's tenure at Gilt, the source also scoffed at the idea that the board, where Mr. Ryan has voting power, was searching for someone with more ecommerce experience. Rather, the source said the board had always been aware of Mr. Ryan's intent and with an IPO possibly happening within six months to a year, it was time to start the search.

Now that 10Gen is busy scaling--the source said 10Gen had raised $50 million at a $500 million valuation--Mr. Ryan will be advising on matters like sales, as opposed to 10Gen's early day when Mr. Merriman, DoubleClick's former CTO, exclusively handled 10Gen for AlleyCorp. Mr. Ryan also recently joined the board of the Yale Corporation, which manages a $19.3 billion endowment.

The source said Mr. Ryan is expected to still devote the bulk of his time to Gilt and will keep his office with the company, returning to the type of role he had in his previous post at Gilt's chairman.

Nitasha Tiku contributed reporting to this article. 

Mr. Ryan (Photo: Invoke Media)

After a tumultuous spring that led to staffer mutiny and the ouster of CEO Drew Patterson, Gilt Groupe has decided to put its travel site up for sale, according to sources who talked to The Wall Street Journal. The Journal reports that the company has been shopping around Jetsetter for the past few weeks with an asking price around $50 million, but so far no interested bidders have taken the bait.

Writes the Journal:

Gilt's move to sell the unit underscores how the New York-based company has struggled at times to expand beyond its core business of holding time-limited online "flash sales" of women's fashions. It is under pressure to increase its revenue and expand into new markets, having raised another $138 million last year from a group of venture capitalists, a deal that valued the small retailer at $1 billion.

The Journal notes that sources said the asking price of the flailing travel company was set too high at $100 million, underscoring the fact that "there hasn't been much interest" from buyers.

UPDATE: A source close the situation told Betabeat that the $100 million figure was never discussed and that the actual price is in the $30 to $50 million range. The source also said the process is several weeks along and that Gilt has had discussions with both companies in the travel space and financial players. New owners, the source reasoned, could allow Jetsetter to accelerate its growth.

Drew Patterson, Jetsetter's former CEO, left in May following an exodus of six senior executives. Gilt Groupe CEO Kevin Ryan asked Mr. Patterson to step down, citing increased staff turnover and sinking morale. Since then, Jetsetter has not publicly named a new CEO. Rob Deeming, Gilt Groupe's director of strategy and operation, was named as acting manager. At the time, Mr. Ryan told Betabeat he expected to appoint a new CEO by November.

“More than half of us are looking to leave within the next month, at which point the business won’t be operational,” a Jetsetter employee told Betabeat at the time.

If you have any information about the sale, please email: tips@betabeat.com

With contributing reporting from Nitasha Tiku

Previously:

Kevin Ryan Asks Jetsetter CEO Drew Patterson to Step Down After ‘Mutiny’ From Staffers

Flash Dance! Luxury Flash Sales Sites Regroup After Layoffs

Airbnb and Jetsetter better step up their local luxury game. Today, onefinestay, the London-based home-rental company announced it would be heading stateside, flush with $12 million in financing, and ready to open up its "unhotel" model in New York City. What, exactly, is an "unhotel"? Basically, just a fancy way of saying Airbnb for the fabulous set or Jetsetter's Homes listings. The company finds high-end private abodes, takes care of the photography, marketing, and insurance, and offers amenities like linens and cleaning.

Global investment firm Canaan Partners, which has offices in New York and Silicon Valley, led the round. Existing investors Index Ventures and PROfounders also participated. Index has certainly been a busy beaver. Since revealing its new $442 million fund Sunday night, Index has already announced four deals, including New York darlings Codecademy and Shapeways. (Onefinestay cofounder and CEO Greg Marsh spent three years on Index Ventures' IT investment team.)

"Two years ago, we hardly dared dream that owners of high-end homes would be so receptive to our business model," Mr. Marsh said in the press release. Of course, in that time, Airbnb, which was founded in 2008, has popularized the concept and onefinestay, launched in London in 2010, has benefitted from consumer comfort levels with letting strangers into their homes. (HomeAway, which was founded in 2005 with more typical vacation fare, and went public last summer, currently has a market cap of $1.74 billion.)

But don't count Airbnb out of the luxe life just yet. While onefinestay has two offerings currently available at more than $1,000/night, Airbnb has more than 50 New York City listings over $1,000/night, the highest being an Upper West Side duplex one block from Central Park inexplicably priced at $9,999/night. Wait, maybe Airbnb is the Airbnb for rich people?

Mr. Patterson via @jetsetdrew

Gilt Groupe founder Kevin Ryan and chairman Susan Lyne spent Monday at the offices of Jetsetter, a deals site for luxury travel that operates independently under the Gilt Groupe umbrella. When the day was done, the Jetsetter board, where Mr. Ryan serves as chairman, approved a bold decision in response to an exodus of six senior executives and pervasive frustration among Jetsetter's nearly 90 employees. "More than half of us are looking to leave within the next month, at which point the business won't be operational," a Jetsetter employee told Betabeat last week, recounting "mutiny" among staffers.

"Drew [Patterson, the company's CEO and cofounder] is going to step down effective immediately," Mr. Ryan told Betabeat by phone this morning. In his stead, Mr. Ryan named Rob Deeming, Gilt Groupe's director of strategy and operations, and Mr. Ryan's former "chief of staff," as acting general manager of Jetsetter. Mr. Deeming had been in charge of Jetsetter's UK office, which was launched last September.

Mr. Ryan said the change at the top was motivated by turnover and morale. "Too many people have left. When you’re the CEO, you’re responsible for that. We’ve had a lot of communication over the last six months on this issue. At a certain point, for myself, you make a change."

Interviews with staffers, who spoke under condition of anonymity last week, painted the picture of a company hampered by Mr. Patterson's and CTO Colin Kroll's unwillingness to listen to and implement other people's ideas--at the expense of employees eager to grow the brand. The initiatives that the duo had put forward, such as a UK office, had flopped, sources said. "They talk to themselves and they think they're smarter than everybody, but they don't know how their customer works," said another Jetsetter staffer, referring to Mr. Patterson and Mr. Kroll. "We have great members, we want to keep them happy."

The way some employees tell it, morale started nose dive around the time Barry Herstein, the company's first-ever chief marketing officer, left Jetsetter. Mr. Herstein, a veteran marketing executive from PayPal, American Express, and the Financial Times Group, had actually been in consideration for the CMO gig at Gilt Groupe. When his appointment was announced last month, Mr. Patterson hailed the opportunity to "get the Jetsetter brand to a larger audience.”

But Mr. Herstein's tenure was short-lived. "Barry started on a Monday, didn't show up for work the following Tuesday and it was announced on Wednesday that he wasn't coming back," said one Jetsetter employee who agreed to speak under condition of anonymity. "He came in and realized all the things that were wrong with the company immediately."

Turnover and disagreement over direction are routine for a startup, but Mr. Herstein was the third highly-respected senior executive to leave Jetsetter this year, following Heather Leisman, the former VP of merchandising and operations and Stephanie Dolgins, the former head of marketing.

Sensing unease among the ranks, two weeks ago, Mr. Patterson broke staffers up into small groups to meet with top executives. Sources say the most successful session, in terms of open dialogue, was with Taleeb Noormohamed, a Canadian entrepreneur brought in to head up Jetsetter's "Homes" division. A week after the meeting, Mr. Noormohamed announced he would be leaving the company as well. "I definitely think Drew was threatened by how much people trust and respect Taleeb. His loss is a huge blow to hope," said one employee. The day of Mr. Noormohamed's goodbye party--for which Mr. Patterson showed up two hours late--employees found out that two more staffers would be leaving as well: Stuart Horowitz, VP of human resources, and Ivana Naeymi-Rad, director of engineering for business platforms. Five minutes after Mr. Patterson arrived at the party, hosted on the roof of the Gansevoort Park Avenue, employees started dispersing. "They all get marginalized, they all get frustrated and they all leave," a source said last Wednesday, adding, "There are about twenty people who are ready to walk out the door tomorrow."

Employees told Betabeat that revenue at Jetsetter was "flat," despite adding new venues, wondering why the board didn't act, despite the fact that there were "no positive signs coming from the company (including financial)." But the company vehemently disputed that claim on the phone. Jetsetter is poised to do close to $100 million in gross bookings this year, a spokesman said, adding that at yesterday's board meeting, Jetsetter reported 16 percent growth year-over-year for this quarter despite an industry-wide lag in the discount offerings. "The travel market is doing pretty well right now, which means there is less discount inventory available," noted Mr. Ryan. Individuals months may have been flat, but never a quarter, said the spokesman.

We had heard that Jetsetter was burning through $500,000 a month, but a company spokesman says Jetsetter has been cash-flow break-even since it was launched, which is unusual for ecommerce companies that normally require a fair amount of cash to build up. Jetsetter was capitalized with $1 million three years ago and hasn't raised since. After that initial raise, neither Gilt nor any outside investors have put money into Jetsetter, says the company. From an accounting perspective, however, Jetsetter still loses a few hundred thousand dollars per month, which is half of what it was six months ago. But the business should cross over into profitability next year, on schedule.

In terms of cash flow, said the spokesman, Jetsetter has been the single best business in all of Gilt.

The company also disputed employee statements that Jetsetter's UK office, one of Mr. Patterson's pet projects, had shut down. "That was a pretty big deal when we opened up another office," said a Jetsetter staffer. "And then to see it fail so quickly was pretty demoralizing for everyone. There’s still some people over there, but we’re no longer really operational in the UK. They’re more there just for the sales side." Jetsetter, on the other hand, says the UK has not closed down and claims the company is in the proces of hiring five more people. Currently, however, the UK office is just there to source deals for the US. Originally, Jetsetter had hoped for an independent UK team to create a business overseas, but found it difficult to get members. The last entry from Twitter account @jetsetter_uk was February 1st.

According to one employee, during a meeting of twenty staffers, Shaun Stewart, VP of sales and operations, suggested that Jetsetter start copying their competitor, Tablet Hotels. The source said Mr. Herstein, the short-lived CMO, asked why Jetsetter wouldn't stick with what it's good at it--beautiful pictures and editorial content--over copying someone else. Jetsetter used to showcase "quality products," said the staffer, "now it's crappy hotels."

Mr. Ryan offered praise for Mr. Patterson's willingess to try new things, contrary to what we had heard from employees. "When Drew came up with the idea of selling full-price hotels a year and a half ago, no one at Gilt had done this and no one in the flash sales space had done this," said Mr. Ryan. "Now it’s 40 percent of our business." Jetsetter also plans on announcing a number of new hotel chains into its offering this coming month, including the recently added Mandarin Oriental. He also spoke highly of Jetsetter's product, especially as compared to its competitors. "The product itself is fantastic. I actually think it’s one of the best products we have at Gilt. It’s won lots of awards. I’m sitting here in the conference room looking at the 2011 Webby award," he said.

"Most of our competitors like RueLaLa or Haute Look that entered the travel space two years ago, either have dropped out or have small businesses," said Mr. Ryan. "Neither one is doing even $15 million in revenue. Ideeli same thing. We all started at about the same time. We have a bigger travel flash sales business than the three of them combined." He also pointed out how a European competitor called Voyage Privé tried to enter the U.S. market a year ago, but "dropped out because they couldn’t compete with Jetsetter in this market."

Ultimately, however, Mr. Ryan's decision to replace Mr. Patterson, a former VP of marketing at Kayak.com, was motivated by the fact that, "There’s been more management turnover for a variety of reasons in a small company than there should be. There’s always some unhappy people everywhere but I think the internal cooperation within Jetsetter is not great between various departments." During the breakout sessions with senior executives a couple weeks ago, Mr. Patterson's staff also blamed low morale on lack of communication, which one source called merely superficial. "It was still a top-down movement of them telling us what was wrong with the company, rather than us telling them what they needed to change," said the source. Mr. Kroll, Jetsetter's CTO who led alongside Mr. Patterson, will be staying in place.

Mr. Ryan said Jetsetter has not yet begun a search for a new CEO. Considering that Voyage Privé is about a $400 million business in Europe, he said, Jetsetter could be expected to approach that as well. "The person in charge, we need to feel comfortable that they can scale this into an international large travel business. It’s too early to learn if Rob is that person," said Mr. Ryan. "But we'll do a search. And my guess is within six months, we’ll have someone new in here from a travel background."

We will be covering this story as it breaks. If you have information about Jetsetter, please contact ntiku@observer.com.

Mr. Patterson via @jetsetdrew

Today, Jetsetter, the luxury vacation deals site (think flash sales on villas in St. Vincent or a pied-à-terre in Paris) announced the appointment of its first-ever chief marketing officer, Barry Herstein. A former CMO at PayPal, American Express, and the Financial Times Group, most recently Mr. Herstein was responsible for revitalizing Snapfish, the photo sharing and printing service, after a decline in revenue growth.

(Ex-Snapfishers seemed to be everywhere these days. Former Snapfish CEO Ben Nelson recently set his sights on reimagining an Ivy League experience at half the cost.)

Betabeat chatted with Jetsetter CEO Drew Patterson about the need for a CMO, Jetsetter's role within the Gilt Groupe family, and those pesky tech blogs.

Over email, Mr. Patterson said that hiring a CMO was crucial because "investing in marketing to get the Jetsetter brand to a larger audience," is the next stage in the company's development. Jetsetter already has 2.2 million members since launching in the fall of 2009. Although 95 percent of travelers return to to Jetsetter after their trip, they have booked just over 500,000 nights.

Jetsetter also seems to be heading in the same direction as parent company Gilt Groupe by offering more full-price vacations--over the steep sales that may have initially lured you in. (Vendors, naturally, prefer not selling at a discount.) "I am most excited about the growth in Jetsetter’s full-price retail collection, which is contributing over 35% of revenue each month," said Mr. Patterson, noting the 800 hotels and resorts in Jetsetter's full-price retail collection.

Don't let the "deals," part fool you. Things can get pretty pricey, if you let it. The highest purchase on Jetsetter so far has been a $217,000 for renting Caribbean home for two weeks over Christmas. The highest price for a flash sale item, on the other hand, was a number of $42,560 packages for a cruise to the North Pole. Mr. Patterson also noted that the second highest flash purchase was a trip to Antarctica for $23,375. "Apparently the poles are both expensive and popular!" he said.

As for its relationship with Gilt, Mr. Patterson said setting Jetsetter up as a separate company has enabled them to offer a more tailored service. "Travel is a massive category, with different purchase behavior and product needs from fashion," he said. "The product and technology teams spend every day thinking about how we can improve the experience of booking travel and going on the road."

The companies still collaborate. "Gilt has been a big part of Jetsetter’s history and success, incubating the company with seed capital and introducing Jetsetter to passionate Gilt shoppers," Mr. Patterson, said, pointing to a number of cross-category initiatives. "For example, Jetsetter destination weddings and honeymoons will be presented alongside Gilt’s wedding apparel and product in an upcoming wedding sale later this week."

During the recent layoffs at Gilt Groupe, sources posited that there may have been too much overlap between Gilt City, an "adventures" and local lifestyles vertical and Jetsetter. When asked why Jetsetter has grown while Gilt City has been forced to close in six markets and layoff top staffers, Mr. Patterson said. "We’ve got a great relationship and work closely with the folks at Gilt City (and I happen to be a passionate consumer of their restaurant deals). My guess is that any chatter about overlap was just an attempt to drive PVs by gossipy tech blogs (which I also read passionately)."

Well, much of that gossip turned out to be true. Regardless, thank you kindly for the passionate pageviews?! We'll take it!

As Jetsetter scales, Mr. Patterson said the next challenge will be around execution. "It’s hard to keep the same level of service and focus as the enterprise expands. My goal is that we maintain the same attention to detail and service level for our millionth customer as we had for our first."

UPDATE: Gilt Groupe has not returned requests for clarification or comment, but responded via AllThingsD this morning.

CEO Kevin Ryan told the blog: “We are not closing down any businesses. We are not closing down Gilt Taste, and we aren’t merging Gilt City and Jetsetter.” Mr. Ryan also said, “In its fifth month of business, Park & Bond did more revenue than any other business in its fifth month,” although he did not say by what metric. He added that President John Auerbach is still employed at the company for now. But, he noted, there was a chance some of its top 15 executives may leave. (Chief Marketing Officer David Zucker left the company in July and Chief Product Officer Stefan Pepe left the company in June.)

Mr. Ryan did, however, tell AllThingsD that Gilt expects to "selectively trim" staff by about 50 over the next couple months, but claimed that by the end of March the number of employees would be larger than it is now. Gilt Groupe, he said, is on track for an IPO, possibly at the end of the fourth quarter, but mostly likely in 2013.

As for Gilt Taste, Mr. Ryan claimed that the site would need fewer staffers despite "doing great."

Business Insider, where Mr. Ryan is chairman, has also confirmed impending layoffs of 50 to 60 people within the next week or so. According to Business Insider's source, five to six percent of the company will let go across various departments in order to get cash-flow break-even by the second quarter of 2012.

Here is our original post:

Since Friday Betabeat has been hearing rumors about impending layoffs at Gilt Groupe. Late Tuesday night, a second source familiar with the company told us that the layoffs would happen on Wednesday and might be as high as 170 employees. We have reached out to Gilt Groupe for confirmation and will update the post as soon as we hear back.

The accounts vary, but both sources also point to restructuring within the company. One source said Gilt Taste, which hired former Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl as editorial director last May, is expected to function at half its current workforce, with the remaining staffers funneled into other open positions in the company. Another source speculated that Gilt Taste was likely to be shut down.

Betabeat also heard that Gilt City and Jetsetter, which overlap in the high-end travel market, will merge. In October, Gilt City, which has a partnership deal with Google offers, acquired the daily deals site BuyWithMe, which itself suffered from big layoffs in the crowded deals space.

In some cases, the rumored layoffs may have already begun. A source said that a president at one of the Gilt Groupe verticals had been recently let go. Based on the description of a longtime executive who helped launch Gilt Man and other details, sources pointed to Park & Bond president John Auerbach.

Former employees say Park & Bond, which launched a partnership with GQ in August, hasn't been moving merchandise and that, aside from Gilt Women, revenues are not what the company had hoped for in its dizzying attempt to chase growth by spinning off new verticals outside of its core business.

“We plow through 100 ideas a week," Rob Deeming, Kevin Ryan's chief-of-staff said in October, adding, "At any one time I’m trying to manage a list of 10 to 15 businesses we’re thinking about going into." In November, just before announcing its expansion into 90 new countries, Gilt Groupe revealed that it was hiring a worker a day.

One explanation for operational adjustments within company might be an attempt to trim the fat before Gilt Groupe's much-speculated-about IPO. In May, the company picked up $138 million from Goldman Sachs, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and others, along with a rumored $1 billion valuation.

The mood among certain verticals is tense as employees worry about their future with a company. Among developers, Gilt was always known as an exacting environment. Now, a source said, "Everybody in there is looking for new jobs." Last month, Lot18 poached  Andrew Koch, formerly VP of marketing at Gilt, as its VP of product. The feeling is that layoffs "are just a question of when or where."

We will continue to update the story as it develops, so please reach us by email with any information: tips@betabeat.com.

The flossy, flossy.

You know Gilt Groupe is in overdrive mode when even its verticals are diversifying.

Jetsetter, the travel site Gilt Groupe founded in 2009, must have liked the looks of Airbnb's numbers,  since it just launched its own foray into the vacation home  rentals market with Jetsetter Homes. As The Next Web notes, Homes starts off with collection of 200 curated and verified villas in exotic international locales. Since this is Gilt we're talking about,  the pricing is "exclusive," with some options offered in the company's customary flash sale style, depending on availability. Although in the case of these homes, we imagine the scarcity is more than just manufactured.

The booking site, which comes with international inventory, benefits from Jetsetter's emphasis on luxe photography,  "including our revolutionary 360-degree tours which transport the user into palatial homes and fabulous infinity pools around the world," says Jetsetter founder and CEO Drew Patterson.

Hopefully, Mr. Patterson learned from Airbnb's mistake and invested in some hefty anti-vandalism insurance. I mean, have you ever tried getting graffiti off an infinity pool?

We spotted Jetsetter founder Drew Patterson right away and demanded to know what happened to the killer acceptance speech he promised us on the red carpet. Mr. Patterson said the preponderance of Anthony Weiner riffs made him decide last minute to swap out "A picture tells a story . . . Ask Weiner" for the more chaste, "Kids, we're going to Disneyland."

Mr. Patterson was standing next to GroupMe's Steve "Bosu ball" Martocci, a fellow Gilt Groupe alum, who hadn't made it to actual ceremony. The two reminisced about the old days. "About this time last year I had this little product," said Mr. Martocci, making his hands into box-shape. "I asked Drew what I should do . . ."

"What did I tell you?" Mr. Patterson asked.

"Don't take money from Gilt," Mr. Martocci shot back. They laughed. It was hard to tell if it was a joke.

***

Betabeat walked past the cordoned-off VIP section, but didn't recognize any VIPs and headed upstairs where we ran into the affable Evan Gregory, one of the co-founders of Auto-Tune the News, who performed earlier that night with inadvertent Bed Intruder Antoine Dodson and a full band. "In some ways, we look at ourselves as odd talent scouts for unintentional singers. Having applied our craft over months and years to Congress and newscasters--we look for people that have many of those same qualities that a conventional, intentional singer might have, meaning like sonically  . . ."

" . . . Like cadence?" Betabeat interrupted?

"Exactly. Antoine is at the top of the hall of fame of unintentional singers."

Mr. Gregory, who grew up in Virginia--along with the rest of the Gregory brothers--said he had been living in Williamsburg, close to the bridge for the past eight and a half years. Betabeat gave his boyish face the once-over. Wait, how old are you?

“Exceedingly old, just very very old.”

"What are you 24?"

"Yeah I’ll be 21 next week and I’ve been in Brooklyn for 8 years," he laughed. “I’m 32.”

Mr. Gregory then helped Betabeat parse how exactly Auto-the-News was connected to tech-scene veteran Fred Seibert. "Our relationship with [Seibert's] Next New Network doesn’t exist anymore because they were bought by Google. I’m looking at like six of their employees now," he said gesturing at a  of people walking past the booth. "Everyone there is now a Google employee. But our deal with them was basically: they manage our partnership with YouTube while we create all of our content independently. They simply operated the relationship between us and YouTube and were allowed to sell ads against us. Now that deal is dissolved so we're even more independent."

So, we had to know. How do the Williamsburg hipsters react when they find out what Mr. Gregory does? "It varies between (a) What is that? (b) I’ve never heard of that, or occasionally (c) I think my mom showed me that!”