Travel Trends with Dan Christian
#1 B2B Travel Podcast. If you are looking to stay ahead in the travel industry, this new podcast hits all the highlights! The Travel Trends Podcast is where industry leaders converge to share & shape the future. Whether you're an emerging entrepreneur, a seasoned industry executive, or a dedicated travel professional, you’ll be able to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Uncover valuable insights, innovative strategies, and meaningful connections that will elevate your travel business or career to new heights.
Travel Trends with Dan Christian
Investing in Travel in 2026 with Chris Hemmeter, Thayer Ventures
Introducing the First Captain of Season 6!
We’re thrilled to kick off Season 6 of Travel Trends and our Captain of Industry series with Chris Hemmeter, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Thayer Ventures, for a powerhouse conversation on the future of travel and tech investment.
Chris opens the black box of venture capital, revealing what investors really look for in founders, how to stand out when raising funds, and why 2026 is set to be a defining year for travel entrepreneurs. With a proven track record as both a founder and an investor in industry-shaping companies like Sonder, Muse, and Canary Technologies, he brings hard-won insights every innovator needs to know.
This fascinating conversation also explores the game-changing role of AI —how it’s exposing critical technical gaps at major suppliers, reinventing consumer search through conversational recommendations, and unlocking vast opportunities for startups and established companies.
Chris shares his insights on key investment areas: hospitality tech, connected commerce, influencer-driven social commerce, and frictionless payments. His optimistic outlook for 2026 highlights the opportunities available for those willing to embrace risk and innovation. This discussion sets an excellent tone for our Captains of Industry series. We appreciate Chris joining us and hope you find it informative. For more information, please visit ThayerVentures.com.
👉 Listen to Investing in Travel in 2026 Now
🔥 Special Thanks to our Season 6 Title Sponsors for their Support: Holafly, Propellic, PayCompass, Kaptio, Civitatis and WeRoad
The #1 B2B Travel Podcast Globally. Over 100 Episodes. Listeners in 125 countries. New Episodes Every Weds.
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I've never seen a more dynamic and exciting time to be a travel tech entrepreneur than today.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome back to Travel Trends Season 6. I am so excited. One of the reasons is that, as many people would have seen on my LinkedIn posts over the past week, we dropped our kids off at university and it's certainly been a tough week. I appreciated all the comments, but this gives me much more time to focus on travel trends and all of our partnerships, so I'm looking forward to the events I'm traveling to and anything that will distract me from missing the kids and them not being in their rooms in the house much quieter than it's ever been. So I just wanted to say a special thank you to all of our listeners who supported our show over the last five seasons all of our partners.
Speaker 2:We couldn't be more energized and enthusiastic about season six and that's actually a big reason that we came up with the captains of industry theme. We have listeners now in 125 countries and we have such an incredible reach and a platform that many industry executives want to be on the Travel Trends podcast, and we certainly very much appreciate the recognition and the opportunity now to showcase some of the most high profile individuals in the industry that have reached out to be on our show or that we've reached out to to say you've got to be a part of this conversation because our whole focus is trying to bring really beneficial advice from experts to everyone working in the travel industry that either wants to improve their company or their career. And I also wanted to start this season by recognizing the amazing team that has been a part of this journey from the beginning, and I actually have one of them joining us today, catherine Watts, who is our head of guesting and PR and does a lot of our marketing activity. She's been key to the success of our podcast and lining up all these amazing guests you're going to hear from in season six, including today with Chris Hemeter.
Speaker 2:Couldn't be more thrilled to be leading off this season with the managing director of Thayer Ventures, someone that I see at the biggest conferences on the biggest stages and always look for his advice. And this interview is just dynamic and I think you heard from that opening clip just a quick snippet of how special this conversation is going to be. But let me bring Catherine to the conversation to give a bit more context to what we're planning for this season. But, catherine, thanks so much for joining us for the opening introduction.
Speaker 3:Hey, dan, thanks so much. Hi everyone, welcome to season six.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. And one of the things that we did, as Catherine knows, we had a team offsite at the wrap up of season five and, thanks to all of our listeners over the past two years we have continued to grow our audience. We've got listeners now in 125 countries. We have such an incredible reach and I couldn't be more thankful to each of you for tuning into our show and giving us feedback, and some of that will highlight to you now with some of the things we want to do for season six based on that feedback. But I also just wanted to share a special thank you to the team that's helped us get to this point. So Catherine has absolutely been with us since the very beginning. Zach as well, who is our producer. You're going to hear from Zach throughout the season because he's recording all of our ads. It's one of the other enhancements that we planned when we had our team offsite at a great celebratory lunch and then we started planning out all the things we want to do to make season six our best season ever. And we of course have Melanie that you have seen at some of the conferences. She does all of our partnerships and has been doing an extraordinary job and you'll see that in our sponsors for the season and a lot of the custom content we're doing. So a big thanks to Melanie, melissa who also happens to be my sister. If people are wondering why you have the same last name, it's not my wife, it's literally my younger sister. She's amazing at social media and so she has been leading our efforts on LinkedIn and Instagram and YouTube. And then we had Eugene, our new marketing coordinator, join us a few months ago and she was a key part of the success of our first in-person event, which you can check out that video on YouTube. And so thanks to all six of you. You can see the entire team on the About the Show on TravelTrendsPodcastcom.
Speaker 2:But I just wanted to thank you guys first for making this such a special podcast to work on. But then I want to talk about the plans for the season, because we had so many great ideas and Catherine, captains of Industry, was one of the ones that when we sat in that room together we debated whether or not that was the right theme for the season. But, given the reach that we have the number of executives that want to be on the show the executives we reach out to. They're so keen to participate in the conversation, and when you think about what our mission is with Travel Trans, it's trying to make sure that we get the most valuable knowledge and advice to the people that can benefit from it most, which are people working within the travel industry that want to understand how they can apply these insights to their companies or to their roles, and we have some amazing success stories to showcase.
Speaker 2:We have a special episode with Tour Radar coming up this season with Travis Pittman, the CEO. They took the advice from an amazing episode we have with Conrad from At Hotels about social is the new SEO, and they've really transformed their business. And is the new SEO, and they've really transformed their business and really leading with social, and so we're going to highlight Travis on that episode to see where their business has gotten to. But there's so many things to look forward to. So, catherine, tell everyone a little bit about the captains of industry, some of the people that our listeners are going to meet, and then also some of the themes that we have planned for the season.
Speaker 3:Yes, of course. So this season, as Dan mentioned, is all about the captains of industry, and it is so fitting for the caliber of guests we'll feature. We're thrilled to kick things off with Chris Hemeter from Thayer Ventures, and we're excited to bring you conversations with Viator, Get your Guide, ef and many more special guests throughout the season. We are also exploring five big themes that are so important right now and ones we're so excited to include as part of the season. Our three new themes include aviation, loyalty and sustainability. Plus, we're bringing back some of our most popular themes, including emerging multi-day and in-destination experiences.
Speaker 2:You got some surprises in store for our listeners. I know we debated whether we would release all the names, but we're actually going to intentionally make a few of them a surprise over the course of the season, because not only are you going to hear from captains of industry on the individual episodes in between those themes, we're also making sure that, within the aviation, loyalty, sustainability, all of the people in those themes are captains of industry, so that you're learning from the most knowledgeable people that have something important to be able to share on those topics, and I'm certainly very excited for those three topics. We've recorded some of those episodes already and some of them are to come because we want to keep them as fresh as possible. But the other thing that Catherine mentioned, too, is the fact we're kicking off with Chris Hemeter, and that is one like today's conversation is really special. You heard that opening clip from him, and when he said that about investing in 2026, there's never been a better time. It was so magic, and that's often what happens in these conversations and why Zach takes those clips and puts them at the beginning of the episode.
Speaker 2:And I just wanted to highlight a couple of things that we're planning to enhance for our listeners this season. So one of the things that we're going to do is we're going to shorten the intros, get right into the conversation. We're also going to be moving the placement of the ads so that, again, we get right in the conversation. We don't have them up front, and we're going to try a few different approaches to make sure we have the most impact for our partners and our sponsors and to make sure that we combine commerce and content in the most beneficial way for our listeners. So we've heard your feedback and we're looking forward to bringing you an enhanced format for this season. And one of the things that people told us as well is they love the conversations, the long form, so the durations of these conversations will not be limited to a certain time.
Speaker 2:You'll see, the Columbia episode we did was nearly three hours. We actually have done some incredible spotlight episodes and they've been up to five hours and some of the people have watched them over the course or listened to them rather over the course of several sessions. But we timestamp them and so some of the things that we've heard from you and again, this show is for all of our listeners and the team is so committed to bringing it together. I enjoy it so much and our partners. I can't thank them enough for being such strong supportive sponsors. So I encourage you to support them all and check out our season six landing page on TravelTrendsPodcastcom. And the other thing I want to highlight, too, is we have our big AI summit coming back this year. So, catherine, do you want to tell everyone what our plans are for that?
Speaker 3:Yes, of course. So we are so excited to host our second annual Travel Trends AI Summit in partnership with TourRadar, happening virtually October 28th and 29th. Our AI Summit is entirely dedicated to showcasing how AI is transforming our industry and how it can benefit your company and your career. So we have two full days, with day one focusing on AI demos and showcasing how travel businesses are leveraging this technology to transform their organizations. We'll also have interactive sessions and networking keynotes, panels and fireside chats with verticals featuring multi-day tours, cruises, hospitality, trip planning and personalization tours and activities, travel agencies and so much more. You can find all of the agenda info and more on our website, traveltrendspodcastcom. And don't forget to buy your advance tickets before ticket prices go up on September 30th.
Speaker 2:Thanks, catherine. It was very clear from all of our listeners they wanted us to run this conference virtually again, given our global reach and the fact that it would be difficult for everyone to get together in one place. We were looking to actually host this in Toronto, where most of us are based, but we heard from our listeners and from our speakers that they wanted to be able to attend from anywhere in the world, and it worked so well last year, and so we have packed these two days. We actually just expanded both days so that they go from 830 till 6pm Eastern Standard Time, so it'll work for people in Australia, the UK, and we will record all these sessions. But you have to register, which we encourage you to do, because if you look at the agenda, you'll see whether it's the verticals or the areas of marketing, finance or the demos, where you're going to get real valuable use cases of how companies are leveraging AI, and the whole idea is to show, not just tell, and so I'm really looking forward. We have done an incredible job, mel in particular, with putting the agenda together, and all of our partners for stepping up, and our sponsors as part of that as well. So we've got a big event planned for everyone at the end of October.
Speaker 2:And, of course, we're actually doing a lot more spotlight episodes. You would have seen for those of you who subscribe to our newsletter we did about eight episodes in the month of August. We were doing executive spotlights, company spotlights, event spotlights, and one of the things I was most excited about is we did our first ever destination spotlight, which was focused on Colombia, and I really encourage you to listen to that episode because it also highlights where we're headed. We have an amazing B2B podcast that we're all very proud of, but we realize there's a significant opportunity for us to expand into B2C as well, given that we do have consumers that listen to our podcast that either want to get into the travel industry or genuinely keen to learn what's happening in the industry, but we want to, given I love travel, be able to highlight destinations around the world.
Speaker 2:We've done a partnership with TravelZoo where we're going to be highlighting 12 destinations for 2026. So I'm really excited to bring that to you. Those will start in November and December, but we also have a continued series of episodes with Deloitte, with Mind Trip and a number of custom spotlight episodes with various partners. So look for those on Thursdays. We'll release our regular episodes on Wednesdays and we'll release our custom spotlight episodes on Thursdays. But keep in mind we have a lot more content coming to you and, as always, we welcome your feedback, which you can send to info at traveltrendspodcastcom, as we have our new blog and we're highlighting more exciting developments happening across our industry. So it's a really exciting season. I'm very motivated for travel trends in the future, going into 2026. So thank you to Catherine, thank you again to our team and let's get ready to kick things off with a true legend of our industry, chris Hemeter, the Managing Director of Thayer Ventures. Thanks again, everyone. Welcome to season six. Thanks so much for joining us, chris. It's great to have you on Travel Trends.
Speaker 1:Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:For sure. I mean, what a way to lead off season six and where we've gotten to with this podcast. I've been a huge fan of yours for many years, you know. I know you much more than you know me because I've seen you on stage so many times at Plug and Play, at Focusrite, and you represent or you epitomize to me the very definition of captain of industry and so on. This season we're going to have the CEOs of Get your Guide and many of the key figures in the industry that are really shaping the future of travel, and you have been in that role for many years, and so it's a thrill to have you. But I want our audience to also know more about you, since there's probably going to be some people out there that don't know Chris Hemeter from Thayer Ventures. So would you mind actually just starting and giving us a little bit of your background and telling us a little bit about Thayer Ventures?
Speaker 1:Sure, sure, happy to do it, and thanks so much for those kind words and I look forward to watching the season Sounds like you've got a lineup. So all people that I many that I know and very much admire. So yeah, look, I've spent my entire life in travel. I grew up in Hawaii. My father was a hotel developer, built a number of the big destination resorts in the islands of the High Regency, waikiki, high up Maui and so forth. My first job was as a pool attendant at the High Regency of Maui when I was 16 years old.
Speaker 1:So I've grown up around wet concrete and tourists and travel and all the dynamics of our industry, and very early in my career I started my own businesses. In my early 20s I just started creating companies. I've started seven companies across my career, always in and around technology and hospitality and so forth. And you know, frankly, when someone has told you that they've started seven companies in their career, that's usually a sign that they are hopelessly ADD, which is exactly me, and ultimately that led me to starting this investment platform, thayer Ventures, 15 years ago, because it truly does sort of satisfy my intellectual curiosity. On any given day, I'll work on half a dozen different concepts and things, which is quite stimulating. Drives some people crazy, I'm sure, but for me it's a good fit.
Speaker 2:That's incredible and obviously, yeah, knowing that that definitely wasn't on your LinkedIn profile. The companies are, but definitely not where you started. But obviously knowing that you have that family background but also the ability to know what it's like to grow a business from the ground up and then be able to advise, mentor and invest in startups, and this is where you know your portfolio is incredibly impressive and the companies that you have chosen to invest in. Obviously you are, you know, a sought after VC firm in the Valley, with travel specifically. But tell everyone a little bit about Thayer, because I think that's where you know some people may be familiar with the name, given the prominence that it has inside the industry, and obviously you co-founded this.
Speaker 1:but tell us a little bit about what the your principles are around investing and sort of how you decided to create the group and the structure and what some of your first investments were. Yeah, sure, no it's. You know a lot of it sort of came from some you know insights that we had 15 years ago about the dynamics of travel. You know, one of the largest industries on the planet Earth, growing faster than global GDP has for some time and is expected to grow faster than global GDP for decades to come, historically resistant to the adoption of technology. So, frankly, if you look at the value chain across travel, especially if you go back 15 years, it was a mess, a lot of broken components and parts and you know we saw some significant disruption and dislocation happening across generations of travelers, across the dynamics of the broader travel value chain. And what we found is that there weren't very many venture capital firms, so professional, institutional investors, that understood or had experience with the complexity of travel. And it's really easy to make mistakes investing in travel because you know all of us travel. So we think intuitively, we have a sense for the consumer experience and then we make the mistake of thinking that's enough to then sort of understand the components. But, frankly, you dig into the nuts and bolts of travel, especially on the B2B side. It's complicated, the stakeholders are complicated. You know, hospitality is a great example of that. With, you know, essentially a real estate business that has layered on top of it management companies and ownership groups and franchises and brands and so forth. Investors were just too lazy to understand the business or, frankly, investors were just having so much trouble getting up to speed and finding a, you know, a path forward. So we saw an opening to do something interesting.
Speaker 1:And then, you know, as somebody who has built a number of businesses, I sort of come to the table and I have, from the very get-go, with the entrepreneur front and center. To me, that is the most important thing, and so I wanted to build a platform where, you know, not only were we able to find the best companies doing innovative work and travel, but then, when we invested that you know, we really were in a position to add value. And to me, adding value isn't being, you know, somebody who sits in the room at a board meeting and pontificates about the balance sheet. It's, you know, it's being able to do good work in between the board meetings, supporting business development, sales and strategies. So, you know, I wanted to be able to open doors, make connections and so forth.
Speaker 1:So very early on, when we were raising money for our funds, we looked for strategic capital and now, investing out of our fourth fund and raising our fifth, we have a number of, you know, the world's largest players in travel as limited partners in our fund, including Marriott and Hilton and Hyatt and Enterprise Mobility and Host Hotels and Resorts and others, and so those connections become a really important component of the value that we bring to the table when we invest. I also spend a great deal of time developing and in nurturing relationships with other companies within travel, whether the big intermediaries or other suppliers, so that again, when I'm investing, I know people, I can bring companies to the table and I can help them open doors, and I think that matters. When you're an early stage company, you know, look great ideas and great founders and great engineers who are builders by nature. What they need are opportunities to trial and to fail and to fix and to move forward and iterate, and they can only do that if they have engagement. So, you know, to me I feel like adding that early in the life of a company, helping them get those relationships in place so they can start to build and develop and learn and iterate can make a huge difference and it's worked for us.
Speaker 1:And we, you know, we, so we've invested, we've invested accordingly. We, you know, we, think about the dynamics of a startup and what has to be true about the market and the pain point they've identified and you know the, the sort of defendable position that they've sought to create with their, with their products. But we ultimately then look for is it the kind of business that we truly believe we can help with the contacts that we have? And to me, that's the final check. I've got to be able to check that box, otherwise it's not a great fit for us.
Speaker 2:For sure and it's very clear from your portfolio, and anyone that is familiar with yourself and Thayer knows your success story and the number of companies that you've been involved in that have been acquired. I mean companies like Uplift and Liftopia and Hipmunk and Adara. I mean there's a pretty extensive list of companies you've invested in that have been acquired, but then there's also some amazing companies that you have been also early on that are still growing dramatically, like Muse is one example, sonder, which is obviously an incredible success story overall as well. So the list goes on and I guess where some of the things I certainly want to cover in our conversation, because I know our listeners are going to be like make sure you ask Chris this, and they've got so many different questions that I because, coming at this from all the angles that I imagine they want me to ask you, certainly in terms of the companies you look to invest in, and that's part of why I wanted to ask about your portfolio.
Speaker 2:We've had Kara Whitehill on our show. She's amazing. Obviously she works with you. We kicked off last season with an investing in AI session with Kevin Chang from Amex Ventures, and we know our audience loves this subject One of the things I'd love for you to help clarify for audiences where Thayer sits in the investment cycle from seed to series A to late stage, because that seems to be something that a lot of entrepreneurs don't necessarily grasp right away and I'm sure you get them all come up to you, they see Thayer VC and you get that pitch that they're just yeah, what stage do you typically look at and what would be some of your advice and guidance, those people listening to this that are in their early stages, that have an idea like pointme or they're on the cusp of doing something really interesting?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What, what, what perks your interest?
Speaker 1:No, those are super important questions, and it's interesting because we really do consider ourselves a strategic fund and we're a relatively small fund size when compared to some of the traditional horizontal players in Silicon Valley, and that's good, because what it means is that we can syndicate in rounds as a real strategic. We're not that firm that needs to have 5 million plus of capacity, or else we can't do the deal. We can write smaller checks than we have next to many of the you know the marquee names in the Valley, and we end up then being that strategic team. We've also learned, though, that we can play sort of across stage. I mean, traditionally, we've had this what we call a constructed and convict strategy, where we make smaller checks in earlier stage companies as our construction checks, and we construct a portfolio, and then we provide evidence to those entrepreneurs that we can add value. We work with those companies and then, of course, across a collection of startups, there are going to be some that just break through, and, frankly, you know luck and timing are two huge components to entrepreneurial success, unfortunately, but it's true, and so some break through, and then we have we've come in with what we call our conviction check, which is a much larger check and we try to invest heavily at that point.
Speaker 1:But we've, you know, we've made investments in very early stage companies that are more, you know, science, experiments, and we want to see how they're going to go and then we follow them on as they get larger. But we've also made some investments in companies like Built, where we've entered at, you know, a much later stage. But we saw real strategic value in those names, in travel, and we saw ways that we could add value and those have worked out well for us too. So you know it's an unsatisfying answer. We basically are very opportunistic across stage. Again, we underwrite to, you know, multiples on the stock that or on the price that we go in for, and we look for ways that we can add real value. Those are the essential things.
Speaker 2:And then in terms of the categories, I know you work in accommodation, that's your background hospitality, transportation. I think those were the two main focus areas, but tell us a little bit about the types of industries across travel that you really focus on, like, yeah, yeah, help kind of refine the focus, especially because, again, this is where, as a strategic investor, as you've highlighted, you're obviously you're doing your research to figure out where the biggest opportunities are then, as these startups are coming to you. And one thing I just also highlight to our listeners is that one of the things that's always stood out to me about you, chris, that I've been so impressed by, is your level of accessibility. I mean, obviously I appreciate you being here for this, but I know I've seen you at Plug and Play and people coming up to you, and I've seen you at Focus right.
Speaker 2:We saw each other in Barcelona just recently and you're walking the floor and people are very keen to shake your hand and whenever I see the Thayer kind of board desk, it seems like intimidating, like shark tank sort of style. People want to be behind the velvet rope and sitting with you in that meeting because it's just like wait a second, is that the next company to be minted. So I just wanted to highlight to our listeners not that everyone's going to have that privilege to have this time like I have with you now, but you know you do make yourself very accessible and so, when it comes to the types of verticals within travel, are you kind of more focused on, say, hospitality and transportation, or are you and technology, or you really kind of look at anything within the travel space as an opportunity?
Speaker 1:yeah, no, great question, and thanks for those. Those comments on accessibility look, as a former entrepreneur, you know, like I said, I am all about the entrepreneur. I really am honestly a sort of a fan of risk takers and I frankly think that it's the innovators that will save the world. And so, you know, when young entrepreneurs find the courage to push their way through a crowd and come up and talk, yeah, I'm going to give them time for sure, because that's exactly what they should be doing, and I appreciate that, and I appreciate that it's uncomfortable. So, you know, I'm not always able to do it, because sometimes I'm running and I have to go somewhere else or whatnot, but I hope to always be that way. And trends and I'll highlight a few, but those are constantly changing. So there's always this big component that we call opportunistic, which basically means what have you got right? I mean, entrepreneurs are out there in the trenches developing unique insights. It would be, you know, sort of arrogant if I sat back here in my home office and thought I knew every you know emerging opportunity in travel. I don't. So in many cases, it's just taking time to listen to what an entrepreneur is working on and learning about that. So I always sort of leave that open. But within travel today, yes, we still believe that there is a lot of very interesting stuff happening in the hospitality technology stack. I mean, it was for the longest time just sort of stuck. The PMS was a closed box cash register that basically just kept everybody in the business of selling, you know, trying to put heads in beds and transacting. The world has changed. I think that fundamentally has changed. That's why you're seeing Muse take off because of what they bring to the table in their integrated platform that enables localization and experimentation by owners. Canary Technologies is another one of our absolute breakaway home run investments all about, you know, guest management and AI messaging and other aspects of sort of the entire traveler journey. We're now, you know, big shareholders of Travel Curious, which is in the experiences space, again doing a lot of integration work with hospitality. We can talk a little bit about that. But this whole sort of world of you know, if we were to sort of distill it down into components that we're very excited about, you know, in addition to all things related to hospitality tech and how that's changing, there's also this whole world of connected commerce and how it's changing. So think distribution, the marketing, merchandising and selling of travel fundamentally changing. And I know we'll talk about AI and the impact on the business. Certainly AI and the way it's changing search is fundamentally changing the way suppliers have to at least think about and manage in this world. So all things related to distribution I think is super interesting.
Speaker 1:Social commerce is another sort of emerging category. No one's been able to really crack the code there, but there are some companies doing some really interesting work with influencers. That channel is becoming critical, specifically merges with social as a sort of longer-term transactional platform and you may see this more organic emergence of you know what almost look like native travel agents that are just sort of you know, coming out of their social space and they'll have the tools to do that work. Payments is also super interesting. There's still a lot of friction and cost in payments, not only consumer but B2B, and we're starting to see some of the sort of bigger emerging horizontal technologies like Stablecoin come over and play a role sort of deeper in the tech stack in payments and I think that that's very, very compelling and interesting.
Speaker 1:So you know it is broadly across all things related to travel. Certainly, you know we've got some food service tech investments that I think are super interesting. Again, leveraging AI, particularly in the banquets and group space, and some fascinating work that's being done there work that's being done there. You know, the carriers airlines themselves, I think are emerging to become sort of more engaged in the broader story of travel. They always have been, but for a long time they've thought of themselves really as these logistics businesses, and I think they're beginning to think of themselves now truly as travel companies, and that's sort of changing the way they think about technology. So we're, you know, we're deeply engaged with most of the major carriers. So, yeah, it's hard pressed to find any part of travel that we're not interested in, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:No, that's exciting to all of our listeners, I'm sure, because I think that's where if you're innovating within the travel space and a lot of people come outside the travel industry I'm sure you've seen this as well. Obviously, you think the founders of Airbnb. There's so many great examples of people who have decided to enter travel because it's a massive market, as you pointed out, second largest globally, very fragmented, as you've highlighted. So there's all these challenges that the incumbents are trying to figure out and someone else comes in with a fresh, new idea to apply to travel and all of a sudden they crack the code. And so you mentioned a number of valuable insights there about areas you're focused on social commerce, big being a big one at hotel, I'm sure obviously you're familiar with conrad and what they're doing.
Speaker 2:Very interestingly, he was on our show and did this amazing episode was one of the most popular ever called. Social is the new seo uh. Travis pitman and the team at tour radar made it mandatory listening for their team and they have transformed their business the last year for exactly the reason you just described is that their search traffic fell by% and they had to find a way to regrow that business. Now they have a $1 million fund for travel creators and their social first strategy. We're going to do an episode on season six just about how they literally applied the insights from another episode and it's transformed their business. And this is where great ideas can be transplanted into another area and can grow and be successful. We'll be right back.
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Speaker 2:And now back to the show, one of the things I wanted just to go back to and I want to go forward then on 2026, ai and all the areas you're looking at, but just in terms of Thayer, ventures and your role in the investment cycle for startups, I'd love to cover kind of that fundamental question that you get all the time, so that you can maybe even refer back to this podcast and say actually Dan asked me about that and you can go and listen to. When it comes to reaching out to Thayer and yourself and what you're looking for with new startups, and given that you do make yourself accessible and people are coming up to you all the time, I'd love to know what are some of the things that you're looking for. You mentioned the entrepreneur. That's obviously critical.
Speaker 2:So obviously the team, the idea, but tell us a little bit about what you and the team look for and what's meaningful to you. Is it that pitch deck? Is it and getting initial meeting? Is it having traction in the marketplace beyond just truly having a proof of concept that you know can scale? What are some of the things that you're looking for that many of our listeners can say, okay, I'm not ready yet, but I will be when I want to actually get in front of you. So tell us some of those signals. That would be really helpful, I'm sure, for our listeners.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so important. And look, one of the things I will say is that and I cannot overemphasize this for all of you entrepreneurs out there cold calls and cold emails do not work. We get way too much volume in messaging through LinkedIn. Doesn't work. You can see, from all of our LinkedIn profiles, from our portfolio companies that are on our websites, all of the people that we know and we work with, I am quite sure that if you work a little bit harder, you can find a way to get a direct introduction. And so when someone I know especially if it's someone that I really care about and work with reaches out to me and says, hey, I'm working with this or I met this young company, I'm really impressed.
Speaker 1:Would you like an intro and would you take a call? I almost always, I could probably say always say yes, Right, Because this is somebody whose judgment I respect. You've gotten to somehow gotten to them and they've made the intro. That's a call that we take the cold calls. I mean, that's just one in a hundred might say enough that you know for some reason. I say, sure, why not, let's take a call, so that I'm going to start there.
Speaker 2:That's great, that's great.
Speaker 1:And in this day and age and I tell you what there's also a little bit of a bias. It's sort of, if you haven't figured out how to get an intro, to me that's kind of a red flag, because entrepreneurs need to be, you need to be wily, you need to be creative, you need to move the ball down the field, you need to know how to, you know make things happen. And so I know that if you worked a little bit harder, you could find a way to get an introduction. So, anyway, I am just telling everybody and that's true for all investors, I would say it's a little bit of a first test Find a way in, anyway. So, look, I think that there are an important set of sort of just absolute gotta haves for any sort of startup, and it has nothing to do with technology, right, First of all, you have to understand the market that you're working in. Right, and so you know, we all talk about the total addressable market. But if you come to the table and say, oh, you know, I'm working in the restaurant space, my TAM is a million restaurants and you know, $800 billion at top line, that's just insufficient. It's like, well, where are you working in the restaurant space, right? Specifically, are you full service restaurants? Are you working with QSR? What's the playbook? Having a very clear understanding of your addressable market, its dynamics, how it's shaped, how it works very important, and it needs to be big enough. The problem with really niche markets yes, you can build a great lifestyle business there, but you probably can't build a venture-backed business in a very niche market. There's just not enough room to absorb the capital. So market and the entrepreneur's ability to articulate some detail about that market is first and foremost.
Speaker 1:The second component is not the idea for the idea's sake, but what is the problem that's being solved. So a lot of times you know I'll find entrepreneurs will very much highlight sort of how something is done today and why that's causing pain, either for the consumer or if it's trading partners and the value chain that you can really articulate the cost. This is a problem and then the solution is typically the answer. That's your product. That's when you're in the business of saying this is what I'm doing, and the third part of that sort of overall narrative is the competitive landscape. So who else is doing similar things, how noisy is it? And that becomes the body of the narrative of why you're starting a business. But it's all those pieces together the unsolved pain that I see my novel defendable solution, and then the nature of the chessboard, which is competition, and how I think that's going to play out over the years to come, and why I'm in a good position to win right. That is your elevator pitch.
Speaker 1:The next, though, major component is this integration of unit economics and go-to-market, and this is where I have found entrepreneurs typically come up short is that they haven't thought through, okay, once I break through and I get a minimum viable product out there and I've made a bunch of founder-led sales based on the nature of my market who I'm selling to the unit economics of what I'm selling. Here is how I'm going to build a go-to-market engine. You know, is it a business development reps making outbound calls, generating demos for you know, account executives who do online sales and I hope to close 20% of the sales that they make at this price? And so here's my projected cost to acquire a customer versus lifetime value price. And so here's my projected cost to acquire a customer versus lifetime value. In there is sort of the Pachinko machine of what I'm going to do. You know, if it's a $250,000 average annual contract value. Well, that might be a direct sales force, you know, is it a channel partnerships in the go-to-market with sort of a service layer built across. But that engine ultimately becomes the thing that will generate the next round of financing. And my problem is I don't want to put capital into a business that I can't somehow see how they're going to raise the next round of financing, because that's a really important part of the risk profile from my perspective. So having some sort of clarity on go-to-market and unit economics is really powerful. And even for like an absolute brand new, you know seed stage startup, you can at least have a forecast of how you might do that as you grow up, and that's very useful and sends a strong signal to the investor that you care about that.
Speaker 1:Talent obviously matters a ton. But look, I invested in Francis, the CEO and founder of Sonder in the Series A. This was his very first job. He had never done anything before. He invented the concept when he was in college. So you know, it's not about having a world-class resume yourself. It's about having an understanding of the kind of talent you're going to need to bring to the party in order to build a great business and Francis knew that and then he executed upon that. He did it actually quite brilliantly. So you know those things all come together.
Speaker 1:And then the last thing I would say for entrepreneurs and I say this every time when I, you know, talk at colleges to you know, classes in entrepreneurship everybody should have a slide in their presentation called progress, and you always want to talk about the progress you've made over the last 90 days and the progress you intend to make over the next 90 or six months. Whatever, it doesn't matter so much. But it's about progress for two reasons. First of all, it's super interesting to see how an entrepreneur is. You know, how are they hustling and moving and making progress and moving the ball down the field, because in early stage companies, progress is pretty important.
Speaker 1:But it's also an opportunity for you, as the entrepreneur, to say at the end of a conversation do you mind if I keep you updated on my progress? And any investor who says yeah, actually I do mind, please don't update me. You don't ever want to talk to that person again. Anyway, I'm serious. Every investor will say yes. And so you say great, and you write down their email address and you start every again month, 90 days, whatever, sending out an email saying, hey everybody, here's my update and progress. And it's a great way to stay connected because while an investor might not be ready today, they might be in six months or a year or the next round. And having spent the time to build that relationship then makes it much easier to hit the ground running when the time is right. But yeah, so those components I think are all the sort of fundamental and you know, look, if you're starting a company, you kind of want to map those out anyway, because the first person you've got to convince to invest in your business is you, and you better be right, because there is nothing worse than starting a zombie business.
Speaker 1:What's a zombie business? It's the one where you know you raise a bunch of friends and family money, you leverage out your credit cards and then you find yourself in a business that just muddles along for 15 years and then ultimately maybe you sell it and return a portion of everybody's capital, but for 15 years you've been woefully underpaid and you've taken the sweet spot of your professional life and lost it to this walking dead zombie company spot of your professional life and lost it to this walking dead zombie company that is. That's the misery of entrepreneurship is getting stuck there. Failure is not the problem. Failing fast is critical.
Speaker 1:I've taped up the boxes on more than one of my startups. They're not all home runs. And you know, you learn so much and then you move on and iterate. It's about taking at bats. You get up, you dust yourself off and you swing again. And you know, you learn so much and then you move on and iterate. It's about taking at bats. You get up, you dust yourself off and you swing again. And when you raise money from your investors, everybody involved should understand that. That's the playbook. If it doesn't work out, shut her down, tape up the boxes, get the wind up documents to everybody and then move on and do it again. And so you know it's a very important part of the life of entrepreneurship, trust me.
Speaker 2:Amazing and excellent advice and I'm glad you hit all of those points, because I'm sure a lot of people are now re-looking at their pitch decks and looking at their product, looking at their teams and saying we're not ready, and these are some of the watchouts we need to be mindful of. The other thing I wanted to ask you about, chris you highlight, obviously, francis perfect example of a hardworking entrepreneur hustling out there renting apartments in Montreal to students and was like there is a bigger business here, and you guys were onto that earlier. So Sondra is a great example of exactly what you described. I was asking you about your investment philosophy, having worked now the last few years with a number of different startups, helping them with funding and some that have gone on to be successful and others that have stalled out and having that visibility. I'll use one example Dharma, with Conviviality Ventures.
Speaker 2:Conviviality Ventures, which is a venture arm of Pernod Ricard. Obviously, you know all these people, all these players, but one of the things obviously understanding when you're trying to raise around whether it be high net worth individuals or venture capital or private equity like where can you get the access to capital and how do you raise around? This is one of the things I think. Also, a lot of early entrepreneurs are just not familiar with trying to manage all of those stakeholders, because it's one thing to understand, so conviviality is investment philosophy, which is conviviality, so it has to fit into their portfolio that matches their brand DNA. They've invested in companies like Hipcamp, so they're very active in the travel space, but they don't lead, they follow.
Speaker 2:So then this is another.
Speaker 2:So now you need someone who's going to lead the round, and you mentioned about how you're strategic investors and you might have someone that writes a bigger ticket, but they want to know that you're on the bill as well, the fair's on board. So tell us a little bit about how best for entrepreneurs to align the stars with a round, especially if they've done that early seed family and friends. Now they're actually talking to VC, because the other thing I see I'll just mention one last thing, and obviously you're the expert here, so please add to this but VCs are looking for 10X, 100x, 1,000x return. Private equity might be looking for two X or three X, and I've heard private equity in meetings who said I, we just don't want to lose our money, like we don't mind doubling over five years, we just want to make sure it's a sure thing, so it's a much more conservative portfolio, whereas you know VCs and you you know this, um, you know Jason Calacanis like it's one out of 39 that might hit, so you need to have you know.
Speaker 2:So tell us a little bit about raising around and aligning different stakeholders and how you view that at Thayer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so hard. I mean, raising money is just one of the most difficult. Raising institutional money. And first of all, like I think it's so important, again in sort of the spirit of thinking of entrepreneurship broadly, not every business needs to be venture backed. There is nothing wrong with building a lifestyle business that you grow and, after working on it for you know, 15, 25 years, you sell it to somebody for 30 million bucks. That's not a venture outcome that anybody's going to care about. But if you own a hundred percent of the equity and you build that business yourself, that's a life-changing outcome, right? So there's nothing wrong with that. Institutional money is a different path and you want to go down that path. If you're trying to grow something big, that's going to require, you know, subsequent rounds of financing to get there. So that profile of a business is you know it's tough You're out there primarily looking for a lead investor.
Speaker 1:A lead investor is the one that issues you a proposal, what we call a term sheet, that lays out here's how much, here's how big the round needs to be. Let's say it's a $3 million round, a seed, or let's just call it a series A to keep everything simple. So a $5 million series A and I'm gonna put in $3 million as the lead investor and I'm pricing it at a $30 million pre-money value. All the terms were in that term sheet. So that means that you've got to raise an additional 2 million bucks from other people around the table, turns out, depending on who your lead is. It's pretty easy to find the people who want to follow those lead investors. You know, if a Sequoia writes a term sheet that has room left in the round, it won't take you but the rest of the day to get that raise. Everybody wants to put their money next to those guys. So you know, selecting, finding and selecting a great lead investor is super important. It makes things much, much easier to fill out the rest of the round.
Speaker 1:You want to certainly take meetings with folks who are not going to lead but would like to fill out the round, but that's not. That shouldn't be the focus of your energy. The focus should be on finding that lead investor. And again, you want to leverage your network, your advisors, your angel investors, anybody you can, to make introductions and advocate for you at those venture firms to get you a foot in the door. You just cannot send a cold email to Excel and expect a return and a real shot on goal of getting them as a lead. Now in travel sometimes you know we've co-led with a bunch of folks before. Where it's let's say it's a round that's too big for us to be a solo lead because of our check size. But we've co-led with other investors who are newer to travel and they really appreciate partnering up because of our understanding of travel and that can be helpful. And it can be helpful to get strategics committed to a round even though they're not leading, because then that sort of entices lead investors to see where the rest of the capital is going to come from and why that's important.
Speaker 1:But it's very, very challenging to raise money. It always has been and it always will be. And then there are just some entrepreneurs that after they get that first financing you you know as a CEO you're networking with folks but you have to be smart about who are you talking to. You know somebody is coming forward and trying to preempt the round. That's a high quality outcome because it is such a distraction to raise a round. It can take nine months of effort to go out and find a lead investor. It just dobbles up a CEO's attention. So it's tough, very, very tough. So it's tough, very, very tough.
Speaker 2:I appreciate sharing those insights because that's certainly what I have seen from my experience, and I know a lot of entrepreneurs. This is resonating with them because these are the things they didn't expect at the beginning and that is one of the real important points you just called out is that literally, you almost have to make the decision to step out of the business to focus on fundraising and you see, they designated one of their executives to do exactly that. Someone runs the business and someone goes out and tries to raise fund and they've got that window of time by which to do that between getting between the different stages and so clearly, people can do more research on their own. Because I don't want to waste your valuable time in explaining the entire cycle and I'd love to spend our time now talking about some of the big trends. You've already mentioned them and we started to get into one that I really want to spend a bit of time on with you, which is AI. And so when you think about investment in 2026, and that's the theme, of course, of our discussion is investing in travel in 2026. And AI has to be one of the most important topics to talk about and just to share with you.
Speaker 2:I know from being active in this space that I hear a wide range of opinions, and I'm sure you do as well, because obviously we both lived through the dot-com era and there's an element of what's happening now where people are sticking AI on everything like they stuck dot-com on everything. Then you go to every conference and every business that used to just be a regular business is now an AI business. So it's not just the startups, it's like the established players. They're being asked by their investors how they're becoming more efficient, more effective, how they're scaling their businesses. So it's not just about the startups, it's as much as important for the incumbents of Bookingcom, glenn Fogle.
Speaker 2:You see how much he talks about AI. You see people like Hotel Planner planning to go public and highlighting that they handle 10,000 calls a day by AI. So it's real at the same time. This is slightly different than the dot-com era. It's real at the same time as there also is a lot of hype. So it's hard to get that signal through the noise. And I would just love to get your perspective on where you think we are in the investment cycle with AI in travel and specifically what you're looking for, because I know a number of businesses feel like they need to come and pitch as if they're an AI business and they may actually not be and so they're now being encouraged to like change and kind of pivot. And so tell us a little bit about how you say AI and travel today and your view on investing in this technology.
Speaker 1:Yeah, huge topic. And again, I want to first start with reiterating what I said earlier. It starts with the problem that you're solving, and if AI, if you're using it as a tool, as an important component of solving a core business problem or somehow fitting into the value chain and making a difference, then it's just sort of hype and that's just not going to go anywhere. So I think that there's sort of three things that I'm thinking about when I think about AI. First of all is how is the technology and the tool being used by good startups? And there's so many obvious places where costs are being managed, whether it's in engineering, customer service and support, marketing and content generation. There's a lot of sort of just within the nuts and bolts of building a business. Over time, it's becoming much more capital efficient to build a building, build a company to scale now because of the just great tools of generative AI, and any entrepreneur should be thinking about that because that makes a huge difference in terms of the capital requirement to build your business. The second component is then thinking about okay, if you're building products, you know AI-based products to attack, you know that are sort of more B2B in nature and you're looking to sell them, you know, to large travel suppliers or incumbents or others. I mean, that's an area that is interesting but, frankly, I think is going to be slower to develop than people think. It's just, you know, this is where you know we weren't wrong back in the dot-com day. Right, the Internet was going to change the world. It just didn't happen in two years, it happened in 25. So the same thing is going to happen, in my view, in the role of AI as a core technology. Of large enterprise. It will change the way they work in time. Of large enterprise. It will change the way they work in time. So you know, there are people doing some interesting things in that area and I'm very mindful of you know how valuable those companies may be, but I still think that that is going to look a little bit more like core enterprise software. It's just going to take time.
Speaker 1:Now where we are particularly excited is how consumer behavior in this sort of the marketing and merchandising and selling of travel is changing. You know we have spent the last 25 years sort of perfecting this world of distribution around. You know keywords and indexing and as a result, we had major power players that cornered the market Google, expedia, booking and so forth, right, and the oligopoly just sort of held power and, frankly, it took all the air out of the room for anybody who wanted to try to do something interesting in consumer travel, because you just couldn't compete with the amount of spend happening at the top of the travel funnel. We fundamentally seeing that narrative changing now as consumers are beginning to use not just beginning they're there now using generative AI as part of their discovery experience. They've moved from sort of this indexing search keyword list of different places that they can click through and intermediaries that take them to more lists that they can click through, to this highly contextualized, conversational form of search and engagement that often doesn't even result in a click-through. It results in a statement of here's what you should do, right, and it may have three recommendations, not three pages of recommendations, and so that's essential for travel suppliers because they got to somehow be in that game. And what does that mean? That means that they have to have highly cleansed, reliable data about where they sit, what they're adjacent to, what you can do from you know it's the demands on the quality of their data now, and the you know the quantity as well of their data is so extreme, and what that's doing is it's exposing all of the technical debt that travel suppliers in particular are sitting on and how screwed up their data is. I cannot overstate how awful it is out there in reality in terms of data quality, and so it's the companies that are beginning to address that mess to enable this sort of new emerging world of Gen AI, search and optimizing it for supply that are winning. Bonafide is one of our portfolio companies data orchestration for supply. They're doing a bunch of really interesting work.
Speaker 1:Nuiti, which is another you know, api as a services platform living in hospitality, again for distribution B2B distribution very, very important and powerful, you know, meets highly fragmented retailing and merchandising of travel across the world. It's that you know that multi, multi-trillion dollar funnel is in play and the battle lines are huge and the amount of money at stake is absolutely fundamental. And so when we see those areas of just radical disruption where the value of winning and the consequence of losing are so high, that's where you got to find, shine the spotlight and watch, because now I don't know what the playbook is, I don't know what the answer is there, but I know that the problem is massive and the disruption is profound and I trust that there will be incredibly creative entrepreneurs who will figure stuff out, get very rapid evidence that it's working, and I want to be there. That's when I want to be there so that I can be a part of those stories and back them up. It was recently, you know, we're talking to this incredibly interesting company out of Iceland called Rexby. Again, sort of combining, taking a whole new look at social commerce and combining elements of AI to sort of you know, affect and create planning and distribution tools that I think are really fresh and there's.
Speaker 1:You know, it's not the kind of story that I could have sat back and articulated to you, right, and said, oh, I'm looking for a Rexy. It took meeting these guys and hearing how they're solving the problem, what they're seeing, why, how it's working, the scale of it that has me thinking, okay, that's interesting. I don't know if it's going to work. Of it, that has me thinking, okay, that's interesting, I don't know if it's going to work, I don't know how big it could be. But you know, when you see some super creative, wily entrepreneurs with some gravitas playing in a big space that's undergoing that kind of change, that's exciting. So you know, I mean I guess that would be an area where I particularly am interested in is all things sort of related to just distribution, selling, merchandising and so forth.
Speaker 2:Well, it's certainly spot on with everything that I've seen and heard, especially when other colleagues and investors focus on the plumbing of travel, and you highlighted one really important aspect, which is APIs. I mean, this is one area you know it's not the sexiest business to be in, but the reality is a lot of these partners have difficulty integrating with each other. Do you write to my API or do I write to your API? How do we connect with each other? And you're you know, you've got technical debt and you've got a product roadmap that is 12 months long and a partner wants to work with you and it's like we'll see you in two years. And all of a sudden, if AI solution that can do that. And to back to your point, I think I just wanted to underscore exactly what you said there, chris, which was even with AI, it still goes back to what problem are you solving? And then now you've got this new technology that can really empower to solve these challenges.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the plumbing. The plumbing is so. I mean it's like think about the you know the classic analogy of the gold rush, right, you, if you were, you'd probably want to be an investor in Levi, not in the gold. Yeah, the shovels and the picks and the axes and the jeans, right, it's the essential plumbing of what's happening are the durable businesses and the ones that are essentially needed now. And what also is super exciting, in my view, is that travel has undergone I mean it has been such a dramatic change Pre-pandemic.
Speaker 1:It's really hard to get big travel companies to experiment. It was hard. I mean, there was some Muse was born pre-pandemic. You know, a lot of guys were doing great work and were, you know, making progress, but it was really hard.
Speaker 1:The pandemic hit, fundamentally changed everything about travel. Nobody saw that coming and you know, ceos woke up the next day and said, holy shit, we're lacking agility, we don't have flexibility. This is a problem, how do we fix that? And finally, people were like, how about that thing we've been talking about for a decade called technology? And they're like, right, okay, let's get to work on that. So now, all of a sudden, you know there was this sort of change in attitude, coming out of the pandemic that technology was, you know, a gotta have, not a nice to have. And then all of a sudden, we hit this next cycle of rates going up and costs going haywire, and then the birth of AI.
Speaker 1:All of these things have happened in succession and it's you know, I have not seen this industry more engaged in experimentation, testing, trial. Now, all of a sudden, the entrepreneur is sitting sort of atop the hierarchy. You know, ideation is what people want. The biggest companies in the world want to know what's going on in startup land and who's doing interesting and new stuff. And that is a game changer, because if people are experimenting, there will be breakthroughs. And when there's breakthroughs, there are huge billion dollar companies being built. And you know, again, I are huge billion-dollar companies being built. And you know, again, I want to be around the hoop, because that's what's happening today. It's a very, very exciting time.
Speaker 2:I've never seen a more dynamic and exciting time to be a travel tech entrepreneur than today. We'll be right back.
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Speaker 2:Visit Civitatiscom for more details and now back to the show In terms of the outlook from your vantage point for 2026, you've obviously talked about AI, You've talked about a number of the verticals you're interested in. You mentioned some of the geopolitical factors and obviously consumer behavior is changing. So you've got all of these dynamic fluctuations that are happening and there's some people that are thinking, oh, VCs have pulled back. You're seeing some of the headlines that. What is your overall view? It sounds to me like you're quite optimistic about 2026, but you have to be a savvier investor than ever would be one of my takeaways. But how would you kind of define investing and travel in 2026? What was your overall outlook?
Speaker 1:Absolutely the best time in history. One of the things I like is that it is hard to raise money, so that knocks out a lot of the accidental tourists of entrepreneurship. And it's just, you know, those who bring real grit and commitment to the table and have insights and passion, they will find a way. It also, you know, you don't need to raise five million bucks to get started With the tools today that are out there. I mean it's becoming way more capital efficient. So, you know, I think that the macro industrial logic in travel is peaking. It's never been better for entrepreneurs. I think the capital markets are tough and they will be. That's a good thing for real entrepreneurs because it means less noise and, by the way, there's no worse competitor than noise. That's the worst one. You don't want that. You want quality people out there doing great work. So I think it's you know, for an entrepreneur it's a great time, but it's you know you got to be serious about it because it's not going to be easy. It's not a layup time For an investor, I mean. I think it's a small fund investor. It's ideal.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I'd want to be sitting on a billion-dollar fund for startups, because I don't think startups are going to be consuming $30, $40 million of capital in the era of AI. They're going to consume a lot less the big funds to actually run their businesses, where I think smaller, more nimble funds that are deeply sector-focused and bring strategy and context to the table. I think we're in a position to thrive, and we're already seeing it. Look, we're seeing lots of dynamic interest from outside of travel and what's happening in travel. This is one of the biggest e-commerce categories in the world. We're seeing mid-market private equity firms wanting to buy companies and turn them into platforms, and so there's more liquidity coming into our space than ever before. It's all good.
Speaker 2:That is the most optimistic outlook and I'm thrilled to hear that I'm sure our listeners are as well and a perfect way to bring our conversation to a close. I do have a couple of rapid-fire questions just to ask you, chris, and then we'll sign off. But when you look back now, what would be a startup that you wish you backed, that you didn't at the time? What's the one that got away?
Speaker 1:oh, there's so many. I, I, I have this faint recollection of taking a phone call with a very early stage company years and years and years ago. It was on my cell phone and nicest guy in the world and you know, described his idea and I thought, yeah, we don't do consumer and you know, good luck, and it was get your guide. Wish I had taken a little bit more time and thought that went through, because that would have been, that was a great time. But there are many. There are so many great companies that we've missed. But that comes with it.
Speaker 2:In terms of your inspiration and where you get it from. Obviously, I appreciate you listening to this podcast, but in terms of other sources of inspiration books, podcasts, websites, articles where do you reach out for your inspiration and what else would you suggest for our audience to inspire them?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean in addition to just sort of all of the usual suspects. I mean yeah, and I mean in addition to just sort of all of the usual suspects. I mean so much of it just comes from, you know, attending conferences and spending time with leaders in travel, right, those the, you know, some of my, my friends now, because of you know, I'm at that time of my career where my friends are running these companies, right, we're all peers and so it's spending time with them and sort of really listening to the things that they're dealing with, the challenges they have. I find it's so important to sort of, you know, understand what's going on in the real world. But, you know, I obviously read all the stuff that everyone else reads, and there's a lot of great content out there, but frankly, it's relationships and the insights of others. I think that sort of bring the most color. So it's always having your ears wide open and engaging.
Speaker 2:And you are at all the conferences, at the dinners. It's you're there, you're present. When I saw you at Focus right recently, I was like plug and play. I was like no Focus writes my priority. You know how to prioritize your time, your time. I know you're traveling for the next few months, so I got one last question for you, because I can't thank you enough for making time for this. But your vision for Thayer as we close out, given that you are at the top of your game and you've probably helped a lot of other people sharpen their sword from this conversation what is your vision for Thayer in the next five years? Where do you want to see this company in?
Speaker 1:2030? Yeah, so I have two phenomenal partners, tyler Carrico and Mike Scott. Young guys, early 30s, hugely ambitious. We're doing a lot more in addition to sort of the core Thayer Ventures investing work. We're also doing special purpose projects. You know we're running our second SPAC right now. We've done some large SPVs and later stage deals. I think we see ourselves just continuing to expand across different asset classes, but always focusing on this industry of travel because it's just it's so big, it's so dynamic and there's so much to do. But I see, you know, hopefully over the next five years, there just being a platform that has, you know, more and more solutions for entrepreneurs and companies across the spectrum, think there's a lot for us to do. There's a lot more capital now that's interested in travel than ever before and hopefully we're the place that that capital wants to park itself while we go to work.
Speaker 2:That's so exciting and I know there's a lot of investors that listen to our show and those limited partners out there that are looking to invest. I know you've partnered with Drive Ventures, mike and the team, and anyway, you're going from strength to strength. There's so many exciting things happening. Thank you, chris, for making the time for this. I look forward to seeing you in person in the near future. I'll make sure everyone knows where to find more about Thayer Ventures and follow up with you and the team, but thank you again so much for this and everything you're doing for the industry.
Speaker 1:I enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thanks again for joining us on this opening episode of Season 6 of Travel Trends. I hope you enjoyed the conversation today with Chris Hemeter, the managing director of Thayer Ventures. I thought it was the perfect way to kick off the captains of industry theme. He certainly, as you heard from my conversation, is the epitome of a captain of industry and had so much valuable advice to share with startups and anyone in the travel industry that wants to understand how the VC, the venture capital market, works, given their incredibly successful track record. So thank you again, chris, for joining the podcast and for more information, check out thayerventurescom. I also connected with one of Chris's colleagues, mike Scott. He talked about the next generation of. Mike Scott is one of those individuals and they invested in a company called Nuite and it's a really impressive company that has just raised nearly $50 million to scale. It's focused very much on leveraging AI to build out APIs the kind of backend which you heard Chris talk about as well and they are going to be presenting at our AI summit at the end of October. October 28th and 29th is the conference. You can find out more information at TravelTrendsPodcastcom. They're going to be presenting on the 28th, so I definitely encourage you to check them out.
Speaker 2:But thanks again to Chris, to Mike and the entire team at Thayer Ventures Cara as well, who's been on our podcast before, and our next series is going to be a continuation from one of our most popular deep dives that we've ever done on Travel Trends, which was in-destination experiences. We had two amazing guests to close out season five. We had Joe Pine and Jake Halpert Joe Pine, the author, and Jake Halpert from the Transformational Travel Institute, and they had such an impressive story to tell that we're going to bring them back at the end of season six. But it also inspired us, with our partner Pano Ricard, to revisit that theme At the end of season six. But it also inspired us, with our partner, pano Ricard, to revisit that theme at the end of summer, if you're in the Northern hemisphere, and September going into October, as people are still traveling in the shoulder season. We wanted to continue with the in-destination experiences.
Speaker 2:So next week you're gonna hear from the founder of Meow Wolf, vince Katalubic, and he is one of the most inspirational people I've ever seen on stage. And if you haven't heard about meow wolf, you need to know about this company because literally they're the next disney in the making. They'll likely be acquired by disney, but I hope that they remain independent for as long as possible, given their creative inspiration and the venues that they are creating in many american cities and hopefully around the world. So you can learn a bit more about meow wolf before, but, but tune in for that conversation next week. And then we're also going to have Laurel, who is the VP of marketing at Viator. She's very much a captain of industry, so each of these themes we're going to have within that deep dive, the captains of industry, and Laurel is exactly that. If you look at the results of Viator, she's been one of those key people that has led to that continued success.
Speaker 2:And then we're going to have shown from Geotourist, so a great three-part series coming up on in-destination experiences. So make sure you're subscribed on the streaming platform of your choice and don't forget we do post clips and highlights from all of our episodes. So if you want to see more from Chris Hemeter, be sure to check out YouTube, linkedin and Instagram. Have a good rest of the week. Until next time, safe travels.
