Recent SI grad Eric Garcia (MSI ’10), now working as a software engineer at the Ann Arbor-based startup Mobiata, shares the news that his company was acquired on Nov. 18 by the online travel giant Expedia. Mobiata has developed best-selling travel applications such as FlightTrack, ranked as a Top 5 best-selling iPhone travel app for the past 18 months; itinerary manager TripDeck; and hotel-booking app HotelPal. In acquiring the company, Expedia’s CEO Dara Khosroshahi said “there’s simply no better company out there doing mobile travel apps with the same level of design sensibility and utility as Mobiata.”
Mobiata’s applications have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, TechCrunch, Macworld and PC Magazine, to name just a few.
“My degree at SI definitely led me to where I am today,” said Garcia. “My tailored program of study let me discover what I wanted to do and find my niche. Every day, I use skills I learned at SI, from effective brainstorming, to designing accessible interfaces, to how to approach and solve problems.”
Garcia is also the co-founder of Phonagle, a startup in Ann Arbor that specializes in location-based games for mobile devices. The company’s other principals are SI grads Sergio Mendes-Baiges (MSI ’08), Benjamin Malley (MSI ’10), and Jeremy Canfield (MSI ’10). Their game outWord, which uses the real world as a game board, is available from the iTunes AppStore. The company was developed after winning a 10-week summer internship program competition sponsored by venture capital firm RPM Ventures. It was during that internship that Garcia connected with the Mobiata team, who were working in the same building. In August, Mobiata moved to new quarters in the Nickels Arcade.
Read more on AnnArbor.com and the Detroit News.
