YouSaid · the spoken record

Johannes Reck

lines on the record: 115
first: 2025-06-23
most recent: 2025-06-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“At the highest level, if Johannes had a massive impact on creating more human connection, I think. And that's across Get Your Guide in the product we sell, but then also the topic of Europe and recreating the future of Europe. I think if I would put that under one theme, it is creating human connection.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. Don't do that. Don't be too hard on yourself. You will not be a perfect parent, and that's fine. And you also want to be a perfect CEO. And that's also fine. I think find your balance. I think balance is the most important thing when you're a parent and you're growing a tech company and you have that demand on you. So really make sure that you find time for both. At the end of the day, when we're 60, 70, 80, I mean, get your guide will be a very important part of my life. And I will want to make sure that that is as successful as possible, but at the same point in time, I think my kids will mean more than anything else in the world.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it helped me in just having the sheer stamina and energy to drive the company forward time and again and not take failure as an option. I think it hurt me in that I don't think I was as inclusive as I could have been. And I think that has hurt innovation to a certain degree at times.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've become a lot more humble. I do know my deficiencies, and I think the things that I get wrong a lot more, I really was very, very self-confident when I started the company, which really helped us survive. And I think Grove the first five years. Today, I'm still very self-confident, but I also understand much more how I need to be complemented”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're not going into the core ticketing market, we're going into the touristic part of the ticketing market. Very different markets, much higher margin. People love to spend on hospitality tickets. That's something that the clubs also love because they get the true fans. They get to build their brand internationally. And at the same point in time, those are people that spend much more when they come to the games and the shows, et cetera. So it's a different part of the market that I think is very interesting. It's going to grow a lot over the next couple of years.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would love to go deeper into what we announced this year. It shows and events. I think there's actually massively important for tourists. So when I come here to London, I want to see Arsenal London. I want to see Chelsea, et cetera. And we're just dipping our toes into that market. There's tremendous interest also from these clubs. Is that not a shit?”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The supply side, the supply side is completely transformed. Used to take, I think, days to upload a product because experiences are so complex. You need to add a description and photos and like take 100 boxes in the meeting point and the Tor itinerary, et cetera. And now you just paste it in a URL or you upload a bunch of files and done. It's huge. And then the pricing and availability management and like the AI insights on how you can improve your experience. I mean, all of that is pure magic.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will have more, but a lot less than we thought we would add. So, in other words, we'll gradually grow, but I think the productivity gains from these engineers will be massive.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jeff Bezos. He's been one of the most inspirational leaders for me in how I built the company, I think, for most people in marketplaces. I think just his level of rigor and thinking about the customer and about building the business would be amazing to have on the board.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And no, look, I think ultimately life is long. And I do think, you know, when I'm 60, 70, I want to look back at my life and I want to make sure that I've spent the time in the right way. And that means I will want to have built a very big business. But my lesson has also been you don't build that in a year or two. You build that in decades, right? And you need to sustain over decades. You need to sustain that pressure. You need to have that high level of energy over decades, right? How do you do that? That's like a question I ask myself quite a lot. I've completely changed my own lifestyle because of that. I do a lot more sports. I do spend more deliberate time with my family, my kids, for instance, because that actually helps me sustain. That is the antidote.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and that's, I think, the point where we need to be careful with ourselves and we need to make sure that we have a sustainable lifestyle.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the world's best people at product. For him, it's really a lot about introspection and understanding what product he types that he likes to build. And he actually, I think, said that he doesn't have anything on his agenda all day long. So I think there are just like different ways of doing it. Any founder is going to be in the business anyways all the time. If you're not thinking about your business all the time, you're not doing something that you love and then you won't be successful anyway. So any founder thinks about it all the time.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know the exact routines of the different CEOs. I think as a CEO, you need to see yourself as a system, ultimately, and you need to build up your own capabilities and your strengths as part of that system. And you need to understand what you're uniquely qualified to do and what you can do different than anyone else in the organization. And that's particularly true for a founder CEO with all of that history and that context. So for me, what that means is I have a strong spike and strategy. I think I've built a really successful business because I've made the right bets and my intuition is very good. That means for me personally, I need to take some time off to actually brainstorm, talk to people, understand where we are at review the numbers, review the metrics, and refine the strategy and bring that back to the company because that's my unique position and my unique role. And I structure my day exactly like that. There are other people, you know, I'd say Daniel Eckford, for instance, is probably.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a very tough question because any founder who's built a successful company will remember that they did work seven days a week, right? So it does happen. I don't know of any founder personally, none of the ones that I've backed and certainly not me personally who have not been absolutely obsessed and have not worked insane working hours. At the same point in time, I think the danger with the general statements is it is not always the same throughout the entire journey and clearly I would not expect today people to work seven days a week at Get Your Guide and I don't work seven days a week anymore. In fact there comes a time when working too much can actually destroy your startup as well because after a time it is actually much more about sustainable growth and sustainable working hours at very high intensity at scale so today”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Little less empathetic. So, what I learned my take on this is different markets deserve different cultures. So we're in the business of selling experiences. We're in the business of hospitality. We are in the business of unlocking unforgettable memories for our customers. The way how we have to build our cultural DNA by its nature has to be different. It needs to be a little bit softer than a revolut because we're just serving a different type of customer and also the employees that will join us will have very different motivations and personal needs than people working at a fintech company or people working at a SaaS company. So it's really how can you build a culture for your market and for your customer base?”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Centralizing all of product under him. Basically, every product review runs through him. He has a culture that is much, much harder hustling than we are. And maybe to a degree you might call you a work.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very much so before investing, I thought there was just one way to be successful, and that was the way how we build Getcha Guide because I saw how that worked and I had such strong beliefs and I'm such an opinionated CEO and I was so opinionated and deliberate about building our culture and all of that. Even the operating model and the strategy, I felt there was just one way to do it. And then, for instance, take a trade republic, which very successful fintech company, probably one of the most underrated companies in Europe, you know, they're absolutely crushing it. And the founder is great, but in many ways what he's built in terms of culture, in terms of operating model, is 180 degrees different to what I've built. I would not make the same decisions at all in many instances, but he's very, very successful.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it's the strategy of investing behind great people and business models that I really enjoy and also spaces where I think I want to learn.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Amazing CEO. I was early on in Trade Republic, which is amazing success. And extra Revolut is probably one of the best ones. And like lots of smaller SaaS companies that are growing really fast.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was just literally with some pocket cash and some advisory shares in the seed round of travel perk, which was a big success. So Avi Meyer, you know, is amazing.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I don't think you'll be successful if you will if you look at the most successful founders in Europe. They're super smart. They've been working on their companies for a long period of time. They don't get eaten up by their success and by their wealth. In fact, they reinvest a lot of this into the startup ecosystem. I don't think that hanging out with that type of crowd or living in that world brings you joy and fulfillment. Like what brings me joy and fulfillment personally is seeing the next founder succeed.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, let me rephrase all of these things totally fair, and I do that as well. You should not live the lifestyle of all of your paper wealth being liquid. And I think that's what a lot of people do. They even take loans against their paper and all of that. So don't do that. Don't do the private jet. Don't go to like the most expensive resorts. Like don't hang out with all of the crowd that has that level of wealth and don't delude yourself. That's what I'm saying.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the point. Like, you should. You should not get into that lifestyle, right? So the way, I'm like, also, like for me, right? I put that money into AmSylt, right? So I haven't touched it, right? So you shouldn't change your lifestyle. I think that's the most important part”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Couple million bucks is probably the right thing if you're a mature company. I don't think that you should be taking too much off the table. So it shouldn't be enough so that you retire forever, never need to work again. I think that's not the right amount.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Family and friends, I offer they never wanted to. With the soft bang around, I said, you know, finally I can pay you back. But my mom said, you know, this is Beheritans. Be happy. Don't worry. We love you. Look, I'm very happy ultimately that I did because that gave me another level of calm in the pandemic.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I felt I wanted to be all in, I felt like that would show that I'm not 100% committed to the company anymore. And I was really wrestling with myself whether I should be selling or not. I told you I had even from my parents and, you know,”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did sell sack nerves thankfully in 2019 as part of the soft bank round, which actually was very helpful. It was very averse against selling secondaries before that. And I had a very hard time.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is where you get into the whining of the CEO and a consumer internet company these days. Like, you know, we all feel that we're very undervalued compared to a lot of other AI or like even SaaS businesses. But the reality is it is what it is. Like I do think that at the end of the day, these valuations will expand and sometimes they will contract and you need to build a really good business. I very much empathize now with Jeff Bezos who said, you know, willing to be misunderstood, right? So I think you need to invest for the long term and then maybe the valuation will be slightly below where you would personally want it. No, that's fine as well because ultimately I don't need to sell any shares, right? I'm going to be in this for long run. We're profitable. We're investing. We're growing like crazy. The numbers are amazing. They're better than they've ever been. I'm pretty sure that over time the valuation will take care of itself.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I had an idea where I'd say we absolutely have to do this and we can't stomach it from our own cash flows, I would go out and raise that capital and do it. But the reality is when you break even and you have that constraint and you start to grow your EBIT, it's a wonderful constraint in a way that you're much more disciplined about investing your own cash, actually. And that is an important lesson. I wish I had a little bit earlier being an entrepreneur because very often we investing and we hope for the best and we don't cut these projects, but they are not really working. And again, we dilute our focus. And the beautiful thing is if you're a profitable company, I feel it actually forces you to focus a lot more.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, totally special, particularly after the pandemic we were at scale at that point in time. Fast forward today, we're now five times the size of pre-pandemic and we're profitable. And it's a very different company in the sense that suddenly we can invest our own cash flows into innovation. We can do all of these great projects. You know, we can do all of this stuff, but it is actually our own cash flow.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which I didn't consider at the time, but those genius farce because they are still with those firms today. They're still crushing it. That's a very important consideration. So I would take a discount for that. So for these type of people, I would take a discount.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. So Alex Finkelstein, the guy who wrote the check from Spark and then also Fargo Mullen of Highland Europe, they were both co-founders of their respective firms.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't take anyone at a discount. I would actually have a competitive process. And then I would really look at the GP. I think that's very undervalued because, you know, there are many people at these different funds. And I think the GP probably matters more than the fund itself. Well, I do think the brand name really does matter. The GP probably even matters more.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I do. I've seen that time and again. Also, with my personal investments, if you have a Sequoia capital or an index or a Spark capital on your cap table, the reality is that your next round will be so much easier.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do think that founders can overraise, particularly in the early days. I told the story of my 2013 race. So I don't think founders should take too much cash too early. So I often advise against that. But fundamentally, if you have traction and if there is a big market opportunity and if it's clear that there will be plenty of competition later down the road, make sure you raise the capital and make sure that you go fast. The tricky part is to maintain the discipline of raising and then not overspending in your own organization and staying nimble and staying focused, right? So you need to do both. You need to stay incredibly focused on building out your core customer segments, your core value proposition, and then you ultimately need to outraise your competition. You need to do both at the same time.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Convertible DAP basically means that's a node that converts with your next equity round at a discount to that price. The only thing that was kind of not so great was the moment we came back, the equity markets went down like crazy, right? So it was this completely weird world where everyone 2021 was celebrating in tech. And then in 2022, we had this massive year growing super fast. Everything was working up, but no VC was available because they were all working on saving their portfolio for most of their companies. It was really doomsday at the time. So it was a very interesting dynamic. So we actually held off raising more capital until early 2023, which was like the first round than we raised after COVID.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We thankfully, because all of the measures still had plenty of cash and we did another thing during the pandemic, which actually helped us quite a lot in that we raised some convertible debt. On top, we raised roughly 100 million, both from existing and some new investors. So that was kind of like the reserve that we had on the back.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We went from late 2021 to March 2022, we grew 10x. It was crazy. And then all of 2022, we already double pre-pandemic volumes.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the thing that really helped our plans was that the recovery then after, I forgot, was the delta virus, like there was a benign virus, I think, in early 2022.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we did a couple of like very extraordinary measures. First of all, we came back with that vision and that target picture to our entire organization and particularly the engineering and product org which is the majority of our expenses on the people side. And we told them we would love for you to reduce your salary but will give you shares as a compensation. So if this actually works out, financially it will be great for you. But you'll need to take the short-term hit. And what happened was magical. Our product and anchovy organization and even beyond that into management functions, people on average reduced their salaries by more than 30% in exchange for shares. Some people went down to like 80% salary reduction in leadership. I kid you not. It was crazy. And with these type of measures, we basically could go very deep into the pandemic and only had to cut marginally. So we only had to ultimately lay off throughout the entire two years, roughly 15 to 20 percent of”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Out of this pandemic, then going in. And that was really the mindset that we took that same week. I sent an email to the entire staff and I told them about something that I had learned a year, two years earlier when I did a tour with my wife, Anika, through Sequoya National Park. And one of the interesting things about the big Sequoia trees is that they actually grow after wildfires. So when the park is devastated, the biggest trees grow because they have the nutrient-rich soil after wildfire and they have full exposure to the sun. And I said, I want to be that sequoia after the COVID crisis. So let's build that sequoia now.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Build a picture of what the right solution was for Get Your Guide at the time. And how Niels, the CFO and I, we all huddled in a room for multiple days to work out that crisis plan. In hindsight, we made all of the right moves at the time, which was number one, not to listen to the investors who wanted to lay off the entire company, but to rather focus on different scenarios of how long this crisis could take and then how we could build a company that is actually prepared for the rebound because already in March 2020, we thought that this is a massive crisis, but there's also a tremendous opportunity in here. We have the cash on the bank. So if we are the first ones out of the gates afterwards, if we do really well by our suppliers in the interim and we have them survive as well, if we're really agile, if we continue to build our product, you know, we could be a much better company actually coming.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like two or three days, I felt like this is surreal. This can't happen. This can't happen to me. I did this for more than a decade. This is just not right. I felt like the world is not right. There's something wrong in the world right now. But then I quickly turn into a mode that in retrospect I describe as being the surgeon. So I tried to put myself outside of the car and the car accident just said, okay, everything is broken like the car is completely destroyed. The patient needs to survive. I need to help the patient survive. So I put my strategy hat on and thought about, you know, what are the potential scenarios that we have from here and how am I going to survive and not only survive but also thrive after this crisis? And the good thing was I had a lot of cash on the bank. The bad thing was I had a lot of investors who basically called me up and said you have to lay off the entire company immediately to save all of the dollars you have on the balance sheet. And then afterwards we'll rebuild. You know, with these different pieces of information, I needed to”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, the closest I can describe to the feeling that I had was like having a car crash on the highway at like 100 miles an hour just straight on hitting a wall, basically. So I was like.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think there was like maybe 15 bookings a day down from like tens of thousands. There was no one on our website looked at Google Analytics. It was just really no one. It was just no traffic. We had 600, 700 employees. We had no revenue.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in February 2020, we have this board meeting with SoftBank, Timasek. Those are obviously Asian funds, and they're already seeing what's going on in Asia where you have lockdowns and everything. And they were saying, no, we better build some contingency plans if this actually spreads to Europe and the US. And the naive still very gung-ho founders that we were, we said, look, we've managed crises before. We've had the attacks in Paris in 2015, which hit us hard. We managed to survive and all of that, we're going to manage. Famous last words, it took three weeks from that board meeting to us being at zero revenue. It's literally zero. Like I was going on the website.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To be honest, I had too little time to really reflect on that because six months later we were managing the biggest crisis in the history of online travel. So that was such a brief honeymoon period that to me it was very surreal looking back. But I actually did learn the hard way that when you're down, then none of these people call.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was the decision that ultimately made Catch your guide into what it is today because just six months after we raised that money, So we would be bankrupt without that round.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Between SoftBank Vision Fund and Timask, we raised an aggregate of roughly $450 million at the time. We did take some of that capital to buy out earlier shareholders, so not all of that was primary.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How is AI going to transform this? How do you think about the UX of the future? How can you build an app that is much more personalized, much more engaging? How can you embed virtual reality in there? For instance, finding the meeting points or even being in the Louvre, like, you know, how can that experience transform? So he is really very visionary and at the same time very grounded in the financials both of it.”
2025-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source