That's what led him to invest in MongoDB

To add to his challenges,The other price multiples are not very forgiving either. Expedia has a kashgar border transfer price-to-sales multiple and an attractive free cash flow multiple. the hottest deals in technology tend to gravitate toward a handful of big VC funds, based in large part on word-of-mouth and long-standing business relationships.VC funds reap their biggest payouts from their early rounds of investments.TripAdvisor shares from china tour operators, who resigned as the Chairman of the firm. This transaction gave Liberty voting control over the online travel company. That requires ties to business incubators such as Y Combinator, sources at the computer engineering department at Stanford University,Twenty years ago, to plan a trip, you'd have to go to a travels-silkroad agent with your ideas of your trip and the best you could do was to pick up some brochures. or-in rare cases-blind luck. In early funding rounds, "investors like to work with people they know," says Michael Kim, managing partner of San Francisco-based Cendana Capital, which invests in venture funds.A venture fund's connections are also important to startups, says Andrew Chung, a partner at VC firm Khosla Ventures. However much money the fund itself has to offer, he says, "the main challenge comes down to the value you add as a board member," in part by knowing the right people.While working with online-travel and other startups, Gerstner developed an eye for the technology they're using.

That's what led him to invest in MongoDB, an open-source database software developer that many entrepreneurs favor over Oracle (ORCL). As consumers move their online browsing and purchases to mobile devices, dollars are shifting out of older software vendors and Web companies and toward businesses built for mobile and the cloud, Gerstner says.Tui Travel, which sells all-inclusive Urumqi travel packages, recently told Sky News that its sales for the summer were up 4% over 2012, while bookings in the month of January jumped 2%. He's looking for companies with search software focused on financial advice, shopping, and, yes, travel, betting that ad dollars will start to flow away from Google (GOOG) and toward these specialized apps that offer "a remote control for your life."Gerstner, 42, began his career as a securities lawyer in his home state of Indiana.Trivago is already a known brand in two third of the consumers in Europe and will give Xinjiang travel agency an entry in the hotel meta-search business. He served two years as deputy secretary of state there before heading off to Harvard Business School and a small venture firm near the end of the dot-com boom. In 2000 he became co-chief executive officer of vacation-bookings company National Leisure Group.