YouSaid · the spoken record

Sam Shank

lines on the record: 50
first: 2016-02-29
most recent: 2016-02-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah. And so imagine if San Francisco was like that. Yeah. And all the streets are available exclusively for biking and walking and cafes. It'd be pretty”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But then you don't have to build the basement, which is a huge cost. I mean, look at the transmaid terminal. And then the other thing that's going to happen is that you can put the cars in areas that are out of the way. You can put that transportation, especially for delivery. So, you know, at Disneyland, most people don't know this, but they have a huge tunnel system underground. They do where all the food and supplies are delivered. So you never see that.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what's interesting to me is what's happening to the shape of the cities because of that. So if car ownership is like a horse, then you've got your garage, which is like a stable. How many houses have stables right now? Very, very few. So you have this requirement to have a stable at your house. And the laws are going to change for that. So what do you do with all that extra capacity, apartment buildings? 20% of them go into 20% of the cost go into parking. So all of a sudden, housing becomes 20% cheaper. That's a wonderful thing.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm inspired by, I'm interested to see what happens with new devices and new computing platforms. And the area that I'm really fascinated with, I've been fascinated for a long time is self-driving cars. And not so much what it's going to do to driving and car ownership. I think that that's a foregone conclusion. And the Super Bowl, there were all these car ads and all of them are going to go away. So all of that money. You don't care about the brand of your Uber, your Lyft. You care about that it shows up on time. I”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's already happened in online travel. And there's just great economies of scale, amazing economies of scale with travel in particular. So Orbit's travel velocity, home away.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yes, that's not happening. But from my support, I've always wanted to take a company public, not so much actually think being a public company would be a big pain and a lot more negative than positives. But in terms of us having the ability to go public means that we've raised to a certain stature and built something that's meaningful enough to go public. So from that standpoint, I use it as a litmus test. It would be fun to have that opportunity. And we're on that track for that within a few years. We probably will be in an area with our growth rate and our profits that we could look at that.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At some point, there's liquidity. I think that the two options are you sell the company or you go public? I'd love to go public.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, foreseeable future, the phone is. I don't think we'll call it a phone anymore, but your VR iPhone, whatever you want to call it, but this computer you carry around, I think that the next big shift will be that you don't carry around a laptop anymore. That doesn't make any sense to carry around this iPhone as well as a laptop that's got about the same computing power in it. So I think that they'll plug into larger screens and you'll have an experience there. Maybe iOS X11. And so that'll be one of the next big shifts. And then it'll start getting smaller to get more immersive. I like to think about it like what is a watch? A watch is technology that looks like jewelry on your wrist.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You'll be on your phone. That would be nice on Hotel tonight. That's the only part I have to talk to someone. We've done some experiments around that. And so that's one piece. The other is that that's going to leave time for the hotel to be a lot more hospitable and to bring in the recommendations or unique experiences within the hotel or opportunities to connect with local guests or things like that are going to be much more prevalent. So hotels and Airbnbs are sort of merging in the”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm a big fan of Airbnb. I think Brian and I see the world very similarly. We both have a design background. We're both focused on making travel more accessible, more human, more authentic. So really a big fan of what they've done. Otherwise, I think that what we're going to see is a lot more automation of the things in travel that you don't like and thinking about the hotel experience. It's like the check-in process or the checkout process or calling the front desk, anything that is something you don't like is going to be automated. So you'll just walk right up to your room. It's going to be all set up.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, you can plop a holiday in anywhere and it's going to feel exactly the same. So I think that is an experience that used to be great. The Hiltons of the Marriott started when you were driving across a country and you didn't know what you were going to get at these guest houses. Now there's all this transparency with TripAdvisor, with services like us and Expedia. You can see what you're going to get beforehand. Now you want a consistent experience, but you want something different that's memorable, that's authentic. And so those guys are going to have to reinvent their business.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The hotel's Marriott, Hilton Just don't provide Engrossing experience. Yeah, it's interesting because I always joke that four seasons are holiday and for rich people, but they're all the same. You're right. It doesn't have a specialized kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, you can...”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sorry, more of the Marriott's in terms of the hotels. Marriott, Hilton's, and those companies just don't provide it. They're not authentic. They don't provide this sort of boutique and really engrossing experience. Yeah, it's interesting.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that what's happening is that people are looking for more authentic experiences for sure when they travel and when they're looking for lodging. And on the far end of that is staying in Noe Valley or a neighborhood or in Brooklyn in somebody's house when they're there too. That's very authentic. That's outside of my personal comfort zone, but that's something that people can latch onto if they're looking for that really immersive experience. On the other end, an authentic experience on what I'm more comfortable with is staying at a great boutique hotel that's got an awesome bar on the roof maybe in New York or that's got a really great restaurant and it's got really personalized service and that's bringing in some of the same level of hospitality that you're getting when you are staying at an Airbnb ostensibly, but it's doing it in a consistent environment, in a place that you know, a place where you know you're going to get a great night's sleep. So that's, I think that that's where it's going. There's sort of two ends of the spectrum there where I think that the companies that are in trouble”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe, but having another, it would be very, very difficult for us to do that and execute the level that we want to execute on with Hotel. I think that where we're going and getting into that is through our ACES concierge. So it's a chat-based. We built it all in-house chat-based, messenger-based type of system after a booking within 15 cities. If you spend more than $200, you get access to this. And you can ask them to do anything. Send flowers to the room. I forgot a toothbrush. So more services. More services. And also, I need a place to go tonight. I need a reservation. What do I do tonight? And that gets us a sense of what people that are using Hotel tonight are also interested in. And if we see sort of patterns there, then we can productize that and automate.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I believe a lot in focus, and right now the focus is on doing what we do, but getting more people to know about it, our awareness within a target market, our target market, our core customers 25 to 35 urban dweller, but our target market is 25 to 55 booked on a mobile device, booked travel.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they'd be better off closing the business down, which is ultimately what they did. So they reduced their burn by growing their business, which isn't a great place to be. We didn't focus, I think, on unit economics early enough. We were focused on growth. Now that we are, we can focus on growth and profitability at the same time. Even if you're doing a fraction of what you'll ultimately be doing, if you can show that you've make a lot of money and that money will grow over time, then that'll be a great place to be. If you're subsidizing every transaction, both operationally as well as with discounts to consumers, I think it's a really difficult place to be.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, as an entrepreneur, you get a lot of different input. So we had people saying this two years ago, that wasn't the right time to listen to them. We have people that were saying grow, grow, grow, you know, even until the last minute. So it's really hard to ultimately make the call based on external information. I think what was for me was like looking at what are the goals, where is this modeling out at? And sitting down with our great CFO and going over it, and then seeing what we needed to do to get to sustainability. And for entrepreneurs right now, I'd say that even if you're not profitable and don't have a way to get profitable by the next round, focus a lot on unit economics. That's what people are going to look at. So if you're doing there are companies out there, I think in the home cleaning space that every time they did a transaction, they lost more money.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if there were mistakes as much as not moving quickly enough when we saw the market changing. Such a jazz. So we started moving towards improving our unit economics, but we didn't move as aggressively enough on things like reducing crediting coupons and discounting and talking to our suppliers about their margins that we're paying, about just having those difficult discussions. We're having those now. Those discussions are going well. There's still a very, very strong partnership with our suppliers and our hotels and with our customers. It's never been better. But we did move as quickly as I think we should have on that.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's like a bond So we're going to finish up this section talking a little bit about TIFs for entrepreneurs. One of the things we have a lot of people listening all the place talking about mistakes made. Give me a mistake you made and how you corrected it. I mean, I'm sure there's multiple. I have multiple mistakes. But is there one that you think you learned something from and then one that you think you pulled off flawlessly?”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Both of those matter equally. And so if you have a company that's profitable but not growing, you know exactly what that company is worth. You can just do the multiple on the earnings. And it's like a bond. So that's pretty boring as an investment. So you have to be growing. And that's what attracted investors to these companies is that the growth was in the hundreds of percent year over year.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, you look at the public markets, you look at there's a lot of concerns around Asia growth. There's a lot of reasons for this that could happen. Who knows what's going to happen in the election? All these things happen, and then they create uncertainty in the market, creates fear. I don't know why it happens, but that's happening right now. And when it shifts, you go from a company that can raise money at any terms to a company that has to give up a lot to raise money. And we'll be in a position where we can choose to raise money or not by this summer. And I want to be in that position.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How we prepared about it is prepared for it is shifted the focus of the business from growth to responsible and profitable growth. And we're way ahead of plan on that. So really happy with the execution of the team and everybody's behind it. We also have enough money to get to that plus a lot more. We don't have to raise another dime. So I think that if you're a business that has to raise more money and you have to be in that position or you have to have those conversations with investors, that can be very difficult now because the terms have gotten much more difficult.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what do you see coming? Because it is definitely, there's a lot of, these are going to, we talked this morning on CNBC about that, the idea of this is troubled times for a lot of companies. And people feel like most things will be acquired, that there'll be a shakeout, that those who didn't raise enough money are going to be in trouble, even if they're very laudable companies and should be invested in. Did you feel that yourself? Are you worried about that, or how do you prepare for that as an entrepreneur?”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We still are growing very, very strong, but we didn't want to necessarily put the risk for the employees, for even the existing investors into we have to raise the next round. So what we did is we shifted to focusing on unit economics. We focused on profitability. We are still growing at the same rate in January we grew revenue 200% year over year. So I'm really proud of what the team's done, but we've also cut the costs and improved our profitability and profile will be profitable in the next few quarters, if not the next few months.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we're near profitability. So, this is one of the big shifts that's happened in the marketplace is that a year ago it was all about growing, growing, growing so you could raise the next round. Right, exactly. And we saw that that was not necessarily sustainable. I didn't want to necessarily put all of the growth.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About half and half at this point. So it's grown. It started as more leisure, so the weekends are still our biggest days. So we've got big usage on the weekends, but the weekdays are heating up too for us. And together, that's about half and half.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Been very happy with the platforms themselves, and we have great relationships with Google and Apple and work with them on their new features and the new capabilities of the platform and the devices. I worry about our own execution way more than I worry about any external threats”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Done that before Hotel Tonight That was just too much for them. What is important to people when they're thinking? You're in the noisy app universe. What other competitors are you in this you see in the space that you're worried about? What do you worry about as a creator of an app? And a phone-dependent company.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's a week out. So, I mean, the background on that is that we were hearing from people that was like, I love hotel tonight, need some more flexibility at times. We started thinking about what is our business? Tonight is a metaphor for spontaneity and our core emotion that we're serving is scratching that itch of being serendipitous and saying, all right, I'm going to turn date night into an overnight. I'm going to extend this business trip in the moment. And that's to solve that problem of helping people be spontaneous on Tuesday booking a weekend getaway for my folks. That is highly spontaneous. They've never done that before hotel tonight. But booking at 10 p.m. on a Friday before that weekend get away, that was just too much for them.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mobile had 1% penetration in online travel, and our website just linked to the App Store. And that was very weird and bizarre at that time. Now there's plenty of companies that do it. That's how people make those.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, I think a lot of that it has to be better, but it also has to be different. So if you're just, if we went out with Expedia's app and it was like $10 less on every hotel, people might be interested in that, but most people are going to be like, this is pretty much the same thing. Or they're not going to remember it and they're not going to tell their friends. If you go out and being around travel, I know that it's a big market. It's really hard to stand out. You've got to be really, really different on every playing field possible on every dimension possible. So we went out with only a few hotels. We went out with three cities when we launched. Went out with only good hotels or merchandising, our vibe, you know, was very hip and conversational. We wanted it to feel like your best, cool best friend. And the other thing we did was we limited the business. So we were only tonight, which was very bizarre for people that are like, why would you download it app just for tonight? And we told the reasons. And then the other was that we were only on mobile. Our website, this was when we launched.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So, what do you imagine differentiates startups as a startup creator? What is it? I mean, in your case, I think it's very slick, it's fast, the prices are good. I have no idea if they're perfect. It's just easier to use. I think easy to use would be something. What are some of the things that you think are a must-haves as an entrepreneur when you're creating these customer service experiences? It could be about anything restaurants, as I said, food delivery.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Both. Both. It's like Lyft an Uber. If you save people time and money and you do it in a big way, then you're going to build a big business. And for us, at 10-second bookings, we've got really great customer service. We can talk about our ACES concierge program that we're rolling out now that's getting really great traction. And then the pricing being better. But you have to deliver on both, I think, and provide a distinctive experience. It can't just be the same thing that you experience somewhere else.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the first order or first area of competition is with the online travel agencies. So Expedia, Priceline Kayak, they all perked up their areas really, really quickly and much quicker than we expected once we launched. And they said, wow, this is a big opportunity for us. We're not doing anything there. And they added last minute hotel booking on their apps. In many cases, they added apps. They added what is called now in the industry, a last-minute mobile discount, a mobile exclusive discount. And they followed our lead there. And so we've maintained a price advantage, though, because what we do is we don't display every hotel. We display first a curated selection, as you mentioned. We work with really good hotels that we quality control. We'll kick hotels off if they fall below a level of quality. Then within that queue of hotels that are providing inventory for that night, we'll show about 15. In New York, there might be hundreds of hotels bidding for those 15 spots. So the deals are very good. Our deals are 17% less than you'd find on another online travel agency's mobile app. So there's a lot of value.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so I finished the Martian, but I'm pretty nerdy. And so if you look at my audible queue, it's filled with a lot of fantasy and science fiction. And one of the ones that I've really enjoyed is either the name of the wind or the Magic 2.0 series. Why don't you tell me? Well, they're about sort of magic or about fantasy, but then they've got this real logic to them. So every piece of magic really works and makes sense. I mean, if you believe in magic, but you have to go there. But then once you do, it's like really, really well thought out and really well executed. The guy that writes the name of the wind takes years to write these books and they're very long and very detailed, but very cool.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, if we're disrupting their businesses, we're not going to have a business. So we want to disrupt, if anything, we want to disrupt Expedia and Pricelines business. And we have put a dent in their last minute booking growth for sure. When we get back, we're going to.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Nobody knew When did they decide that? We'll talk about that in a second. I'd love to know the mechanics behind this because it must be really sort of even more complex. Restaurants is Hoed, I would imagine a similar thing is filling tables and figuring out stuff like that. So you consider yourself a cooperative partner of them, like not a disruptor of their businesses.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are you talking about? This is silly. It doesn't make sense for us. We went in with a very different message. One, we're mobile lonely, and if they didn't hang up the phone on us, maybe we could then have a conversation at that point. They're like, we don't want another group. Once we got past...”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the market is really good. They're being more efficient in their marketing channels. We're helping them with their last minute demand. So they're filling their hotels up more readily and more than ever before. So occupancy rates are up. And that's happened and started five years ago when we launched, and it's continued until now. So hotels are generally very happy. In terms of what we did in the relationship with hotels is we did change, and we've stated, one of our goals is to build a company that embodies respect for both sides of the marketplace. And so more like Lyft in that way. And so we wanted to partner with our hotels, not compel them or force them to do anything, but just provide them with a great service that delivered. And then they'd come back and use it. So we said, and this was in the era of Group Up. So go back five years, Groupon hadn't done their S1. Nobody knew that it wasn't a great business. So there were like a thousand Groupon clones out there. They were all calling hotels every day saying, hey, give us a discount on your rooms. Give us 30% margin and we'll fill up your hotel and hotels will like.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they copied you. But, well, I don't know about that. I think we. And There's Okay, I'm a high roller at Which The full price. So talk a little bit about hotels looked at you. I mean, obviously, the entire travel industry, and I want to talk later about Airbnb and other things, is under siege. There's all kinds of things happening. They have their own websites. They're trying their own things, not as successful doing their own things. I don't run to the hilt and they're hyatt or four seasons or wherever I might be staying. I don't interact with them that way. And in fact, I don't make hotel bookings there anymore. Talk a little bit about how you approach the hotel industry, because there's sort of, I would have imagined shell shocked about how their businesses are run now, because same thing with restaurants, the same idea.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it was all before those services. So they copied you. But, well, I don't know about that. I think we probably saw the world the same way. But one of the things we did early on was look at the number of taps it took to complete a booking. And we're still obsessive about that. It's three taps in a swipe to make a booking. It's always been three taps in a swipe. It's 10 seconds, and we keep that as a core piece of what we do. There's no way we're going to change that. And that's really given us a lot of focus around simplicity and the on-demand, solving that on-demand. Everything then flows from that. So instead of doing star ratings, which don't necessarily tell you what the hotel is going to be like, we simplify it down into, is it hip, is it lux, solid, which is in the middle of the road, maybe a branded hotel? Or basic, we even have a crash pad category too, which is like a hostel. And you might be more in the high roller category, which is awesome. At the bottom of the list, you'll see high rollers in major cities, which is like a sweet or a penthouse or something that's often on a big discount because it's hard for those hotels to fill those.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. And it's a lot with data. And there's a lot of data, exactly. So, you worked closely with hotels. Now, one of the things you did, I think, that was smart was you made it hip looking and you gave little reviews, but they really weren't that big a review. It was just a hip, or you name the hotels. What's solid? That's always like, that's not so good. You know what I mean? You put it's sort of like putting Instagram filters on things. And then you took beautiful pictures, and then you made it super easy to check in and check out, which is one of the things that sort of bothers me. And I see why, you know, I just do it through your app. And it's a little like, it is like ordering an Uber or like ordering a meal. It reminds me a lot of munchery and those kind of things. Were you thinking about it like that, or what was the concept?”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that one of the things that happens is travel is a really big purchase category, and it's an area of tremendous passion for people. So if I said, all right, you've got a week off from work and you've got to spend five grand, what would people do? They're not going to sit around. They're going to go on a trip. So people think about this a lot. They dream about this a lot. And we gave people a new way to think about that. So they latched on to it immediately. So I think that there's just tremendous passion within the category, which makes it easy to disrupt. There's also tremendous dollars and margin in it. It's the largest category of e-commerce. And because it's a virtual good, because also there's a lot of excess capacity in the system. Sure.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's totally fine. We're open. What was wrong with the way people? Because, again, online travel was early, it was one of the first things on the internet that became popular, booking your own airline for one. Yep. How is disruption ripe for disruption? Why did that, do you know what I mean? Because that's what really happened here.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go ahead. Hotel this week. It's totally fine. We're open to all the feedback on that for sure. So we started thinking about that. We built it from the ground up. We built it in 10 weeks from a sketch all the way to the App Store and really hustled and realized that, hey, there is not only just a product here, not only just a company here, but a whole shift in how people are thinking about booking hotels. It's going to be more spontaneous. It's going to be about on-demand consumption. This was before on-demand was on demand. It was before Uber had launched. And so it was just piecing things together. And really the knowledge of the travel industry coming together into the perfect storm of timing and then getting this product out there.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So they were taking all that they had learned, and they have great websites, but they didn't necessarily repurpose those for now. So I was like, what if you build from the ground up a travel app and you threw away everything and started over, what's it going to look like? Well, it's going to be speed, it's going to be convenient, and it's going to focus on what you can do at the last minute when you're mobile, when you're not in front of your desktop anymore. And that last, last, last minute booking window, which is tonight.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trip Advisor. Trip had one, but it was really bad. It was just for it was like a website inside an app. And then hotels.com had one. But again, they were not really rethinking the entire experience for the app. It was a webbed.”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Base is still around. It's a price comparison side. It's kind of like deals meets kayak. And it provides a lot of value. But it wasn't sort of the change the world make my mark on the universe type of idea. And I was ready for that. And so then I started thinking, what is it going to be like when travel and apps meet? Why do all the big guys either don't have a travel app?”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we're five years old. So it was about six years ago now. And I was looking at the app ecosystem as an entrepreneur, you look at these big platform shifts and you see sort of where the world's going. And my whole career, you sort of like wait for these platform shifts to happen. And then you say, all right, what's a great business to do? And I've been in travel for five years before that. I'd done two startups. I was running the second one. That was profitable. I was looking to do something. That's what?”
2016-02-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sam Shank, CEO, HotelTonight · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT