How I Got Here - Inside stories behind innovation and startups in travel

The Hipmunk story is one of idea versus reality, Silicon Valley versus the status quo, big challenges and an eventual sale to an unlikely suitor.

The company's co-founder, Adam Goldstein, is now candid about what happened to the company from its creation in 2010 until the SAP Concur acquisition in 2016.

From the original vision and how it evolved under the glare of an adoring West Coast tech press and curious travel media, to appearing at The Phocuswright Conference for the first time and facing the snark of a vocal rival CEO - Hipmunk had quite a ride.

Goldstein joins us as the latest guest on the How I Got Here podcast.  

HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.

It's hosted by PhocusWire's Kevin May, and Mozio co-founder and CEO David Litwak.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After a timely break of a few months after completing the first 28-stretch of episodes, How I Got Here returns for its second season.

Nowadays, Rod Cuthbert is a recognizable figure on the conference circuit, an investor and a valuable critic of new businesses and ideas as they come through the Launch and Summit programs at Phocuswright's events.

But he's best known as the co-founder of Viator, Australia's pioneering online booking platform for tours and activities that he created in the 1990s and was involved with until just before its sale to TripAdvisor in 2014.

Pundits still often label the tours and activities the "Wild West" sector in 2020 but in Viator's early days it was almost pre-humanoid.

Cuthbert shares the back story to the creation of the company and its heady growth period in the 2000s as our first guest of season two on How I Got Here.

HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.

It's hosted by our editor in chief, Kevin May, and Mozio co-founder and CEO David Litwak.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Operto was created in order to make life better for property managers - both those in private accommodation and others in the hotel sector.

The Canada-based company is a property automation system for managing short-term vacation rentals, hotels and other types of guest accommodation.

Co-founded by Michael Driedger in 2016, originally under the name SlickSpaces, the software is a combination of smart home devices to offer property managers real-time visibility and control over their units, as well as providing keyless entry, energy savings, noise and occupancy monitoring.

Driedger, who had no experience in the travel industry (coming from a structural engineering background), is the latest guest on How I Got Here.

HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.

It's hosted by PhocusWire editor in chief, Kevin May, and Mozio co-founder and CEO David Litwak.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Paul Metselaar knows a thing or two about corporate travel. He also knows how to steer his business through difficult times.

Created in 1984, Ovation Travel Group remains an independently owned company with 700 employees and over 200 travel advisors.

It currently works with 700 businesses on plans for over 300,000 travelers a year.

Metselaar has managed to operate the company alongside the so-called giants of the travel management world and push through major downturns following the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 and the global economic crisis.

He joins us for the latest episode of How I Got Here.    

HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.

It's hosted by PhocusWire's editor in chief, Kevin May, and Mozio co-founder and CEO David Litwak.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Microsoft might be considered a very different type of large corporation from a major online travel agency such as Expedia Group.

But, as most people know, travel's global web giant was created as a unit within the Microsoft empire in the mid-1990s, before being spun out via a public listing in 1999.

There are many similarities between the two brands.

Over two decades on Expedia's formation in the U.S., Ariane Gorin is one of very few executives at the OTA that also had a successful career at the IT company.

The president of Expedia Business Services joined Expedia in 2013 after a decade with Microsoft and has since been involved in a number of big initiatives around the business.

She joins us as our latest guest on High I Got Here.

HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

NexTravel is, in many respects, a classic travel startup in that it started out with one idea and then quickly pivoted to another.

The U.S.-based company, launched in 2015, as a consumer-facing leisure trip platform but realised that it could switch fairly easily to a service that focused on the needs of business travelers.

At that point, a few years into its history, business travel was still a reasonably quiet sector on the startup front.

This relative head start allowed co-founder and CEO, Wen-Wen Lam, to build a brand (and its associated technology behind the scenes) that has since gone on to capture a decent amount of share in a market that has, in recent years, mushroomed in terms of investment and profile for new businesses.  

NexTravel now stands alongside a number of peers in the startup wing of business travel that are giving the incumbents - the large travel management companies - plenty to think about.

Lam is this week's guest on How I Got Here. 

HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When the definitive history of online travel is written in the decades to come, Steve Hafner will be remembered for many things.

It may well be for his signature and extremely direct style of commenting on the industry ("Hipmunk - road kill" being one of his most infamous) during countless appearances at travel events.

But hopefully the pivotal role he played alongside Paul English in the creation of Kayak will be his legacy.

After learning the travel business at Orbitz, Hafner met English and the company was formed in 2004 with a mission to get the widest array of air tickets as possible in front of users.

The rest is history (an IPO and then a sale to Booking Holdings for $1.8 billion in 2012), as the saying goes, but it's a fascinating example of determination and smart thinking that brought Kayak to where it is today.

Hafner is the latest guest on the How I Got Here podcast.   

HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stephan Ekbergh is known for his risk-taking (moving a business to another continent) and open views on the sector's developments and issues.

The Travelstart Group is where this Swedish entrepreneur's passion for the business still rests after two decades in the job.

But he is involved in a number of initiatives in and outside of the industry and is a regular on the conference circuit, not least because he is not afraid to call out problems and speak his mind.

Perhaps unusually for the leader of a business, Ekbergh is also not afraid to admit his own failings (of which, he'll concede, there have been many) but always knowing that an individual and a business can learn from them.

Ekbergh joins us for the latest episode of How I Got Here.

HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.

Other episodes: on PhocusWire and Mozio.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bus travel is a huge part of the transportation ecosystem in Latin America, especially in Mexico where Reservamos was born in 2013.

The business was co-founded by Sebastian Gomez, an MIT Sloan alum, who saw an opportunity in the market to bring the complex world of bus ticketing in Mexico into the digital sphere.

Reservamos is now a large and established business in the region, but the journey has been far from easy.

The company and its exec team faced challenges from traditional operators and other local difficulties, as well as pivoting the company a few years into its history into a tech provider.

Gomez tells the story of Reservamos in this week's episode of How I Got Here.

HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.

Other episodes: on PhocusWire and Mozio.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hitlist went from being an idea to help friends find air tickets when visiting its CEO in Turkey to a favorite in the app stores.

Gillian Morris and her team managed to achieve the growth of the product with little money on the marketing front and almost next to no investment funds coming in.

The story behind Hitlist is testament to what hard work, some luck along the way and an ability to retain an acute sense of what the product should be at all times (a way of alerting users via an app to cheap fares based on their personal preferences).

Her pathway to 2020 has not been without its pitfalls, including countless unsuccessful investor meetings along the way.

Morris has also been at sharp end of seeing the bias that exists in the industry and investment community when startups are, unlike Hitlist, fronted my men.

She joins us as the latest guest on the How I Got Here podcast.

HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.

Other episodes: on PhocusWire and Mozio.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.