Pod Insights The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch 20VC: TripActions CEO Ariel Cohen on The Future of Business and Personal Travel & Layoffs; How To Do Them The Right Way & Maintain Company Culture and Morale About this episode Ariel Cohen is the Founder & CEO @ TripActions, the company trusted by more than 4,000 companies to manage their business travel and expenses. To date, Ariel has raised more than $980M with TripActions from the likes of Lightspeed, Oren Zeev and a16z to name a few. Prior to TripActions, Ariel co-founded StreamOnce, a business multimedia integration platform which was acquired by Jive Software. Prior to StreamOnce, Ariel led Product Management in a senior leadership role at Hewlett-Packard. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ariel made his way into the world of tech and came to change the way we think about business travel today with TripActions? 2.) What are TripActions doing in their business to be there for their partners, customers and suppliers in the long term? TripActions engaged in layoffs, how did Ariel approach the size of layoff required? What is the right way to do layoffs? How does this change in a remote world? 3.) Given the uncertainty, how does Ariel advise founders to assess and correct their burn and spending? What is a reasonable amount of runway to reserve for? For those hit hard on the demand side, what can they do to build durable defensibility when they can't scale demand? 4.) How does Ariel view the future of business travel? Does Zoom replace much of the business trips? What will the landscape look like in 3 years? What players will survive? Who will thrive? 5.) From a founder psychology perspective, what has Avi done to cope in these very challenging times? What has worked? What has not worked? What does Ariel advise founders struggling to cope psychologically? What can investors do to be there for their founders? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Ariel’s Fave Book: Mr Vertigo 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.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Harry Stebbings? We are back on the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings. And if you'd like to suggest either guests or questions for future episodes, you can on Instagram at H Stebbings 1996 with two Bs, and it would be great to see you there. But to our show today, and Covid has obviously impacted so many different firms in many different ways. But the travel space more than any other, this company today sadly had to lay off 350 people in March. And so I really wanted to speak to their founder, and I'm delighted to welcome their founder today, Ariel Cohen, founder and CEO at Trip Actions. The company trusted by more than 4,000 companies to manage their business, travel and expenses. To date, Ariel has raised over $980 million with Trip Actions from some of the best in the business, including Lightspeed, Oran Ziv and Andreessen Horace, to name a few.
0:41 Harry Stebbings? Prior to Trip Actions, Ariel co-founded Stream Ones, a business multimedia integration platform, which was acquired by Jive Software. And prior to Stream Ones, Ariel led product management in a senior leadership role at Hewlett Packard. I do also want to say a huge thank you both to Araf Yan-Mohammed at Lightspeed and to Oran Ziv for some fantastic questions and suggestions today. I really do so 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.
1:21 Harry Stebbings? 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. 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.
2:04 Harry Stebbings? 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 more today at www terminal.io, that's terminal.io. But it's now time for the show and I'm delighted to welcome Ariel Cohen, co-founder and CEO at Trip Actions.
2:28 Speaker 01 You have now arrived at your destination.
2:31 Harry Stebbings? Ariel, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show today. I've been looking forward to this one for a very long time, I have to admit. I've had so many good things from Araf at Lightspeed and then also the main man, Orin Ziv. But thank you so much for joining me today, Ariel.
2:42 Speaker 02 Hey, thank you so much. I've heard great things and I know that Orin had great experience with you. And you know, these guys, we know them for years, so it's fun that we all know each other. So really, really happy to be here.
2:53 Harry Stebbings? It totally is. After 3,000 interviews, there are a few people that I haven't met, but Orin is a special one for sure. But I do want to start on you, Ariel. So tell me, how did you make your way into the wonderful world of startups? But especially, how did you come to Found Trip Actions? And what was that aha moment for you?
3:08 Speaker 02 I'm originally from Israel and I moved in '09 to the US. And the main purpose, I moved through HP after we got acquired in HP. But I've moved because I really wanted to move to the entrepreneurship side and really start startups. And I thought that the best place to do it is here in Silicon Valley. And that was my goal. And I found myself in Jive, which was back then was a startup and went through that. And started a fairly small startup with my co-founder, Ilan Twig. We sold it back to Jive very fast, after nine months. And the really good thing that happened there, it showed me what does it mean to be an entrepreneur? But it also created a lot of lifelong connections. So Orin Ziv, which you've mentioned, was also an investor in our previous startup.
3:51 Speaker 02 Araf Janmohammad from Lightspeed was an investor in our previous startup. So it kind of created this relationship that eventually brought us all together to start Trip Actions. And Trip Actions, it's really, I think, based on my experience, right? I was throughout my career, experiencing travel from both sides. I was a road warrior, so just someone that traveled a lot for business. And had a lot of experience around the, a lot of frustration, to be honest. Takes very long time to book your trip. When you need support, it's like you need to hustle a lot and so on. So there was that side. And on the other side, as a manager, as an exec in a lot of different companies, every time that it came to the business
4:34 Speaker 02 Travel discussion and the budget around it and the spend. I felt that it's much more an emotional discussion than a discussion that is based on data and actions that you can actually take as a manager. So I really felt as an entrepreneur that there is an opportunity to fix it all. And that led to trip actions and of course, we can talk more about trip actions. But it was really knowing a problem on a first hand and feeling strongly that both Elon and I can fix it.
5:01 Harry Stebbings? And I mean, it's been an incredible journey to watch over the last years, I have to say. But I I do wanna kind of grab the bull by the horns and being British, I'm always quite, you know, uh, careful to dip into new conversations that are potentially sensitive. But Covid has caused such uncertainty and changes in the world and travel's obviously been hit very hard in the last month. So I guess first, what are you doing in your business to be here for the long term? For customers, for partners, for suppliers and what's that response for you?
5:25 Speaker 02 I'll actually start with something that I think is very important to establish. When you think about the future of travel and definitely the future of business travel. I know that a lot of people that right now are saying, hey, maybe doing everything through video conference, that's the solution. I think it's an amazing workaround and I think it's actually fairly efficient workaround. But it also remove a lot of things from, you know, the cultural aspect, the in-person connections aspects. The thing that really drive businesses and you can actually see it, you know, I don't think that people think that will come out of this when the economy is growing, right? You're really going to be in a depressed environment until we'll be able to get out of our houses, to meet again in restaurants, to go to the bar and to travel, right?
6:08 Speaker 02 So I think that I have this strong belief that travel, business travel and generally travel is part of our life. It's actually an important part of us as human beings, as people, as people that needs to know each other, to understand each other as a context. So so that's really important because if this is something that you strongly believe in, then you're always thinking about the day after of the day after. How can I help for businesses to get back to business, right? From the perspective of trip actions. And all of the steps that we've taken from the beginning of this crisis and up until now, and that's what we're gonna continue. Continue to do are related to this. So the first part was, hey, this happened.
6:50 Speaker 02 We need to provide a lot of tools for our customers to manage the situation. Think about it, a month ago, a six weeks ago, people were still traveling. So what we've done, we've released capability for our customers to see where their employees are. And we correlated it with the CDC recommendations. They had the risk zones recommendations. And we allowed business travel managers to see which trips can continue, which trips should be canceled. We even allowed them to cancel an entire region and also help them to get refunds for that. So that was more of like, let's tune on our customers and making sure that they can manage the situation. Then we beefed up our support back then and made sure that when all of the flights between Europe and the US got canceled,
7:34 Speaker 02 we are ready and we can keep the wait time fairly low. And also we can help our customers to rebook, to change their routes, to get back home, right? So that was more of the immediate response. Then we also needed to do another thing. We looked at the business and Trip Actions is a business like any travel company that was hurt badly on the day-to-day revenue perspective. So the way that we walk, we sign customers. They are now their customers and when their employees are using us, we charge the customer for that. So it's basically usage based. Obviously, the usage has dropped down by ninety percent. So immediately we needed to adjust our costs. So we'll be here in a year from now, in two years from now, in three years from now. That was kind of what I was looking at.
8:16 Speaker 02 How well can I make sure that we will be alive in the long run after COVID? And unfortunately, to do that, I needed to do layoffs. And it's, you know, it's, we are still a startup. It's something that is just horrible to let go people that you've been together, you've built this thing together with them, that were actually really good employees. And to let them go, it's really, really horrible.
8:38 Harry Stebbings? Can I dive in and just asking it layoffs are horrible always, but layoffs are so much harder also when it has to be done by Zoom. Can I ask, have you got any lessons or advice in terms of what it takes and what it means to do layoffs well, respectfully and right in this new world of Zoom?
8:54 Speaker 02 I would start and say that layoffs period are tough and they are tough when you know it also relates to your values, right? For me, laying off somebody that was performing well, that's really, really tough because we all you know, laying off people for performance from time to time. But this is about I you've done your job, you've done it brilliantly, right? Maybe you are great about it and I'm still laying you off. So I think you're crossing a certain trust line when you do that. Now, how you do that for me, I really, really believe in the human connection on the face to face meeting. It's something that I think it's a, you know, we've talked about it earlier, right? I strongly, strongly, it's part of who I am, right? Meeting with a person, looking at that person in the eyes and whether it's good news or
9:38 Speaker 02 bad news, communicate it. And I think that video conference conferencing by by definition is very transactional, right? You start a meeting, you end the meeting, you don't really know what happens in the five minutes afterwards, the five minutes before that, all of the body language and so on. So again, that's why I'm calling it a nice workaround, but nothing more than that. And doing it over Zoom is just horrible, right? The way that we did it, we kind of started with a conversation with everybody at the beginning of the day, which immediately, you know, creates uncertainty, right? Am I going to get fired today, am I not and so on? And then we did personal conversations. And again, we've done it all over Zoom. So you cannot really, you know, you don't even see the person before you went to the
10:20 Speaker 02 room after if he's okay, how is he receiving it? Something that if it was in a face to face conversation, you could see the real reaction. So I think it's highly, highly inefficient to do it through Zoom. It removes a lot of the emotional aspects of it, but obviously that's the only way that we could do it right now. When it was done, we got a lot of criticism around it. You could see headlines and all of this, but I think part of this was also the fact that we are a One of the fairest, I would say, unicorns to do layoffs. Just because usually I think in trip actions, we are executing really well. Obviously, since then, unfortunately, a lot of companies needed to do the same thing. So now it's kind of, you know, everybody are doing it. Lessons learned, you know, it just, you know,
11:04 Speaker 02 try to avoid the entire experience, but if you don't have a choice, it's it's what you need to do. You need to communicate as much as you can.
11:11 Harry Stebbings? Can I ask, there's a lot of founders in your position, in differing scales and sizes who go, okay, we need to cut burn and we do need to lay people off. The question I have for you is, it's so uncertain of whether it's six months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months. So given the uncertainty around how long this lasts, how did you approach the size of your response in terms of the cuts?
11:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's a really, really good question, right? And only, I think in two years from now, we'll be able to see and look back on our decisions and see which decisions were correct and which were not, right? Because we are still in the crisis when we are still in the moment, right? And I think that my advice to entrepreneurs is, if you believe in the product that you have, in the offering that you have, in your company, right? In your mission, believing in it also means that you have to be very responsible. Delaying a tough decision will not help you to achieve your mission as a company. By the way, if you delay the tough decision, you may end up laying off more people. So eventually, the reality is reality, right? If you're not making revenue and the crisis lasts for a very long time, you will need to lay off people.
12:16 Speaker 02 But as you delay it more, you'll have less capabilities, less flexibility, and therefore you end up actually hurting your business and the people even more. So my first advice is actually to look at your cash situation. To lose, you know, usually entrepreneurs, I'm like that, are very optimistic people, right? You are always assuming that there is a way, that there is a way to get funded, there is a way to add that you'll sell the next deal and so on. On times of crises like this, I would advise to lose some of this optimism and to look at the reality and act upon that. And actually, if you think that it's a three-month crisis, it's better to think it's a six-month crisis. If you think it's six months, think that it's 12 months. I've approached it as.
12:58 Speaker 02 It's probably a twelve month crisis, which then you have additional twelve months of implications. So I kind of saw it through a lens of twenty four months. That was my approach to this crisis. But you know, only in two years we'll know if I was right or wrong. Maybe it is a three month crisis and I overreacted, right? But my advice is to be very, very careful and not trying to avoid tough decisions.
13:19 Harry Stebbings? Absolutely. No, I totally agree. And I also always think it's super important to be very decisive upfront and not do multiple rounds of layoffs as well, because I think that has a real not to culture.
13:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, and part of it is you're touching culture and for one of the main reasons that Elon and I are doing this is actually related to culture, right? We believe in the culture that we want to build in our company and the way that the workplace should look like and so on. And for me, culture is not benefits. You know, sometimes people are confusing culture with benefits. You know, maybe there is a barista or ping pong tables or stuff like that. For me, culture is to be mission driven, is that everybody believe in the same mission, that everybody wants to win and so on. And I think that doing layoffs generally creates a toll on the culture. And the main reason is, again, it's related to what I've said earlier, you are crossing a certain line, right?
14:08 Speaker 02 You're basically telling people, even if you performed well, even if you are great, even if you are amazing, even if you've been part of this journey, I may still lay you off, right? I may still fire you. So I think that these times will affect cultures a lot, including the culture of trip actions. And what I'm doing, I'm trying to make sure that we are coming out of this where our culture is even stronger than what it used to be. But it is definitely tough. I think it's actually going to be very hard for every entrepreneur out there.
14:37 Harry Stebbings? Can I ask a very direct question? It's like, what specifically are you doing to maintain culture and employee motivation through this crisis? And what have you found works and what maybe doesn't?
14:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think that there are two different things. One is to rally the people again around the mission. So I'll give you an example with trip actions. After we've done the layoffs, we've done a company all hands and we've communicated what we've done in the context of the layoffs and we've stopped there. But then a few days afterwards, we've met again the entire company and we've. communicated our strategy now, right? In light of the crisis, we now know, right? Like two months ago, we didn't know that we'll have something like that. We didn't, we couldn't even imagine it. But now we know, right? Now there is a new reality. And giving this reality, where are we focusing our energy as a company? So, for example, we looked at this and for trip actions was always about the user, the customer and our partners. It was always like that.
15:32 Speaker 02 It's in our values, it's how we operate, it's how we wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night. So I was talking with the company and I was telling all the employees, hey, listen, we don't have users right now, but it's still all about the user. So what we need to do right now is to bring more customers in, so sign more customers, although they are not going to really use us, but to bring them in. And also, we need to improve in all of the gaps. When you build a company, you have a lot of gaps. So you need to improve, you need to take this time and invest more in our product, more in R and D, more in efficiency, more in training. We should use this time, so when we are back, when the users will get back, they will have even a better experience with us than what they had before Covid.
16:16 Speaker 02 So I think, again, mission is a really, really important thing, even if everything has changed. And really, what I've told the team is it's all about getting back to business. It's us getting back to business, but it's also helping our customers to get back to business. And again, we believe that part of the business is actually business travel. So that was one thing. The other thing that I wanted to do from the beginning is to be as transparent as you can. So what do I mean as you can? You cannot share everything on the moment that it happens. So you need to make some decisions and then you need to plan them and how to communicate them and so on. But being transparent means of let's not communicate false hope to the employees. Let's actually share with them the situation. Let's be very transparent on how much money do we have in the bank? How much are we burning?
17:01 Speaker 02 By the way, we were doing it all the time. Employees in trip actions all the time knew how much money do we have? How much we burn? On what do we burn the money and so on? But now it's even more important if you want them to believe in the long term of the company. So over-communication and keep getting back to the mission, very, very important. Things that we see that doesn't work, I think again, this video conferencing environment creates a very transactional environment where a conversation starts and conversation ends, right? Even all hands, you don't have the people walking into the room and walking out of the room. You cannot really see their faces. It's something that reduces the human element to minimum. And I don't have a solution for that right now, but I think this is something that during this crisis,
17:46 Speaker 02 the thing that worries me the most is the fact that I think that there is a degradation of the ability to communicate and really understanding what's going on. I'm a gut person and I cannot get the same gut feeling because of the way that we are communicating right now.
18:00 Harry Stebbings? I'm totally the same as you. I gained so much from that in-person interaction and kind of analyzing the body languages. We spoke about the culture maintenance there, we spoke about the layoffs and we spoke about the changes. It's really fucking hard, let's just be clear. I guess my question to you is, for you as a founder with all of this on your shoulders bluntly, in terms of founder psychology, how's this time been for you personally? And I guess what have you done to cope?
18:23 Speaker 02 When you're going on a startup, you are ready for the roller coaster, right? And it's always like this. We had a year and a half ago, we had a major crisis where we had a certain fight with one of the airlines in the US. And until we solved that issue, and now we actually became really good friends with this airline, but until we solved it, we were actually operating under a crisis mode. And the same here. So I think part of being an entrepreneur, you know, it's not what you see in a tech ranch or what you see in the TV shows, right? It's there is a lot of hustle. And if you're not ready for the hustle, don't be an entrepreneur. So I'll start with that. How do you cope? I think first of all, you know, you need to rely on the people that you trust, that you can speak with. I just had a long discussion with my head of customers.
19:06 Speaker 02 She is actually a chief customer officer. She lives in Amsterdam, her name is Kira. And just before this meeting, I had a long discussion with her and we talked for 60 minutes. I think the 20 minutes, we talked about the organization and some things there. And 40 minutes, we talked about how is she doing in Amsterdam? And what do they do over the weekend? And how she's coping and how I'm coping and so on. So I think talking with people, you know, we see our families much more. Talking with my wife, even with my kids, right? My son always like to better understand our business. So talking with them on everything, I think that helps a lot, at least for me, that's what helps me. Really talking with people and sharing, opening up and getting their perspective.
19:46 Harry Stebbings? Can I ask, you mentioned that about kind of speaking with the people you trust. Obviously, for me as a VC, I want to be the best that I can be for our founders in this environment. Help me out here. What does the best investor do to help you in this time? What would you most want from your investor in this time?
19:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think that investors, and we kind of briefly touched it, right, but I was fortunate to have really good investors, right? We've talked about Oren and Ariel already, but I also have Ben Horowitz, which he, you know, he lived through something like that, right? He ran a company in O1, right, and even took it public at that time, right? He wrote a book about it. So having someone that really went through that on the culture level, on how do you communicate with employees? How do you deal with cash? How do you optimize the moment and really focusing on the right things? That's super, super powerful. And what I've noticed about our investors throughout this crisis, it starts with trust, right?
20:39 Speaker 02 For me, as a CEO, as an entrepreneur, it's very important to see, to feel that our investors trust me to weather the storm. But also challenge you, asking you some questions, right? Why are you doing that? Why are you doing the other thing? And I think that if you feel that the challenge is coming from mistrust, that would be extremely not effective. If it's coming from a discussion, hey, we trust you, but maybe you didn't think about that, that's very, very powerful. So for me, having investors that A are just really good people, but B also believe in the long term of trip actions and believe in me, believe in Elon, believe in the team, that helps a lot.
21:17 Harry Stebbings? You speak about the long term there. If we kind of switch slightly, but moving kind of more macro to the travel industry itself, coming out of this environment. A question that I have to ask is kind of what do you think the landscape will look like coming out on the other side? Will we see a graveyard of startups and kind of a plethora of new open opportunities? How are you thinking about that environment when we emerge from this?
21:37 Speaker 02 First of all, generally in the startup community and any business community, cash is king, right? You can have an amazing, amazing business, an amazing idea, amazing offering. And if you will eventually run out of cash, you'll run out of cash. Nothing will help you. So I think that startups that right now were not fortunate to raise Money before the crisis and are not capable of raising money right now. They are in big trouble and their founders, their entrepreneurs needs to find solutions for that. So I think that's part of what you would see. You'd see that some startups, even great startups, will not be able to survive mainly because they didn't raise money just before that, right? So I think that's something that you'll definitely see. I think that when it comes to our space, you know, business travel and travel generally,
22:22 Speaker 02 I kind of said it at the beginning. I have strong belief that people, once it is done, will get back to travel, to business travel, even in a stronger way. Now, let me explain what does it mean once it is done. I think that as long as people will think that it is not safe for them to travel, they will not travel. You will need to give them tools to make decisions if this is safe or not. But safety is important. I think that once they'll know that it is safe to travel, they'll get back to the efficiency, right? To close a deal, you need to meet face to face. We've just talked about managing a team, motivating a team, layoffs. All of the various business activities that are related to growth will need to happen and are usually happening between people when they're meeting.
23:03 Speaker 02 So I think this will be even stronger in the future as the economy will want to rebound, right? People will want to get back to growing the economy. But I think until that point, it's my role, right? As someone that runs a tech company in the travel space, to develop the products that will allow people to get back to business, to travel efficiently when health is a consideration and safety is a consideration and budget is a consideration. So if you ask me if people will get back to travel, I would say, hell, yes. If you ask me when, I think it's when they will feel that it is safe. And if you ask me, you know, what is our role there is to provide them the products, the tools to make these decisions.
23:42 Harry Stebbings? I totally agree and I love that in terms of providing those products. I do have to ask, you said cash is king there and I love that statement. But I have a lot of founders who ask me, the money's on the table. Should I take it and take a hit with dilution? Or should I be a lot more conservative and raise less and not accept all of the money that's on the table? How do you think about if the money's on the table, take it versus maybe being more dilution sensitive? What would your advice be there?
24:05 Speaker 02 I think I'm actually Very consistent on my thinking regarding to this through two different startups and a lot of different founding rounds. I think that what's important when you do a funding round is not the dilution level. It's actually the partner that you bring to the table and whether this partner is aligned to your vision or not. And whether you think that you can work with this partner because it's a very, very, very long term journey, right? Eventually, if you brought somebody into the table just because it gave you money, it will affect your startup badly. So I think that the discussion should never be around dilution, not in wartime and not in peacetime, right? Never about dilution, it should be about the partner that you are bringing in. That partner will be part of your startup.
24:48 Speaker 02 And now there is also the issue of terms. I think that dilution is one aspect of terms. I think that more important part of the terms is are you putting weights on your startup right now? That will prevent you from growing in the future, right? So I'll give you an example, there are a lot of debt structures out there. And some of them are really fair and making a lot of sense. Some of them can create a problem for the startup to grow in the future. So I think that as long as you're not creating a long term issue to your startups, you should raise. If you can raise today, you should. Dilution, I think it's a game of averages. Sometimes you have a great round, sometimes you don't have a great round. Eventually, when you get money in, you're also starting to grow, you're creating a lot of value.
25:33 Speaker 02 And that's kind of counter to the dilution effect. So I never in my life as an entrepreneur optimized for dilution. And I don't recommend anybody to do that. I recommend to really think about the long term vision of your company.
25:45 Harry Stebbings? Can I ask, we've seen over the last few days, we've seen Airbnb, we've seen Expedia take on large debt rounds in both cases, actually. I mean Airbnb was equity also, but large debt rounds. Did you ever contemplate in this time doing a debt round in terms of just easing cash flow for trip actions as a company? Did you ever contemplate that as an option in terms of the debt?
26:04 Speaker 02 Yes, yes, as I said, there are a lot of instruments out there. And the answer is I'm looking as a CEO on all of the options, okay? All of the options that are out there. And I'm basically creating a balance between. The cash that we have in the bank, which we were fortunate to have a funding round six months before this crisis. We closed a certain debt facility to finance our payments product just before COVID in February, actually, and so on. But I'm constantly looking at what we have, the options out there in terms of financing, and that is one of them. It was always one of them. And then what do we want to do with the money? Because for us, for trip actions, it is less about survival because we do have cash.
26:46 Speaker 02 It's more about what aspects do we think that if we'll invest there will come out stronger from the crisis, right? So, for example, we've done layoffs, but we are still hiring in some departments. We are hiring in the enterprise sales team. We are hiring very selectively in the product R and D team and so on. So obviously you need to look at these things as what exactly you're gonna get out of this cash. And if the form is that, like what I've said earlier, it's all terms and conditions. You need to make sure that this debt helps you to run the company for the long run. So I'm looking at all options all the time, not just in crisis, just all the time.
27:23 Harry Stebbings? Now, I would love to move into my favorite element of any episode there, Ariel. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. It's the quickfire round. Are you ready to dive in?
27:32 Speaker 02 Let's do it.
27:33 Harry Stebbings? Okay, so I promised myself I would read more, even in quarantine, I'm failing. So I clearly am just a terrible human being. But what's your favorite book and why?
27:41 Speaker 02 I would say it's actually Mr. Vertigo by Polo Star. It's a fairly old book, but it's about teaching you that you can fly. And for me as an entrepreneur, it really, really, I think, I relate to this in terms of the hassle, the ability to fly, and also the need to stay humble while you're doing that. So this book has really, really affected my thinking, I think, throughout my career.
28:04 Harry Stebbings? What's your superpower and then your weakness in company building, if you were to do thirty seconds on each?
28:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think, first of all, I'm a very decisive and mission-driven person, right? So I think that's very important, right? That's, I would say, my superpower. Some people will joke that it's always absolute clarity with me. And sometimes it will be a joke, sometimes it would be a criticism. But I think it's actually what drives me and what drives Trip Actions. I would also say that my weakness is that I'm very emotional about this, right? It's never for me just a meeting, just a deal, just a financing round. I'm very emotional about this. I'm taking it very, very to heart. Sometimes you'll see it. So I will say that that's definitely my weakness.
28:46 Harry Stebbings? What motto or quote do you most frequently revert back to and why?
28:50 Speaker 02 I think my motto is there is always a way, right? There is always a way and there is always a way to achieve your dreams. So I would say never, never give up on your dreams. Never settle, right? We are here to achieve something and there is always a way to achieve it.
29:06 Harry Stebbings? Who was the first check into Trip Actions and how did it come about?
29:09 Speaker 02 The first company that ever booked in Trip Actions are NetScope. It's a tech company. It's actually a light speed company. So Ariel connected us. I will never in my life forget that booking. It was their CEO making a booking. And I remember their CFO calling me so excited that everything worked. It was on an alpha, right? So it was kind of very, very, very early stages. And it was just exciting to see it happening.
29:33 Harry Stebbings? That's such a special moment. Tell me, what's the next five years hold for you and for Trip Actions? And what does that roadmap look like?
29:40 Speaker 02 We have something very special here, right? I don't see ourselves as, okay, someone is booking a trip. I think we are really powering the human connection. I think now more than ever it is important. And I see this as a journey, right? In five years from now, I hope that we'll be able to bring this experience, the experience that we create through Trip Actions to as many people as possible, to as many companies as possible, users as possible. And it's really about the human connections, showing to everybody that it's pretty much the opposite of what all of us are doing now. And I'm really looking forward to get back to meeting people, to have drinks with people, to sit in the same restaurant with people and so on. And I think the Trip Actions have a big, big, big part of this.
30:20 Harry Stebbings? Well, Ariel, as I said at the beginning, I cannot wait to go for espresso martinis with you in London. So I can't wait to make that happen. And thank you so much for joining me today.
30:28 Speaker 02 Thank you so much. I enjoyed it very, very much. I can feel that you're very passionate about entrepreneurships and startups. So it was a great experience for me to speaking with you.
30:40 Harry Stebbings? Such a special founder and I loved having Errol on the show there. And if you'd like to see more from us behind the scenes, you can on Instagram at H Stebbings 1996 with two Bs and I 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.
31:22 Harry Stebbings? And speaking of teams there, did you know there will be 1.4 million job openings for developers in 2020? And that's when 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 more today at www terminal.io, that's terminal.io.
32:06 Harry Stebbings? As always, I so appreciate all your support and I can't wait to bring you a fantastic episode with Elad Gil on Monday.
Previous 20VC: 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy: Deconstructing Economies of Scale, How To Assess True Market Size, Assessing Risk vs Uncertainty, What “Brand As Power” Really Means with Hamilton Helmer, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Offi Next 20VC: Elad Gil on Startup Offense and Defence in a Recession, How The Venture Landscape Has Shifted & All Things Valuations, Secondaries and Layoffs Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
