The Ledger
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Johannes Reck calls Peter Thiel's critique of European founder ambition "BS"
“I think it's bullshit to be honest when people say European entrepreneurs don't work as hard, are not as ambitious. You know, I've heard Peter Thiel and like others say that, but I think that's BS to be honest.”
US VCs Refused to Fund GetYourGuide Unless They Relocated to America
“For the people that I met in the U S most people said, you know, move over here or we're not going to give you funding.”
Reck: Masayoshi Son is a skilled financial investor
“So I was surprised because, you know, you have these stories of Masa that he's just this crazy person, but he's actually a really good financial investor as well. So don't know, don't be kidded by like all of the headlines. He knows what he's doing.”
Investors urged Johannes Reck to lay off GetYourGuide's entire staff during COVID
“The bad thing was I had a lot of investors who basically called me up and said, you have to lay off the entire company immediately to save all of the dollars you have on the balance sheet.”
Johannes Reck says hiring scale executive product talent in Europe is impossible
“If I want to hire, let's say the next chief product officer, At Get Your Guide, it's almost impossible to do that in Europe and need to go to Silicon Valley because the density of people who have done that scale have served tens of millions of customers a year…”
Germany subsidizes pensions with €100B yearly but invests only €7B in VC
“Germany subsidizes its retirement system every year with a hundred billion, right? But we don't, we have seven billion invested in VC, a hundred billion subsidies in retirement system.”
Johannes Reck says GetYourGuide can only go public using American funds
“How can a German company go public in Europe? It's impossible. And like, if we go public, it's only with American funds.”
Reck: German Visa Process Took Six Months for GetYourGuide CTO
“For him to get a visa to come to Germany after he had signed a job contract, and this guy makes a lot of money, took him six months.”
Reck: GetYourGuide engineering headcount will grow slower due to AI gains
“We'll have more, but a lot less than we thought we would add. So, so in other words, we'll gradually grow, but I think the productivity gains from these engineers will be massive.”
Johannes Reck asked his parents to remortgage their house for GetYourGuide
“I need to go to my parents and basically say, hi, you need to fund me for like another year after university. So, you know, can you please, you know, put a mortgage on your house and like fund me because there was no seed capital available. No one would give a…”
Johannes Reck says the Samwer brothers single-handedly created Berlin's tech ecosystem
“I think the three of them are incredibly smart dudes, and I think they have created the Berlin ecosystem single-handedly.”
Brent Hoberman regrets passing on acquiring Booking.com at the seed stage
“I made one pivotal mistake at last minute.com. I had the opportunity to buy booking.com at the time as a seed stage company. I still regret that to the present day.”
GetYourGuide laid off 30% of its staff a year after Series A
“I remember like a year or so after Raising that A round, I needed to lay off 30% of the company and completely re-juggle Get Your Guide to refocus us on the core.”
Johannes Reck says Airbnb tried and failed at experiences in 2015
“Airbnb had tried experiences From 2015 onwards, they had failed.”
GetYourGuide would have gone bankrupt during COVID without its $450M round
“For us it was the decision that ultimately made Get Your Guide into what it is today, because just six months after we raised that money, COVID hit. So we would be bankrupt without that round.”
GetYourGuide Product and Engineering Staff Took 30%+ Salary Cuts for Equity During COVID
“Our product and edge organization, and even beyond that into management function, people on average reduced their salaries by more than 30% in exchange for shares.”
GetYourGuide Retained All Engineers and Product Managers Throughout the Pandemic
“So we only had to ultimately lay off throughout the entire two years roughly, 15 to 20% of the staff, not a single engineer, not a single product person.”
Johannes Reck sold secondary equity during GetYourGuide's 2019 SoftBank round
“I did sell secondaries, thankfully in 2019 as part of the soft bank round which actually was very helpful.”
Reck: Founders should cap secondary liquidity to a few million dollars
“I think a couple million bucks is probably the right thing if you're a mature company. I don't think that you should be taking too much off the table, so it shouldn't be enough so that you retire forever, never need to work again.”
Reck: 90% of GetYourGuide's Berlin Employees Are Non-German
“At Get Your Guide, we have 90% of our employees in Berlin are not German.”
Reck: Europe accounts for 60% of global inbound travel
“Europe has 60% of the global inbound travel.”
Reck: GetYourGuide was first to sell Vatican tours online in 2010
“We got very lucky because we got a very good tour agency, which did tours to the Vatican very early on in the Vatican is like one of the major sites in all of Europe and no one had sold the Vatican online at that point in time.”
Reck: GetYourGuide probably wouldn't exist without Rocket Internet
“And it is that I never did business with them but I must say that without them even Get Your Guide probably couldn't exist.”
Johannes Reck regrets raising a $14M Series A due to excessive dilution
“I would have not raised as big of a series A looking back. I think it was too much dilution.”
Reck Received His First Founder Incentive Package Ten Years After Starting GetYourGuide
“The first founder incentive package that I personally got awarded by the board with I think happened after like a decade or so.”
Former Booking.com CEO Kees Koolen invested $1M in GetYourGuide
“I'm going to come on board. Like I'm joining a board of directors and I'm going to personally invest a million bucks in the company.”
Reck: Founders earn board respect by standing firm and pushing back
“We gained so much more respect when we went against the board and said, we're not going to do this. We're not going to do that. We'll focus on this. This is my opinion. This is where I stand.”
Reck: GetYourGuide Would Have Grown Faster by Delaying US Expansion
“If I'd go back in time, it's another lesson for a lot of founders. I would have not gone as early. I would have done more in Europe. I think we would have had even more growth and more profitability.”
Reck: GetYourGuide's $450M round included secondary buyouts
“Between Southbank Vision Fund and Temasek, we raised an aggregate of roughly four or fifty million dollars at the time. We did take some of that capital to buy out earlier shareholders, so not all of that was primary.”
GetYourGuide revenues dropped to zero within three weeks during COVID-19
“It took three weeks from that board meeting to us being at zero revenues, literally zero.”
Reck: GetYourGuide grew 10x between late 2021 and March 2022
“We went from, you know, late, 20, 21 to March, 20, 22, we grew 10 X.”
Reck: GetYourGuide 2022 volumes doubled 2019 pre-pandemic levels
“Literally like in 2022 were double 20 19 levels. And 20 21 was still half 2019 levels.”
Reck: GetYourGuide raised $100M in convertible debt during COVID
“We raised some convertible debt. On top, we raised roughly a hundred million, both from existing and some new investors.”
Reck: GetYourGuide Never Touched Capital Raised in 2023 Round
“We never touched any of that capital because we broke even at the same time.”
Reck: GetYourGuide Is Profitable and 5x Pre-Pandemic Size
“Fast forward today, we're now five times the size of pre-pandemic and we're profitable”
Reck: Trade Republic is one of the most underrated tech companies in Europe
“Trade Republic, which you know, is a very successful fintech company, probably one of the most underrated companies in Europe, you know, they're absolutely crushing it.”
Reck: Trade Republic's founder centralizes all product reviews under himself
“He's centralizing all of product under him. You know, basically every product review runs through him.”
Reck: Spark Capital's fund returned multiple times via Oculus and Wayfair
“So TalkSpark Capital, our Series A lead, you know, the deal after Get Your Guide was Oculus Rift, right? You know, Palmer Lucchi. So, you know, we were basically off the hook a couple of months after they made the investment in us because the fund was already …”
Reck: European VC funding is $50B annually versus $200B+ in US
“We spent fifty billion a year in VC in Europe. The US is north of two hundred billion.”
GetYourGuide had only 3 to 5 bookings in its first two years
“We had, I think three to five bookings in the first two years of our prototype, three of which was my mother because she took so much pity on our students.”
Reck: GetYourGuide earned $500k in net revenue in 2010
“I think we did something like half a million then in, in the first year in 2010 in net revenue. So commission revenues, more or less profitable, but we didn't have any cash because we were just living off the mortgages from our parents.”
GetYourGuide Raised $1 Million Seed Round at a $5M-$6M Valuation
“It was a million bucks... I think at like a five or six million pre-money.”
GetYourGuide had ~$2M net revenue growing 2x-3x at Series A
“Business was doing somewhere around two million net revenue at that point, and growing, I think two X to three X over a year.”
GetYourGuide raised $14M Series A at $30M-$35M pre-money valuation
“Series A at the time was actually very big for European standards at the time so it was somewhere around fourteen million. As a total of Series A, like I think like 30, thirty five million pre-money.”
GetYourGuide Lost Zero Senior Executives During the COVID Crisis
“We had not a single person in senior leadership leave the company.”
Reck: AI reduced GetYourGuide product onboarding from days to seconds
“On the supply side. The supply is completely transformed. It used to take, I think, days to upload a product because experiences are so complex. You know, you need to add a description and photos and like take a hundred boxes at the meeting point and, you know…”