00:18:31 · Constantin Schröder
[00:18:31] S2: Yes. So we we saw... For us, it was a little bit different to what what Dean just described, think. We scaled the company to quite a sizable sizable business in in two years. Think we're doing around 15 to 20,000,000 g b... GBV top line. And we saw that we were struggling on many parts of managing that business basically. And so we stopped growth. We focused on what actually is going on in the business, on the processes, on the things that are driving the business. And we started kind of really in a very detailed manner kind of pinning down to the really the ultimate last process, how the business is running and mapped all these processes from the starting point of acquiring a guest or acquiring a company, integrating a company, a guest staying in your apartment, to actually the guest checking out, or you having a fully fully running company that you acquired. I think so we mapped that in a really really detailed fashion, and we basically started looking at what are the big drivers that that make this business work successfully and have the biggest impact on on guests at the end of the day. We have compared to to Dean and Dan a lot more kind of exposure on the service quality that we actually deliver, because we distribute on Airbnb, on booking.com, and these guests leave reviews after staying with us. And so they really look at how is their stable, and how is communication being cleanliness, all these things we get rated on these things. And so we said most importantly, we have to deliver service quality to guests, and that is the biggest kind of driver to it. And what we did there, we looked at traditional businesses, we looked at our business, and we saw that communication nearly in all these businesses was the main reason why guests would leave bad reviews. And so what we did last year, we built a chat agent that I think is... There are some companies actually focused on just doing that and selling that. We built it for us internally, and I think it's probably the best version you can get out there, which supports our guest communication team and took away around 80, 90% of the workload that they have day by day.
00:20:45 · Constantin Schröder, John Reynolds, Din Bisavak
And so that was the first kind of way we took this AI injection and we built it and built the first kind of internal product for us that we could easily also sell organically, but that has really helped us kind of to deliver higher quality to our guests and to help us also to become a very lean and focused team with team members that actually focus on not the manual work but the work that creates value. And so that was the first thing we did internally. What we also did is a very robust database architecture from the day when we acquire a company and all the data that that company has to once that business is live and kind of fully integrated, that is a really, really crucial step for us to not lose data and to not create chaos. And also for us it's extremely important that we have everything in one place, that team members can access data at a snip of a button that we can see performance of the businesses that we've acquired really well, and we don't have chaos so far as this single source of truth and really kind of strong database and data architecture is what we've been working on in the last couple of months. And now we are step by step building a AI infused ticketing system that basically covers all the aspects of the guest journey and the owner journey and supports our team members and turn. It's something I think that Dina's been working on already and is a step ahead of us, I think, so far already with the ticketing tool they've built. [00:22:17] S0: Can you touch [00:22:18] S1: on John Can you touch just I can quick Go on. [00:22:20] S0: Go on. Yes. I can
00:22:20 · John Reynolds, Din Bisavak, Dan Lifshits
[00:22:20] S0: Go on. Yes. I can [00:22:21] S1: quickly jump in. I think there's one philosophical distinction that I would like to make. Because we keep kind of throwing around the word of... Or the phrase of AI injection. And, I mean, I can only speak on myself, but I think the others would agree. We don't see ourselves as kind of a roll up company that builds software to make their businesses better. We see ourselves as a software and product company who happens to have kind of the go to market of a roll up, at least for now. And that might change in the future, as Dan said, but at least I think when we talk about Buena and for the others here, I would really like to go away from the AI injection because that's not how the business actually works. It's not we buy a company and we introduce one feature that has some AI to it. But my time and most of the time of the people in the company is spent on building the best possible software and product for currently property management and, you know, not thinking about kind of from the upside first and then building a product, but building from thinking from building the product to to the upside after. [00:23:38] S0: Can can you can you all talk about a bit about how supportive or not supportive your VC backers are about this model too? Can we talk about that, Dan? [00:23:47] S3: This Dan or Dean Dan? [00:23:50] S0: Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:50 · John Reynolds, Dan Lifshits
[00:23:50] S0: Yeah. Yeah. [00:23:51] S3: I think that kind of one of our largest equity investors to date is General Catalyst, as kind of is known. And I think that kind of General Catalyst has been, to some extent, the kind of ambassadors of this kind of strategy across the globe, especially in The US, but I think in Europe in general. And I think that they understand very well what it takes to operate in between this kind of your typical VC world and your typical PE world. So I think that they've been probably one of the best partners we could have had for the journey so far. Again, the gentlemen around the table do not have General Catalyst as an investor. So, actually, maybe they can compare and say that kind of how other VC is kind of equally good as well. But very, very supportive partner, understanding really well the playbooks of kind of digitization of the business with AI as well as kind of how to implement some of the kind of roll up and M and A playbooks into kind of diligence of the deals, remain very diligent on kind of what you buy, how you buy, financing playbooks between kind of balancing debt and equity. So I think that these are some of the things that we need the help with, especially on the kind of this PM and a front because we're not coming from there. We're rather kind of product people and operators. And General Catalyst has been a huge help in that. [00:25:09] S0: Have your VC backers been equally as supportive, Constantine?
00:25:09 · John Reynolds, Din Bisavak
[00:25:09] S0: Have your VC backers been equally as supportive, Constantine? [00:25:14] S1: I think I think I would put it more broadly. I think there's kind of two types of VCs in the market for businesses like ours right now. There are VCs who, you know, believe it's a roll up with AI injection. And then there's VCs who believe we are product companies who choose the most efficient go to market strategy to scale quickly and efficiently that exists. And I mean, I can tell from my experience, I think when we raised our first round a few years ago, most VCs tended to be kind of in the first camp, and people just didn't understand yet where this could lead. I think today, the the the landscape is really evolving. I think GC, General Catalyst, was, as Dan said, kind of they are the ambassadors of that strategy, and I think they were the first ones to really start making big bets on that strategy. But there is other funds like Thrive, mean, GV in our case, and I know that every other kind of tier one big investor is actively looking into the thesis and actively looking into the strategy and thinking how to deploy their money best into into probably one of our companies. [00:26:31] S0: Constantine, you're not in there. Go on. You go.
00:26:31 · John Reynolds, Constantin Schröder, Dan Lifshits
[00:26:31] S0: Constantine, you're not in there. Go on. You go. [00:26:33] S2: Yeah. I would I would fully agree. I think the the market is like exactly like Dean said. There's two different types of VC, and a couple of a handful of them have understood the thesis. And I think that's that's what I saw when I... We we just quite recently did a series a fundraise. Still to this day, there are some VCs, I think, that are struggling to understand kind of the potential of of what we're doing here. But it's evolving, and I think that's that's the good thing to focus on. We've we've raised our series a from Eurazeo, which we also saw as one of the European funds to have super high conviction on AI. First of all, like backing some of the the best foundational companies, foundation model companies, and then also quickly tapping into this thesis, and they've been super, super supportive. And if I think with their very broad kind of funds from not only a venture capital arm, but a growth arm, more private equity focused a debt arm, and also an infrastructure fund that they have. I think they cover the full life cycle and are faster, the perfect partner, and and all the steps that we that we're going to take in the next years. [00:27:45] S0: Why would a why would a VC struggling to understand it? They just didn't like the model then. [00:27:48] S3: I think the challenge there... Yeah. Go go on,