Table of Contents
What started as a frustrated university student stuck in a Beijing hotel room became one of Europe's most successful travel companies. GetYourGuide's journey from three bookings in two years to a $1.6 billion valuation offers profound lessons about persistence, strategic pivots, and surviving existential crises.
Key Takeaways
- Three pivots and two years of near-failure preceded GetYourGuide's breakthrough—sometimes persistence through apparent failure leads to unexpected market discovery
- Taking too much money too early creates dangerous dilution and pressure to diversify before achieving core product-market fit
- The "celebrity effect" from high-profile funding rounds can be more dangerous than helpful, leading founders to lose focus on fundamentals
- Brand-name VCs provide disproportionate signaling value for future fundraising, but the individual GP matters more than the fund name
- COVID-19 revealed that cash-rich companies with strong unit economics can emerge stronger from crises by maintaining talent and improving market position
- Europe's startup ecosystem suffers from insufficient late-stage capital and talent density, requiring founders to think globally from earlier stages
The Accidental Discovery That Launched a Billion-Dollar Company
Johannes Reck's entrepreneurial journey began with a simple mistake. In 2007, while studying biochemistry and neurobiology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, he accidentally booked his flight to Beijing a day early for a student delegation trip. Stuck alone in his hotel room, he searched Google for things to do and found nothing useful.
When his co-founder Tao arrived the next day and showed him the city through a local's eyes—visiting the Great Wall, eating Beijing duck in the hutongs—the contrast was stark. "From that epiphany really of having seen the city through the eyes of a local, someone who speaks the language, we went back to Switzerland and said, you know, we have to build a website, we have to build a community for people so they are able to do that."
The initial execution was terrible. Their first iteration—a peer-to-peer platform for student guides—attracted only 100 users and generated three to five bookings in two years. Three of those bookings came from Johannes's mother, who "took so much pity on us students."
But failure taught them something crucial: Europe had a massive, completely undigitized market for experience providers. Walking through London, you could see the London Eye, Thames River cruises, hop-on-hop-off buses, Madame Tussauds, and Harry Potter tours—none of which could be booked online in 2009.
The Bootstrap Years: Surviving on Parental Mortgages
The pivot required going all-in at the worst possible moment. With two years of failure behind them and no proven concept, Johannes had to ask his parents to mortgage their house to fund another year of attempts. "I have no idea looking back" where the conviction came from, he admits.
The strategy was pure hustle: cold-calling suppliers, traveling to Salzburg to sign up hop-on-hop-off bus tours, manually building relationships with experience providers who had never considered online bookings. The breakthrough came when they secured a Vatican tour agency—one of Europe's most sought-after attractions with zero online presence.
"I still remember the day when they went live and suddenly the booking started to tick in," Johannes recalls. Revenue reached half a million in their first year (2010), making them roughly profitable but with zero cash reserves.
The business revealed brutal seasonality. Travel spikes in summer, then crashes in November. For their first two years without VC funding, they literally faced bankruptcy every winter. "We're constantly looking into the abyss," Johannes remembers.
Breaking Through: Why Brand Names Matter More Than You Think
The breakthrough came through pure networking hustle. At a startup conference, Johannes approached Brent Hoberman (Lastminute.com founder) after his stage presentation. A four-hour wait for a 10-minute meeting led to funding, but not for the obvious reasons.
"I made one pivotal mistake at lastminute.com," Brent told him. "I had the opportunity to buy Booking.com at the time as a seed-stage company. I still regret that to present day. I'm not going to make that mistake twice. I'm going to invest in you."
That million-dollar investment at a five to six million pre-money valuation changed everything. More importantly, Brent's referral opened doors to U.S. investors that had been completely closed. "That referral from him as a proven travel entrepreneur made all of the difference."
Alex Finkelstein at Spark Capital led their Series A—a massive $14 million round at $30-35 million pre-money. In hindsight, Johannes admits this was "too much dilution," but it transformed the company overnight from nobody to startup superstar.
The Celebrity Trap: How Success Nearly Destroyed Everything
The Series A created what Johannes calls "the celebrity effect." Suddenly everyone wanted meetings, partnerships, and deals. VCs treated him like "the greatest and smartest person on the planet." But this newfound status created the company's biggest crisis.
"That was the moment when I made the biggest mistakes," he reflects. The core error was listening too much to VCs instead of following their operational instincts. Board members pushed for geographic expansion, new customer segments, SaaS products for vendors, and hiring expensive senior executives.
"We completely lost our way and you know going to the board meetings literally looking for advice of what we should be doing in our strategy instead of pushing for the strategy that we saw working in the day-to-day."
The result was predictable: expenses spiraled while growth slowed. Within a year, Johannes had to lay off 30% of the company and completely refocus on core European markets and core customer segments.
The Booking.com Masterclass: Learning Focus from a Legend
Salvation came from an unexpected source. On a Friday night while watching Netflix, Johannes received a call from Kees Koolen, former CEO of Booking.com. After a detailed numbers review, Kees showed up at their Berlin office Saturday morning at 9 a.m.
"He goes to the meeting room with me and to the whiteboard and like he basically maps out like the entire journey... It was literally like you know being in the room with the Jedi grandmaster." Kees joined their board and invested a million dollars personally.
The core lesson was ruthless focus. At Booking.com, Kees had looked at experiences for years but always said no to expansion. "He told me at booking you know they had looked at experiences for you know many many years and you know he said you know on these type of innovation projects um you know people had to go to the innovation department. The innovation department had one person that was himself and it was called the no department."
The turnaround worked. By promoting internal talent instead of hiring expensive external executives and refocusing on core markets, they returned to over 100% year-over-year growth with better unit economics.
The SoftBank Moment: $450 Million and Meeting Masa
In 2019, GetYourGuide raised $450 million from SoftBank Vision Fund and Temasek at a $1.5-1.6 billion valuation. The process was surprisingly rigorous—nothing like the "500 million in 30 minutes" stereotype.
Meeting Masayoshi Son was surreal. In his San Francisco home with a Napoleon painting behind him, Masa proved surprisingly financially oriented for marketplace investments. "He was literally looking at okay how do we value this business you know how can this be very profitable over time... he's actually a really good financial investor as well."
But Masa's visionary side emerged in the second half of their meeting. Already focused on AI in 2019, he asked how artificial intelligence would transform travel experiences, discussing personalized UX, virtual reality for meeting points, and enhanced engagement strategies.
The timing proved prophetic. Six months later, COVID-19 hit.
Surviving Extinction: The COVID Crisis and Sequoia Strategy
"It took three weeks from that board meeting to us being at zero revenues. Literally zero." GetYourGuide went from tens of thousands of daily bookings to maybe 15. Website traffic vanished completely.
"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."
Investors demanded immediate mass layoffs to preserve cash. Instead, Johannes chose what he calls "the surgeon" approach—stepping outside the emotional trauma to strategically plan survival and eventual dominance.
The key insight: this represented both crisis and opportunity. With sufficient cash reserves, they could maintain talent, support suppliers, and emerge stronger when travel rebounded.
Their solution was brilliant. The entire product and engineering organization agreed to reduce salaries by over 30% in exchange for equity compensation. Some leadership took 80% salary cuts. "It was such a testament to their belief in the company."
The result: they only laid off 15-20% of staff over two years while maintaining zero engineers and zero product people despite zero revenue for over a year.
The Sequoia Recovery: Growing 10X in Six Months
The company's email to staff during COVID referenced giant sequoia trees, which grow strongest after wildfires due to nutrient-rich soil and full sun exposure. "I want to be that sequoia after the COVID crisis."
When travel rebounded in early 2022, the strategy paid off spectacularly. From late 2021 to March 2022, they grew 10X. By 2022, they doubled pre-pandemic volumes and achieved profitability.
"I didn't expect the rebound to be as forceful and as quick, but I did expect it to happen." The combination of maintained talent, improved supplier relationships, better contracts, and enhanced product positioning created massive competitive advantages.
Angel Investing Insights: Multiple Paths to Success
Johannes now angel invests in 30-40 companies, including successful bets on TravelPerk and Trade Republic. The biggest learning: "I thought there was just one way to be successful and there was the way how we built get your guide... then for instance Take Trade Republic... 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."
Different markets require different cultures. GetYourGuide's hospitality-focused business demands more empathetic culture than fintech companies like Revolut. "We're in the business of selling experiences. We're in the business of hospitality... The way how we have to build our cultural DNA by its nature has to be different."
The European Disadvantage: Capital, Talent, and Infrastructure Gaps
GetYourGuide's success highlights Europe's structural challenges. When hiring their next Chief Product Officer, Johannes admits "it's almost impossible to do that in Europe. I need to go to Silicon Valley because the density of people who have done that scale... just doesn't exist."
His "Prime Minister of Europe" agenda focuses on three priorities:
Pump up venture capital funding to match US levels. Europe invests $7 billion annually in VC versus the US's $200+ billion. Meanwhile, Germany subsidizes its retirement system with $100 billion yearly. "We spent 50 billion a year in VC. In Europe, the US is north of 200 billion. Why do we have that gap?"
Attract talent through tax incentives. Anyone relocating to Europe with computer science degrees should receive massive tax benefits—five years tax-free or no taxation on stock options. "We can't compete with less capital, a more scattered European landscape, more bureaucracy, and less talent."
Remove bureaucratic barriers. When GetYourGuide hired a CTO from Netflix, visa processing took six months because San Francisco consulates only took appointments twice weekly with six-month backlogs. Johannes had to call Germany's foreign office personally to expedite the process.
The Work-Life Integration Debate: Sustainability vs. Intensity
On the question of working seven days a week for startup success, Johannes offers nuanced perspective: "Any founder who's built a successful company will remember that they did work seven days a week... I don't know of any founder personally... who have not been absolutely obsessed."
But the approach must evolve. Early-stage requires total immersion, but at scale, sustainability becomes crucial. "Today, you know, I'm much more focused on... you need to sustain over decades you need to sustain that pressure and you need to have that high level of energy over decades."
His current strategy emphasizes systematic insight gathering rather than pure hours: customer service rotations, supplier meetings, data analysis, and strategic reflection. "For me personally I need to take some time off to actually brainstorm, talk to people, understand where we at, review the numbers, review the metrics and refine the strategy."
Leadership Evolution: From Confidence to Humility
When asked how he's changed as a CEO over 15 years, Johannes highlights the shift from pure confidence to balanced humility: "I've become a lot more humble. I do know my deficiencies and I think the things that I get wrong a lot more."
Early confidence helped them survive and grow through initial struggles—refusing to accept failure as an option. But it also limited inclusivity and innovation. "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."
The balance requires maintaining conviction for major strategic decisions while acknowledging areas needing improvement and external expertise.
AI Transformation: Supply Side Revolution
GetYourGuide's current AI implementation focuses heavily on supply-side efficiency. Previously, uploading complex experience products took days of manual work—descriptions, photos, meeting points, itineraries, pricing. "Now you just paste in a URL or you know you upload a bunch of files and done."
AI also handles pricing optimization, availability management, and provides suppliers with insights for experience improvement. "I mean all of that is pure magic."
The broader vision aligns with Masa's 2019 predictions about AI transforming travel through personalization, enhanced UX, and potentially virtual reality integration for navigation and experience enhancement.
Secondary Sales Strategy: Taking Chips Off the Table
Johannes was initially "very averse" to selling secondary shares, viewing it as showing lack of commitment. But the 2019 SoftBank round changed his perspective. Taking "a couple million bucks" off the table provided emotional stability during COVID without affecting operational commitment.
His advice: secondary sales should be meaningful but not lifestyle-changing. "It shouldn't be enough so that you retire forever, never need to work again." The goal is reducing personal financial pressure while maintaining incentive alignment.
Future Vision: Human Connection and European Renaissance
When asked what he wants to be remembered for, Johannes returns to core themes: "At the highest level, if Johannes had a massive impact on creating more human connection... and that's across GetYourGuide and the product we sell, but then also the topic of Europe and recreating the future of Europe."
The vision connects personal mission with broader societal impact. GetYourGuide's experiences create connections between travelers and local cultures. Similarly, his European advocacy aims to reconnect the continent with innovation leadership and global competitiveness.
Lessons for the Next Generation
GetYourGuide's journey from university side project to billion-dollar company offers several enduring lessons:
Persistence through apparent failure often reveals adjacent opportunities. Their initial peer-to-peer guide platform failed completely but revealed the massive undigitized experiences market.
Brand-name investors provide disproportionate future value through signaling and network effects. Brent Hoberman's referral opened doors that had been completely closed to first-time European founders.
Rapid scaling requires disciplined focus. The Series A celebrity effect nearly destroyed the company by encouraging premature diversification.
Crisis preparation enables competitive advantage. Maintaining talent and supplier relationships during COVID positioned them for explosive recovery growth.
Geographic arbitrage remains powerful. European companies can build substantial businesses while benefiting from lower operational costs, but must think globally for talent and capital.
Sustainable leadership requires evolution from pure intensity to strategic focus. Early-stage demands total immersion, but long-term success requires systematic approaches to insight generation and decision-making.
GetYourGuide's story ultimately demonstrates that building transformative companies requires navigating multiple near-death experiences, learning from expensive mistakes, and maintaining long-term vision through short-term turbulence. For European entrepreneurs, it provides both inspiration and practical guidance for competing globally while building locally.
