Web site has plane facts of air travel

What: Seatguru.com, based in Seattle

Who: Matthew Daimler, founder

Employees: two

What it does: Are you flying somewhere and want to scope out the plane in advance? The company's Web site has detailed information about seating, lavatories and exit rows on 250 airplanes used by 30 airlines. It also supplies airline travel policies and articles on travel.

Stakes on a plane: Daimler, now 28, got the idea in 2001 when he was flying often between San Francisco and Prague, Czech Republic, for a project. "I was in coach and knew I was making the same exact flight in another two weeks on the same plane," he said. "I thought, 'Well, here I am in this OK seat, but how do I get into that guy's seat?' " He wished there could be a Web site with that information.

The hobby evolves: Daimler, a computer engineer, registered the site's domain name and grew it into a hobby site. In 2002, he moved to Seattle to take a job with F5 Networks. Soon after, he began using Google's AdSense advertising service, and his site started bringing in more than $3,000 a month.

Building up: Daimler's wife, Susan, quit her job in 2004 to run the site. The revenue and hits continued to increase, and Daimler quit his job this year as well. The couple run the company from their downtown Seattle home.

Plane speaking: In January, Seatguru.com had about 600,000 unique visitors. The site still gets its best data from users who e-mail opinions about seats, Daimler said, and it recently added the ability to print seating diagrams, add comments and fax them in. Airlines have noticed, and some send their own data and lobby for better seat reviews.

Quote: "I'm still sort of baffled that so many people find it useful day in, day out," Daimler said. "Travel is one area that they feel like they don't have a lot of control over. They just buy a ticket, and that's it."

Looking ahead: Daimler said the company is profitable and has not taken any venture funding. He has spoken with Expedia and other large travel sites about offering reservations capability, but that hasn't happened yet. "That is the holy grail of this," he said. "One-stop shopping you're able to dive in, find your flights and compare some of the information upfront."

— Kim Peterson