How Wander Raised $50M to Reinvent Luxury Travel

In this episode, John Andrew Entwistle, founder & CEO, breaks down Wander’s explosive growth and recent $50M Series B round led by QED Investors and Fifth Wall, with support from Redpoint, Uncork, Starwood Capital, and Breyer Capital. Wander is building the first vertically integrated platform in vacation rentals, targeting the $35B luxury short-term rental segment with over 1,000 homes, a best-in-class 85 NPS, and 35,000+ nights booked to date. Earn Sourcery Content Rewards: https://whop.com/sourcery/?a=sourcery Molly on X: https://x.com/MollySOShea Jack on X: https://x.com/jacksharkey11 Brought to you by: Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, and travel. As a Sourcery listener, you can unlock up to $500 toward Brex travel or $300 in cash back, plus exclusive perks to help you move even faster: https://brex.com/sourcery Kalshi—The largest prediction market and the only legal platform in the US where people can trade directly on the outcomes of future events: https://kalshi.com/sourcery Follow Sourcery for the latest updates! https://www.sourcery.vc/ TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - John Andrew Entwistle Introduction 1:00 - Series B Benchmark: $5M–$15M ARR 3:32 - What is Wander? 5:20 - Maintaining a high NPS through various transitions 6:10 - The Unscalable Beginning 8:15 - Building the First Vacation Rental REIT 10:46 - Brex Sponsorship Break 11:48 - Market Size: $35B GMV in Top 5% 13:42 - Customer Experience Philosophy 17:00 - Solving the Marketplace Cold Start Problem 19:15 - Hardest Challenge: The 2022 Crisis 23:47 - Sourcing Premium Properties 25:30 - Favorite Properties and Hidden Gems 28:51 - B2B Opportunities 32:34 - The Technology Stack 36:18 - Founder Background 39:59 - Advice for Young Founders 41:37 - Staying Clear During Rapid Scaling 43:53 - Team Structure and Hiring 48:56 - Efficient Marketing and Operations 51:04 - Demand Generation Strategy 53:22 - Activation Over Growth 55:27 - Business Model Deep Dive 57:59 - Capital Raised: $100M+ 1:00:13 - What to Look for in Investors 1:02:20 - Life Philosophy: The Four Rules 1:06:24 - Looking Forward #podcast #investing #technology #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #siliconvalley

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We signed our Series B term sheet. It was actually a wet signature, which is very rare nowadays.

• 0:05Molly O'Shea?

  We have an exclusive, fresh off the term sheet.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  Fresh off the term sheet?

• 0:08Molly O'Shea?

  Straight to sorcery.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  Straight here. Series B is one of the harder rounds, if not probably the hardest to wonder is a company that's entire purpose is to solve a problem. Really, it's a verticalized marketplace, which means that we own the booking platform and the distribution. But we also have this curation on the underlying inventory. And then all of the inventory is ran to this consistent standard, almost hotel-like. And so when you pair those different dynamics together, you're able to solve the customer experience problem.

• 0:36Molly O'Shea?

  John Andrew, welcome to Sorcery.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 0:39Molly O'Shea?

  First, thank you to Joshua Browder for the introduction. Shout out to Do Not Pay and Browder Capital.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  Thanks, Josh.

• 0:48Molly O'Shea?

  Sponsored by Browder Capital. No, I'm just kidding. Anyways.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  The premier pre-seed investor.

• 0:54Molly O'Shea?

  Well, big congratulations on your Series B.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 0:58Molly O'Shea?

  I know this was a massive opportunity for you, and I'd love to know everything about it.

• 1:03Speaker 00

  Okay, well, yesterday or the day before, I do not remember, we signed our Series B term sheet. It was actually a wet signature, which is very rare nowadays.

• 1:14Molly O'Shea?

  We have an exclusive, fresh off the term sheet.

• 1:16Speaker 00

  Fresh off the term sheet. So we don't actually know.

• 1:19Molly O'Shea?

  Straight to sorcery.

• 1:21Speaker 00

  Straight here. We don't know exactly how big the round is going to be.

• 1:26Molly O'Shea?

  Question marks.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  Question marks. But yeah, it's all happening live.

• 1:30Molly O'Shea?

  So it'll all be edited with the exact amount. Hopefully, the lead is still the lead.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  I'd love if it like shined. Can you do that kind of editing? There, with a rainbow, maybe some unicorns or something.

• 1:42Molly O'Shea?

  So who led this round and what was the process like for you?

• 1:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the round is led by Q E D, who is an internal investor. They led our Series A. And the process has been really fascinating. I think that.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  The Series B is one of the harder rounds, if not probably the hardest. And the reason for that is that you have to hit pretty incredible milestones. I'd say that probably today, the minimum threshold is around 5 million of ARR. But really, like 10 to 15 is starting to become standard. The sort of goalposts have moved quite a bit. And so I'd say that's rather difficult. You have to build a high-growth company, a good executive team. You actually have to have product-market fit. And so I'd say that those are the things that make it challenging. And then also too, you know, we're in a macro and a period where you don't know what firms are active or not active. You don't know how much money folks still have to deploy or not.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  And so you kind of have to run a little bit of a larger process to sort of-

• 2:45Molly O'Shea?

  Which partners are going to stay at the firm?

• 2:47Speaker 00

  Exactly. So it's very complicated right now for founders, but it's definitely navigable.

• 2:55Molly O'Shea?

  So, speaking of metrics, can you share some of your metrics?

• 2:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, so we've been, we've been super fortunate. Wander's grown quite a bit. We just passed 1,000 locations, which is super exciting.

• 3:06Molly O'Shea?

  Congrats.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  Thank you. Yeah, we, it feels like yesterday, we had like two locations on the platform and people are like, what is the point of what you're doing? I'm like, well, one day-

• 3:16Molly O'Shea?

  Fight for the location.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe there'll be more, you know, hopefully.

• 3:21Speaker 00

  So yeah, we've grown locations on platform about 14x year-over-year. Our net promoter score is 85 for Q1, which is super high.

• 3:29Molly O'Shea?

  Wow.

• 3:31Speaker 00

  We're cresting a $40 million GMV run rate. I think we're targeting to finish the year around 80.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  So yeah, a lot of, a lot of good growth. I feel, I feel very fortunate.

• 3:40Molly O'Shea?

  That's fantastic. So to get to basics, could you just explain what Wander is and the evolution of the company?

• 3:46Speaker 00

  Totally. So when explaining Wander, I always ask the question, like, have you ever had a bad vacation rental experience?

• 3:54Speaker 00

  You know, whether it's bad Airbnb or VRBO, you know, get there, it doesn't look like the photos, et cetera. And the reason why I start with that question is because at the end of the day, Wander is Is a company that's entire purpose is to solve a problem rather than like trying to force feed people this like SaaS or something that we have an idea for.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  And so when you think about Wander and how we've solved that, really it's a verticalized marketplace, which means that we own the booking platform and the distribution. But we also have this curation on the underlying inventory. And then all of the inventory is ran to this consistent standard, almost hotel-like. And so when you pair those different dynamics together, you're able to solve the customer experience problem.

• 4:40Molly O'Shea?

  That's amazing. So where are all the locations?

• 4:43Speaker 00

  So mostly in the US, we have expanded into Mexico and Canada.

• 4:48Molly O'Shea?

  Congrats.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank you.

• 4:50Molly O'Shea?

  Wow, international.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's cool. There's nothing about the way that Wander works that actually requires any friction when going into these international markets, other than registration and legal. And so you will see Wander expand across the globe, which I'm really excited for.

• 5:11Molly O'Shea?

  That's great. So I have heard that your pace is unreal. That is from Paki McCormick. Yeah, we have a good question from him right now. So shout out to Paki. So you've transitioned from owning homes through a REIT to doing managed properties. Somehow you've maintained this really high NPS throughout it all. How are you making this happen?

• 5:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, so Wander, when we first started Wander, my big question was, do people actually want what we're going to create? Like, is their idea market fit on this idea of consistency and quality, which seemed obvious in hindsight, but I wanted to prove it out. And so we had to solve the cold start problem of, you have this marketplace, you have this demand, you have no locations. So we actually decided to own the first few assets on balance sheet. Which is a very capital intensive idea, a really big risky bet. But what it allowed for us to do is prove and build very, very quickly what works, what didn't, what the ultimate user experience was.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  And I think that that idea is something that candidly wasn't fully appreciated. When Wander launched as a six month old company and you would go and stay at one of these homes, you had a Tesla that you could unlock through the app. So we like literally built an integration. Someone at Tesla like hit us up. It was so cool. You could control the entire house through your smartphone. So turn on the lights and the TV and the Sonos through the Wander app. So think about that, like what startup six months in builds like that type of integration? And then you had obviously the full booking platform and everything like that. And so the user experience and going a step further, concierge, we ran in this unlimited way.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  We said like concierge can do anything you want from booking a private chef to a private jet, to stocking the fridge, whatever you can dream of, concierge can do it. And so we started the company with this exceptionally unscalable version, but it was all in this pursuit of like taking what I thought was the best chance of finding product market fit, which we did. We found product market fit very quickly. But then you run into this big question of how do you, how do you scale? You know, that, that classic tagline of do things that don't scale only works for like a very short period and then you actually do need to scale. And so the first step was taking those initial assets that we bought on balance sheet

• 7:43Speaker 00

  and transitioning them to an investor owned model. So we needed to obviously bring the cash back to balance sheet and move to third party ownership. But we wanted to retain the control, even though we were moving to third party owners. And so that's why we ended up structuring it as a REIT. Which enters into the next, you know, sort of level of insanity from a startup perspective, which is now you have a 12-month-old startup building a REIT, which is insanely complicated. Like, I don't think that people actually realize how wild of a concept that that is.

• 8:20Molly O'Shea?

  And how old were you at the time?

• 8:22Speaker 00

  I was 23, yeah, 23, turning 24.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  And so, yeah, so we built a REIT. We, like, the first vacation rental REIT to ever exist. It was exceptionally well-done. Like, I wanted everything to be bulletproof, scalable, truly institutional-grade. Latham Watkins was our lawyer. And then I think we used Ernst & Young from a REIT accounting perspective and a tax perspective. We used Phoenix American for a fund administrator to actually manage, you know, folks' money, to make sure that it was all being handled correctly. And so you had this massive investment, not to mention, obviously, all the technical pieces, which, at the end of the day, ended up being, in my opinion, like, one of the most beautiful products I've ever built. This idea that you could go, you could stay at these homes, you could own a piece of it

• 9:08Speaker 00

  through this platform, and to have everything be truly institutional-grade and legitimate in a world where, candidly speaking, like, most of these fractionalized investment companies are not exactly sound, was something I was really, really proud of. So we scaled that until, candidly, we reached the point where we had owners of these homes say, like, "Hey, we trust you now. Like, we trust you with our $5 million beautiful house, you know, to take it and to run it. And we believe the data. You don't need to convince us anymore that running to a brand standard actually has an impact on the underlying performance." And at that point as well, you know, we had been building, along this whole journey, WanderOS, which effectively runs the underlying operations.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  You can think about it like this piece of software that coordinates vendors and cleaning crews, where we actually talk to our customers, all of that.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  And so, at that point, we were actually able to scale the number of locations without adding headcount, which was a really important idea. And so from there, we closed out the Fund One for the REIT. Investors got a really great return, 22% plus percent, which is really great in real estate.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  And then we continued to scale, you know, asset light. And so here we are today, but obviously a crazy journey, as you would expect, requiring a lot of iteration and speed, but solving the cold start problem in a marketplace like this was just phenomenally difficult, but I don't think that we would have been able to do it if we had gone through any other evolution.

• 10:43Molly O'Shea?

  Sorcery is brought to you by Brex, the financial stack trusted by more than 30,000 companies, including one in three venture-backed startups in the US. Nearly 40% of startups fail because they run out of cash. Brex is literally built to help founders avoid that. Unlike traditional banks that let your money sit idle, chipping away at it with fees, Brex is designed to help you spend smarter and move faster. Their all-in-one solution combines checking, treasury, and FDIC protection into one powerful account. You can send and receive money globally at lightning speeds, get 20 times the standard FDIC coverage through their partner banks, and even high yield from day one. With same-day and even same-hour liquidity, access your funds anytime.

• 11:28Molly O'Shea?

  Companies like Scale AI, DoorDash, ServiceTitan, Hims, Anthropic, Flexport, Robinhood, and Plaid, trust and use Brex. Start today at brex.com/sorcery. That's B-R-E-X dot com slash sorcery. Super high NPS, similar to that of the likes of like Apple.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:51Molly O'Shea?

  You're building the amount of Airbnbs, essentially. This is a very luxury market, so what gave you the conviction to go after this market? And where is there opportunities? How big is this?

• 12:04Speaker 00

  So the top 5% of vacation rentals represent about 30% of the industry's revenue. So there's about 300,000 locations that fit the Wander standard. And those 300,000 locations represent about 35 billion of GMV, which is quite a bit.

• 12:22Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, you could build a good business off of that, for sure.

• 12:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 12:27Molly O'Shea?

  So why exactly is travel broken right now?

• 12:32Speaker 00

  I think that you have incredible fragmentation. It's sort of that classic Keith Roy quote of take a highly fragmented, low NPS industry and vertically integrate it. And that's how you create enterprise value. You have legacy softwares, different types of operators, different qualities of inventory, conflicting incentives. And candidly speaking, no one's looking after the underlying customer. All of these companies are and individuals are just trying to convince you to book a trip with them or spend your money with them. And then once that's done, they kind of just like, are like, okay, great.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  Versus at Wander, literally like we have a button in the concierge chat, like a thumbs up or a thumbs down. And when you hit that thumbs down button, it doesn't go into the ether like it actually pings me on Slack.

• 13:23Molly O'Shea?

  Sirens go off.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  Literally, like it literally messages me directly that there is like someone upset. And obviously I'm unable to deal with, you know, every customer. Fortunately, there's relatively few from a negative perspective. But the, the amount of care that we have is really, really special. And it's something that like, we will never, we, we won't be able to be perfect 100% of the time. But from a company perspective, a cultural perspective, I never plan on, on, um,

• 13:54Speaker 00

  on giving up in, in the pursuit of like delivering just consistently great experiences for people.

• 14:00Molly O'Shea?

  Let's dig into that further. I want to go deep into your customer experience. I've heard so many phenomenal stories about friend stays at Wanders, how much they're excited by it. They're like, there's surprises at every turn. You don't even understand like how much you get access to and all the care and detail that goes into it. So let's talk about the customer experience and how you thought about even going that far.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. So when you think about travel.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  And you think about life, like we all work really, really hard. We have little time and every now and then there's a reason why you want to escape and get away. It may be something emotional. It may be something where you want to spend time with friends or family. It may be something where you just like want to be happy. And to me, it's like an exceptionally vulnerable moment in someone's life that can either be a really horrendous experience, which is a drag in the worst time, or you can absolutely delight and like make their, make their day and, and so make their week, make their year, depending on the memories that happen.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  And so the way that I think about it is, is that the first thing is we want the digital experience to represent and inform the user on what is the home that you're booking? Where is it? Here's a video. Here's four plans. Here's all the information that we can give you to have you, you know, have a great experience. Make that digital experience really beautiful. Once you actually go and book, you're presented with all the information, the home guides, you know, how to get to the property and of course, you know, concierge is able, able to assist you. And then when you, when you check in, the idea is that, and really the brand promise of Wander is that what you booked actually matches reality.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Like what you saw in the photos, hopefully pales in comparison to like when you actually get there and start to experience it. And so, you know, that's really, I think what makes Wander special. And of course there's all the little things like the amenity kits and, you know, the snack basket and the waters and, you know, all the things that you would, you would hope for. But I think that it's really that idea and why our NPS is so high is that as a company, you have a brand and that brand is effectively a promise to your users and your NPS is a measure of how well you're delivering on that promise. And so I think that, you know, again, for us, it all revolves around, around the customer and ensuring that. We're, we're creating a platform and an environment for them to have like real memories.

• 16:42Speaker 00

  Like these are real, these are real people. Like it's not just like numbers on a screen. Like this is families and, and moments that shape, shaped their lives.

• 16:52Molly O'Shea?

  The marketplace is the heart of Wander and booking, finding something that you find delightful and having a nice escape. How did you solve the cold start problem for the marketplace?

• 17:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I think it goes, you know, into that question that, that Paki had asked about going from owned into the re and then going into obviously third-party inventory. You know, I think that on the demand side, we found idea market fit very quickly. And, and that's because you can put out what you're doing to the world. You can say, hey, this is what Wander is. Here's a launch video, et cetera. The supply side was much, much harder. Um, I mean, I remember when we were first scaling, you know, an idea that we had was, you know, how are we going to finance these homes? How are we going to be able to purchase more, you know, more homes on balance sheet to start to grow our supply?

• 17:49Speaker 00

  And so we, we ended up signing up a hundred million dollar credit facility with Credit Suisse as a literal eight-month-old company. It was unheard of in terms of the level of sophistication, audited financials, you know, all the things that you would imagine that go into something that, um, that large, you know, we had to, we had to fulfill. And literally six months later, all of the banks were failing. You see it like literally, I'm watching the headlines, you know, Credit Suisse uh, is going under this 200-year-old plus, you know, uh, globally important bank. And here I am, you know, as like little Wander, being like, okay, like, here we go.

• 18:33Molly O'Shea?

  Where's my hundred million dollars?

• 18:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, here, here we, here we go. And so I think that that is that is something as well, like when you think about all Wander has gone through, everything we've had to do to get to this point now where things are, you know, scaling super quickly and, you know, it feels like this inevitability. You know, lots of, lots of ups and downs. And so, you know, for any founder who's, you know, watching or listening, just know that regardless of like how pretty the press release looks, or, you know, oh, wow, like Wander's this overnight success, it feels like yesterday they only had two properties or whatever. It is incredibly, incredibly difficult and takes a lot of, you know, fast thinking.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  And sometimes the world makes it makes it a little harder.

• 19:21Molly O'Shea?

  That brings me to Browder's question. What is the hardest challenge that you've had to overcome in your journey?

• 19:31Speaker 00

  You know, it's interesting. So I'm, I'm a second time founder, a venture backed founder. In my first company, Coder, I ran from ages 18 through 23, and it became relatively large. And everything was hard. I'd like wake up every day and it was like, everything was net new, everything was challenging. And I remember starting Wander and feeling like, okay, like this is going to be cake. Like, I've been there, I've done it, I know how to raise capital, I know how to build a great product, I know, I know good people and can put together a team. And of course, you immediately start to run into, you know, every company is unique in the way that it wants to cause pain to its founders and Wander

• 20:16Speaker 00

  was, was no different. And so I would say that probably the most challenging period for us was when in 2022, Credit Suisse failed, you had interest rates skyrocketing, you had this platform, which had great technology and a great brand and user love, but was now unable to scale supply. And how quickly as a team, we needed to be able to react to that, to build, to power through, even raising capital, as you would imagine during that period was rather difficult. Even as a second time founder with a great brand and great

• 21:00Speaker 00

  name, you know, it wasn't exactly as if money was laying on the floor, like during that period.

• 21:08Speaker 00

  And so I said that that was really challenging. But one thing that I pride myself in as a CEO is we never had to do any layoffs. We never had to slow down. You know, if you look at our growth, it looks like we always post year over year growth. And that's because we do, but that, that, that period was very, very difficult. And I think that I tried to like, I think like when you have, like, when you think about, you know, your parents or my parents or anyone's parents, there will always be times where they have a bad day or they're struggling to provide or whatever else. But they like walk into the room with their kids and they put a smile on. It's like, we got this, like, and of course you're working, you know, overtime.

• 21:51Speaker 00

  I think that that's what that period was like for me. And one of my proudest moments in that is that I was, I was telling, I was relaying this experience to one of our executives and they said, from my perspective, everything was great. Like we were just, we were going and growing. You kept the culture moving. You kept everyone excited. And I think that's something that I'm proud of that, you know, like I remember laying awake many, many nights during that period, but again, ensuring that I kept the team moving and growing and excited. And so, yeah, that's always difficult, but every, every founder, most founders go through, go through those, those periods. It's very, very normal.

• 22:35Molly O'Shea?

  It's great to know that in your natural state, you operate with integrity and you take care of your team and everyone thinks it's seamless, even though you might be lacking some sleep and sweating a bit.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, we were talking about this, like this, this week, I got like six hours of sleep last night, which was amazing. So, you know, I'm glad I can be coherent. Thank you. Yeah. But yeah, before that I was running on like 10 hours of sleep for the last like seven days.

• 23:04Molly O'Shea?

  Oof.

• 23:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was, it was, it was rough, but it's, it's, it's, it's so fulfilling. I feel very grateful. I can imagine the, you know, Brian Johnson comment like do not have a lack of sleep, which again, I do not endorse. So, you know, I fully prescribe to the idea that sleep is important. I don't want to create like hustle hustle culture ideas.

• 23:26Molly O'Shea?

  Sometimes you just have to do it for the mission.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, sometimes you have to like sacrifice a little bit, which is hard, but and to be clear, I think if I was smarter, maybe I wouldn't, I wouldn't have to be so sleep deprived. So.

• 23:40Molly O'Shea?

  I'm not sure if that's how it works.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Well, I like to think so at least.

• 23:46Molly O'Shea?

  I think you're probably doing fine. So how do you source top tier properties?

• 23:53Speaker 00

  So the way that I looked at it was I saw it as a large data problem. So we knew the industry was very large. We knew that there was this idea of concentration of revenue in this, you know, quality subset, but there was this needle in a haystack problem. And so what I saw was the opportunity to effectively create a really interesting piece of software where we would be able to ingest every home bought and sold in the last five years, every single vacation rental and a bunch of other surrounding data and effectively feed it through a series of various agents, looking at things like home quality, amenities, location, all the types

• 24:36Speaker 00

  of analysis that you would, you would have to do as a user and filtering that down into the 300,000 locations that are obviously Wander's, you know, sort of target market. We've sifted through literally millions of units, that system, and it was probably one of the most fun data exercises that I ever worked on. And so then it's about enriching it with the owner information, the contact information, which is again, this, you know, massive data exercise, this OSINT or open source intelligence exercise. And so that was all very, very cool and a lot of, a lot of fun. And so we, we know literally every home, the address, where it is and who owns it. And so we have a very clear path from here

• 25:21Speaker 00

  of sort of accomplishing our, our target.

• 25:24Molly O'Shea?

  Do you have any favorite properties?

• 25:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's interesting. So we're going to add about 200, 300 locations this month. Um, you know, obviously you have that exponential growth curve happening. And so I candidly don't get to look at all of them anymore, which is a wild.

• 25:43Molly O'Shea?

  It'd be hard to get to two, two hundred, three hundred properties in one month.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so, you know, it's so funny, right? Because I was so, I loved the early days, visiting these homes and like, working on them and understanding, you know, the relationship with the vendors and how I could build software that they would want to interact with. And now it's like, I just get to see the same photos that everyone else sees. It was funny, like even the launch video that we recently did. I got to see it at the same time that everyone else did, just because so much was happening around the company. And I was like, wow, this is a great video. Like, good job, guys. Like, you know, retweet.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  And so, you know, from a property location, you know, most of my favorites come from the early days where I was actually able to visit most of them. You know, I think that there's a house, Wander Banden Beach in Oregon, that I remember standing at and thinking that if I could replicate the feeling that I was having there to millions of potential customers, that it would be a company that was a net positive. And so that, that's probably my favorite.

• 26:51Molly O'Shea?

  Are there any particular, like, hot properties that people keep on going to, or states that you wouldn't assume are like, the place to be, but everyone keeps on going to? Like, I'm just really curious what the behaviors are on the consumer side.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  I'd say that you have all of the normal sort of travel markets that you would think of. But one of the really cool things about Wander is that our focus isn't just on the revenue potential of the home, but certain sort of hard to measure characteristics about the look and the feel. And what ends up happening is that you have passionate homeowners who built these properties that you would see in Architectural Digest.

• 27:34Speaker 00

  That are in the middle of nowhere. And one of the really cool things about Wander is that we surface those homes to people and say, "Hey, this isn't just a home that's in a magazine. Now, thanks to Wander, you can actually go and stay here." And so you do have these really beautiful homes, like for example, Wander Orford Cliffs is this James Bond looking house that's made of glass on these two pedestals above a 180-foot cliff at the westernmost part of the United States, except for Alaska and Hawaii, obviously. And it is just the most insane views.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  And the owner, like a funny antidote, like set up the beds and even like the master bathroom to like look at this view. And so it's like you're washing your hands in the morning or whatever else. And you turn around and you just see this wild expanse. And you would never think to go to, you know, Port Orford, Oregon as a, you know, traveler. But there is this gem of a house that was previously never going to be seen by anyone other than the owner and now is a place you're able to go to.

• 28:46Molly O'Shea?

  I'm surprised you're not getting hit up by like entertainment studios for booking these locations, are you?

• 28:52Speaker 00

  We are, yeah. So Wander.

• 28:55Molly O'Shea?

  Is there a B to B side of this?

• 28:59Speaker 00

  A little bit. You obviously are focused on the guest and the consumer, but we certainly get used for movies and photo shoots and car launches and all types of things. We actually had a relatively large movie, which I'm not allowed to talk about because it hasn't been like announced yet. It's been filmed at one of our locations. And so it's cool to see like, oh, this house was in the movies and now you can actually go and stay there as well.

• 29:26Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 29:27Speaker 00

  So it's something that we don't necessarily focus on.

• 29:31Molly O'Shea?

  Hopefully it's not a horror movie.

• 29:32Speaker 00

  It is not, no. Ironically, horror movies, you know, fun story.

• 29:38Speaker 00

  I remember we had a relatively few number of locations, maybe about 10. And I see this message on Slack that is really excited. Oh, they want to give us all this money to film a movie at one of the locations. Like, this will be great, you know, great revenue. And I'm like, OK, cool. Like, is it a horror movie? And the guy's like, you know, the, the person responding was like, nope. Like, I checked with the, the producer. They confirmed it's not a horror movie. And I'm like, OK, like, can you send me the script? And I get the script, uh, under NDA, obviously. And it was a movie about like 15 people dying in some like horrific way and like totally a horror movie. And I'm like, OK.

• 30:22Molly O'Shea?

  No, it's not a horror movie. It's a thriller.

• 30:24Speaker 00

  Exactly. That literally is the exact quote. Um, and not that like, if it's like an action movie or something and it's like a random, you know, bad guy, like, OK, maybe. But to have it be like this, like haunting, like cult massacre thing. Yeah, seriously. I was like, OK, that's a little like off brand.

• 30:44Speaker 00

  But it is funny, like, I, I do appreciate, like, my paranoia, like, being useful there, being like, OK, like, send me the script. Cause like people lie like all the, all the time.

• 30:54Molly O'Shea?

  Always read the fine print.

• 30:56Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah. And I, I also was like excited to read the script because I'm like, oh, cool. Like, yeah, like, see what's going on.

• 31:02Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, that's wow. Whoa. Yeah, I'm sure you have some crazy stories. What's the craziest story that's come out of?

• 31:08Speaker 00

  Of Wander. Yeah, I mean, that one was really interesting. Um, and to be clear, like, we have a exceptionally low incidence rate, mostly because our guests are very high quality and they're vetted. And

• 31:21Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 31:21Speaker 00

  Uh, that dynamic, but.

• 31:23Molly O'Shea?

  It's not like an Uber or an Airbnb where you just open up supply to the whole world.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, when you, when you go and book a wander, like, you will have to verify your ID. Like, we will make sure that, like, you know, you're not a, like, serial killer or something like that.

• 31:37Molly O'Shea?

  Naturally.

• 31:39Speaker 00

  And so I would say that that actually probably was like a very funny and interesting story. When we had the Teslas, you had obviously like people who would like crash like every now and then.

• 31:54Speaker 00

  Or like ding things or whatever.

• 31:56Molly O'Shea?

  Are you gonna integrate Optimus into the house? Do you still have this Tesla partnership?

• 32:00Speaker 00

  No, we no longer offer the Teslas at the homes.

• 32:03Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 32:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, the Teslas were so cool, like such a cool feature, especially having the integration in the app. But obviously, like you can't be adding 300 plus Teslas. You know, a month, though it's very, very cool. But yeah, certainly like when you think about robotics. It is interesting to think about like having those inside of the Wander home and taking care of things for the guests and whatever else. There's so much cool, cool potential from like the hospitality perspective.

• 32:35Molly O'Shea?

  So I want to get into the app because we have many engineers in the audience, many founders and tech curious. So the app itself, can you just break down the magic behind it all? Cause I know this is actually very robust and you've built something that's.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I mean, like the, the tech stack that we use is actually very simple. We, we made the decision early on to

• 33:01Speaker 00

  have the company be basically entirely TypeScript. Which of course you have like that classic debate of like, do you want to do native iOS development or not? Like, what do you want that to look like? And ultimately, we made the decision that we just didn't have enough money to have two different development teams. And we couldn't support, you know, a different version. So we, we wanted to have in use frameworks that were, you know, compatible against, across all platforms. And we also made the decision that, you know, building in, in TypeScript to have a little bit of continuity between front end and back end teams. Which to be clear for, for all of you who are, you know, gonna like roast me in the, in the comments or whatever else like. Like, yeah, like there is definitely a more performant way to, to build.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  But, you know, in the early days, you know, it's like you have like one or two engineers. And so you have to make those kinds of decisions. And I think that probably the most interesting thing about Wander from a software perspective is that. You have the booking engine and the booking platform. And that's the only thing that we surface to guess. But underneath, you have what we call Wander OS, which runs 100% of the property management tasks related to all the properties on the platform. So 100% of all the operations are being coordinated remotely with with third-party vendors actually doing the underlying tasks. And I think that one of the most interesting things about Wander is that we don't actually have any local property managers.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  People think that, oh, we must have a bunch of like onsite property managers that are employed by Wander, taking care of these homes. And it's actually all all done with software. Obviously, there are vendors who are onboarded onto the software who are completing these tasks. But everything that you can think of from intelligent pricing, vendor communication, coordination, logistics, guest vetting, guest communication,

• 34:56Speaker 00

  is all done through Wander OS. And then there's really three or three or four core ideas from an agent perspective.

• 35:05Speaker 00

  Whether it's communicating with the guest or automatically creating tickets and assigning them to the different vendors, or actually communicating with the vendors through Wander OS directly to their phone. And so I'd say that like up top, you see this like really beautiful guest experience, this great booking platform. You stay, everything's perfect. But underneath is this massive amount of software and automation. And this thesis, the property management was really just a

• 35:36Speaker 00

  a software problem. Obviously, you just have a lot of logistics and coordination. And we felt that that can largely be automated. I'd say today, we probably have about a 60% deflection rate, where the items and the tickets and the coordination and communication is being handled by these agents. But I see a path to what I would I would define as full deflection, meaning like 95% of these tasks being done by AI, probably in the next 12 to 18 months.

• 36:03Molly O'Shea?

  So do you guys take REX?

• 36:06Speaker 00

  The credit card?

• 36:07Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  Yes, Wander accepts Brex, absolutely.

• 36:11Molly O'Shea?

  So you can potentially book a corporate stay there?

• 36:14Speaker 00

  Yes, with Brex, who I believe is the sponsor of this show.

• 36:20Molly O'Shea?

  Thank you, Rex, for sponsoring this show. And so I guess, going back to your background, how did we get here? Like, you founded Coder, how did you start Coder? You have a really interesting founder background.

• 36:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I became fascinated with computers and software at a pretty young age. And so I started my first company when I was pretty young, thirteen, fourteen. My first venture-backed company, I started when I was about seventeen, eighteen. That was Coder.com.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  You know, it was interesting, like, my college years were not spent in college or, you know, partying or anything else. It was spent like building enterprise software and learning all the hard things about building a company. And I feel very fortunate in that my peer group was the most intelligent, fascinating, kind people that you could ever pray to be associated with at, you know, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. I still feel that way today, like, I feel so lucky to have so many smart people around me and, you know, helping to create who I am. But it was a, it was a really incredible experience.

• 37:32Speaker 00

  And it's wild to say that, you know, now at twenty-seven, I've been a venture-backed CEO for a decade. Is a pretty, pretty crazy statement.

• 37:39Molly O'Shea?

  And you got involved in Teal Fellows?

• 37:42Speaker 00

  I did, I was a, I was part of the 2019 class of Teal Fellows. It's one of the most, like, remarkable things.

• 37:54Speaker 00

  You know, as a, as a young founder, it can be a little bit lonely. Especially as the CEO, you are responsible, at least this is how I felt about it. You know, I'm responsible for the mortgage and livelihood of, you know, 100 plus individuals who are all relying on me and am I making the right decisions or the wrong ones? And you just feel alone and I don't want to use the word like scared because that makes it seem a little bit like too emotional, but I think it's something that, you know, unless you're a total psychopath, which I mean, to those who don't feel anything like,

• 38:35Speaker 00

  you know, God bless. But for me personally, like I feel it, like I feel the weight of it. And so the Thiel Fellowship was really special to me because it was the first time that I was able to meet people my age who are in a similar position. And that just allowed for, I mean, candidly speaking, like the first like true friends that I that I had, because there was like some level of level of understanding. And I think that that word like fellowship was was very, very real. So yeah, something I'm grateful for.

• 39:12Molly O'Shea?

  I'm not sure many founders are that open and honest about it, but there is a tremendous weight and emotional experience to it, especially if you're locked in and you're building something and you're not going the traditional path that everyone is swimming and you're constantly fighting that tension and you're doing it younger than people would have expect. Maybe you get treated differently, that kind of thing. But do you have any advice for young founders that might be going down this path?

• 39:43Speaker 00

  You know, what I would say is that I think that nowadays there is a culture of

• 39:52Speaker 00

  Of celebrating, you know, young founders, young entrepreneurs.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  And so I wouldn't say that you actually have that much going against you. In fact, I would almost say a little bit of the opposite, that like if you are someone who's, you know, further along in their life, that there like may actually be some discrimination, which is, you know, terrible. And something that I think like Silicon Valley should actually like very much fix.

• 40:20Speaker 00

  You know, I'd say that, so I'll actually give the advice more so to like any new founder and entrepreneur as opposed to just, just, just someone who's young.

• 40:31Speaker 00

  You know, which would be the, like, it is very hard, it's going to be difficult and very, very painful.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  And the, you know, ultimately, like, not to become like numb to that idea.

• 40:47Speaker 00

  Like, but to understand that, like, the feeling, that feeling is like just you being like a good human. And then obviously, like, you need to continue to work through it. Like, you can't let it paralyze you, but don't, like, don't forget it, I guess.

• 41:02Molly O'Shea?

  How do you keep your mind clear while you're scaling so rapidly and so many opportunities pop up? And you just have to be dedicated to the mission?

• 41:12Speaker 00

  You know, it's, it's funny, I'd say that I actually don't make like a great dinner guest, especially in periods like this where like we're scaling so quickly, we're going through our series B, you know, I'm dealing with, you know, all of the chaos that comes, comes with that. And so like, if you're, if you're talking to me at dinner, I'll just start staring off like into the distance. And one of my buddies, we were at sushi in New York, we just, I just signed the term sheet and, you know, that was like to celebrate. And he's like, you know, John Andrew, like, you just didn't talk for like the last five minutes, which I think is also like that I was sleep deprived. But, you know, I would say that, like,

• 41:52Speaker 00

  Wander was actually built for that idea. Like, I started Wander after stepping down from Coder. And I started it because I wanted to get away and the experience that I had like wasn't good. And so, you know, I think that getting out into nature, going on a walk, you know, spending time with loved ones. And candidly speaking, like going and staying at a wander where you can be in this beautiful new place and have an experience where like everything's taking care of for you and you can think and process and transition. And it's actually, we have quite a few customer stories where people send us very special, meaningful notes.

• 42:33Speaker 00

  But talk about how they were making some really hard life decision and they ended up having the moment of clarity, you know, at, at one of our homes. And so I do think that that is really, really special. But I would say that, you know, one, one really difficult thing is that when you are in a mental space where you've had 10 hours of sleep and you're super stressed. And like, everything is going wrong and the world's all against you. It's hard to even know how to fix it, what decisions to make to feel better. And you almost have to be really prescriptive with yourself and say, like, as, as silly as it sounds, like,

• 43:14Speaker 00

  like, okay, like, my head hurts, like, I should try drinking water. And like, you know, I'm feeling really stressed. Like, even though I don't feel like going on a walk, I should go on a walk. And so you have to find those things for you and almost like prescribe yourself it as, as if it's like a medication. I'd say that that's been like a really useful like mental framework for me.

• 43:37Molly O'Shea?

  Given your experience and how much you've scaled the company, how big is the team? Who makes up it? How, how has this evolved?

• 43:50Speaker 00

  So today, we're about 100 people, a little bit more. The team looks rather normal today where you have different department leaders, sales, marketing, product, operations.

• 44:04Speaker 00

  And we have really phenomenal leadership. I think that that's something that I feel very lucky lucky for. It is a relatively flat organization today. We do try and limit the number of sort of middle management that exists. And if there is middle management, it has to be leaders who actually are the best at said said task. Like, I don't believe in the idea of having someone,

• 44:29Speaker 00

  you know, run, let's say, like, a product team who doesn't actually know anything about product. You know, I think that as Wander goes through this next phase, you know, I had dinner with Nigel Morris, the founding partner at Q E D. And we were actually talking about how should I be thinking about organizational structure as we go from series B to series C? And he talked about this beautiful idea, which is, you know, very obvious to, I think, a lot of people who had gone to business school or whatever else, which is this idea that as you scale as a company, at some point, you switch from functional teams to business units, where you have some

• 45:11Speaker 00

  specific tasks, some specific K P I, some specific item that needs to be done, where you have a team that is obviously, you know, multifunction. You have your business leader, you have your salesperson, you have your product person, and it exists in this sort of separate function, as opposed to being like, okay, we have people from marketing and sales and whatever collaborate together. And so I think that that's, you know, something that I'm really excited for for Wander to, you know, go into that next phase of being like a larger, larger company and switch from, you know, at first, everyone reports to you, to the second layer, which is you have a really great executive team, to I think this third idea, which is that you have business units that sort of like operate on their own, basically companies inside of companies.

• 45:57Molly O'Shea?

  Wow. Yeah. So what do you exactly look for in hiring? Or is there like a magic secret sauce? Is there an element? Are you looking for the dog in them?

• 46:09Speaker 00

  My answer is actually like ironically, the opposite of that.

• 46:15Speaker 00

  So I, I, I, I think that beautiful companies have a, have a soul. And the reason for that is that companies are just groups of people and people obviously like have a soul. And so the soul that you want your company to have has to be the type of soul that you, you know, I ideally have in the types of people that you hire. And so, you know, when building Wander, I was very, very focused on alignment of ethics and virtues, along with of course, the, the quote unquote dog. And or their skillset or whatever else. I wanted these to be like really good people. Because I think that if you can have an environment where folks aren't fighting with one another, where there isn't drama,

• 47:00Speaker 00

  or you know, a lot of the things that can exist in, in some, you know, sort of more toxic cultures, that it would actually be a more productive outcome. Even if, and this is a, a pretty contrarian statement, I think. You know, if I have two individuals who are making a decision and one of them is 10 out of 10 in the skillset that I need, but they are like just not a culture fit, meaning that they're like just a bad, aggressive, you know, sort of like person. Then I will take someone who is a nine. Because I know that at least I'm going to be able to collaborate with the nine. At least I know that the nine is going to be able to collaborate with others. And as long as they have that work ethic and the drive to get to a 10.

• 47:44Speaker 00

  I think that, you know, at the end of the day, like those will be better hires and make you excited to show up to, to work. And so I think that that's actually something I'd really recommend is to define the, the culture and the ethics and the type of people that you want.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  And be like very, you know, sort of strict in, in that.

• 48:07Molly O'Shea?

  Are your business strategies with this? First off, before we get to that, are you hiring?

• 48:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 48:15Molly O'Shea?

  What are you hiring for? Everything?

• 48:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's, there's lots of open roles.

• 48:19Molly O'Shea?

  All right, we'll link, we'll link the careers page.

• 48:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, just, I think it's on wander.com forward slash about.

• 48:24Molly O'Shea?

  Perfect.

• 48:27Molly O'Shea?

  Apply now.

• 48:29Speaker 00

  The fourth wall breaking is so funny to me.

• 48:32Molly O'Shea?

  Have to do our part.

• 48:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I like it.

• 48:34Molly O'Shea?

  Um, so, yeah, I just, so, back, back to your point about everything is moving really fast. You saw your recent announcement on X itself.

• 48:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:47Molly O'Shea?

  You know, and, and the new promo video. And your CMO Kyle tweeted this out, and I thought this was so interesting because it will, we'll get to this, but I, I want to know more about like how strategies are shifting as you go to this next stage. You mentioned talents going to the next stage, thinking about hiring now that you're getting into the series B range. So Kyle tweeted out that with the promo video, the team used no creative agency. It was all done internally. There was no production crew. It was just a single director filmed and edited, and it was low cost. You spent 35% less than original 2021 launch. So like, what kind of incentives are you giving the

• 49:30Molly O'Shea?

  team or navigation to, to be more efficient? Or is this all internally driven?

• 49:38Speaker 00

  First of all, I think that frugality is a critically important idea and mindset when building a startup, particularly seed, series A, series B. You have the classic story of Amazon building desks out of doors, and I'm sure that they don't do that today. But it is that like cultural idea. You know, I think that one thing that we, we do is we're a very budget focused company where each department has their budget and then inside of that, they can generally allocate the way that they would like, knowing that if you spend too much on a launch video, then that's a hire that you're no longer able to make.

• 50:19Speaker 00

  And I think that that's very different than most startups. I think most startups say like, okay, how much do we want to spend on this launch video and whatever else? There, there's no real incentive for them to spend less than the allocated budget. It becomes almost like this idea of like, we're going to spend right up to the budget. And so Wander, I constantly encourage the team to think about efficiencies, you know, doing things ourselves, doing things with like scrappy individuals in the same way that you would in your own life. Like in your own life, you wouldn't spend, you know, money the way that I think that a lot of companies do. And so, you know, the net result of that is, is that when you, when you look at Wander and you think about all the things that we've accomplished and the rest,

• 51:02Speaker 00

  you know, it is only, only possible with that idea. If we had, if we had a different culture, I mean, the company would have run out of money long ago.

• 51:11Molly O'Shea?

  What other demand generation tactics are you using?

• 51:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. So about 35% of our bookings come from higher cost channels. So think like Google and Facebook. The rest are all lower cost. So SEO, influencer, marketing, word of mouth, our repeat.

• 51:29Molly O'Shea?

  Podcasts.

• 51:30Speaker 00

  Podcasts.

• 51:35Speaker 00

  Powered by Brax. This one, this podcast is.

• 51:41Speaker 00

  And so, you know, I, I think that like our repeat booking rate is very high. That obviously drives a lot. You know, Wander has a pretty incredible LTV to CAC. Our, our, over a three year period, so our like 2022 cohort, 2023 cohort,

• 51:59Speaker 00

  it has over a $10,000 LTV, uh, which means that basically folks are booking once a year.

• 52:04Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 52:05Speaker 00

  Which is, is phenomenally high. You can imagine what that LTV looks like over a, you know, 30, 40, 50 year period, which is also why as a company I take customer satisfaction so, so seriously is that these customers aren't worth just one trip. They could be worth, you know, 20, 30, 40 trips over their lifetime. And they're also going to tell 20, 30, 40 of their friends. And so it's, it's really critical that, that you nail that. But if from a, a marketing perspective, I think that as you go from seed to series A, series A to series B, that you have multiple profitable channels. Because otherwise you are going to fail to scale. You're going to find out that that one profitable channel that you had can only reach, you know, a certain number of people.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  And that that certain number of people obviously isn't enough to get you to that next phase. And so I think that de-risking that from a marketing initiative perspective during your series A is really important to show growth investors that we have five, 10 different channels at a very low CAC. That we can put money into and that will actually improve as we grow.

• 53:09Molly O'Shea?

  How do you then match the demand with the rapid increase in supply? You mentioned you're going to be onboarding like 200 to 300 new properties. How do you scale that?

• 53:21Speaker 00

  So going back to the dinner that I had with Nigel recently and Nigel Morris. For those entrepreneurs who aren't familiar with him, he is one of the clearest thinking, most interesting, passionate, you know, investors that I have ever met, Midas List Investor. And we talked about this idea that Wander has about 400,000 users on our platform.

• 53:49Speaker 00

  And so it was less a question of how do you grow your user base and more of a question of how do you activate them? And I think that that subtle difference in framing is could be really valuable to a lot of different startup founders out there, which is this idea that you already have all of the customers that you need. They're in your waitlist, they're signed up to your product, they're following you on Twitter, whatever it is, and you don't have a growth problem, you actually have an activation problem. And so the question is, how do you activate? How do you encourage? How do you light a flame under, you know, those, those users to go and make the leap with you, to go and try your product for the first time? And if you have a really high MPS product, you know, you should be off to the races.

• 54:34Speaker 00

  I think the same could be true, like a podcast audience, you think about like, I don't actually need to grow my subscriber count. Like it's more a question of how do I activate that community? How do I activate them?

• 54:43Speaker 00

  And so that's currently actually my focus is less so about growing the number of users on platform, but activating a larger percentage of them. And there are of course various different ways to do that, but I think that that framing is probably a useful idea for a lot of listeners.

• 54:59Molly O'Shea?

  How does the business model work? So it's primarily a marketplace, you're taking a percentage off of each booking.

• 55:06Speaker 00

  That's correct.

• 55:07Molly O'Shea?

  Maybe a percentage off of each vendor from chefs to, you know, maybe your private jet. Could you explain more on that?

• 55:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, so Wander works as a, as a take rate on gross revenue. So when someone makes a booking, we take a fee of that booking and then we also charge a fee to the owner on the underlying revenue. We don't, we don't actually mark up any services. We don't charge any type of payment processing fee when it comes to vendor payouts or coordination or anything like that. We like to align ourselves as much as possible with, with the homeowners and with the guests, which is that we're creating, you know, value and providing you this, this place to stay and it's going to be a really great experience and into the owner, we're going to, you know, bring you this, this customer that you wouldn't, you wouldn't

• 55:55Speaker 00

  have had. And so I think that, you know, sharing in that is, is a really good way of ensuring that your MPS ironically stays high is that if you, if you align your monetization with what's important to the customer and what's important to the owner, what's important to both sides of the marketplace, then that is ironically the only way that you're going to be able to deliver, you know, a high, a high MPS. The moment that you start to have conflicting monetization incentives, you, you could run a pretty serious risk.

• 56:24Molly O'Shea?

  And since this used to operate as a REIT, do you still own any properties? I know you're moving to asset light as well. What's the shift there?

• 56:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. So wonder all of our scales asset light, when you think about the quantum of capital, the 300, 200, 300 homes that we'll add this month is about 1.5 billion dollars of real estate.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  And so having any percentage of that, even 1% wouldn't, wouldn't be possible unless we were partnered with, with a large capital provider. And so, you know, from, from that perspective, most of our original homes have all been, you know, sold to third parties. They've all stayed on the platform, you know, they were investors or whoever else who wanted, wanted to own them. We still do own one or two from a more of like a strategic perspective, like being able to have that control and understanding is actually pretty useful. And of course, like you can sell the asset in the event that you, you need to from a capital perspective. But everything, you know, to your, your question is asset light at this point.

• 57:29Molly O'Shea?

  We've covered so much. I have like two more topics to get through. I hope you're okay with that.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  Absolutely. I'm excited.

• 57:37Molly O'Shea?

  We'll just keep going. You've raised a tremendous amount of money to date. Could you share how much you've raised? I know the debt facility was part of it. You can take that in, take it out, however you want to do it. But who have you raised from? And what was the total?

• 57:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I don't, I don't like to include debt in like the total figure. And to be clear, like that facility, you know, happened and then it didn't happen. And so it's not like, you know, Wander as a company, it's like a hundred million dollars in debt or something.

• 58:11Speaker 00

  You know, we, we raised, I think, I mean, gosh, with this round, I mean, it'll probably end up being over a hundred million dollars.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  We're backed by some really, really remarkable investors, Q E D, Redpoint, Briar Capital. I mean, there's, there's a long list of folks. Paki is, is an investor in us.

• 58:32Speaker 00

  You know, I think that, like, raising capital tends to be something that is really celebrated, you know, in the startup community. But I, I, I think, and as it should be, like, it's, you know, it is, at the end of the day, a representation, most of the time, hopefully, of building a good company. But I, I think that, like, it would be cool if we liked the headline of like Wander, you know, achieved like eighty-five NPS this month. And like, that was like the big news.

• 59:04Speaker 00

  But yeah, we've, we've, we've raised, we're, we're very fortunate, especially after this round, to be super well capitalized. And so it feels really good as a founder to know that what I'm building is going to be around a little bit longer and hopefully build a, actually build an enduring company. I was talking with someone about that idea of, like, Google is only twenty, twenty-five years old. You know, Apple, the same, even Tesla. And so it's like, I think people don't even know like what it actually truly means to build an enduring company, like something that's around for a hundred years, like Coca-Cola or whatever else. And so I think that that's something that I'm really excited for is to, to spend the rest of my life building this company.

• 59:46Speaker 00

  If, if I'm so fortunate, obviously, I don't, I don't know how the, the world will turn out, but.

• 59:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's something I'm excited for.

• 59:53Molly O'Shea?

  What do you look for in investors? I know you mentioned Q E D a bunch of times, but.

• 59:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think that the the first thing is that they they share your ethics and that there is a certain level of protection and trust. You know, when you when you bring on a board member, you're effectively giving someone a vote in how your company is is ran, the allocation of capital. And it has a real effect, like board meetings decide whether or not like a certain feature gets removed, or if the company cares about net promoter score, or whatever else. And so if you if you bring on the wrong investors, you can you can totally destroy your company.

• 1:00:38Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  And so, you know, what I focus on is this idea of trust, like my hope is is that like I'm gonna do my best each and every day. I'm gonna ensure that, you know, the employees are taking care of our customers are taking care of that I'm a good fiduciary. And my ask is, is that, you know, as an investor, that you are a good actor, that you also, you know, fulfill your fiduciary duty as a board member to the company, as opposed to, you know, sort of prioritizing your own your own gain. And that that is a really difficult balance. You obviously have the stories of VCs, you know, firing their founders and, you know, acting badly and and giving predatory

• 1:01:19Speaker 00

  terms and bridges and all these different things. And so, you know, at at the end of the day, I'd say as a founder, like, make sure that they match your ethics, make sure that they, you know, have a certain level of their own control. That that also is something that can happen a lot is that you can bring on a firm and a partner where that partner may be great, but that firm may direct them in a in a different way. And also vice versa, you can you can partner with a name brand firm that has a great reputation and a partner act in in a bad way. And so I I think that it's, I mean, candidly speaking, it's risky. There there's if you are bringing on external capital,

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  you now have shareholders, you have a boss, and that boss can fire you, they can change the direction.

• 1:02:07Speaker 00

  And so like you, you should you should do your best to ensure that they're aligned with with what you're trying to accomplish.

• 1:02:12Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, it's very sound, wise advice. And you've been doing this for a while, 10 years plus?

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, it feels like I've lived many lives at this point.

• 1:02:21Molly O'Shea?

  I have heard that you do run by some really strong life philosophies. Could you share more on that?

• 1:02:29Speaker 00

  When, when I was, when I was younger,

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  I, I became self-aware like a pretty young age, like,

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  I, I remember being like eight and laying on the grass and doing my homework and like stopping for a second and saying like, life is never gonna get better than this moment.

• 1:02:47Molly O'Shea?

  Oh my god.

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  Like, you are eight years old buddy and soon you're gonna be thirty and forty and fifty and like, this is what's up. Like, enjoy, enjoy it. And, and so when I was young, I made this, this set of rules to help me live, live a good life, to help, to help me decide in, in what I thought were, were challenging circumstances and ideas. And, and so the, the four, the four rules are, and the first one is rather morbid for a, a kid to come up with, is that the worst thing that happens is you die. And for me, what that rule or that mentality enables me to do is it enables me to walk into situations

• 1:03:32Speaker 00

  with a level of almost comfort that like, hey, like you can do this, you got this, like, you know, the worst thing that happens is you die, right? So it's like, uh, which of course, like, accepting death is a really like, you know, crazy idea.

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  You know, the, the second one was about urgency. Tomorrow is a lazy man's today, which was if you wanna live a fulfilling life, like you can't just delay things, like you should try and get it done now. You should, you should take that shot. You should take that chance. You should, you should, you should really go and try and accomplish it. Uh, the third, uh, was live with it or fix it, which was because I felt like and, and had seen a lot of people end up in circumstances where they were almost stuck, like, this thing really bugs me and I don't know what to do and whatever else.

• 1:04:25Speaker 00

  And, and for me, the framework was you have two choices. You can either live with it, which is totally fine, or you can fix it. And once you decide which one of those you're going to do, then like, great, you're now out of this sort of purgatory of, of indecisiveness. And the fourth was that as I was was getting older, as I was, you know, becoming like a teenager, mid teens, I found that I started to say no a lot to

• 1:04:57Speaker 00

  different things that were happening in favor of work. Like I would be working really hard and you know, some people would invite me to go, you know, do something and I would say, I would say no. And I came up with a rule of always saying yes to adventure, which is rule number four, which is this idea that if you want to have a life that also balances, of course, your ambition, that going out and experiencing the world and having adventures and you know, that that dynamic is really, really important to living a happy, happy and fulfilling life. So those, those were my four, four rules that I sort of came up with, you know, when I was younger

• 1:05:38Speaker 00

  and they've served me, they've served me well. And yeah, I'm very, I'm very grateful to have had them like along the way.

• 1:05:49Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah. John, Andrew, those are beautiful. That is like a beautiful way to wrap up the conversation too. I like to end on a positive note. That's a pretty positive note, but to extend that because you're just so good. I'm going to keep you here all day. What are you most looking forward to this year?

• 1:06:11Speaker 00

  Gosh, that is a fascinating question.

• 1:06:14Speaker 00

  Because you have two, you have two sides, right? You have the personal side and the company.

• 1:06:19Molly O'Shea?

  Could be both.

• 1:06:20Speaker 00

  Well, it's funny, like one of the things that I'd like to say, I can't because it would spoil the surprise for her. I think even saying that probably does, she probably won't even listen to this. Who listens to their boyfriend's podcast, right? No, I think it's, it's fine. It could be, it could be a trip. It's probably a trip. Who knows?

• 1:06:40Molly O'Shea?

  We're gonna cut that.

• 1:06:41Speaker 00

  Or leave it in.

• 1:06:42Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, we'll leave it in.

• 1:06:45Speaker 00

  You know, from a, from a company perspective, I think that Wander has reached the point where we have a lot of the ingredients for success. You know, we're through this round, we'll, we'll be well-funded. We have a great brand. We have a great team. We have customer love and.

• 1:07:06Speaker 00

  It's about taking all these ingredients and bringing them together, sort of having the company enter into that next stage. And so I think that I have a very good path and idea on how to get us there. And ultimately, we'll certainly try our best. But Wander has now hit the point where if it doesn't work, if you don't see, you know, hundreds of thousands of locations and a big global company and hopefully a lot of happy customers, that it won't be because the idea shouldn't have existed. It will be because like I failed

• 1:07:48Speaker 00

  to make it happen. And I am very dedicated to not failing. Like, I think that the world will be a little happier with Wander in it. And I think that that's a good thing.

• 1:07:58Molly O'Shea?

  Find your happy place.

• 1:08:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:08:02Molly O'Shea?

  Well, John Andrew, it was a pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much.

• 1:08:05Speaker 00

  Thank you. Thank you for having me.

• 1:08:06Molly O'Shea?

  Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, sorcery.vc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email, and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up.