On the list of industries not to launch a business in during a pandemic, travel sits pretty high at the top. Yet that’s exactly what Sisi Liu did. In January 2020, she launched a beta of the app Hoptale, which allows users to document their travel experiences in a journal format.

Prior to founding Hoptale, Sisi had a successful career on Wall Street. She was an investment banker in the Technology, Media, and Telecommunication group at Morgan Stanley. She was also a tech investor at multi-billion dollar private equity and hedge funds in New York, San Francisco, and London. In addition to her over 10 years of investing experience in the technology industry, Sisi has an engineering and design background from MIT and Parsons School of Design. 

On the podcast, we discuss the logistics of launching a travel-based app during a travel hiatus and global shutdown, what it was like to walk away from Wall Street, and what she has learned about pivoting a business in times of crisis. 

Download the Hoptale app here.

Follow Hoptale on Instagram.