20VC: TravelPerk’s Avi Meir on Why 2021 Will Be A Record Year For Business Travel, The 3 Priorities For All Founders During COVID, What VCs Can Do To Really Support Their Founders In A Recession

Avi Meir is the Founder & CEO @ TravelPerk, the travel management platform that combines the best of leisure and corporate travel into one smooth experience. To date, Avi has raised over $134m with TravelPerk from the likes of DST, Spark Capital, Felix Capital and Heartcore to name a few. Prior to founding TravelPerk, Avi co-founded HotelNinjas, a hotel management product that was acquired by Booking.com. Before that Avi was VP Product at budgetplaces where he managed a team of 50 across product and marketing. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Avi made his way into the world of startups and came to change the way we think of corporate travel with TravelPerk? 2.) Why has Avi advocated for the re-opening of society much sooner than others have done? If Avi were in government, what would he advocate for and do? How does Avi try and effectively assess the core risks of COVID both from a societal and economic perspective? 3.) How does Avi feel when he hears the comparison of COVID to Saars or 9/11 when it comes to their impact on travel? Why is this so different? Why does Avi believe 2021 will be a bigger year for business travel than 2019? 4.) How does Avi advise founders heavily impacted by COVID to really effectively analyse their spend and optimise runway? How does Avi think approach the element that sales and marketing is now non-revenue driving? How does Avi approach resource allocation as a result? 5.) Does Avi believe we will see a fundamental re-shaping of corporate travel? What will change? How does domestic travel change? What will the landscape look like on the other side? Who will survive? Who will thrive? Does Avi feel now is an opportune time for M&A? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Avi’s Fave Book: The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

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

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  We are back and welcome to the 20 minute VC and Founders Friday with me, Harry Stebbings. And last week on Founders Friday, we had Ariel Cohen, founder and CEO at Tripactions on the show to discuss the impact of COVID. And I thought it only right to have his counterpart in the world of corporate travel management on the show to hear his thoughts. And so I'm delighted to welcome back to the show a friend and former guest, Avi Meir, founder and CEO at TravelPerk, the travel management platform that combines the best of leisure and corporate travel into one smooth experience. To date, Avi's raised over $134 million with TravelPerk from the likes of DST, Spark Capital, Felix Capital, and Heartcore, to name a few. Prior to founding TravelPerk, Avi co-founded Hotel Ninjas, a hotel management product that was acquired by Booking.com. Before that, Avi was VP of Product at Budget Places, where he managed a team of 50 people

• 0:45Harry Stebbings?

  across product and marketing. I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Alex at Spark, Antoine at Felix, and Max at Heartcore for some fantastic questions and suggestions today. I really do appreciate that. But before we move into the show today, I'm sure you've heard about it, but my word, I just love this product, Carter. Carter simplifies how startups and investors manage equity, track cap tables, and get valuations. Go to Carter.com/20vc to get 10% off. More than 800,000 employees and shareholders use Carter to manage hundreds of billions of dollars in equity, and Carter now offers fund administration, so you can see real-time data in the Carter platform and work with Carter's team of experienced fund accountants. Simply go to Carter.com/20vc

• 1:26Harry Stebbings?

  to get 10% off. And speaking of teams there, did you know there will be 1.4 million job openings for developers in 2020? And that's where my friends at Terminal come in. Terminal is a remote teams engine for fast-growing companies, connecting you with global talent to deliver the product-building powerhouse your business needs to grow. They provide services and infrastructure in a complete solution that allows businesses to build and scale their remote engineering teams from the ground up without sacrificing experience or quality. From workspaces to community to on-the-ground support, they take the guesswork out of remote so that you can thrive. But don't take my word for it. Just ask high-growth businesses like Gusto, Chime, Earnin, and Hims, all trusting Terminal with their remote teams. And you can find out

• 2:07Harry Stebbings?

  more today at www terminal.io, that's terminal.io. But that's quite enough from me. So now it's time to talk about the future of travel, the impact of COVID, and more with Avi Meir, founder and CEO at TravelPerk.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:28Harry Stebbings?

  Abby, my friend, it is such a joy to have you back on the show. I so enjoyed our last episode, but thank you so much for putting up with these terrible British tones once again.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Don't mind if I do.

• 2:38Harry Stebbings?

  That was brilliant impersonation there. Tell me, for those that maybe missed our first episode, how did you make your way into the world of startups and come to found Travel Perk?

• 2:46Speaker 02

  By complete accident, I would say. I'm always jealous reading about Warren Buffett when he was seven, he was already making millions selling lemonade or something. And I always liked computers, I liked the engineering part of that. I started coding when I was very young, even younger than you, Harry. And yeah, I was passionate about understanding systems and hacking in the old sense of the word, meaning understanding how systems works and then finding creative ways of getting the system to do something that wasn't meant to do. And that's what I'm passionate about, and building stuff, understanding how things work, just evolved into building a team and running a team rather than just coding. So more practically, I've been living in Barcelona for 10 years now, I'm from Israel originally, and I came here for business school and kind of stayed around, working in a couple of startups, always in online travel, that always has been my niche or my industry. Previously, I

• 3:30Speaker 02

  started another company called Hotel Ninjas, which was a software service for hotel management, which we sold, together with a classmate of mine from business school, we sold that business to Booking.com back in 2014. So sold the business to Booking, stayed there for a year or so, and then I quit to start Travel Perk. And the two sentences pitched behind Travel Perk is, business travel sucks and we're here to fix it.

• 3:51Harry Stebbings?

  I think the best kind of mission statements have strong opinions, and so I love that as a mission statement. Now, I was thinking, how do I elegantly approach the topic and gently do it? But I guess there was no way that I could, so not pussyfooting around here. And kind of COVID first, it's hit travel obviously harder than any other industry for obvious reasons. Majority of the Twitter spheres align with the stay at home, we were talking about the weather helping and contributing to that with the rain in Spain. You've advocated, though, for something a little bit different in terms of reopening sooner than others. I guess, what's your thoughts here and what leads that thinking, Abby?

• 4:23Speaker 02

  So first, I would say if people on Twitter would disagree with you, you're probably right. So that's the first thing I would say. But first, Travel Perk and strong sentiments. Since very early was that we should lockdown, go remote. We actually never did remote work as a company. We always believed in being in the same office, having this kind of serendipity that you get by bumping into people and having an interesting discussion, waiting for the coffee or something. So we never did remote. It was actually one of the main reasons why we would sometimes lose great engineers, because they wanted to work remote and we would not accept that. So for a company like us, who never did remotes, to go full remote, and it was, I think, a week or two before it was the official policy in Spain where we have most of the people. And the reason we decided to go remote is because it was starting to look, you know, we're in travel, so we see travel data before most other industries do.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  And we saw that things are looking weird, especially in Asia. So we decided to take the more cautious approach and we moved to full remote. We stopped using the office a week or two before it was mandatory here in Spain. So I wasn't against the idea of lockdown when it started. I thought it was the right approach and the kind of the most cautious approach, given that we didn't know anything about this new virus and how deadly it is, how infectious it is, et cetera. So that's kind of the starting point. Back in the beginning of March, we closed all offices down and moved to be fully remote. So my current change of mind is we have to understand that's new, right? I didn't start by saying lockdowns are a stupid idea. What I do think right now is that we need to kind of start looking at costs of that and we have to assess the risk versus the reward.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  And unfortunately, I don't think there is a solution that works perfect. And this is kind of the messy world in which we live, right? We have to choose between something that is a known bad versus an unknown potential bad. And right now, if we keep locking down and looking around, I think what the Twitter folks don't get is almost by definition, if you're spending your day on Twitter during this period, you probably don't have a job that cannot be done. Or in other words, your job can be done remotely. But many people work in factories, in hospitality, in industry, you know, healthcare, of course, they can do their job remotely. I saw this great graph in The Economist. I tweeted that, I think it was sixty-eight percent of jobs in Spain cannot be done remotely. And if Southern Europe is roughly seventy percent, the UK would be closer to sixty percent, but it's not much lower than that.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  So you have countries like the UK, Spain, Italy, basically most countries, where you have sixty, seventy percent of those who work cannot perform their work remotely. And they are being sent to some kind of unpaid leave or. redundancy and you're looking at the US and you have twenty plus million people already unemployed just as today and you wait another two months of this thing and you get many more so I think we have to be responsible as a society in a discussion and understand that if your situation allows you to work remotely doesn't mean that it's true for everybody working in a factory and if you work in a factory got cancelled because you just physically or legally cannot perform your job what do you do what's next for you are you able to and do you want to live from government food handouts is this a good way to live the next year or year and a half what are the implications after that so I think we have to have of this discussion openly and there's too much emotion right now and it's being like everything else in our society

• 7:15Speaker 02

  unfortunately it's becoming a political issue it's not a political issue it's a society issue that everybody should be a part of not just the experts all of us need to be a part of this discussion and to have a clear understanding of the price and the risk of each of these different alternatives Canas what would you like see governments do I'm too intrigued if Avi was the prime minister slash president what would you do Right now it seems like the Swedish approach is a good compromise between letting people avoid getting sick let's say because luckily we don't live in a top down society where the government is here to protect us from everything a part of being a free person is taking risks sometimes and acknowledging that you take a risk and understanding that and being okay with it right it's a part of being free I don't look for country that where the government tells me how to live my life to avoid me taking any risks I don't think it's interesting to live in a society like this so if you look at Swedish approach it seems right this moment

• 8:00Speaker 02

  and again it might change in a week so who knows but right now it seems that they have found a good balance between protecting allowing those who need protection to be protected those who have pre-existing conditions while not destroying their civilization not destroying their economy and I'm trying to avoid the world economy because it seems like I only care about the GDP of the country and that's not what I mean I really mean people's dignity and freedom this is more than just does the country grow the GDP per capita these are real people's lives that we're talking about so the Swedish approach seems to be the right one hence answer your question if I were to make a decision I would say those who want to go back to work especially if you're below forty five years old and you have no pre-existing health conditions it seems right now according to the data that you are at a much lower risk

• 8:40Speaker 02

  compared to people who are let's say over seventy five years old or have one of the risk factors like obesity or autoimmune diseases or asthma etc so if you're below forty five and healthy your risk seems to be Low. So if you choose to do so, I would not force anybody. But if you choose to do so, you should be allowed to go back to work. And you should try and follow as much as you can the guidelines for, you know, social distancing and keeping things safe. Look, don't be stupid, right? Like, I really trust my fellow citizens to not be stupid. Maybe it's a crazy thing to say these days, but I do trust that people don't wanna die, they don't wanna catch this virus. And nobody will go to like overcrowded bars now and go to a nightclub, but you can go to work. Kids should be able to go out to a park away from people. And we see some crazy stuff. We see like the official police Twitter account here in Spain.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Tweeted a video of how they used a helicopter that I presumably and all of us taxpayers pay for to chase a guy that was camping in the middle of a mountain. Like, why? You know, like, why? Why are our tax money being used to chase a guy camping in the middle of nowhere? Like, is it risky to anybody? Like, not even to himself, right? And let alone to anybody else, because there is nobody there except him. So, yeah, use common sense, let people go back to work, encourage people to understand the risk. And as long as we keep the curve flat or flatter, then we should definitely open up more and faster. And people get confused with flattening the curve. I think people got confused thinking that flattening the curve means less people get sick. No, I mean, mathematically speaking, flattening the curve means that the surface below the curve still is the same. You just delay. If you were going to get it, you're still going to get it. You just wanna catch it when ICU beds are available and there is a ventilator waiting for you.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  If you need one, you know, God forbid, right? So it's not about not getting it, it's about delaying it. And so people should understand the math, they should understand goals and strategy and decide if they wanna participate in that or not. And be free to choose instead of being told what to do.

• 10:17Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, man, it's not. I do understand. That's obviously the societal layer. I've spoken to many travel founders over the last few weeks and month or so. And they all say, Harry, SARS, nine eleven, for the travel industry, we've seen this before, we've seen this before. And then when I look at it, I'm like, actually, no, we haven't. We haven't seen a demand and a supply side shock simultaneously like this. How do you feel about the comparison to SARS and nine eleven? And how do you evaluate the current situation specifically for the travel market in that context?

• 10:45Speaker 02

  I've been in travel for sixteen years now and I know how to read also about history, so we've never seen something, like, it never happened. We're talking about demand going probably, and I'm being generous here, probably below five percent globally for travel right now. Some areas just zero, right? Just have no travel at all. We have started to really feel the pain of no bookings and cancellations probably first or second week of March. So it was a bit later for us, maybe because we have more European and North America focus, so and it kind of arrived a bit later. I mean, I came back from holiday on the first of March, I remember, and it was still like the airport was still full. Like, it feels like it's been years, but it's it's only been a month, a month and a half, right, of close to zero. We haven't seen anything like this. A month and a half of close to zero in Europe, a bit longer in Asia. We haven't seen anything like this. And I think more than in the past, we have a huge degree of uncertainty.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  I mean, going back to the previous point, nobody really knows, right? And the big debates now about what do you do? How do you operate under this huge amount of uncertainty? And I think this is not going to go away. I'm struggling to see a situation where the uncertainty goes away anytime soon, which means we have to open up and operate in travel, talking specifically about travel. We will have to operate under a huge amount of uncertainty, which will change things dramatically for everybody.

• 11:52Harry Stebbings?

  I always believe that the best CEOs are fundamentally the best capital allocators. How do you think about capital allocation internally with so much uncertainty? You know, you said about five percent bookings there. You have a huge amount of resources deployed in sales and marketing. How does one think about that when bookings are down ninety five percent?

• 12:09Speaker 02

  My first approach was, I saw a few, and I'm not trying to blame, right? I'm just observing that I saw a few companies, in my opinion, reacting out of panic and hysteria and cutting extremely fast, extremely deep. And, you know, maybe if you look five years from now, maybe they did the right thing and I didn't. I prefer to, and our approach at Traurper was, let's buy ourselves some time and understand what's going on. So we can act in a more calm, focused, disciplined way, which has always been, we aspire to do that, right? I'm not saying we're always calm and disciplined, but we always try to be. And what it meant for us is, first, I mean, we had a lot of volume, right? So for our sales team, for example, March was the best month ever. We hit a record month in March in terms of closing deals. So it's not like people are just sitting home and not doing anything. They're actually extremely busy in the sales team. Customer care, same story for different reasons.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  So March has been the busiest month because everybody was cancelling. But we actually grew very, very well, multiples year on year in Q one, right, in revenue. So Q one was an amazing quarter for us in growth, even though we had, of course, not so great March. So everybody was booking and then everybody was cancelling. So the customer care team was extremely busy up until a few days ago where we basically reached Almost the end of the battle in terms of tickets that they needed to handle cancellation, et cetera. And now it's a bit calmer. So what we're doing now is we're allocating capital to training for customer care. We're looking at capital to what we call the lemonade factory. And we're changing many things in the company because we believe that some things will not change. I don't buy the, everything will be remote from now on. I think many things will be remote. But people will also understand even more the value of human connection and the value of meeting people in person.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  So I don't think it's going away. Nobody took the other side of the bed, but I propose if one of the listeners wants to take the other side of the bed, reach out to me. I'm willing to bet that business travel will grow in twenty twenty one, not based on twenty twenty, based on twenty nineteen.

• 13:46Harry Stebbings?

  I know one founder very specifically who will definitely take that bet. I'll probably tell you afterwards and.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, happy to take the bet.

• 13:52Harry Stebbings?

  That would be an interesting.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Public.

• 13:53Harry Stebbings?

  We shall see if they will too. I, I guess my question to you is like based on that, like as I said, I have spoke to this exact friend who was debating it. And he had the more negative view and he was saying, I've got these idle workforce who, as you said there, focused on training, which is absolutely optimizing time. And you see absolute benefits to that. If you're not so resource abundant, and I'm not saying Travel Perk is resource abundant. But yeah, Travel Perk is well financed. If it wasn't and you're in an earlier stage situation, how would you advise founders who have this sudden commercial workforce, which is now no longer really a revenue driver that it once was? How would you respond?

• 14:28Speaker 02

  So let me disclose the secret of our action plan during the Corona crisis. And I didn't get approval from anybody. So let's see if, if I need a job after that, I'll reach out to you, Harry, see if you have a job for me. But here's a summary of how we approached this thing. And I would give the same advice to anybody regardless of how much cash you have or not. First priority for us as a business is to survive. So we'll do anything we need to do in order to survive and preserve cash, which already answers your question, I think. The fact is, as you say, we are capitalized and we happen to be very efficient with our capital. So our burn rate is low, which gives us more optionality. But if I didn't have that, then I definitely need to do something more drastic. Cash should be the number one priority. Number two priority for us is to emerge strong after this crisis. As I said, it's going to end and people will go back to traveling.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  And I don't want to lose twelve months after lockdowns are lifted in rebuilding the capacity, rebuilding the muscle that we have lost. If we went and did too deep of a cut. So there's a difference between cutting the fat or cutting the muscle and definitely not cutting the bone, right? So we. We want to emerge strong after that. And then the third priority is turn lemons into lemonade. We created a lemonade factory and we do a lot of stuff that we didn't do before. Investing in a product, investing in inventory. You can reach out to hotels now and we're more receptive to have a conversation, for example, in airlines as well, as you can imagine. So we're doing a lot of things around inventory, around the product. We released a new mobile application during this period, actually two, one for Iris, one for Andrew. So turning lemons into lemonade, using this opportunity whenever you can. But if you have no cash, priority number one prevails, right? So if you have no cash, you have to find a way to get the runway.

• 15:49Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, no, listen, I do agree, especially in terms of the cash preservation. It's an unsettling time for the team. For you as the leader, you know, your job is to instill confidence. What advice would you give in terms of communication, in terms of assurance to team members who are fundamentally concerned and worried for their livelihoods? What have been some lessons for you and what great leadership, I guess, looks like in such an uncertain time?

• 16:09Speaker 02

  I'm not sure I have the right answer, honestly. I've been keeping a journal and so first advice is keep a journal because it's interesting to kind of write it down. Don't change what you wrote down and then look back after the crisis is over to see how you thought and what was right, what was wrong. So I'm not sure I have the right answer, but the approach we take is let's be as transparent as possible. It's not a family, right? And if you have to use a cliche, the family one, I like sports team one, right? So in a sports team, you have to sometimes give hard do, during difficult news and deal with it instead of trying to be liked and protective. And I think the big mistake that more kind of greener, let's say, or less experienced entrepreneurs will do, and I definitely did that mistake many times, is try to be liked by the team and try to be protective of their feelings versus giving them the hard truth and trusting that they are adults and can handle it. And not only handle it, they can actually come up with better solutions than you can.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  So having a very transparent communication, sharing the challenges, sharing what you're struggling with. We're doing a lot of Q and A sessions these days on Zoom and somebody asked me, how are you doing? Because I keep asking people, how are you doing, et cetera, et cetera. So one of the questions in the Q and A was, how are you doing, Avi? And I said, well, not so great. Before this crisis, I managed to stop reading my phone, first thing I do when I wake up. And I went back to this crappy habit and I'm checking my phone. One eye is still closed, I'm still asleep. One eye is already open and I'm reading about virus and death. And maybe the virus also attacks the kidneys and now it also attacks the heart. And that's how I start my day, you know, in many cases. And no, I'm not doing great, right? And if you are honest about it and like, no, I'm not a super person. Everybody's struggling. I think these are my challenges. I need to cut costs right now to preserve the company. That we survive this thing and cutting costs might mean saying goodbye to some people in our team.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  And that's the challenge for me. So being honest about it, being open about it and transparent, I think it's much better than telling them, oh, no, everything is okay. And then like a day later doing huge layoffs. Nobody likes to be treated like that.

• 17:44Harry Stebbings?

  No, but I think you're absolutely right there in terms of the transparency and like the challenge. Can I ask just, I think so many are struggling in times like this. What have you found works in terms of really just being productive, getting out of that mindset? And just actually pressing on in terms of your psychology and staying positive.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  I think resilience plays a huge role here. And if you have resilience going into this thing, then it's easier for you. And if you didn't have it, it's time to develop it. And it's funny because I finished reading a book over the Christmas period that helps me a lot. I think it's called The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism. And basically, the point is if you cannot change something, why worry about it, right? And it's easier said than done. But I think my approach to keep sane was first, just the usual stuff that everybody's trying to do, but I think it's helpful is my commute is thirty seconds now, right? From the bedroom to where the computer is. And it's very tempting to be working twenty four seven. The fact that I have a wife and two kids here, two young kids helps because I have my commitments and I have my responsibility. So it kind of forces me to stop working at one point. But if you don't have that, then you have to find a way to have a schedule and force yourself to stop working. Just have a sane schedule, I would say, in terms of what you can fix and what you can't and what you should worry about or not.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  I'm trying to be more tactical in what I worry about, solving problems that I can handle that are completely within my reach. Not worrying too much about things I cannot change. Now, am I a hundred percent disciplined? No, if you follow me on Twitter, you see that I worry a lot about what the government is doing and I cannot change that. So I'm not sure I have the best answer for that, but I'm trying to worry about things that are within my reach and within my responsibility within the company. Trying to use the help of my team as much as I can, being transparent about the challenges I have, struggles I have, when I feel down, et cetera. I'm not trying to look like I'm always happy and everything is great. And then having a good schedule and a sane life in terms of trying to keep healthy, trying to eat well, work out as much as I can, which is not great, but still just trying to keep sane and having stuff outside of work, not just work.

• 19:25Harry Stebbings?

  Speaking of kind of within your control and then outside of your control, moving kind of to the future and an eye on the future. In terms of kind of the future of travel, a lot of saying, you know, it'll really impact business travel with a large decrease in kind of non-critical meetings with the world, realizing that Zoom can potentially handle those. Meetings that you didn't have to be there for in person. You're completely taking the opposite side and are super bullish. And I'm interested, how do you see the future of business travel in that case? And I guess in terms of like business travel returning, what are your thoughts on domestic versus international?

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think for the first, and I don't know how long it will be, right? It could be two months, it could be eighteen, twenty four months. But basically until, so I think people are not worried about it anymore, right? So I don't know what will make people not worry about the virus anymore. Maybe it will be a vaccine, maybe it realizes it's not as deadly. Maybe they'll just get used to it, like something will happen. One of these, or maybe another thing I cannot predict right now, that will get people less worried about it. I don't think twenty years from now, we'll still be worried about it. We're not even worried about HIV anymore. In a sense of, of course, we have to be careful. You're too young to remember, but you know, in the nineties, it was a huge pandemic, right? Like people were extremely worried about HIV. And now it almost became a chronic disease, almost, right? I'm not downgrading the challenges that come with contracting HIV, but it almost became a manageable chronic disease. So something will happen, is my guess, that will make people less worried about the virus. Regardless if it's because it's solved like a vaccine or just not worried about it.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Until then, and I don't know if it's two or twenty four or more months. Until then, we'll live in a weird kind of limbo periods. I think people will travel and my prediction is that twenty twenty one will be, business travel in twenty twenty one will be higher or the dollar a month will be higher than that of twenty nineteen. But it will look differently, right? So I think, for example, domestic travel will emerge faster and sooner than international travel. We already see that, by the way, so we have trips, I mean, volumes are still low, but we see trips being booked in Germany now, domestic. In the UK, domestic, in the US as well. I had a chat with a South Korean company where they see a lot of domestic travel. So domestic will come back first, is my guess, it's easier, right? It's easier to manage because the two ends of the trip are under the same, let's say, policy. And then I suspect that we'll see corridors of travel.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  So for example, it might be okay to travel or allowed to travel from New York to San Francisco, but not from Oklahoma to San Francisco. Don't take my actual states, but you'll have some kind of corridors or maybe countries will allow, the UK will allow everybody from France, but not from Spain. Again, I guess, but something like this will have corridors of travel. And then the third point, I think we'll have a lot of kind of red, green, kind of start, stop scenarios. Where you have locally and regionally and nationally, you have some increase in cases and then they will shut down and then reopen again. So. Flexibility will become a huge concern for business travellers, basically during this period until people are not worried about it anymore. So I think, yeah, I think domestic will be big, which is great news for train, for example. So rail will be bigger than flights, at least by the number of bookings, because it's just more convenient to travel domestically in many cases in train versus flight.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  And the hassle will lower, you know, like, I think people will be less inclined to sit in a closed metal tube that is the plane versus taking a train. I think you can distance more. Sometimes you can even open the window. The doors open every station. So trains will be bigger than flights at the beginning during this period of domestic travel. And then flexibility will be a huge issue. And we're actually changing the product and the strategy to match that belief. We're changing what we build to match how we see the world evolving.

• 22:31Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, when we think about kind of the world evolving, not every travel company, as we said, is so well funded. Not every travel company has the runway. Do you think we'll see a graveyard of travel companies? And how do you think the travel landscape on a very kind of company-specific level will look on the other side?

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, so unfortunately, that's, yes, we're already seeing it. So some companies we know already are going under or merging into other players. First money into travel company, probably dead for a while. You know, companies wanted to raise the first round are struggling. So this is probably going to mean that early stage travel companies or those who have high burn and low cash reserves are going to struggle, unfortunately. And also probably consolidation will happen because of that. So that's in the immediate term. After that, who knows?

• 23:11Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think this is like an ideal consolatory time for you afterwards, given the funding that you have and the funding behind you? Do you think that actually it can be a time where some really phenomenal assets can be picked up for really reasonable prices?

• 23:23Speaker 02

  We're definitely, any deal like this, we're definitely are looking more and more into that direction, yeah.

• 23:27Harry Stebbings?

  You also mentioned fundraising there, Avi. And, you know, obviously kind of fundraising and VCs do play a role in this and the ecosystem more broadly. I guess, what would you like to see from the VC ecosystem in a time of such uncertainty as this? And for you as the founder, what would you most like to see from that VC ecosystem?

• 23:42Speaker 02

  I got probably one of the best emails I've ever gotten from a VC, just at the beginning of this thing. So I'll name them. I hope they don't mind. If they do, I'm sorry. But amazing people at Local Globe, run by Sol and Robin Klein, and George is the person that we're dealing with, and Julian from the Latitude Fund, which is a growth fund they raised. Just an amazing team. And as the crisis started, they sent me an email and it's

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Said, we have X million waiting for you. Tell us when to wire them. They didn't ask about terms. They didn't ask about if I actually need the money. They just sent me an email. It was like a two sentence email. I should check with them if it occurs for me to publish the screenshot. Like, it's it's just amazing. Send me an email out of the blue and said, we have X million waiting for you. Tell me when to wire if you need it. That's the kind of support we need right now. If you have reserves in your fund and your company is good, right? I'm not saying it's it's a bad company. It's it's a great company, great product, growing well and hit hard by this crisis. This is an external factor that will go away. Honestly, they were amazing before and I always recommend them. But for me, this is more than I could even imagine. And without words, to this level of loyalty, this level of support, just fantastic. So the first thing business should do if they are able to, and the company is good, is reach out and sign a check to their current portfolio. I think that's one of the best helps because it gives you the oxygen to breathe.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  It gives you the oxygen to think clearly, not act of panic, act out of lack of discipline. So yeah, just amazing support. I think that's the best thing you can do.

• 24:54Harry Stebbings?

  What did you respond, Avi?

• 24:56Speaker 02

  What I just told you, that it's one of the best emails I've ever gotten.

• 24:59Harry Stebbings?

  I love that. Listen, that's fantastic to hear. And listen, I think it's challenging. I think it's challenging. You have a fiduciary responsibility to your LPs. And I think you're absolutely right in the case of travel, but when it is an outperformer and given how well you've done in the last few years, I think in other cases and in the messy middle, it's sometimes not as easy as that.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:16Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah. But no, listen, I totally agree with you. And that's fantastic to hear. I do want to move into my favorite there, Avi, which is a quick fire round. So I say a short statement and then you hit me with your immediate thoughts. Are you ready to rock and roll?

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it.

• 25:26Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, so Avi, hit me. Your favorite book and why?

• 25:29Speaker 02

  So I'm not sure if it's my favorite book, but I'm actually, I'm just reading it now and I really like it. It distracts me from the Corona situation. It's a pretty funny book and pretty smart. I think it's called The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window. It's a Swedish book. Great, great book.

• 25:42Harry Stebbings?

  Love it. I've never heard of that. It's the first time it's ever been named on the show, as you said, in kind of two thousand episodes. And that really is quite an achievement. Tell me, what's your superpower and then your weakness in company building? Thirty seconds on each.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Superpower, I know how to find great people, great talent, and to make the talent to work together. Weakness, I want to be liked. That's a big weakness.

• 26:02Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, I share that weakness. It's a challenge for sure. It's a difficult one to combat too. Tell me, what would you most like to change in the world of venture today?

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Venture. Venture is amazing. The VCs who listen to this are, you guys are amazing. Having said that, I try to be politically correct here. So let's, less time consuming way to exchange information. You know, this dating period of let's talk call, let's learn about the company, let's learn a bit more. These thing times 10, 15 different conversations takes a lot of time from the founders. So maybe finding a less time consuming way of doing that.

• 26:31Harry Stebbings?

  What would you like to see in that case? Cause I'm not being rude, you could put together passive customer references. You could put together a huge amount of resources to shorten that process, I guess.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's something like, I don't know, like the Snapchat of data rooms, like here's everything. Take a look, if you don't invest, somehow you forget that, like something like that, you know? Because the questions repeat themselves anyway. I mean, you need to be the founder, you need to understand like who they are as a person. But a lot of the, let's say the data exchange transactions are the same. So why do I need to spend an hour with you rather than just give you access to a data room? And I think many founders do that because they are concerned to expose too much. So if we had a way to let you see everything, but you forget it if you don't invest, I think it would be way better. You could look at like a thousand deals a week, it'd be amazing.

• 27:09Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, listen, I think that's gonna be the next company. Tell me, who was the first check in Travel Perk and how did that come about?

• 27:15Speaker 02

  So fir- real first check was founders, right? So we invested our own money. But first non-founder check was angel investors. We raised something like seven, eight hundred thousand dollars from angel investors.

• 27:25Harry Stebbings?

  Who was the first angel that said yes?

• 27:27Speaker 02

  I don't want to offend anybody who was the real first angel, so we had a group of them. We had around 12 angel investors more or less in the same time. Most of them are private, not famous names, so people from Israel, business people, entrepreneurs from Israel, from the US, from the UK, from Switzerland. Let's say friends and friends of friends kind of group.

• 27:45Harry Stebbings?

  Tell me, Avi, the final one, next five years for you and for Travel Perk, paint that picture.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, we probably will be the number one business travel platform globally in the next five years.

• 27:54Harry Stebbings?

  Avi, huge thanks for staying, you're a hero and excited for the next five years.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Thank you for inviting me.

• 28:01Harry Stebbings?

  The thing I love about Avi, you're always gonna get a straight answer. And if you'd like to see more from Avi, you can find him on Twitter at @aviMehir. Likewise, it'd be great to welcome you behind the scenes here at the show. You can do so on Instagram at HStubbings996 with two Bs, always love to see you there. But before we leave you today, I'm sure you've heard about it, but my word, I just love this product, Carter. Carter simplifies how startups and investors Manage equity, track cap tables and get valuations. Go to carter.com/20vc to get 10% off. More than 800,000 employees and shareholders use Carter to manage hundreds of billions of dollars in equity. And Carter now offers fund administration so you can see real time data in the Carter platform and work with Carter's team of experienced fund accountants. Simply go to carter.com/20vc to get 10% off.

• 28:46Harry Stebbings?

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• 29:30Harry Stebbings?

  As always, I so appreciate all your support and I can't wait to bring you an amazing episode with David Sacks, founder at Croft Ventures on Monday.