The Exchanges

Q That was a brilliant impersonation there. Tell me though, for those that maybe missed our first episode, how did you make your way into the world of startups and come to found Travel Perk?

A By complete accident, I would say. I'm always jealous reading about Warren Buffett when he was seven. He was already making millions, selling Limolet or something, and I always liked computers. I liked the engineering part of that. I started coding when I was very young, even younger than you, Harry. And yeah, I was passionate about understanding systems and hacking in the old sense of the word, meaning understanding how a system works and then finding creative ways of Getting the system to do something that wasn't meant to do, and that's what I'm passionate about, and building stuff, understanding how things work, just evolved into building a team and running a team rather than just coding. So more practically, I've been living in Barcelona for 10 years now. I'm from Israel originally, and I came here for business school and kind of stayed around working in a couple of startups, always in online travel. That always has been my niche or my industry. Previously, I started another company called Hotel Ninjas, Which was a software service for hotel management, which we sold together with a classmate of mine from business school. We sold that business to Booking.com back in 2014. So I sold the business to Booking, stayed there for a year or so, and then I quit to start Travelperk. And the two sentences pitch behind Travelperk is, business travel sucks, and we're here to fix it.

AI assessment note: “sold the business to Booking, stayed there for a year or so, and then I quit to start Travelperk.”

Q And here we are. What an incredible journey it's been since. I do have to pick up on one thread that you mentioned there, though, and it was the founding for you of Hotel Ninjas and then selling to Booking.com. So I have to ask, how did your experience founding Hotel Ninjas maybe change your operating mentality today with Travel Perk?

A It's a great question. Maybe the main one for me, um, when we even start a company, we think about what you're going to build and sell is, and it sounds obvious, but it wasn't for me, is make sure you choose a market with a clear aim. What I mean by that is, at Hotel Ninjas, we were building software for hotel management. You know, hotels, you know, if you think about when you go and check into a hotel and they, they have this screen, they type, like the receptionist would tap into a keyboard and give you your key, uh, to your room, uh, et cetera. This is the software that we were building, what, what she's using or he's using to check you in, et cetera. So really the operations of hotels. And we built this amazing software, cloud-based, you know, modern SaaS business, modern SaaS products, I should say. And then we went to hotel owners, and nobody wanted to even give us half an hour of their time. And their point was, we don't need a solution. And I was like, yeah, but you have a server-based solution that sits in your basement. Why don't you move to the cloud? And like, they were just not understanding that. They were saying, what do you mean the cloud? I mean, the server is in my hotel, and I can control it. Why would I move everything to the cloud? Sounds risky. Right. And every time we came up with another amazing feature we built, they came back with, I don't need that. A…

AI assessment note: “So when we created Travel Perk, we made sure that we are actually solving a big pain”

Q So Avi, if we put ourselves in a hypothetical situation here, imagine I'm an angel investment of yours, say, and you're advising me I'm an early stage seed company on getting the best group of people around the table. Having had the experience that you have now with Travelperk, what would the advice be to me in getting that best cohort of people around the table?

A Yeah, so I would probably go for one or two of three categories. I would go for one or two, and when I say I would go for, you know, it could be An advisor. It could be a board member. It could be an investor, right? I mean, somebody who's killing the game, who has an incentive to help you succeed, right? And I would go for one or two in each of the three categories. First being industry experts. These people can help you avoid mistakes that you're about to do and open doors, especially if like many industries are built on, on, on having the right network. So these kind of people who can, who come with the network can definitely help. So I would go for one or two industry experts. I would go for one or two people that have the right network into fundraising. The best people in this, in fundraising perspective, Are successful entrepreneurs, right? So in our case, going back to Johannes, he was incredibly, um, important and helpful for us in raising funds all the way from the series A to the series C. So having somebody with the network and you and I know that the best way to get a term sheet is a very warm introduction from a portfolio company, right? I mean, this is the best way. So I would make sure that I have one or two well-connected people into the funding, the VC area, or, you know, if that's the path that you're taking. And the last category I would say is one or two X o…

AI assessment note: “I would probably go for one or two of three categories.”

Q The D round, okay. What would you like to change about the investor conversations that you could do better personally, do you think?

A Yeah, I think that maybe pushing more on the option pool. It's kind of one of the last pieces you negotiate on the term sheet, and everybody's tired from pushing on valuation, and then you just accept whatever is written there. And I think you have to be more strategic. I need to be more strategic about it and have a better understanding of what we're trying to achieve in terms of recruitment in the next 18 to 24 months, which is a reasonable time frame until the next fundraise. And then make sure that the, the option pool is reflecting that. Otherwise it becomes a bit of a messy discussion at the board level after that. So I would use that opportunity to push more on the, on the option pool side.

AI assessment note: “I think that maybe pushing more on the option pool.”

Q Absolutely optimizing time, and you see absolute benefits to that. If you're not so resource abundant, and I'm not saying travel perk is resource abundant, but yeah, travel perk is wealth finance. If it wasn't, and you're in an earlier stage situation, how would you advise founders who have this sudden commercial workforce, which is now no longer really a revenue driver than it once was? How would you respond?

A So let me disclose the secret of our action plan during the Corona crisis. And I didn't get approval from anybody, so let's see if, if I need a job after that, I'll reach out to you, Harry, see if you have a job for me. But here's a summary of how we approach this thing, and I would give the same advice to anybody, regardless of how much cash they have or not. First priority for us as a business is to survive. So we will do anything we need to do in order to survive and preserve cash, which already answers your question, I think. The fact is, as you say, we are capitalized, and we happen to be very efficient with our capital, so our burn rate is low, which gives us more optionality. But if I didn't have that, then I definitely need to do something more drastic. Cash should be the number one priority. Number two priority for us is to emerge strong after this crisis. As I said, it's going to end, and people will go back to traveling, and I don't want to lose 12 months after lockdowns are lifted in rebuilding the capacity, rebuilding the muscle that we have lost if we went and did too deep of a cut. So there's a difference between cutting the fat or cutting the muscle, and definitely not cutting the bone, right? So we want to emerge strong after that. And then the third priority is turn lemons into lemonade. We created a lemonade factory, and we do a lot of stuff that we didn't do…

AI assessment note: “I would give the same advice to anybody, regardless of how much cash they have”

Q What would you like to see in that case? Cause I'm not being rude. You could put together packs of customer references. You could put together a huge amount of resources to shorten that process, I guess.

A Yeah. We need something like, I don't know, like the Snapchat of data rooms. Like here's everything. Take a look. If you don't invest, somehow you forget that. Like something like that, you know, because The questions repeat themselves anyway. I mean, you need to be the founder, you need to understand, like, who they are as a person, but a lot of the, let's say, the data exchange transactions are the same. So why do I need to spend an hour with you rather than just give you access to a data room? And I think many founders do that because they are concerned to expose too much. So if we had a way to let you see everything, but you forget it if you don't invest, I think it would be way better. You could look at, like, a thousand deals a week. It would be amazing.

AI assessment note: “We need something like, I don't know, like the Snapchat of data rooms.”

Q SARS, nine, 11 for the travel industry. We've seen this before. We've seen this before. And then when I look at it, I'm like, well, actually, no, we haven't. We haven't seen a demand and a supply side shock simultaneously like this. How do you feel about the comparison to SARS and nine 11? And how do you evaluate the current situation specifically for the travel market in that context?

A I've been in travel for 16 years now, and I know how to read also about history. So we've never seen something like it never happened. We're talking about demand going probably, and I'm being generous here. Probably below five percent globally for travel right now. Some areas just zero, right? Just have no travel at all. We have started to really feel the pain of no bookings and cancellations probably first or second week of March. So it was a bit later for us, maybe because we have more European and North America focus, so, and it kind of arrived a bit later. I mean, I came back from holiday on the first of March, I remember, and it was still, like, the airport was still full. Like, it feels like it's been years, but it's, it's only been a month, a month and a half, right, of Close to zero. We haven't seen anything like this. A month and a half of close to zero in Europe, a bit longer in Asia. We haven't seen anything like this. And I think more than in the past, we have a huge degree of uncertainty. I mean, going back to the previous point, nobody really knows, right? And the big debates now about what do you do? How do you operate under this huge amount of uncertainty? And I think this is not going to go away. I'm struggling to see a situation where the uncertainty goes away anytime soon, which means we have to open up and operate in travel. I'm talking specifically about tr…

AI assessment note: “we've never seen something like it never happened”

Q No, but I think you're absolutely right there in terms of the transparency and like the challenge. Can I ask just, I think so many are struggling in times like this. What have you found works in terms of really just being productive, getting out of that mindset, and just actually pressing on in terms of your psychology and staying positive?

A I think resilience plays a huge role here. And if you have resilience going into this thing, then it's easier for you. And if you didn't have it, it's time to develop it. And it's funny because I finished reading a book over the Christmas period that helps me a lot. I think it's called The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism. And basically, the point is, if you cannot change something, why worry about it, right? And it's easier said than done. But I think my approach to keep sane was first, just the usual stuff that everybody's trying to do, but I think it's helpful, is my commute is 30 seconds now, right? From the bedroom to where the computer is, and it's very tempting to be working twenty-four-seven. The fact that I have a wife and two kids here, two young kids, helps because I have my commitments and I have my responsibility, so it kind of forces me to stop working at one point. But if you don't have that, then you have to find a way to have a schedule and force yourself to stop working. Just have a sane schedule, I would say. In terms of what you can fix and what you can't and what you should worry about or not, I'm trying to be more tactical in what I worry about. Solving problems that I can handle that are completely within my reach. Not worrying too much about things I cannot change. Now, am I a hundred percent disciplined? No, if you follow me on Twitter, you see that I worry…

AI assessment note: “if you cannot change something, why worry about it, right?”

Q You also mentioned fundraising there, Avi, and, you know, obviously kind of fundraising and VCs do play a role in this and the ecosystem. I guess, what would you like to see from the VC ecosystem in a time of such uncertainty as this? And for you as the founder, what would you most like to see from that VC ecosystem?

A I got probably one of the best emails I've ever gotten from a VC just at the beginning of this thing. So I'll name them. I hope they don't mind. If they do, I'm sorry. But the amazing people at Local Globe run by Sol and Robin Klein, and George is the person that we're dealing with, and Julian from the Latitude Fund, which is the growth fund they raised. Just an amazing team. And as the crisis started, they sent me an email and they said, We have X million waiting for you. Tell us when to wire them. They didn't ask about terms. They didn't ask about if I actually need the money. They just sent me an email. It was like a two sentence email. I should check with them if they're okay for me to publish the screenshot. Like it's, it's just amazing. Send me an email out of the blue and said, we have X million waiting for you. Tell me when to wire if you need it. That's the kind of support we need right now. If you have reserves in your fund and your company is good, right? I'm not saying it's, it's a bad company. It's a great company, great product growing well and hit hard by this crisis. This is an external factor that will go away. Honestly, they were amazing before, and I always recommend them, but for me, this is more than I could even imagine, and without words, to this level of loyalty, this level of support, just fantastic. So the first thing visitors should do if they are abl…

AI assessment note: “the first thing visitors should do... is reach out and sign a check”

Q I do have to ask though, Avi, one super interesting element to the fundraising process with you is kind of the C round being just six months after the B round. Can I ask, what was the thinking behind the kind of quicker velocity fundraise?

A Yeah. So the reality is, is I think two things that really plague here. We didn't need to raise the C round. We, as you said, we had just raised the B and there's enough runway to go. Uh, we're burning very little amount of money compared to the amount we raised at the B round. So the reason we decided to go for the C was actually two reasons. One is that we saw that the machine works and we can accelerate with more fuel. And when I say the machine works, I mean that unit economics made a lot of sense to us. We are bringing a positive contribution margin. Every time we set a trip, we know how to bring leads in a very efficient way. I mean, capital TV ratio is crazy. Just if we were a pure SaaS company, you'd be, you'd be amazed on our, on our capital TV ratio. So everything, when we looked at the machine and we saw if we invested X millions more, Can we grow faster? Does it actually scale? The answer was a clear yes. And actually the answer became yes, somewhere between the B and the C round, right? So it wasn't obvious to the B round. It became obvious close to the C round. So that was the first point is like, we felt that with more funding, we can actually grow faster. And then second point is, I just like the opportunity of partnering with PostCinovic, which is an amazing team. I mean, I have to admit, I didn't know much about them before we got into discussions and they're …

AI assessment note: “the reason we decided to go for the C was actually two reasons”

Q in maybe on one particular element we mentioned there, which is kind of the board member element. So you've got an incredible board with travel perks. For me, I've just joined my first board. Tell me, what do the best board members do that makes them so special? And for you, the entrepreneur, what can I do to be the best board member that I can be, do you think?

A So I would say, and I'm very fortunate to have an amazing board, right? So I can speak from experience there. I would say the best board members are very supportive in bad times. I don't know if any startup that didn't have any rough patch. If you know one, let me know. So difficult times will come. You know, it can be slow growth. It can have an HR crisis. You could have whatever, you know, you name it. You know, somebody hacks your servers. You know, whatever comes, you need to know that your, your board members are there to support you and not freak out and not panic when things go south, but also they need to be pushing you in good times, right? So when things go well and you feel great about yourself, and then I call one of my, one of my investors, one of my board members, and I tell them, we've just had an amazing month, you know, we're going 700% year and year, whatever, and they're like, only 700%? Why not a thousand percent, right? And keep pushing me, they really keep pushing me to the right direction. It's super helpful, right? So I think And good board members know when it's time to push and when it's time to be supported. So I think this is extremely important. I would also say that great board members understand that they're not running the business. They invested or they joined the board because they believe in their leadership team. They believe in their overall…

AI assessment note: “good board members know when it's time to push and when it's time to be supported”

Q So Avi, if we put ourselves in a hypothetical situation here, imagine I'm an angel investment of yours, say, and you're advising me I'm an early stage seed company on getting the best group of people around the table. Having had the experience that you have now with Travelperk, what would the advice be to me in getting that best cohort of people around the table?

A Yeah, so I would probably go for one or two of three categories. I would go for one or two, and when I say I would go for, you know, it could be An advisor. It could be a board member. It could be an investor, right? I mean, somebody who's killing the game, who has an incentive to help you succeed, right? And I would go for one or two in each of the three categories. First being industry experts. These people can help you avoid mistakes that you're about to do and open doors, especially if like many industries are built on, on, on having the right network. So these kind of people who can, who come with the network can definitely help. So I would go for one or two industry experts. I would go for one or two people that have the right network into fundraising. The best people in this, in fundraising perspective, Are successful entrepreneurs, right? So in our case, going back to Johannes, he was incredibly, um, important and helpful for us in raising funds all the way from the series A to the series C. So having somebody with the network and you and I know that the best way to get a term sheet is a very warm introduction from a portfolio company, right? I mean, this is the best way. So I would make sure that I have one or two well-connected people into the funding, the VC area, or, you know, if that's the path that you're taking. And the last category I would say is one or two X o…

AI assessment note: “I would probably go for one or two of three categories.”

Q And here we are. What an incredible journey it's been since. I do have to pick up on one thread that you mentioned there, though, and it was the founding for you of Hotel Ninjas and then selling to Booking.com. So I have to ask, how did your experience founding Hotel Ninjas maybe change your operating mentality today with Travel Perk?

A It's a great question. Maybe the main one for me, um, when we even start a company, we think about what you're going to build and sell is, and it sounds obvious, but it wasn't for me, is make sure you choose a market with a clear aim. What I mean by that is, at Hotel Ninjas, we were building software for hotel management. You know, hotels, you know, if you think about when you go and check into a hotel and they, they have this screen, they type, like the receptionist would tap into a keyboard and give you your key, uh, to your room, uh, et cetera. This is the software that we were building, what, what she's using or he's using to check you in, et cetera. So really the operations of hotels. And we built this amazing software, cloud-based, you know, modern SaaS business, modern SaaS products, I should say. And then we went to hotel owners, and nobody wanted to even give us half an hour of their time. And their point was, we don't need a solution. And I was like, yeah, but you have a server-based solution that sits in your basement. Why don't you move to the cloud? And like, they were just not understanding that. They were saying, what do you mean the cloud? I mean, the server is in my hotel, and I can control it. Why would I move everything to the cloud? Sounds risky. Right. And every time we came up with another amazing feature we built, they came back with, I don't need that. A…

AI assessment note: “when we created Travel Perk, we made sure that we are actually solving a big pain”

Q Can I ask, how can you test that cultural fit? Is it in the fundraise process where you just spend a lot of time together asking the tough questions? What does that culture fit assessment look like?

A The way I do it is the way I interview candidates for the company. So I would sit with them and ask them about the values and ask for them to come up with examples that show the values that they are stating that they have. I would, I do reference calls about my investors, ask them for references, but also reach out to portfolio companies, ideally a company that also went not great, you know, and then you can really assess how the individual operated when things didn't go so well. So I treat investors and board members the way I treat employees and they need to be a screen. They need to be referenced and they need to be interviewed.

AI assessment note: “The way I do it is the way I interview candidates for the company.”

Q The D round, okay. What would you like to change about the investor conversations that you could do better personally, do you think?

A Yeah, I think that maybe pushing more on the option pool. It's kind of one of the last pieces you negotiate on the term sheet, and everybody's tired from pushing on valuation, and then you just accept whatever is written there. And I think you have to be more strategic. I need to be more strategic about it and have a better understanding of what we're trying to achieve in terms of recruitment in the next 18 to 24 months, which is a reasonable time frame until the next fundraise. And then make sure that the, the option pool is reflecting that. Otherwise it becomes a bit of a messy discussion at the board level after that. So I would use that opportunity to push more on the, on the option pool side.

AI assessment note: “I think that maybe pushing more on the option pool.”

Q Can I ask, how can you test that cultural fit? Is it in the fundraise process where you just spend a lot of time together asking the tough questions? What does that culture fit assessment look like?

A The way I do it is the way I interview candidates for the company. So I would sit with them and ask them about the values and ask for them to come up with examples that show the values that they are stating that they have. I would, I do reference calls about my investors, ask them for references, but also reach out to portfolio companies, ideally a company that also went not great, you know, and then you can really assess how the individual operated when things didn't go so well. So I treat investors and board members the way I treat employees and they need to be a screen. They need to be referenced and they need to be interviewed.

AI assessment note: “The way I do it is the way I interview candidates for the company.”

Q sides of the same coin there. And I couldn't agree with you more. I do have to ask that you mentioned the element of kind of remote workers and the center ...focus of hiring. For you, when you look back at kind of building and maintaining the culture, what have been some of the biggest challenges in kind of scaling that team and that culture for you, do you think?

A Maybe the biggest challenge is just when you need to hire more people by absolute amounts, right absolute? So number. So when you need to hire five people and you're very strict about the quality and cultural fit, then it's easier than when you need to hire 500, right? So this is a challenge that grows together with your scale. And if you think about any other area in startups, Try to kind of optimize so it doesn't grow linearly with how fast you grow as a company. I don't know how to do it for hiring. So this is a problem that I didn't yet find a way to scale faster than how the company grows, right? So just finding great candidates is very difficult. No, and then the second part I would say is, I don't know if it's directly related to the culture, but just kind of the fact that we all need to basically learn a new job every six to 12 months, right? So if you want to keep growing, you as a person, you want to keep growing at the speed of the company, you You need to get a new job in the company every six to 12 months. And this is just very challenging for most people, first, to accept, and second, to execute, right? I mean, you might be great at task X, but if your task is now 10 X, then suddenly you need to learn a new way of doing it. Otherwise, it's just, like, there are not enough hours in the day to do 10 X before in full capacity. So this is one of the most challenging a…

AI assessment note: “Maybe the biggest challenge is just when you need to hire more people by absolute amounts”

Q in maybe on one particular element we mentioned there, which is kind of the board member element. So you've got an incredible board with travel perks. For me, I've just joined my first board. Tell me, what do the best board members do that makes them so special? And for you, the entrepreneur, what can I do to be the best board member that I can be, do you think?

A So I would say, and I'm very fortunate to have an amazing board, right? So I can speak from experience there. I would say the best board members are very supportive in bad times. I don't know if any startup that didn't have any rough patch. If you know one, let me know. So difficult times will come. You know, it can be slow growth. It can have an HR crisis. You could have whatever, you know, you name it. You know, somebody hacks your servers. You know, whatever comes, you need to know that your, your board members are there to support you and not freak out and not panic when things go south, but also they need to be pushing you in good times, right? So when things go well and you feel great about yourself, and then I call one of my, one of my investors, one of my board members, and I tell them, we've just had an amazing month, you know, we're going 700% year and year, whatever, and they're like, only 700%? Why not a thousand percent, right? And keep pushing me, they really keep pushing me to the right direction. It's super helpful, right? So I think And good board members know when it's time to push and when it's time to be supported. So I think this is extremely important. I would also say that great board members understand that they're not running the business. They invested or they joined the board because they believe in their leadership team. They believe in their overall…

AI assessment note: “the best board members are very supportive in bad times.”

Q I do have to ask though, Avi, one super interesting element to the fundraising process with you is kind of the C round being just six months after the B round. Can I ask, what was the thinking behind the kind of quicker velocity fundraise?

A Yeah. So the reality is, is I think two things that really plague here. We didn't need to raise the C round. We, as you said, we had just raised the B and there's enough runway to go. Uh, we're burning very little amount of money compared to the amount we raised at the B round. So the reason we decided to go for the C was actually two reasons. One is that we saw that the machine works and we can accelerate with more fuel. And when I say the machine works, I mean that unit economics made a lot of sense to us. We are bringing a positive contribution margin. Every time we set a trip, we know how to bring leads in a very efficient way. I mean, capital TV ratio is crazy. Just if we were a pure SaaS company, you'd be, you'd be amazed on our, on our capital TV ratio. So everything, when we looked at the machine and we saw if we invested X millions more, Can we grow faster? Does it actually scale? The answer was a clear yes. And actually the answer became yes, somewhere between the B and the C round, right? So it wasn't obvious to the B round. It became obvious close to the C round. So that was the first point is like, we felt that with more funding, we can actually grow faster. And then second point is, I just like the opportunity of partnering with PostCinovic, which is an amazing team. I mean, I have to admit, I didn't know much about them before we got into discussions and they're …

AI assessment note: “The reason we decided to go for the C was actually two reasons.”

Q Absolutely optimizing time, and you see absolute benefits to that. If you're not so resource abundant, and I'm not saying travel perk is resource abundant, but yeah, travel perk is wealth finance. If it wasn't, and you're in an earlier stage situation, how would you advise founders who have this sudden commercial workforce, which is now no longer really a revenue driver than it once was? How would you respond?

A So let me disclose the secret of our action plan during the Corona crisis. And I didn't get approval from anybody, so let's see if, if I need a job after that, I'll reach out to you, Harry, see if you have a job for me. But here's a summary of how we approach this thing, and I would give the same advice to anybody, regardless of how much cash they have or not. First priority for us as a business is to survive. So we will do anything we need to do in order to survive and preserve cash, which already answers your question, I think. The fact is, as you say, we are capitalized, and we happen to be very efficient with our capital, so our burn rate is low, which gives us more optionality. But if I didn't have that, then I definitely need to do something more drastic. Cash should be the number one priority. Number two priority for us is to emerge strong after this crisis. As I said, it's going to end, and people will go back to traveling, and I don't want to lose 12 months after lockdowns are lifted in rebuilding the capacity, rebuilding the muscle that we have lost if we went and did too deep of a cut. So there's a difference between cutting the fat or cutting the muscle, and definitely not cutting the bone, right? So we want to emerge strong after that. And then the third priority is turn lemons into lemonade. We created a lemonade factory, and we do a lot of stuff that we didn't do…

AI assessment note: “First priority for us as a business is to survive. So we will do anything”

Q I do, though, want to start with a little bit about you, Avi. So tell me, how did you make your way into the world of startups, and what was the real aha moment for you with Travelperk?

A It's a great question, and honestly, I don't know how I found myself doing this job. I think it found me. I'm from Israel. I'm technical by background, like many Israelis. I started conning when I was very young, And always was fascinated by computers and understanding how software works, or never was into playing video games, but more just understanding the underlining technology. And as you probably know, the military service in Israel is mandatory, and I was a software developer in the army, and worked on some pretty cool projects there, and kind of moved after that to travel, which became my now passion together with technology, right? So we are in this overlap between technology and travel at Travelperk. And that's how I got here. So kind of working for an airline, really offline, you know, managing flight operations in Paris, smelling the jet fuel day in, day out, learning about how airlines think about the operations, which was a great introduction to travel. Not the best place to be in terms of, you know, if you're interested into technology, because it's very low tech, actually, surprisingly. But then moving online, working for a startup first, got acquired, and then creating my first startup, Hotel Ninjas, together with a friend and an ex-classman of mine from business school, a guy called Christian Ennestrom. We ran Hotel Ninjas for a couple of years, and we sold it …

AI assessment note: “working for a startup first, got acquired, and then creating my first startup, Hotel Ninjas”

Q Can I ask, what would you like to see governments do? I'm too intrigued. If Avi was prime minister slash president, what would you do?

A Right now, it seems like the Swedish approach It's a good compromise between letting people avoid getting sick, let's say, because luckily we don't live in a top-down society where the government is here to protect us from everything. Part of being a free person is taking risks sometimes and acknowledging that you take a risk and understanding that and being okay with it, right? It's a part of being free. I don't look for country that where the government tells me how to live my life to avoid me taking a risk. I don't think it's interesting to live in a society like this. So if you look at Swedish approach, it seems right this moment, and again, it might change in a week, so who knows, but right now it seems that they have found a good balance between Protecting, allowing those who need protection to be protected, those who have pre-existing conditions, while not destroying their civilization, not destroying their economy. And I'm trying to avoid the word economy because it seems like I only care about the GDP of the country, and that's not what I mean. I really mean people's dignity and freedom. This is more than just does the country grow their GDP per capita. These are real people's lives that we're talking about. So the Swedish approach seems to be the right one. Hence, answer your question, if I were to make a decision, I would say those who want to go back to work, especi…

AI assessment note: “if I were to make a decision, I would say those who want to go back to work”

Q They're fantastic, and Tom really is very special. But the funding itself allows for many different things, obviously kind of scaling the most Prominent, and you've scaled across multiple locations in Europe and expanded that team significantly. So if we kind of merge the two core components there, growth and culture, I have to ask, Avi, it's no mean feat. How do you think about building a growth culture internally?

A It's a work in progress, I must admit I mean, it's,. I think it's one of the biggest challenges, right, as CEO of a growth stage company is how to keep the culture, how do you keep growing, especially in multiple locations. And so far, we made very clear not to have multiple locations. We only had Barcelona. We never did remote, and we lost great people because we didn't do remote, and some, like, great engineers want to travel to Japan and work from there, so we paid some price, but it was worth it, and now, as you say, we are expanding, and we are opening offices in other geographies, and we are a bigger scale, so I would say, first culture is, the way I see it is, is all about who is in the team, and who isn't, so the hiring is key here. I don't, I don't know how to hire somebody who's not a cultural fit, and turn them into a cultural fit. I don't know the skills, so making sure that we hire the right people, and if we made a mistake, we'll fix it quickly, Is extremely important. And I think also if you hire the right cultural fit people and you empower them and you give them the tools to identify in an interview, if somebody is a cultural fit, then you can scale that. I don't have to interview every single person, although I do, but I don't have to, to make sure that we have the right cultural fit in the company. So that's one thing is, is cultural fit and how to kind of ma…

AI assessment note: “first culture is, the way I see it is, is all about who is in the team”

Q I do, though, want to start with a little bit about you, Avi. So tell me, how did you make your way into the world of startups, and what was the real aha moment for you with Travelperk?

A It's a great question, and honestly, I don't know how I found myself doing this job. I think it found me. I'm from Israel. I'm technical by background, like many Israelis. I started conning when I was very young, And always was fascinated by computers and understanding how software works, or never was into playing video games, but more just understanding the underlining technology. And as you probably know, the military service in Israel is mandatory, and I was a software developer in the army, and worked on some pretty cool projects there, and kind of moved after that to travel, which became my now passion together with technology, right? So we are in this overlap between technology and travel at Travelperk. And that's how I got here. So kind of working for an airline, really offline, you know, managing flight operations in Paris, smelling the jet fuel day in, day out, learning about how airlines think about the operations, which was a great introduction to travel. Not the best place to be in terms of, you know, if you're interested into technology, because it's very low tech, actually, surprisingly. But then moving online, working for a startup first, got acquired, and then creating my first startup, Hotel Ninjas, together with a friend and an ex-classman of mine from business school, a guy called Christian Ennestrom. We ran Hotel Ninjas for a couple of years, and we sold it …

AI assessment note: “saw the opportunity together with my co-founders to start Travel Perk and fix business travel”

Q of the cash preservation. It's an unsettling time for the team. For you as the leader, you know, your job is to instill confidence. What advice would you give in terms of communication, in terms of assurance to team members who are fundamentally concerned and worried for their livelihoods? What have been some lessons for you in, like, what great leadership, I guess, looks like in such an uncertain time?

A I'm not sure I have the right answer, honestly. I've been keeping a journal, and so first advice is keep a journal, because it's interesting to kind of write it down, don't change what you wrote down, and then look back after the crisis is over to see how you thought and what was right, what was wrong. So I'm not sure I have the right answer, but the approach we take is Let's be as transparent as possible. It's not a family, right? And if you have to use a cliche, the family one, I like sports team one, right? So in a sports team, you have to sometimes give hard news, difficult news and deal with it instead of trying to be liked and protective. And I think the big mistake that more kind of greener, let's say, or less experienced independents would do, and I definitely did that mistake many times, is try to be liked by the team and try to be protective of their feelings versus giving them the hard truth and trusting that they are adults and can handle it. And not only handle it, they can actually come up with better solutions than you can. So having a very transparent communication, sharing the challenges, sharing what you're struggling with. We do a lot of Q&A sessions, you say, on Zoom, and somebody asked me, how are you doing? Because I keep asking people, how are you doing, et cetera. So one of the questions in the Q&A was, how are you doing, Avi? And I said, well, not so gr…

AI assessment note: “Let's be as transparent as possible.”

Q They're fantastic, and Tom really is very special. But the funding itself allows for many different things, obviously kind of scaling the most Prominent, and you've scaled across multiple locations in Europe and expanded that team significantly. So if we kind of merge the two core components there, growth and culture, I have to ask, Avi, it's no mean feat. How do you think about building a growth culture internally?

A It's a work in progress, I must admit I mean, it's,. I think it's one of the biggest challenges, right, as CEO of a growth stage company is how to keep the culture, how do you keep growing, especially in multiple locations. And so far, we made very clear not to have multiple locations. We only had Barcelona. We never did remote, and we lost great people because we didn't do remote, and some, like, great engineers want to travel to Japan and work from there, so we paid some price, but it was worth it, and now, as you say, we are expanding, and we are opening offices in other geographies, and we are a bigger scale, so I would say, first culture is, the way I see it is, is all about who is in the team, and who isn't, so the hiring is key here. I don't, I don't know how to hire somebody who's not a cultural fit, and turn them into a cultural fit. I don't know the skills, so making sure that we hire the right people, and if we made a mistake, we'll fix it quickly, Is extremely important. And I think also if you hire the right cultural fit people and you empower them and you give them the tools to identify in an interview, if somebody is a cultural fit, then you can scale that. I don't have to interview every single person, although I do, but I don't have to, to make sure that we have the right cultural fit in the company. So that's one thing is, is cultural fit and how to kind of ma…

AI assessment note: “making sure that we hire the right people, and if we made a mistake”

Q I always believe that the best CEOs are fundamentally the best capital allocators. How do you think about capital allocation internally with so much uncertainty? You know, you said about five percent bookings there. You have a huge amount of resources deployed in sales and marketing. How does one think about that when bookings are down 95%?

A My first approach was I saw a few, and I'm not trying to blame, right? I'm just observing that I saw a few companies, in my opinion, reacting out of panic. And hysteria. And cutting extremely fast, extremely deep. And, you know, maybe if you look five years from now, maybe they did the right thing, and I didn't. I preferred to, in our approach at Travelwork, was let's buy ourselves some time and understand what's going on, so we can act in a more calm, focused, disciplined way, which has always been, we aspire to do that, right? I'm not saying we're always calm and disciplined, but we always try to be. And what it meant for us is, first, I mean, we had a lot of volume, right? So for our sales team, for example, March was the best month ever. We hit a record month in March in terms of closing deals. So it's not like people are just sitting home and not doing anything. They're actually extremely busy in the sales team. Customer care, same story for different reasons. So March has been the busiest month because everybody was canceling. But we actually grew very, very well multiples year and year in Q-one, right, in revenue. So Q-one was an amazing quarter for us in growth, even though we had, of course, not so great March. So everybody was booking, and then everybody was canceling. So the customer care team was extremely busy up until a few days ago, where we basically reached alm…

AI assessment note: “we're allocating capital to training for customer care. We're allocating the capital to”

Q of COVID first. It's hit travel obviously harder than any other industry for obvious reasons. Majority of the Twitterspheres are like with the stay at home. We were talking about the weather helping and contributing to that with the rain in Spain. You've advocated though for something a little bit different in terms of reopening sooner than others. I guess what's your thoughts here and what leads that thinking, Abby?

A So first I would say if people on Twitter would disagree with you, you're probably right. So that's the first thing I would say. But first, Travel perk and strong sentiment since very early was that we should lock down, go remote. We actually never did remote work as a company. We always believed in being in the same office, having this kind of serendipity that you get by bumping into people and having an interesting discussion, waiting for the coffee or something. So we never did remote. It was actually one of the main reasons why we would sometimes lose great engineers, because they wanted to work remote, and we would not accept that. So for a company like us, who never did remote, to go full remote, it was I think a week or two before It was the official policy in Spain where we have most of the people, and the reason we decided to go remote is because it was starting to look, you know, we're in travel, so we see travel data before most other industries do, and we saw that things are looking weird, especially in Asia. So we decided to take the more cautious approach, and we moved to full remote. We stopped using the office a week or two before it was mandatory here in Spain. So I wasn't against the idea of lockdown when it started. I thought it was the right approach. And the kind of the most cautious approach, given that we didn't know anything about this new virus and how …

AI assessment note: “So my current change of mind is we have to understand that's new, right?”

Q of COVID first. It's hit travel obviously harder than any other industry for obvious reasons. Majority of the Twitterspheres are like with the stay at home. We were talking about the weather helping and contributing to that with the rain in Spain. You've advocated though for something a little bit different in terms of reopening sooner than others. I guess what's your thoughts here and what leads that thinking, Abby?

A So first I would say if people on Twitter would disagree with you, you're probably right. So that's the first thing I would say. But first, Travel perk and strong sentiment since very early was that we should lock down, go remote. We actually never did remote work as a company. We always believed in being in the same office, having this kind of serendipity that you get by bumping into people and having an interesting discussion, waiting for the coffee or something. So we never did remote. It was actually one of the main reasons why we would sometimes lose great engineers, because they wanted to work remote, and we would not accept that. So for a company like us, who never did remote, to go full remote, it was I think a week or two before It was the official policy in Spain where we have most of the people, and the reason we decided to go remote is because it was starting to look, you know, we're in travel, so we see travel data before most other industries do, and we saw that things are looking weird, especially in Asia. So we decided to take the more cautious approach, and we moved to full remote. We stopped using the office a week or two before it was mandatory here in Spain. So I wasn't against the idea of lockdown when it started. I thought it was the right approach. And the kind of the most cautious approach, given that we didn't know anything about this new virus and how …

AI assessment note: “So my current change of mind is we have to understand that's new”

Q large decrease in kind of non-critical meetings with the world realizing that Zoom can potentially handle those meetings that you didn't have to be there for in person. You're completely taking the opposite side and they're super bullish. I'm interested, how do you see the future of business travel in that case? And I guess in terms of like business travel returning, what are your thoughts on domestic versus international?

A Yeah, so I think for the first, and I don't know how long it will be, right, it could be two months, it could be 1824 months, but basically until, so until people are not worried about it anymore, right, so I don't know what will make people not worried about the virus anymore, maybe it will be a vaccine, maybe they realize it's not as deadly, maybe they'll just get used to it, like something will happen, one of these, or maybe another thing I cannot predict right now, that will get people less worried about it. I don't think 20 years from now we'll still be worried about it. We're not even worried about HIV anymore, in the sense of, of course, we have to be careful, You're too young to remember, but you know, in the nineties, it was a huge pandemic, right? Like people were extremely worried about HIV, and now it almost became a chronic disease, almost, right? I'm not downgrading the challenges that come with contracting HIV, but it almost became a manageable chronic disease. So something will happen, is my guess, that will make people less worried about the virus, regardless if it's, because it's solved like a vaccine or just not worried about it. Until then, and I don't know if it's two or 24 or more months, until then we'll live in a weird kind of limbo period. I think people will travel, and my prediction is That twenty-twenty-one will be, business travel in twenty-twenty-o…

AI assessment note: “domestic travel will emerge faster and sooner than international travel”