Advice on Going from 0 to 1 from a Unicorn Founding Team

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• Where is the transcript for this webinar?

  Ron Levin:
  We’ll let folks continue to trickle in, but happy to get going. So thank you for joining our Alumni Ventures Seed Fund webinar today: Advice on Going from Zero to One from a Unicorn Founding Team, where we’ll share our experience and advice and really the first year of kind of getting going with creating a company that will hopefully end up becoming a unicorn based on our own experiences. Why don’t we just take care of the next slide—some of the legal disclosures, I believe.

  So this presentation is for information purposes only and is not intended as an offer to sell securities or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities. If you are interested in our full disclosures, you can go to avfunds.com/disclosures—get that out of the way.

  We’re going to talk a little bit about venture investing in seed portfolio through Alumni Ventures, how that works, but we will spend most of our time with a discussion—myself and Javier. Noticeably absent, unfortunately, is our third co-founder, Avi, who was scheduled to be here but unfortunately had an urgent personal matter to attend to. We decided to continue the presentation with just Javier and myself for today rather than trying to reschedule, but I’m sure we will be talking a lot about Avi as we move forward in our discussion.

  So Javier, I will let him introduce himself in a few moments. As I said, I’m Ron Levin. I lead the Seed Fund here at Alumni Ventures. I’ve been at AV for about five years, but actually was an investor in our funds before I came to work here, so have been affiliated with AV for probably going on about seven years now.

  In addition to being an investor, I was of course a founder—as a co-founder and the first CEO in the first year or so of TravelPerk, which we will dive into—and have spent most of my career at the intersection of the travel and technology industries. I had been at Booking.com, which is part of the story of how we all got together as co-founders, and have worked in management consulting but have also been on the corporate side. So a little bit of everything, but am an investor today here at AV—sector agnostic, focused on pre-seed and seed investing. And we’ll come back to Javi in just a moment.

  So just as a quick introduction for those of you who might be new to Alumni Ventures or new to our seed team—we believe that seed venture investing is very compelling for a number of reasons. It is really an asset class that has historically outperformed public markets, for one, and even other stages of venture investing. Early stage tends to be the highest risk/high reward profile, but if done right can typically lead to the strongest returns over various time periods.

  It’s a form of investing that is not fully liquid at all times and certainly comes with risk. Anything can happen. But as many of you know, with a well-diversified venture portfolio, there is an opportunity to seize on very strong returns in the portfolio.

  The asset class is available to any accredited investor, and we can certainly discuss more on the SEC definition of an accredited investor, but that’s who we work with. We have over 10,000 individual accredited investors who invest in one of the funds within Alumni Ventures.

  The Seed Fund—currently we are investing out of our seventh fund. We do annual vintages, so every year we raise capital and deploy capital across a portfolio of sector- and geographically-diversified pre-seed and seed-stage investments in companies that are high-growth, innovative, have scalable business models, and compelling teams.

  We are right now building a portfolio that will probably end up around 60 or so deals. We are deploying that capital over the course of a year, but we do reserve part of that capital for follow-ons. We like to reinvest into the companies that are our winners because that’s often where the biggest returns are made.

  The reason for such a large portfolio—this is a larger portfolio than some of the other funds within Alumni Ventures—is particularly within seed, the power law concept is very important. As you look at very early-stage companies, especially those that might be pre-revenue, pre-launch, the more opportunities you take, the more chances there are to get those companies that will generate the very significant returns where one company can return the investment of an entire portfolio.

  So taking a large, diversified approach, we feel, is the right strategy for that. The minimum investment into our fund is $25,000. If you invest in one of the AV funds, you then also get access to syndications, which are individual companies where we secure allocation—where you have the opportunity to put money into a specific deal. It’s fully optional, but we do make that available once you’ve invested in at least one of our funds.

  So that’s a little bit on how the Seed Fund works. As I said, over 10,000 investors have been with us since our inception. We have around $1.3 billion under management at this point. Currently we are ranked as the number one most active VC firm in the country, and number three globally—that’s for the last two years according to PitchBook.

  Also more recently, we felt very gratified that our business model of investing alongside traditional, leading, well-established venture firms is paying off. We are now considered among them—ranked by CB Insights as one of the top 20 performing VC firms in the U.S., alongside some of the biggest names that you probably know in our industry.

  Our team is around 40 full-time investors spread across five offices in the U.S., and we have a very large support staff as well that helps keep us going—and around 1,300 portfolio companies that we manage and work with every day.

  And with that, just a little bit more on how our firm sources deals. Most of the investments that we make tend to come on warm introductions or through our network—either people we know, other venture investors, other founders who refer great deals to us.

  We’ve also established a more formalized, what we call “Super Angel Partner Program,” where we work with highly experienced, reputable, and successful angel investors to find out what deals they’re excited about and what they’re personally putting their money into—and we invest alongside them.

  In many deals, this has been a great opportunity for us to expand the number of deals that we see. We’re very active—more than one new investment every week in the Seed Fund—but we’re combing through probably about 30 to 40 deals for every one that we invest in.

  So it takes a lot of deal flow to build a pipeline that leads to the kind of opportunities that we want to invest in, which tend to have a bit of a moonshot approach—meaning deals that are either deep technology or have the opportunity to become a very large player because they’re addressing a large addressable market, and ideally have a very strong founder-market fit—a founder who’s either been a prior founder with success or has really deep expertise in the particular market that they’re going after.

  And as I said, we always—or almost always—co-invest alongside traditional, well-established VC funds that have also gone through a rigorous due diligence process on the company. And we invest globally as well.

  And with that, let me now finally turn it over to Javier, one of the three TravelPerk co-founders who really got this all started. I will let him introduce himself, but let me also mention that Javier’s current company, Oliva, is also a portfolio company of Alumni Ventures, which we are very excited about. But Javi, why don’t you take it away and give yourself a little introduction.

  Javier Suarez:
  Amazing. Hey Ron, thanks so much for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be here. I think you can all see a little bit of my background on the slide, so I’ll try to keep it short.

  I was born in El Salvador, raised in Berlin. I ended up working in Amsterdam at Booking.com as well as with Ron. And there I really noticed how many companies were trying to use consumer travel tools to manage their business travel, and it was very, very obvious that there was something missing in the market.

  I tried to convince Booking.com that we should do it maybe internally, and of course they still had a massive opportunity in terms of the consumer side. And they said, no, let’s stay focused. And after a few years, I got too much of an itch and I thought, if I’m able to convince a few co-founders to get going, I’ll give that a shot.

  I was lucky to convince Ron after some shots and then Avi as well. What I wanted to do was to combine—to complement—our skills. Ron was really coming from the B2B side already at Booking. Avi was coming from a technical perspective. I was really passionate about product. So I thought it was the perfect trio. I was able to convince them, off we went, built TravelPerk, and that took off very fast, which we’ll talk about more in a tiny bit.

  In between that, I burned out. It was a bit of a tough battle to keep going, but I did—and it made me realize how difficult it is to access mental health, which led me to create my next company, which is now Oliva Health. And that’s me in a nutshell.

  Ron Levin:
  Yeah, great, thanks. So that’s a good way to, I think, kick off. I think it would be helpful to tell a little bit more on the origin story.

  I mean, obviously you saw an opportunity, as we did, coming from Booking.com—being in the online travel space—but why focus on business travel? And I guess that’s question one.

  And then question two is: Where does your motivation come from? Because it really all originated with you. I would say I have an entrepreneurial streak, but you were really the driving force behind starting a company here.

  So yeah, maybe you can address both—kind of the problem that you wanted to solve, and why you wanted to take it on.

  Javier Suarez:
  Yeah, I’ll start with the latter first. So for me, in terms of building a company, entrepreneurship—I always felt an instinct to think about how to do things better, solve things. I would spot problems, but I couldn’t really define it as entrepreneurship. I was young.

  And even when I was at Booking, all I really, really wanted was to solve a problem.

  What the learning was, that through time I ended up getting tired of having to report to a boss, having to depend on other people to promote me. And I just thought—no, I just really wanted to do my own thing and build stuff.

  And that was a big part of the motivation—basically to have my own autonomy and just be able to go out there and try stuff. I was always quite a big risk character. I didn’t think that risk was a big problem—it was a matter of just fixing later if a mess happened.

  So it’s a combination of all those ingredients that led me to think about creating companies.

  And during Booking, it was almost weird—to be frank—to see so many incredible consumer tools like Booking, like Expedia, where you could instantly access all of the inventory in the world, easily book things, see your trip bookings, et cetera.

  But then if you would look to the other side of things—for companies—all they had was consumer travel options or they would have this archaic incumbent like American Express, Carlson Wagonlit, where you would have to negotiate months and months to get a contract, pay crazy amounts of fees, get locked in, et cetera—and nothing in between.

  And on top of that, we would see at Booking all these companies trying to use it—of course not very happy—because it was not built for that.

  Javier Suarez:
  So for a long time, I even broke my mind up thinking, why does this not exist? There must be a reason, because it’s just obvious. There’s a lot of companies that simply want to be able to deploy invitations to their team, see reporting, get invoices, get travel policy in place without having to negotiate a massive contract for years. So it made no sense to me that it didn’t exist.

  But eventually I just said, okay, it just simply doesn’t exist. And that’s what really made me hungry to give it a try because I just thought it was so obvious. And yeah, so I’m not sure if I answered your question, but…

  Ron Levin:
  Yeah. Yeah, and I mean it’s a difficult jump. I mean, we’re at Booking.com, which I would say arguably is the most successful travel company that’s ever existed, period.

  If you look at the revenue of the company, the profitability of the company, the reach—for a period of time, it was the number one performing stock on the entire NASDAQ exchange over a 10-year period.

  This was obviously part of the Priceline Group at the time. It’s now rebranded as the Booking Group. But that growth was absolutely driven by what was happening at Booking.com.

  I mean, working at one of the best. And at the time it wasn’t as known as an Amazon or a Google, but one of the best internet companies out there. Period.

  Kind of having the gumption to leave and say, hey, I’m going to take a chance on my own startup—I mean, that’s kind of risky, right? I mean, you came to me, it took me a while before I got on board with the idea, but you kind of jumped right in.

  Javier Suarez:
  Well, yeah, for some it even sounds insane because I didn’t only leave—I took a loan, I went in debt to do it. And the chances of success were tiny, but I just thought, I’m young, I don’t have very big commitments.

  I’ll always pay back a debt, I’ll get some job and pay back. So I thought it’s just worth a shot at that age and time. Yeah. So I was not very scared of that.

  Ron Levin:
  Yeah, I think they say sometimes ignorance is bliss—or I don’t know what phrase you want to use. Sometimes you just have to throw caution to the wind and jump in and do things, right?

  Javier Suarez:
  In fact, I think that’s a huge thing, to be honest. I actually posted about it a few weeks ago. What I’ve noticed a bit between the first company and the second one is that when you are a first-time founder, there’s just a lot of things you don’t know.

  And in fact, that is, in my opinion, a blessing—because you’re not scared of them. What you don’t know, you don’t know. So you just go for it.

  And the problem with experience is that it’s too much, and then you start overanalyzing things and say, hey, if we do this, this is not going to work because of this. And you place yourself barriers that you’ve accumulated through experience.

  But if you would completely disappear—erase those—and forget that what once didn’t work can always work in a second attempt…

  So the beauty of naivety is a massive advantage for first-time founders, in my opinion.

  Ron Levin:
  Yes, yes. So true. I mean, I don’t know—looking back—if I would’ve had the courage to do it. But there were a lot of things that came together for me to do it, for you to do it, for Avi to join us.

  And if you’re just joining us—sorry, just to interject—Avi’s not here because of a personal matter, but we certainly consider him at least one-third of this equation here (and more now) because he’s still the CEO today. But sorry, go ahead, Javi.

  Javier Suarez:
  No, sorry, I was going to say that… sorry, I missed my thought now, but—ah, sorry. The decision to leave Booking, if you think about it—yes, it was a big decision.

  But at the same time, it was also the best school, because we got to really understand what were the fundamentals that matter, and what was so different from their approach to every single other company in travel back then.

  That now has been copied over and over again—not whatever, they’ve been copied, and it’s fine.

  But Booking was really an incredible school of understanding—how do you really understand to the craziest levels of personalization and real value—to make a decision to choose a travel option to an extent that I have never seen before.

  And now if you fast-forward into TravelPerk, a lot of those attributes are the foundational elements that also make TravelPerk successful.

  And one of them would be, for example, consumer-like inventory depth. You go to TravelPerk, and we’ve invested from day one in having the deepest inventory possible so you can find exactly what you would in a consumer tool.

  It’s taken a lot of effort and time. But all that came—not because we woke up and were geniuses—it came because we saw that at Booking.com, how well it worked to give people options.

  Ron Levin:
  Yeah, I think that’s a great point. I mean, Booking was absolutely the foundation for starting this company in our backgrounds.

  It’s how we all met. Avi’s company, Hotel Ninjas, had been acquired by Booking into the division that I was leading at the time. And we had worked together on other projects and got to know each other.

  And so, I mean, it kind of made sense to come together. But I also think as founders, we were not kids out of school, exactly. I mean, we had some direct experience in the industry.

  And my sense is that gave us a lot of credibility as we went out to talk to both potential customers, as well as partners, as well as investors.

  I think going back to the early days—what were your biggest concerns of getting things launched? Were you worried about raising money? Were you worried about building product? What most concerned you?

  Javier Suarez:
  Well, I think what most concerned me was that what we were trying to build was pretty utopian. I mean, we were trying to build—with very little money—an online travel agency.

  And the ones that are successful have been there for decades, have billions of dollars, and we wanted to do that, right?

  That’s why, of course, we also started not with that exact approach—we wanted to do something just with technology—until we realized that the real need is for an end-to-end solution.

  But my biggest concern was that… I knew exactly how much Booking had invested to build the solution they had—over a couple of decades of really just chipping away more and more.

  And we were trying to do that in a matter of a year, with very limited resources, at speed.

  So I knew that the chances of success were quite low, to be frank. But I just thought that even if they’re low, let’s double down on those low chances and let’s stretch them as much as we can.

  Ron Levin:
  Well, so the rational argument—I mean, there’s solving a problem, and then there’s also kind of the financial element of creating a big company.

  I mean, we started the company essentially at the beginning of 2015. By the beginning of 2022, in the Series D round, the company had become a unicorn.

  Did you actually expect that that would happen? It’s kind of the dream—but to actually think, in reality, we would become a billion-dollar company?

  Javier Suarez:
  I kind of thought it was like a zero-sum game. It was either that or nothing. I thought this kind of solution either becomes enormous or just crashes and burns.

  And I think we saw a few along the way. So I think for that business, there was only an A or B, right? No middle.

  Yes, you could argue you create a good business also that is a bit smaller, et cetera. But simply for the route we took—with venture capital, et cetera—the expectations and what we wanted to build were simply either an enormous unicorn or crash and burn.

  And so I thought it was either one of these two, right?

  Yeah. So it was kind of like what it felt like—kind of trying to build a plane while it’s flying and trying to cover the holes and hope it lands.

  And eventually you kind of fix that thing and it flies a bit better and safer, and eventually it’s a plane. So it was a lot of that. It was a lot of that.

  Ron Levin:
  Yeah. And how much do you attribute the success to the early foundations? I mean, the team, the advisors…

  We’re kind of talking about what a founder should be thinking about doing in year one. What were the key decisions that were made early on that you think really set the foundation for success?

  Javier Suarez:
  So I think that—I’m a big believer that being a solo founder, even though some are great at it—for me, my opinion, it’s a disadvantage for multiple things.

  For multiple reasons: in terms of complementing skills, in terms of having that other person to lean on and stuff. So I always knew that it should be a combination of people.

  And I think the biggest thing there is to make sure that these skills are as complementary as possible.

  And then the second part of that, I would say, is that it’s also important that aside from the skills, that you connect with these people at a personal level—almost to make sure that this trajectory of 10 years is successful.

  So I think that spending time with your potential co-founders before—it’s a big attribute to the success at TravelPerk. I think we did that more with you, and you longer; with Avi, a bit less—but we did take some time.

   

  Javier Suarez:
  That’s one. Two is, of course, part of the skills that you bring together is also a network, right? In your case, you had very good exposure in the U.S., so that also helped a lot to get the initial angels convinced and get us off the ground, et cetera.

  So I do believe in the power of networks. I believe in the power of complementary skills, the complementary personalities. But it’s not to be underestimated how hard it is to put all those pieces together and for them to truly fit over time.

  And maybe one of the learnings there is that, of course, we made it work, for example, between us. But through time, I think we did realize that there were different personalities, different ways of life, et cetera, and we were fully committed to the mission and that’s why we made it work.

  But I do think that that could be a big problem if not handled correctly.

  If this nuance is too time-consuming and you’re not really connecting the best that you could with your partners, it could become a deal-breaker for one or more.

  So I guess my message is: do not underestimate how long this relationship is going to be, right? And as many people say, it’s harder to undo than a divorce.

  So I think that we got quite good to get off the ground. I think the network that we brought along also helped us a lot with the success.

  And also in the initial meetings—you would bring a lot more, I guess, the business side of things. I think I would bring a bit more of the product passion side of things. Avi would bring the second-time play side of things.

  So it was a good story that led people to get enough conviction and trust that even though potentially the chances were small, that we could maybe pull this off.

  Ron Levin:
  Yeah, no, absolutely. And I also like the way you framed it around shooting for a big result—because if you’re starting a venture-backed tech company, that’s what investors want to see too, is the ambition for the big return.

  They’re not looking for a 3x—they want a hundred bagger, or at least the opportunity to get there.

  So I know a lot of first-time founders are always very concerned about fundraising. I had never raised money for a startup. I don’t think you had either. Avi had just limited experience with that.

  Looking back at the first round, I think we raised a million dollars—a seed. There wasn’t really “pre-seed” back then. I don’t remember that. But it was kind of a million-dollar, or million-euro—I don’t remember which—seed round that we did.

  I think we had 10 investors—mostly individual angels, one or two more institutional.

  But what tips do you have from your memory? And now you’ve been on the other side—raising money for your own startup, as well as having raised later stages at TravelPerk—what advice do you have for a founder who’s maybe never raised money from outside investors before? Someone other than friends and family? How to go about that?

  Javier Suarez:
  One, I would say that everything you’ve heard until now—the good times are over.

  The good times when there’s zero interest rate and there are no other assets to invest in, and just the VC industry is reigning capital because there are no other assets—which created a very, very nice era where raising money, if you had some kind of proof and traction and a team, it was easy to capture.

  And of course margins—who cares? Unit economics—who cares? It was just about growth.

  I think that was not a realistic era. I think we were all kind of in a bubble, in a dream.

  And I think now, the world has suddenly shifted from that perspective, and the expectations are to build real companies—with a real bottom line, with a real top line, with real growth, with real economics, and real businesses. Must-haves, not nice-to-haves.

  So I guess the conclusion is: get prepared for a lot more questions—and real questions—to validate yourself as a real business.

  You need to really make sure that what you’re solving is keeping people up at night. If it’s anything close to a nice-to-have, it’s going to be tough.

  So I think that it’s a completely new reality, even for me. I mean, at TravelPerk—yes, of course, it took work to raise money, but we were still in this phase where—of course, we were also very lucky that we had good numbers, et cetera—but there was still this aggressive capital deployment phase because of the zero interest rates and all this, that we benefited from.

  And all that is gone now.

  Right now you really have interest rates back, and you need to really prove how you are a superior investment to anything that [an investor] could get elsewhere.

  So in a nutshell, I really, really like it—because it’s pushing people to create real companies that are solving real problems and that have a real machine that has the potential to become a long-lasting impact in decades, and not just something vanilla that is smoke and mirrors.

  So yeah, it’s about really building real value with real numbers and real foundations. And if you do that and you can prove that that can scale to enormous scale, I think it’s a great time. Otherwise…

  Ron Levin:
  I agree. And I think it’s very important that founders not be afraid to just schedule as many meetings as you can with investors.

  Tell the story. Get a lot of reps in. Get a lot of practice telling the story. See what works, what resonates.

  I think when we were doing the seed round, I probably had at least 10 conversations for every one that actually led to a check. And some of those conversations are just not the right fit, or it’s too early—you’ll definitely get that a lot.

  But you’ll have some investors that say, “I really like what you’re working on, it’s a little too early—but let me refer you.” I know an angel investor who might be interested.

  And several of our angels actually came that route—as introductions from other investors that we had pitched.

  So keep hustling. Don’t get deterred. If you get a lot of no’s, that will happen. Don’t take it personally. Keep going.

  It’s important to build a reputation. And without those early funding partners, if you don’t have access to be able to bootstrap it yourself, you’re going to just need to keep hustling. Really not much other choice.

  So I’ll just interject—we did get a few questions submitted ahead of time. I’m going to try to incorporate those themes into our remaining discussion.

  But if anyone would like to put anything into the chat, we’ll try to come to some questions toward the end. We’ll aim for another 15–20 minutes or so.

  But Javi, let’s talk about culture. You’re a big culture guy. That was always very important for you.

  How did you think about what kind of culture you wanted? What kind of people you wanted to hire, in terms of some of the early software developers, some of the first commercial folks we hired—how did you think about that?

  And what did you learn from that experience? And maybe how does that inform how you work now as an entrepreneur?

  Javier Suarez:
  Yeah, there are so many layers I could answer that question with. But I think one that we did was that—one thing I realized is that no matter how you twist it, values are always a tricky thing for them to land.

  Because just the word “values”—it makes you feel that you need to exchange your values for those of the company.

  So just by definition, it just sounds weird. So we kind of went back and really thought—so what do they really mean?

  At the end of the day, what we’re trying to create is a personality for an entity that we all want to connect to and agree to.

  So actually what we’re doing is an agreement.

  We completely scrapped the name “values” and we called it “agreements.”

  And it’s like—okay, how do we want the personality of Oliva to be? We defined that.

  Of course we started that at the co-founder level, and then we trickled it down—or across—the company, and everybody had their input.

  And then once we got to a place where we thought, “Yes, this is the personality I can commit to, and I can connect to,” then we literally shook hands and were like, “These are our agreements.”

  And all these agreements have become tools, right? Because it’s like—hey, we agreed to this, but we’re doing that, right?

  I’ll give you an example. One of our agreements is that we commit always to best-in-class care.

  And if I would come all of a sudden and say, “Hey team, we really have to increase margin, so we’re going to start paying therapists less. We’re going to start cutting corners in terms of how people actually can access sessions.”

  The numbers will go up, but that will completely be detrimental to best-in-class care.

  So anybody in the company should be able to say, “Hey, hold on. I thought one of our agreements is that we don’t compromise best-in-class care.”

  So I think it’s really about making it a tool. And it’s a tool to be able to guide difficult moments, good moments, and simply refer back.

  It’s not me and you—it’s simply that we agreed that this is how we work.

  So now it’s been, for me, the most pragmatic and easier way where I’ve actually seen people call out agreements during meetings over and over time—because they can be themselves.

  Their values are theirs. We’re not here to change their values. We’re saying: when we’re in the workplace, these are our agreements.

  Ron Levin:
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  Ron Levin:
  What do you think are the most important values or norms that a successful company should start instituting right away? I mean, think about, I dunno, grit and determination—

  Javier Suarez:
  Optimism, 24/7 work. No, I’m just kidding.

  Ron Levin:
  Well, we had a 24/7 cycle, didn’t we, early on? I mean, one of my favorite war stories to tell from the first year is—we had set up a front end of our travel booking portal before we had the backend built, but we got our first customers really quickly.

  And one of the first ones, I believe, was in Singapore, and they started making bookings. And we’re in Barcelona, and it’s like three o’clock in the morning and someone needs to actually manually make the booking within 10 minutes or something.

  And we got on a cycle. We took turns—the three of us—who would be awake or who would be on call and get that ding, say, “Oh shit, I gotta wake up at three in the morning and make a flight booking for this customer.”

  That to me is one of the best illustrations of some of the stuff you have to do to get your hands dirty.

  Javier Suarez:
  So let me find out that you wake up in the morning and you booked the wrong direction. So you have a board meeting that is booked wrong, and they want to completely eliminate—

  Ron Levin:
  That may have happened. And I think that’s why we started celebrating when we got those bookings and did them right. I remember bringing a vuvuzela back from South Africa and we would blow it every time we got a booking.

  Javier Suarez:
  But back to the values—I think that number one thing is psychological safety. You just have to be able to be yourself and put your boundaries and make sure that you can make mistakes and learn. I think that unless that is there, it’s very hard to innovate and move forward.

  Ron Levin:
  And thinking about external folks—so we sort of built an MVP, and if you want the whole history of TravelPerk, there was a pivot involved in our first year.

  We initially had one idea and then we broadened our vision, but we started talking to customers, and that’s kind of what informed a lot of the direction that the company ultimately took.

  But talk about early acquisition. How do you get those first customers? If it’s not your buddy or someone, how do you get them? How do you onboard them? How do you build trust with those first few customers?

  Javier Suarez:
  So TravelPerk had a few really good things in the model. One was that in the beginning, all we had to say to companies was like, “Hey, excuse me, where are you booking today?”

  And they would tell you, “Oh, we use all kinds of consumer tools,” which was the vast majority—which is not an enterprise.

  And all you had to say is, “Okay, how about—you can find everything you book elsewhere, you can find with us for no extra cost. And what you’ll have out of it is that you’ll have a report at the end, you’ll have travel policies, you’ll have expenses, you’ll have reports.”

  And so it was basically: keep doing what you’re doing—much better—for no cost at all. Because of course the model in the beginning was about the commission, and we were focused on that.

  And then through time, of course, there’s been SaaS enablement that has gotten that much better. So I think that was one.

  And then two was—it was easy for people to adopt it and for really a lot of volume to start going in.

  And then the second thing was that although it took time to build and to really refine that inventory, what we realized was that one of the biggest things that people hated about booking in consumer tools was having to chase invoices.

  And I noticed that because I was doing it myself. And also I went to the CFO in TravelPerk back then, I was like, “Javi, why are we not doing invoices for customers, if we’re the customer—if we’re the merchant of record?”

  And they were like, “I dunno, I just haven’t been asked.” I was like, “What!?”

  So in a matter of a week, we built this. And then all of a sudden, people could book with us and they would get their invoice immediately.

  So they wouldn’t have to go and call the airline, call the hotel, get that receipt, send it back. It was just—immediate.

  And even though they would be very upset that we maybe didn’t have still all the inventory they wanted, or something went wrong—just the fact of having that invoice instantly, it would retain them.

  So to put it into perspective—for a very long time, for three years—we had negative 23 NPS, because maybe we screwed up some booking, or we were missing out on an airline.

  But simultaneously, we had negative churn—so people would come back, because the pain of the invoicing was so big.

  And basically that was the hook that allowed us to keep people within the platform while we built the plane and got them the seats and airlines and hotels and train and all that stuff.

  And eventually, of course, NPS got above zero, and now it’s like—I dunno—60 or whatever. So it’s really good.

  But I think it’s about really finding—the trick here is always to find the biggest rock in the shoe for the customer.

  What’s keeping them truly up at night? And not just a little rock that you’re tiptoeing around and you can get by.

  Really—you cannot work anymore. And that, for us, was invoicing.

  Ron Levin:
  Yeah, it’s definitely a journey. I mean, finding this kind of product roadmap—you can lay out all the best vision in the world, but as we kind of discovered with our version 1.0, we went to market with something that the market didn’t really want.

  It was a little bit—I thought too—it was around helping… it was basically a gamification system to help companies save money and incentivize employees to save money on their business travel.

  But I think we kind of specced that out, made it, built a demo, went to market, and customers were saying, “That’s great, but what I really need is X, Y, and Z,” and the invoicing and other kind of product features.

  And so I think really listening to customers at that early stage is extremely important.

  But how would you reflect on maybe what was the most painful lesson in the first year—but on the flip side, also maybe the biggest positive surprise?

  Javier Suarez:
  I guess the most painful was that I thought the only way to do this was brute force.

  I basically let everything—in terms of my personal well-being, family, everything—aside, and I just did this 24/7.

  I mean, I got the office for us in my building so that I could commute within the same building, and basically didn’t leave the building for a year. That just cannot be healthy by definition.

  And so I did a lot of stuff that now feels so ridiculous. I took 12… a lot of stupid stuff—I took 12 hours of parental leave. That’s all I did, and then went back to the office, et cetera.

  So I think that it’s about really understanding that it’s a marathon—and making sure that you understand this is a long play.

  And I kind of poised myself for burnout eventually because I just thought—it’s just brute force. I have to do more than everybody else to win.

  Ron Levin:
  That’s brutal. Reflect on that a little bit more—because obviously it’s part of the story of how you transitioned to Oliva.

  But maybe some advice—so at the time, I mean, I didn’t have kids. I was in Barcelona, which was kind of a new city for me. Avi did have at least one—maybe the second kid—when we were getting started in the first year.

  Your kids came a little bit later into the journey. Maybe for parents—I mean, I know how much work it is just with kids—and how to think about: is it a good idea as a parent to start a company when there’s so much work to be done and so much pressure?

  This is kind of—I know—goes into the direct space that you work in now. I’m kind of curious what you advise people about that.

  Javier Suarez:
  Yeah, so I think it’s about being smart in your time distribution. I don’t think you have to delay a family for a startup.

  But you have to be very, very careful to keep your priorities straight. And at the end of the day, your family will still be your family.

  And if the startup explodes—so what?

  There is no startup worth missing your kids grow, being healthy, having a happy family. There should be no startup worth that, in my opinion.

  So I think it’s just keeping that really front and center, and making sure that—yes, maybe you have to work late, but from 6 to 8 you have dinner with the kids and you put them to bed.

  Or on the weekends, you’re there. And yeah, that could come a bit at the cost of you having more time for the company.

  But if you don’t have a healthy and happy family, it will cost even more to the company.

  So it’s about understanding that, right?

  So I think that working hard is very important. And you will have to do a lot of sacrifices. That means, to this day, I still continue to bump three out of every four vacations because I have to do something for work.

  But I’m trying to get better on that. So I’m still not nailing it myself. But it’s really easy to forget about priorities, and those things accumulate with time, and it’s simply not worth it—period, bottom line.

  So if you had to choose the fa—

  Ron Levin:
  Yeah. Can you spend another moment on that—kind of talking about your journey from TravelPerk to Oliva? Why the transition, and why did you decide to tackle mental health?

  Javier Suarez:
  Yeah. Well, I burnt out quite severely at TravelPerk, and I kept going—of course, as always, right? Back then. And the thing was that it was simply too hard. I was not looking for some crazy specialist—I was just looking for a counselor or therapist, and it was just too hard to find the right one, to get better, et cetera. It made no sense.

  And I really started digging into it, and I just saw how much of humanity is exposed to this. If you think about it, you could even say that 100% of humanity is exposed to this, because directly or indirectly—if half of humanity will have a mental health challenge during their life—the other half is affected.

  So you could say that 100%. So it was just something, I think, that today and age, there needed to be a place where you could simply go, show up, and say, “I’m feeling like crap” (sorry for my French) “and get me sorted. I have no idea what I have, or what I need, or what I should do—just guide me,” right?

  I’m not at my best to begin with.

  And so, similar to TravelPerk and Oliva, I think that we’re building something that we want to use—that we wanted back then. And so yeah, that’s the approach we’re taking.

  Ron Levin:
  And I guess my last question: all the lessons learned from so many years at TravelPerk—and you went in, I think, with your eyes a little bit wider open when you started Oliva—maybe talk about some of the lessons that you’ve applied and things that you’re doing differently.

  Javier Suarez:
  So I think one of the big ones is: what really is your problem, and what’s not a problem? What’s an emergency, and what’s not an emergency?

  Back then, I thought every problem—“That’s it, the company is going to crash and burn.” So everything was critical.

  And if you really think about it, it’s probably like 2% in your company that—if that happens—it will kill the company. So what I’ve learned to do is that that 2%—you put it in the vault. Bulletproof, bombproof, everything. You dig it as deep as you can.

  So that, in our case, for example, would be: a hack, data, personal data would be leaked. That simply cannot happen.

  So we double down in making sure it doesn’t happen.

  And the other 90% of problems can be solved, right?

  So if you have that view—that yes, okay, it sucks, we screwed up—what did we learn? A. Let’s return that learning. Let’s not do it again. But it will be solved.

  So this, I guess, self-anxiety or leveling of what really is a problem and what should really drain energy—for me—is different now.

  I understand what a real problem is. I understand what a real emergency is. And I understand the importance of prioritizing your own well-being almost above everything.

  So I think those are one of the biggest learnings—understanding that most of us, I think, in this space—we’re not treating open-heart surgery. Nobody’s dying.

  It’s going to be okay. And just—one step at a time—we’ll get through it.

  Ron Levin:
  Yeah, no, that’s great advice. And it’s fun—and I think helpful—to kind of reflect with the benefit of hindsight on what went well, what lessons to share with others, which is kind of why we do this.

  So really appreciate you making the time. Again, unfortunately Avi couldn’t be here, but absolutely he’s got a lot of thoughts on all of this as well.

  But it was an amazing journey. I was only there for the earliest stages of it, but just to watch how everything developed was truly astonishing.

  It is the entrepreneurial dream—to create a company that really makes a difference.

  I think there’s something like 1,300 employees today and hundreds if not thousands of customers out there using a product that was just in our imagination of what we might build.

  So very, very gratifying, rewarding, and I’m glad we have the opportunity to share the tips that we can.

  Any parting words—or if anyone’s interested in learning more about Oliva or anything, anything you’d like to share?

  Javier Suarez:
  Regarding Oliva—if anybody is looking for proper workplace mental healthcare, please do reach out.

  And I guess the last little advice I would give is to make sure that—it’s one life, and fun needs to be part of it.

  So keep that lens on, and things will be fun.

  Ron Levin:
  Awesome. Great way to wrap it up.

  So for anyone who joined or was not able to join live, we will be sending out the recording of this video and some slides to go with it. That will come to everyone who registered.

  So if you’d like to learn more about the Seed Fund: av.vc/seedfund—or reach out to [email protected].

  We appreciate you all being here and look forward to the next webinar. Take care, everyone. Thank you.

  Javier Suarez:
  Thanks, everybody.