Looking Back: The GetYourGuide Journey on CNN Money

Tobias Rein, co-founder and principal engineer, sat down in our Zürich office with Urs Gredig of CNN Money Switzerland, for their Executive Talk series. The conversation focused on the past ten years leading to GetYourGuide becoming one of the rare Swiss unicorns and what the future holds for us.

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Watch the full interview here or read our highlights below:

On GetYourGuide’s ten year journey:

Looking back, would you have ever imagined getting to where you are now?

Tobi: No. Definitely not. If you see ten years ago and now, it’s this big step. But it’s a journey, right? A lot of things just came naturally. It was all step by step by step. It was a lot of hard work at the beginning from us, the founders, and now the employees have brought us all the way here.

It hasn’t been an overnight success. You struggled quite a bit from time to time, correct?

Tobi: There were maybe four bookings in the first year, and three of them were from Johannes [Reck’s] mom. At the beginning, the idea started as students guiding students around. It was Couchsurfing for tours and activities. This idea clearly failed. We needed to learn that the hard way. We were very, very close to giving up after the first six months.

Then a few things happened. Investors approached us and this gave us a signal that, ok, there is interest. And also professional guides approached us looking for a way to do business online. In the travel industry, flights and hotels were on the way to being online completely and tours and activities were just the next thing. We were in the right place at the right time in this niche.

On dividing responsibility between the founders:

You have a very unique way of sharing the responsibility. Is that part of your success? That everyone knows what they’re best at?

Tobi: Yes. That’s definitely part of it. That started in the early days where Johannes and Tao, the business people, had this idea and they reached out to the people that had the skills they were missing. From this day on, it was very clear who was doing what. I think trust was definitely one big component of that. We trusted Johannes and Tao to bring the best people on board, and on the other side, they also trusted us with the technology.

On company culture:

Are there any principles you want to bring across to the team? Is it let’s have fun together? Or a working environment where you have fun sometimes?

Tobi: It needs to be both, right? I think the right word is ‘passion’. If you are passionate, you have fun and you will also deliver great results. We do have core values and passion is one of them. It’s the one I like the most. If people are passionate they are capable of doing much more than they think.

Are you afraid that those values are at risk of losing their meaning the bigger you get?

Tobi: I think how we run the organization, no. In the tech organization, for example, we have very small mission teams. And these teams are self-contained. They have all the functions that they need to ship a product. And in these mission teams, they should still live up to these values. Each team can be a small startup in itself.

On the future of the company:

Where do you see the company in ten years? Is there an ultimate goal?

Tobi: We want to be the platform where you can book an amazing experience, and it always works. Even if the guide doesn’t show up, we will make sure you have a great experience. That’s the ultimate vision. How that looks in practice, I’m not sure. It could be augmented reality, virtual reality, there are so many things out there. We just need to make sure we’re there.

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