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Travel Tech Essentialist #140: Horizons

Mar 30

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This edition covers a wide spectrum of new horizons, from new jobs to new fundraising, launching, and scaling strategies, to enhancing traveler experiences to making better decisions. Happy Easter, everyone!

Thanks to HotelsByDay for sponsoring this newsletter

HotelsByDay is an app for flexible hotel experiences. By offering hotel rooms for a block of hours, hoteliers can capitalize on their unmonetized empty day room inventory while consumers enjoy the convenience of on-demand lodging accommodations—from day passes for pool, gym, spa, and parking to flexible room hours for work, meetings, long layovers, or quick refresh.

0. The most clicked link in the previous newsletter

The most clicked link in Travel Tech Essentialist #139 was Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s 2-minute video of the true essence of greatness, emphasizing that it stems from character shaped by adversity.

1. Travel Tech Essentialist Job Board

Five months after the launch of the new Travel Tech Essentialist Job Board, it is encouraging to see the solid traction it’s gotten and how it is becoming the leading platform for travel tech careers and talent. And most importantly, many hires are taking place. Happy candidates and happy companies. That’s the idea.

Remote job opportunities command the highest interest among candidates exploring new positions, with searches and applications for these roles surpassing those in specific locations. Barcelona, New York, and London—cities once speculated to be losing their allure—are the next most popular search destinations, trailing the interest in remote work but not by a wide margin. The top three cities for job searches are London, Barcelona, and New York City, in that order, with Barcelona, New York City, and London leading in applications. Amsterdam and Berlin follow in 4th and 5th position for both searches and applications.

Marketing & Communications leads as the most sought-after job category, accounting for 23% of all searches. Close behind, Sales & Business Development captures 19% of search interest. When it comes to actual applications, Sales & Business Development takes the lead over Marketing & Communications.

If you are hiring and want your company's openings featured on the job board and in this newsletter, please fill out this quick 1-minute form.

P.S. After writing this section, I received a very encouraging email from Tucker Dearth, COO of Travel Collection. I thought it would be relevant to share it (with his permission):

Dear Mauricio,
I wanted to extend my heartfelt thanks to you for the incredible impact your platform has had on our recruitment process. Thanks to your travel tech job board, we've made two amazing hires who are not just perfect for their roles but have also seamlessly integrated into our team culture. Your dedication to connecting companies with the highest caliber candidates has truly set you apart in this competitive job market. We are immensely grateful for your support and the opportunity to access such a valuable talent pool.
Kindest,
Tucker

2. Exit Envy

In this post, Christopher Elliot defines the mad scramble to exit an airplane, often before it barely touches the gate, as "exit envy." 58% of travelers surveyed by Kayak said passengers should not rush to get off the plane but I sense some illusory superiority here (the cognitive bias that leads individuals to overestimate their own qualities and abilities in relation to others). Interestingly, this rush often ends at the luggage carousel, where the hurry seems unjustified.

With airlines rushing to monetize conveniences and considering the lengths to which passengers will go to ensure they're first off the plane, we may soon see a "pre-exit" option emerge as the next airline ancillary.

3. Deviceless travel

In The Future of Travel is Deviceless, Fritz Oberhummer writes that the future of travel will lean towards a deviceless experience inspired by a vision where technology enhances human interactions rather than complicates them. This concept draws inspiration from the personalized service of the past and contrasts with today's impersonal tech-heavy travel. The transition involves solving digital transformation challenges, including modernizing legacy IT systems and integrating online and offline services. The ultimate goal is a "Digital Purist Traveler" who navigates travel effortlessly through integrated IoT and AI without the hassle of physical devices. This evolution promises a more enriching travel experience, emphasizing the joy of the journey over the mechanics of getting there.

Spectators will be able to tell their grandkids that they were there looking at their phones when LeBron James broke the all-time scoring record. The lone exception is Phil Knight, founder of Nike, taking in a deviceless moment.

4. The Onion-Theory of Risk

Mark Andreessen thinks that the biggest thing entrepreneurs fail to see is the relationship between risk and how to raise and spend cash. He advocates for a strategic approach that he calls the "Onion Theory of Risk." On day 1, a startup has every conceivable risk: founding team risk (do you have the right founders and will they be able to work together?), product risk (can you build the product?), technical risk (do you depend on a technical breakthrough to make it work?), launch risk, market acceptance risk, revenue risk, cost of sales risk, viral growth risk, etc…

The key to successful startup operation and fundraising lies in methodically eliminating these risks as the company progresses. So you raise seed money to peel away the first two or three risks, such as founding team risk, product risk, and initial launch risk. Then you raise the A round to peel away the next level of product risk, recruiting risk and some customer risk, for instance. As you go, you are peeling away risks by achieving milestones, both making progress in your business and justifying raising additional capital.

Andreessen suggests that pitching for investment should involve a clear demonstration of milestones reached and risks eliminated at each stage, thereby aligning the amount of capital raised with the specific risks targeted for removal. Something like this:

I raised a seed round and achieved ＿, ＿ milestones and eliminated ＿, ＿ risks.
I raised the A round and achieved ＿, ＿ milestones and eliminated ＿, ＿ risks.
Now I want to raise a B round to achieve ＿, ＿ milestones and eliminate ＿, ＿ risks. And by the time I raise my C round, this is the state that I’ll be in.

See Mark Andreessen’s 2-minute video here

5. Landing in the middle of the Swiss Alps

Sion Airport in Switzerland is in the heart of the Alps. It is a technically difficult landing because the airport is surrounded by mountains and the steep descent (6 degrees). Here’s a beautiful video of the approach and landing:

6. Meme coins as the new go-to-market strategy

Exploring innovative go-to-market strategies? Here’s a new one you probably have not considered: piggybacking off a popular meme coin. Li Jin (co-founder and GP at early stage VC Variant and a brilliant thinker) suggests tapping into the vibrant communities and broad appeal of meme coins might be the next big thing in go-to-market strategy (specifically relevant to the crypto and blockchain sectors). By incorporating these tokens into their offerings, startups can not only engage an already active user base but also enhance the utility and, consequently, the value of both the tokens and the integrated products. Examples like BONKbot and Berachain showcase the potential of this strategy to create a virtuous cycle of increased usage and value. Read + Li Jin.

While these examples aren't from the travel sector, the most impactful innovations in travel often originate from outside industries, so it’s worth keeping an eye on this outrageous (today) suggestion.

7. Crypto and Blockchain travel innovators

There are a few travel players who might read Li Jin’s article with 🤔 instead of 🤣.

Crypto-friendly OTA Travala closed 2023 with $60 million in revenue in 2023 (kudos to them for their quarterly public updates, something uncommon for travel companies).
TravelX’s "NFTickets” enable seamless exchanges between customers and airlines. They are already operational with Flybondi, facilitating a peer-to-peer model for ticket trading among travelers, and with Viva Aerobus in Mexico, employing an Airline2Peer model for enhanced ticket flexibility.
Xeni operates as a Shopify-type travel aggregator that powers numerous booking sites and is transforming how travel content is resold and payments are processed online. It’s built on the Headers blockchain and has over 300,000 wallet holders and $1.6 million in transactions settled.

8. Sam Altman on what it takes to build a great company

4.5% of the startups that have gone through Y Combinator since 2010 have become billion-dollar companies. Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI and former president of Y Combinator) knows what it takes to build great companies. Through Ruben Dominguez, I found this 5-minute video with actionable advice on Sam’s 9 tactics for building a great company.

Get to know your users really well. The best founders are deeply involved in customer support and immersive user engagement for profound insights (Airbnb founders even moved in with hosts!)
Have a short cycle time & understand compound growth. Identify customer pain points → solution → test with users → iterate. A small improvement every 4 hours instead of weeks has a profound impact in the long run.
Make a long-term commitment. Viewing your company as a 10-year project makes you take better decisions.
Stay lean until everything is working really well. Stay lean until everything is working really well. Initial flexibility is key; expand only when you're confident in your direction and success.
Resist the urge to make quick hires, especially mediocre ones. "The team you build is the company you build," as Vinod Khosla says. Success is the result of a great team and a product people love, so focus intently on assembling a strong team. The best CEOs prioritize recruiting and retaining exceptional talent.
Relentless execution. Success requires meticulous attention to every detail and a deep commitment to perfecting every customer interaction.
Startups are about not giving up. Sam Altman highlights the essence of startup resilience, noting how a company's seven attempts to join a YC batch illustrate the critical persistence founders must have to succeed.
Fiduciary duty to take care of yourself. Prioritize self-care as a duty to shareholders, your team, and yourself. Overlooking health and relationships for work is unsustainable.
Clear mission. The most successful startups typically define a compelling mission within the first two years. This mission becomes a magnet for attracting talent, founders and media attention.

9. Persistence and flexibility

Sam Altman’s #7 tactic for building a great startup is not to give up. Indeed, persistence is common to all successful startups. However, considering that 90% of startups don't succeed, there's a nuanced argument for recognizing that sometimes giving up (or at least being open to the possibility) is the best decision. We should be aware that showing incredible persistence in pursuing a bad idea is not good. Kevin Kelly, the founder of Wired Magazine, offers an interesting viewpoint on the three things that people need: 1) The ability not to give up something till it works; 2) the ability to give up something that does not work; 3) the trust in other people to help you distinguish between the two.

Jeff Bezos also offers some good advice on this:

“Entrepreneurs need a combination of stubborn relentlessness and flexibility. You need to be stubborn about your vision because otherwise, it will be too easy to give up. But you need to be very flexible on the details because as you go along pursuing your vision, you will find that some of your preconceptions were wrong, and you are gonna need to be able to change those things.” -- Jeff Bezos

10. The largest traffic referrals (in the US)

New research published by Rand Fishkin (founder of Moz) reveals Google as the primary source of US web traffic referrals, significantly outpacing others, with nearly ten times more referrals than Microsoft & Bing, the next largest source. Some other observations from the study:

Slight decline in traffic to the Long Tail, suggesting an increasing concentration of web traffic among top sites.
Despite Reddit's efforts to keep users within its ecosystem and YouTube's dominance in video content, both platforms still funnel a significant amount of traffic to smaller sites.
A comparison of the most "generous" and "hoarding" referrers, shows the variance in how platforms distribute traffic. Search engines dominate the top of the most generous referrers, while large medical sites, media consumption platforms and utility-focused sites like UPS, FedEx, tend to hoard traffic.

Are you fundraising?

If you are a startup looking to raise a round (from pre-seed to Series D), I can help (for free). Travel Investor Network is a private platform where I recommend innovative travel startups to investors and innovators. If you’re interested, please start by completing this form.

Travel Tech Essentialist Job Board

Explore the 1317 open positions on Travel Tech Essentialist’s curated Job Board and stay ahead of the curve by subscribing to job alerts. Some of the jobs on the board:

BoutiqueHomes | Director of Growth | Remote, New York City | $150,000 – $225,000
FLYR | Product Marketing Manager | San Francisco | $131,000 - $183,000
Airbnb | Product Manager, Luxe | Paris
WeTravel | VP of Customer Experience | Remote

→ Join the Talent Network. Hiring companies sometimes ask me to help them find the best talent. If you want me to have you on my radar to introduce you to the right opportunities, join the new Talent Network (it takes 3 minutes).

→ If you're contemplating a career move, simply curious, or an HR professional seeking job insights, subscribe to my Travel Tech Jobs newsletter.

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