The Exchanges

Q I guess you, you, you were a high school dropout. Not, not, I don't mean this as in a disparaging way, like, you know, to tar you with this brush, but you dropped out of high school, right?

A I did. My, uh, you know, we were coming up to the end of year exams in year 12, uh, what you would call the senior year of high school, I guess. And, uh, my dad died towards the end of the year, and I, I sort of, I have to admit, in looking back, I, I kind of used that as an excuse to just not finish all the exams. I just didn't see that they were going to be important to, to whatever it was I was going to do next. I wasn't going to go to university. I'd made that decision. So I didn't complete my year 12 exams, and after Christmas, I packed a bag and got on a plane, and there I was in Melbourne.

AI assessment note: “I did. My, uh, you know, we were coming up to the end”

Q know, and, and, because this is the beginnings of the, what would become the sort of the PC boom, the personal computer boom, and, and, and you would go on to work for, for DEC, a digital equipment corporation, which was a huge PC maker back in the day. Um, And, and that's, and I think you ended up staying there for, for several years, right, as a sales rep?

A Yeah, in 84, I think 83, DEC released their personal computer, and my job at the time was to find dealers in Melbourne to sell their personal computer. It's called the Rainbow. IBM and, uh, and Apple had released their machines, and, you know, the market was abuzz with this new thing, PCs. And I just couldn't find enough dealers to sell this thing. They're just, you know, we were not going to be able to get this product to market, so I approached a couple of my buddies at the office at DEC. And said, you know, we should do this ourselves. You know, let's find some money, beg, borrow, or steal, go to the bank, let's open a location of our own. So that's what we did. We, we, we started a business.

AI assessment note: “my job at the time was to find dealers in Melbourne to sell their personal computer”

Q Yeah. Tell, tell me about September 11th, because September 11th was both the biggest disruption to the travel industry up until COVID, of course, 20 years later, but it was also, what I didn't realize, it completely transformed the industry in ways that would benefit businesses like yours. How, what happened?

A Well, Uh, I was in the US at, at the time, so I have a direct personal experience of what happened. I was in New Orleans, uh, with a colleague from the company. Nine-Eleven happens. All flights in the US, all travel is stopped. There are no planes in the air. Everybody who has a booking is on the phone to the airline, to the hotel, to the car rental company. Clearly, their phone systems melt down. Ah, it's just impossible to get through to anybody. They can't staff up quickly enough. They can't add enough phone lines. It's just complete mayhem. Some of those companies had invested and, and had sort of fledgling websites, and were able to direct their customers to go to the websites to, you know, find information, connect with them, Change their booking, whatever it was. So people who hadn't previously attempted to do anything related to travel on the internet found themselves going to American Airlines or Delta or Marriott or Hilton or whatever. And they liked it. Uh, they liked what they found. They liked not having to be on hold and listen to that music for 40 minutes.

AI assessment note: “Some of those companies had invested and, and had sort of fledgling websites”

Q Wow. All right. So now, I mean, but, but in terms of, of other growth opportunities, I mean, how are you acquiring users?

A Because we were the first and there wasn't any competition, um, we were able to buy advertising and also get organic traffic. Um, relatively easily. But, conversely, not having competitors was not great. When you've got competitors, you know, they bring customers Into the market as well, and those customers, you know, look at their website, and then a percentage of them will say, well, who else does this? What are the competitors that I can look at? So if there's other people out there who are also doing marketing, that's good for you as well. There was nobody out there who was marketing tours and activities. There were people selling it, like Expedia and Travelocity and others were selling tours, But they weren't marketing. They were marketing hotels and flights.

AI assessment note: “we were able to buy advertising and also get organic traffic.”

Q All right. You are ostensibly the CEO, but 2010, your time at Viator comes to an end. What, what, what was going on?

A That's, you know, the, the board meetings became very different. After Carlisle came on board, it was less about the sort of big picture strategy, and it was more about spreadsheets and more about gross margin and, and things that weren't really my sort of core expertise. I was less comfortable, and I was not really adding a great deal of value, because by this time, The direction of the company, what we did was completely set in stone. So my ability to add value was, you know, it sort of, it had sort of run its course. Um, you know, the company becomes almost like your family, so you don't want to leave it, but I also realized that, you know, Barry did a much better job of this growth phase than I did, and we got on really well together, and I was very happy to leave The business in her hands. Wasn't really happy to leave, but, but I got comfortable with it.

AI assessment note: “board meetings became very different. After Carlisle came on board”

Q So tell me what you and Peter started to think. I mean, did you think, hey, let's pitch them on some, on, on, on, on working with them?

A Yeah, we, uh, Jill made contact with them and said, look, we've got a lot of experience at Fox Interactive on building websites for travel companies. We know exactly what is required. She, she really sold us. There was no particular reason why Sabre, based in Dallas, Texas, should contract with a company in Sydney, Australia. There were, there were plenty of people in the Northern Hemisphere that could do this, but they sent some of their people down to meet with us Uh, to talk about the contract, and lo and behold, we won it, and you know, the winning of it was, it was kind of easy in a way. At the time, I lived at Bondi Beach. I don't know if you've been to Sydney, but Bondi Beach is sort of iconic.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, we, uh, Jill made contact with them and said, look”