Oct 14, 2024 · 1h 9m · how-i-built-this
Viator: Rod Cuthbert
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, host Guy Raz speaks with Rod Cuthbert, founder of Viator, about how he transformed discarded enterprise software into the world's leading online booking platform for travel tours and experiences, culminating in a $200 million acquisition by TripAdvisor.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 33% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 4.2 Guest teaching 2.4 Guest disagreement 0.6 Guy pushing back 0.4
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 6:56 Rod boasting about table tennis dominance
Rod playfully challenges Guy, insisting Guy would not score a single point and offering to play left-handed so he doesn't ruin Guy's party.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 44:20 Guy refusing the softened runway framingGuy rejects startup euphemisms, pushing Rod to acknowledge that running out of cash in 2005 meant they were walking the plank off a pirate ship.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 45:24 Rod correcting Guy on Barrie Seidenberg's genderWhen Guy refers to hire Barry Seidenberg as 'this guy', Rod directly corrects him that Barrie is a woman.
Guy holds their own ▶ 15:35 Guy displaying direct knowledge of SabreGuy demonstrates detailed industry familiarity by recalling how Sabre's internal enterprise travel interface operated across corporations before consumer OTAs.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rod Cuthbert's Tasmanian Roots and Table Tennis Ambitions | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 | Guy establishes Rod's background leaving Tasmania as a teenager and his brief stint as a table tennis coach. Rod playfully boasts about crushing Guy in ping pong. | |
| Breaking into Technology and Launching a PC Dealership | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy walks through Rod's transition into computers, sales at DEC, and co-founding a PC dealership in 1983. The exchange is straightforward and collaborative. | |
| Getting Fired from On Australia and Starting Fox Interactive | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Rod recounts getting fired from Microsoft's On Australia joint venture and immediately teaming up with Peter Fox to start Fox Interactive. Guy prompts him on their initial vision. | |
| Digitizing Travel Brochures and Hiring Sabre Veteran Jill Hazel | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy displays domain familiarity with Sabre's enterprise booking infrastructure while Rod explains how digitizing physical brochures led to hiring Sabre veteran Jill Hazel. | |
| Bondi Beach Pitch and Winning the Sabre Ground Content Contract | 4 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Rod describes wooing Sabre executives on Bondi Beach. Guy interjects to give a public service announcement panning the Moulin Rouge, which Rod dryly notes is a personal choice before explaining the economics of ground content. | |
| Dallas Layoffs and Inheriting the Booking Engine IP | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Rod explains the surreal experience of arriving at Sabre headquarters during mass layoffs only to be told their completed project was collateral damage that they could keep for free. | |
| Finding the Name Viator and Securing Seed Funding | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Rod details finding the name Viator in a 1921 Catholic Book of Saints at the State Library of New South Wales and securing initial VC backing. | |
| Expedia Partnership and the Rise of Curated Experiences | 5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy references Expedia founder Rich Barton while Rod details how a white-label deal with Expedia launched Viator's business model before consumer awareness existed. | |
| Navigating Startup Finances and 9/11's Digital Shift | 5 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Guy and Rod explore how the travel shutdown during 9/11 counterintuitively forced customers and providers onto the internet, catalyzing online travel booking growth. | |
| Inventing Skip the Line Tours at the Vatican | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Rod explains how product manager Dominique Exman negotiated with the Vatican to invent the skip-the-line tour concept, creating high-margin premium travel experiences. | |
| The 2005 Cash Crunch and Hiring Barrie Seidenberg | 3 | 6 | 3 | 2 | Rod corrects Guy's framing of being near death to having a short runway, and promptly corrects Guy when Guy refers to newly hired executive Barrie Seidenberg as a man. | |
| Pitching Carlyle Group and The Royal Danish Connection | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Rod shares the story of securing a $6 million investment from Carlyle partner Allan Thygesen after bonding over Danish Prince Frederik's marriage to Tasmanian Mary Donaldson. | |
| Acquiring Look Tours and The Midnight Server Theft | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Rod narrates the bizarre incident following their acquisition of Look Tours, where thieves stole the company's on-site physical servers along with all backup tapes. | |
| Market Expansion and Stepping Down as CEO | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Rod reflects on handing over the CEO reins to Barrie Seidenberg as the business matured, and recounts his mother questioning the tech industry's obsession with financial exits. | |
| Leading Rome2rio and TripAdvisor's Acquisition of Viator | 5 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Guy and Rod discuss Rome2rio and TripAdvisor's $200M acquisition of Viator. Rod admits telling TripAdvisor's Steve Kaufer early on that user reviews were a terrible idea. | |
| The Science of Travel Happiness and Reflections on Luck | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Rod explains research showing that booking trips in advance maximizes happiness due to positive anticipation overriding imperfect vacation realities, concluding with reflections on serendipity. |
Statements from this episode (13)
Fox Interactive Founders Invested $30,000 Each Using Severance Payouts
“We agreed pretty much on the spot to, ah, we each put some money in, I think 30,000 dollars each, ah, on Australia had given me a terrific payout, they were generous, they gave me six months salary when they fired me, so I had the capacity to take some of that…”
Travel Was the Perfect Product Category to Sell Online
“Travel really lends itself to sale on the web because there are no physical goods. There's lots of product description and images required. It's just the perfect thing to sell online.”
Payment Friction Prevented Early Travel Agents From Booking Local Activities
“They weren't able to book the on-ground activities that you often would want to do when you get there, but there was also another more fundamental reason why they weren't doing it, and that is that the operators say the Moulin Rouge or the Eiffel Tower, etc., …”
Sabre Relinquished Booking Software to Viator Founders After 1997 Layoffs
“We knew the names of various executives up the line, and we just kept calling the switchboard until we got through to one of them, who told us, Well have you heard of collateral damage? That project of yours, that's collateral damage. We don't want it. We don'…”
Viator Typically Took a 25% Commission on Tours and Experiences
“25% was pretty normal. An average per person price on, you know, a walking tour, or a cooking class, or whatever it was, might be a hundred bucks, and we would buy that from the supplier for 75 bucks.”
9/11 Unexpectedly Put a Rocket Under the Online Travel Industry
“So, for the online travel industry, there was this strange, perverse effect of nine-eleven, which is that it literally put a rocket under the industry.”
Viator Invented the Highly Lucrative 'Skip the Line' Tour Concept
“So with the tour operator, they approached the Vatican, the church and said, what if we did this thing that we'll call skip the line? What if we charge these guys three times as much, but you let them straight in? And the Vatican, you know, the commercial, the…”
Look Tours Lost Its Code and Backups in Physical Server Burglary
“Sadly, they kept all of the backups in a box that was sitting on top of the servers, and when these servers were stolen in the middle of the night, The backups of all of the code and customer records, et cetera, were stolen as well.”
Look Tours Rebuilt Its Stolen Website Using the Wayback Machine
“They managed to, over the next few days, rebuild the website from, you know, using the Wayback Machine and I don't know, a whole bunch of methods that they came up with on the spot. They got the site back up and going in about four or five days.”
$20M More Capital Could Have Yielded a $1 Billion Viator Exit
“It would have been great if we'd held on to Viator for just a few more years, tossed another twenty million dollars into the bucket, and turned it into a billion dollar exit.”
The Carlyle Group Made an 8x Return on Its Viator Investment
“I think Carlisle made eight or nine times their investment.”