Bill Cilluffo, Partner and Head of Early Stage Investments, sits down with Wander CEO John Andrew Entwistle to discuss young entrepreneurship, workplace culture and revolutionizing the vacation rental experience.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
You're listening to the FinTech Thought Leaders
podcast from QED Investors.
You're deep dive into the worldof venture capital and
financial services with today'sdigital disruptors.
Qed is a global venture capitalfirm focused on investing in
FinTech companies all the wayfrom pre-seed to IPO.
Fintech Thought Leaders bringstogether the most talented
entrepreneurs tackling today'sbiggest problems.
(00:30):
If you're looking to learn moreabout what motivates our
founders and team members tosucceed, you're in the right
place.
Hello and welcome to theFinTech Thought Leaders podcast.
I'm Bill Salufo, head of EarlyStage Investment at QED
Investors.
Today on the podcast, I'mexcited to be joined by John
Andrew Entwistle, founder andCEO of Wander.
John Andrew, welcome to thepodcast.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Thank you so much for having me.
It's great to be here andtalking with you, obviously.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Nice.
I'm looking at John Andrew athis apartment in Sausalito and
looking out his back window atone of the most beautiful views
I've ever seen.
If I look like I'm ogling you,it's your view that I'm
incredibly jealous of.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Listen, I'll take it.
I did my hair this morning.
I'll take the compliment.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Nice, we're going to get into Wander a little bit
later in the podcast, which isthe company that you're
currently CEO of.
Just to orient the audience, Iwonder if you can give us about
a 60-second elevator pitch onwhat Wander is and what you guys
do.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I think a lot of people have rented a vacation
rental it was, say, airbnb orVRBO and had a bad experience,
whether it be the place didn'tlook like the photos, or the
beds were uncomfortable or theinternet was bad.
The whole idea with Wander isto verticalize the vacation
rental industry to really ownthe distribution and the
(01:47):
operations and effectively haveall of the homes be consistent
the same beds, linens, views,amenities, those different
pieces.
Obviously there's a lot ofverticalization behind that
infrastructure, from ownershipto operations and beyond.
The real idea is for thecustomer to have this really
incredible consistent experiencewhere you can go to wandercom,
(02:09):
book any of the properties andknow that you're going to have
an incredible time.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
No, that's awesome.
I've certainly heard from many,many people how amazing that
experience is.
I keep looking to book my trip,but I spent so much time
overseas I haven't been able toget to one of them domestically
yet, but I'm looking forward tochecking it out.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
We'll fix the overseas problem soon.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
You can be in charge of launching our international
markets, that's perfect, butlook, as a start, I'd love to
get into your entrepreneurialjourney.
Wander's not your first rodeo.
It's either your third orfourth, if I'm not mistaken.
I believe you actually startedyour first company at age 13.
I'd love to go all the way backand hear about what that
company was.
But, more importantly, what isit that really drew you to
(02:48):
entrepreneurship at such a youngage?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, it's actually a pretty deep question.
I was raised by a single dadlawyer.
When I was pretty young Iwalked downstairs and I saw him
working at his computer.
It was like five in the morning.
I'd woken up in the middle ofthe night.
All of a sudden it reallyclicked for me the sacrifices
that he was making and watchinghim work to support me and my
(03:10):
sister and then somehow take usto school and then go to work
during the day and then do itall over again at night.
I think a lot of it was like Iwanted to work like dad,
candidly, it's like.
Then I was like okay, well, Ineed a computer.
I built my own, which he wassupportive of.
Then from there you have thisyoung kid who has access to the
(03:31):
internet and all the thingsaround it.
I just became incrediblypassionate about software and
design and product.
In terms of that first company,I think a lot of young
entrepreneurs started with videogames.
The first thing I did wasdownload a few different video
games and so excited to exploreand have fun and all that fun
stuff.
(03:52):
Very quickly I wanted to playwith other people.
Of course, back then you had togo and set up servers for
everyone to go and join.
Then you get exposed to theearly cloud and hardware Before
you know it.
It had a little company thatwas really all designed around
hosting and allowing people toplay together and those
(04:13):
different aspects.
That was that first company wasreally around hosting game
servers and allowing people toplay together, obviously built a
lot of infrastructure aroundthat as well and exposes you in
the early days to a lot ofreally cool dynamics of the
internet.
Yeah, that first company didfairly well.
We were doing low six figuresin revenue.
(04:34):
What was joke?
I was not focused on myhomework at all.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
That was probably the right call, judging by that
number.
You had a little nonchalantstatement in there that you
passed over, but I've got to goback to so age 13,.
Hey, I wanted a computer, so Ijust decided to build one.
Probably not something thatmost 13-year-olds are thinking
about.
How did you have the confidenceor decide to jump into that?
Is it something you had beendoing as a hobby before, or was
(05:01):
this just completely out of theblue?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
You can't only be.
Building a computer is not thatdifficult.
So to any parents who arelistening if your kid wants a
new computer, definitely try andget the parts together for them
to build it themselves.
I think definitely with adulthelp it's pretty easy.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Probably not with my adult help.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, I shouldn't say easy, I don't want to offend
anyone.
No, it's really doable.
Anyone can do it.
For me.
I wasn't allowed to play videogames growing up.
I wasn't allowed to watchcartoons or those different
things.
I'm a super strict householdsense, more of the sense of hey,
we live in a beautiful world,go out and explore it, that kind
of vibe.
And so I had grown up tinkeringwith RC cars.
(05:47):
That's how I got my exposure toelectronics, was building RC
cars and the motors and all thatfun stuff.
And so it was like when Iwanted to access the internet, I
already had this coreunderstanding of components and
how to put something togetherand, I think more so just an
ethos of if you don't know it,look it up, follow the manuals,
(06:09):
read, ask people.
There's a lot of greatinformation out there to
discover, and so I think that'swhat led me to it at a young age
and, of course, also anincredibly supportive pop.
It's like before I had anymoney, someone bought those
initial computer componentswhich he gets massive credit for
.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
You had this video game business.
Sounds like that was doingpretty well.
But flashing forward a fewyears you actually started your
first really substantial company.
That was less out of a hobbycalled Coder.
I wonder if you can just talk alittle bit about that journey,
of how you came upon that and alittle bit of the Coder story.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
So I had enrolled in high school online really to
spend time with my pop.
He would travel all around theworld trying cases and beyond
and I figured like why not?
Which also gave me a lot offree time, because I was able to
do years worth of school workin like 30 days.
It was really useful.
And so during that time, me andmy co-founders, we started
(07:03):
Coder, which essentially movesthe development environment
where software engineer writescode to an organization's cloud
infrastructure, really with thevision of bringing, like, the
productivity of a startup to theenterprise right, basically
like enterprise security andspeed and all that sort of fun
stuff.
And so I started that companywhen I was 17, 18.
So still in high school, and wewanted to get an office, so we
(07:28):
moved down to Austin.
I was in New York, kyle was inSaskatchewan, canada, which is
very far away, and Amar was inAlabama and moved down to Austin
to start that company.
The product was incrediblytechnical, very difficult to
build, took a lot of time andengineering power, but when we
launched we saw incrediblereception and we also at that
(07:50):
point had a small team and we'recertainly also running out of
money.
So I'll never forget being like18, 19, cold emailing VCs you
know it didn't even have aLinkedIn at the time saying like
hey, I have like this companyand this product and it's
starting to grow and like it hasa ton of potential.
Can I please pitch you?
I think a lot of earlyentrepreneurs sort of wonder,
(08:12):
like how do I get in contactwith VCs, how do I raise money,
like those different pieces, andcertainly easier, like if you
can get warm intros or otherwise.
But you know, one thing thathappened as that company started
to grow was that like peoplejust started to take notice
because your cold emails now hadmetrics and progress.
I didn't have a resume, but mycompany and how awesome it was
(08:34):
was starting to be that resume.
We went on to raise our seed.
That was led by Redpoint andUncork, along with Founders Fund
joining and a few others.
And then shortly after, weraised our Series A and then
eventually our Series B and nowCodeServe is one of the most
popular open source projects inthe world and our enterprise
(08:54):
product powers dozens of Fortune500 companies.
So if you've ever streamed a TVshow, a lot of them write their
software on Coder.
If you've ever sent a wiretransfer, a lot of the banks
build their software on Coder.
So yeah, ran that company asCEO from 18 to 23 and was an
incredible experience.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
That's amazing.
So your first business reallystemmed out of a hobby, right,
you played video games, youwanted to play people and you
know, take a few steps forwardand it becomes a business.
This one seems extremelydifferent.
Many business ideas come out ofpersonal experience.
I don't know if you hadpersonal experience from your
first startup.
How did you even come up withthe idea of doing this so?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
the original idea for Coder was actually basically a
consumer ID, right.
It was like we wanted to writecode in the cloud.
That was like the whole idea,and the same way that you use
Google Docs to edit whatever anessay or whatever else we wanted
it to be so that you could openyour browser and code in the
browser, which is now a likethere are lots of products that
(09:54):
do that.
But back then, like therewasn't anything.
As we launched that product,what we saw was we turned on
monetization.
We had like 60,000 users.
We had just raised our seed andno one wanted to pay.
I think we made like $20.
And I immediately told the teamalongside my co-founders and
(10:14):
said guys, this isn't going towork.
We have 60,000 users.
This is the best way tomonetize.
Like no one's willing to payfor it, like the product has
issues but it's relativelystable.
We're going to have to pivotwhich, after building a product
for two years and having a teamand just raising a seed and like
you feel like you're on top ofthe world.
People think you're a littlecrazy and it certainly feels
that way to you as the founder,but that's what we decided to do
(10:38):
and with it we created our opensource project code server.
We released that alongside,effectively, an enterprise page
that said if you're a companyand you like this technology,
you know, sign up and give us acall and code server.
When we released that,basically the engineering
community was ecstatic.
It became the fastest growingproject ever and with it
(11:00):
thousands of companies, and Iwas on the phone with all these
massive Fortune 500 companieslike pretending that coder was
bigger than it was and liketrying to understand exactly
what they wanted and eventuallywe built that product for them
and obviously they ended somepretty massive initial contracts
To answer your question interms of like, how did you come
(11:21):
up with the idea?
You know it started almost witha like technical vision of the
future and inevitability, likewe thought that software
development was eventually goingto move to the cloud, but the
end business model radicallyshifted as the market sort of
told us what to do.
No, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
I mean it's an interesting flavor on a freemium
model, right Like come up withthis open source product to get
all the engineers hooked andthen when the engineers have
jobs and the companies need it,then you can monetize that way.
It's a pretty cool little hackthere.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, the business model is called OpenCore, which
obviously we did not know at thetime, but it's pretty popular.
There's a lot of like big opensource projects like HashiCorp
and various databases etc.
That follow that model.
Such a successful company.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
You talked about all the different people on it.
What made you make the call toleave coder, decide to not be
CEO, and we'll talk about whatcomes next with Wander here
shortly.
But what caused you to?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
take that leap.
I had been running the companyfor the last five plus years and
had a pair of two otherincredible co-founders and
ultimately, at different stagesin the company, you kind of have
to look at what the companyneeds and who's potentially best
to do it, and we made thedecision together that it was
going to make most sense for myco-founder, amar, to step into
(12:36):
the role and for me to exploreand see what was next.
And it's always like adifficult moment right when you
step away from something you'vebuilt for so long.
If I think about it, I thinkbuilding that company was like
40% of my life.
Let's say that you becomeconscious at 16.
So then it would be like thevast majority.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
You started a company at 13.
So we'll rewind the clockfurther for you.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
It's always difficult but like, at the end of the day
, right, you do what you thinkis the best job possible, and
it's always a transition.
I think anyone who's gonethrough it will probably
understand why I'm havingdifficulty putting words around
it, but it was a really lovelything.
I stayed on the board for abouta year afterwards and Wander
started very quickly after, andso I had my hands full.
(13:24):
But yeah, coder was anincredible experience.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Is there a way to point to the single hardest part
about it, or is that toochallenging?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
I'll never forget my last all hands.
I knew that I wasn't even goingto be able to think through it
live, so I ended up just beinglike, okay, I'm going to
memorize exactly what I'm goingto say, because you see all
these faces and people who youdeeply love.
I think that's one thing for meas a founder that I don't think
people truly understand, is itlike?
(13:53):
I feel such a sense ofprotection and love for the team
, for our shareholders, for thecompany and the product, for our
customers, and so it's justdifficult.
So I memorized that one andblacked out and went through the
spiel.
But yeah, that was probably themost difficult piece.
And then, of course, after whenyour phone stops buzzing and
(14:16):
email stopped flying in andthere's just silence, is a
pretty trippy experience.
And then you're like I'mstarting from scratch.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
You mentioned that you first started playing around
with electronics through RCcars.
I know that electronics wasn'tthe only thing to stem from that
.
The car piece became a prettyimportant part of your life.
I'd love to share with thelisteners your auto journey and
kind of what that's all about.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
It's definitely, I think, something that's less
covered.
I have a passion for vehiclesand motors and going fast and
when I was a kid I think Rick,around like 15 or so my pop took
me to this racing school out inArizona to kind of like get my
first taste of not just likedriving a car but also like how
(14:59):
to do it responsibly and like ona track.
And in a setting like that Iabsolutely fell in love with
racing cars and that whole world.
And at the end of their lessonsthey had a car called the
Formula Mazda, which is aFormula car but powered by a
Mazda engine.
And that's when I fell in lovewith Formula racing.
Very quickly ended up joining ateam out of Dallas and so raced
(15:24):
Formula cars, formula Mazdas,all across the country in
amateur races and ended upfinishing second in nationals in
my second year doing that andthen moved up to Formula four so
the entry into the Formula oneseries and ended up joining this
incredible father son team andraced with them.
(15:46):
And I raced with them up untilI ended up breaking my back,
racing at the Indianapolis MotorSpeedway.
And at that point, of coursealso Coder was like happening
right, like I was still buildingCoder.
So it was like 17 about to turn18, or maybe I just turned 18.
And after I broke my back twoweeks later I was with my back
brace setting up the desk setupslike you know, surviving on
(16:13):
like whatever the rest of theprescribed like pain killers
were that like the hospital gaveme, like setting up the office
for the team, and so that wassort of like my racing journey.
I still like raced cars afterthe back healed up would race
like trophy trucks down in Bajaand that kind of cool stuff
certainly got much more dialedback and I never viewed it as my
(16:34):
future, like I was going tobecome the next like Max
Verstappen or something whichwas.
I appreciate it.
I'm glad I had that foresightat a young age but certainly
made the most of it, which waspretty cool.
And obviously you get to learna lot of other things about life
Beyond just business.
You learn about competitivenessand team dynamics and you know
a whole different world and, ofcourse, characters like how do
(16:56):
you deal with this?
You know 50 year old man who'slike pissed that you beat him,
like those different things werelike really interesting.
But yeah, I was extraordinarilygrateful and it was a really
wonderful childhood and got tosee a lot of the country, which
was cool.
It's fascinating doing thisseries.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
How many of our entrepreneurs have pretty cool
background stories that you justdon't really know about.
Are you a huge Formula One fantoday or is it kind of hard,
given that you know you were init and, you know, ended with a
probably not so pleasantexperience?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I'm a fan of Formula One.
I think they've made like thecars and the tracks quite a bit
safer.
But I do think, though, thathow dangerous it is really isn't
properly shown to the audience,and I think people forget that.
I think nowadays a death ispretty rare, but you flash back
even 20, 30 years and peoplewere dying every season.
(17:48):
And of course, the other piecesis, these drivers are trained
to not crash in a way thatthey're going to kill themselves
, which I know sounds weird, butit's like they're going to try
and hold on to that car as longas they can, and so I do wish
that they showed that piece likejust how dangerous it is.
So those young kids like mewatching who think they're
(18:08):
invincible are sort of remindedthat they're not.
But yeah, I certainly loveFormula One, the engineering
behind it, the team dynamics,the logistics of taking this 500
person team all across theworld it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Super cool, super cool.
You had left Coder.
You were kind of thinking aboutwhat to do next.
You know you made it sound likeWander came pretty quickly, but
that's a very, very differentbusiness than cloud coding
infrastructure.
What is the origin story aroundWander?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
So after I stepped down, I'd went to this cabin out
in Colorado to sort of get awaythink about the world, you know
, quarter life crisis and when Igot there the place just didn't
look like the photos.
Beds were uncomfortable,internet was bad.
And so I opened up my littlelike notepad and put the idea
for Wander next to all the otherideas that were not similar at
(18:57):
all and Candidly had nointention of building the
company, like you know, had theidea and closed the notebook.
And then you know the rest ofthat week, which is how long I
wanted to give myself totransition, you know, I was
supposed to just relax, read abook, get my head straight, but
the idea for Wander just endedup keeping me up at night, like
(19:19):
I couldn't help but think aboutit and want to work on it.
And so, you know, after I leftthat cabin I just started
working and thinking about allthe reasons why this company was
going to die and like why notto start it?
At that point I wasn't ignorantto this idea that whatever
company I started next, I wouldspend eight plus years on at the
(19:39):
minimum, just to you know, andall the torture that comes with
building a company, and so youwant to make sure that it's
right, like you want to makesure that it could work, and you
also want to make sure it'ssomething that you want to do.
And so I spent about threemonths working on the idea,
crafting it, thinking throughthe different models.
What would happen if plan Afailed?
What's you know the fall back?
What are all the you knowadjacencies?
(20:01):
Because at that point too, Ialso wasn't ignorant to the fact
that your first idea inside ofthe space is tends not to be the
one that becomes like themulti-billion dollar outcome.
Right, there's always like thatlittle adjustment that takes
place.
And so, yeah, just reached thepoint where I loved every single
second of working on it.
I felt like happy again and Icouldn't help but start the
(20:26):
company and was really fortunatethat a lot of people had seen
me work and seen who I was andwanted to do it all over again.
And so we raised our pre-seedand seed that was led by Red
Point, who led Coder Seed inseries A, and so got to work
with Alex Bard over there allover again and it's wild, he's
been like on my boards since Iwas like 18.
(20:46):
So it's like, yeah, it's likethe story continues.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
It's always good when you do one startup and the firm
wants to lead your next one.
That's always a great sign.
Yeah, so look, you talked aboutalmost knowing up front that
whatever you came up with thefirst time wasn't going to be
the exact thing that you woundup doing.
I'm assuming that when youstarted the company, you did not
assume interest rates weregoing to go from zero to five
percent in the matter of acouple months and change the
(21:11):
world of real estate sodramatically.
You know, I wonder if you canjust talk through a little bit
of from the original idea towhere you are now.
You know how was that impactedby the crazy landscape that you
wound up building this into?
Speaker 2 (21:23):
A lot of people who have a heavy real estate
background.
They sort of have the contextof like how wild the current
transition and times are versus.
For me, it's like I'm just likeOK, like this must just be
normal.
You have like 300 year oldbanks collapsing and all this
sort of crazy stuff.
When we started Wander, onedynamic that exists with
marketplaces is called the coldstart problem, right where you
(21:47):
have to have supply to havedemand and you have to have
demand to have supply, andtherefore you end up in this
cold start problem.
And so the idea with Wander wascould we kickstart that demand
by effectively owning our firstfew assets, right building on
balance sheet, and what wouldthat look like?
And as we were exploring thatmodel, obviously we were in a
(22:09):
historically low interest rateenvironment and the capital
markets were far more homebentthan they are today, obviously,
and so that was an avenue thatwe were able to pursue, and I
think we were able to pursue itpretty far, not just beyond our
first few assets, but call itour first 15, which, candidly,
was, I think, although likedifficult to scale, really
(22:35):
incredible for honing in theactual product, building out the
underlying operations, thosedifferent pieces, because we
understood not just what it waslike to be the platform and the
distribution, but we alsounderstood what it was like to
be the actual property owner andthe operator and all those
different components that comewith it.
As interest rates began to rise, obviously, like it becomes
(22:57):
less feasible, the cost ofcapital begins to rise and at
that point we had already had abrand, we had, I think, over
150,000 users, and it was reallytime to ramp up scale, and so
we began to explore adding thirdparty properties into that mix
and, candidly, I wasn'texpecting the reception that we
(23:17):
saw there.
I think in November we're ontrack to add like 10 new
properties, which is prettyincredible for us, given how old
the company is.
And so things transition andchange.
But as a founder, you sort ofhave to look at what's happening
.
Is the ground shiftingunderneath your feet, what's
working, what's not, and,candidly, have a little bit of
courage and be unafraid to makethose adjustments.
(23:39):
I think you know everyone wantsyou to like, grab on, to like
an idea and like run it into theground and it's like.
No, the purpose is to build atruly valuable and important
company and there are going tobe adjustments and changes along
the way.
The pivot may not be as drasticas going from a video game into
Slack or Instagram, going from,like you know, a hotel booking
(24:02):
company or whatever it was, intoInstagram, but there are always
going to be little pivots alongthe way.
I actually think that everyfounder knows that.
Who made it to the end?
And so that's the one thingthat I would say to like any
founders listening, is that ifwhat you're doing isn't working
or things are changing, likepivots and adjustments and
evolutions are not a bad thing.
(24:22):
I'm sure in your seat you'veseen hundreds of them along the
way, and the good companies tendto do it very well and in a way
where they don't skip a beat.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah, I mean Nigel likes to joke that out of 200
investment securities made, twoever have sort of hit their
numbers the whole time straightthrough, and I'm pretty sure
even those who have had, youknow, lots of movements and
changes along the way.
So it's probably literally 100%if you actually get underneath
the covers.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah, I'm sure if you asked those founders there
would be like mid-quarter panicsthat took place.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Your original idea that led toWander was hey, I stayed in
Airbnb.
This Airbnb kind of suckedrelative to my expectations.
So one of the early days ofWander's, hey, I'm going to own
the inventory so I can controlit and I can do whatever.
Now you're going to a bit of athird party thing.
Does that bring back the Airbnbproblem?
How do you deal with that?
(25:15):
I mean, is it still kind of thecore idea?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
I mean, that sounds like a pretty important change,
given the origin story of thefirm, the key dynamic was taking
control over the underlyingasset right, this idea that,
when Wander would come in, thatwe controlled everything end to
end, right from the furnishingsto the beds, the operations of
the property, the maintenance,all those different pieces, to,
(25:40):
effectively, the point where theonly difference was where the
underlying real estate capitalcame from.
And so in that context, when webegan to test it, guests didn't
even know that these propertieswere owned by a third party,
which makes sense, obviously,because you know, if it's
branded like a wander and lookslike a wander and everything's
the same, who owns the actualreal estate on paper, it doesn't
(26:02):
matter to the end customer.
What was really cool, thoughand I think something that isn't
realized is that Wander'sstrategy of building a brand and
building our own distributionresults in pretty dramatic
outperformance relative to thebroader market, very similar to
sort of the big hotel chains howthey outperform, you know, some
mom and pop hotel and thatdynamic we found people were
(26:28):
like, willing to pay for withinthe short-term rental world, and
so that's what I think hasallowed us to scale and start
scaling as quickly as we have,is that we can very quickly show
that Wander leads to a, youknow, 30 plus percent B in
occupancy, 30 percent plus B inADR and obviously in terms of
like your gross revenue on a T12, that's pretty meaningful.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah, that's awesome.
How many properties do you haveon your platform now?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
It's changing pretty rapidly now.
We'll finish November with over40, and we're targeting 50 by
the end of the year, which isexciting.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
That's awesome because as a vacation brand,
obviously the broader the depthis, the more different people
you'll attract, so there'sprobably a nice positive
flywheel too as you get thatnumber up.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Oh, the flywheel that's starting to kick off is
something that I hoped for andprobably was in like some like
in the thesis that a lot of likeVCs had when, like, we started
the company.
But seeing it start to reallykick off now is pretty
remarkable.
We have guests who stay in NewYork who then go to Malibu,
guests who stay in Calistogathen go to Cave Creek and all of
(27:33):
a sudden, as that networkbuilds, you have this like
flywheel of people justexploring all these destinations
.
They have their accounts soyou're remarketing and
distributing to them.
It's really speeding up.
I'm very grateful, like thepace that Wander's now operating
at and the clarity of thepotential we have.
I recognize how rare it is andI'm super grateful to be
building it Very cool.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Well, very early on in this chat we talked about
international and sort of yourdesire for international
expansion.
Wander, if you can talk aboutsort of your views on that?
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Wander, as a travel company, by definition, has to
become a global business rightIf it's to reach its full
potential.
And when you look at thebroader short-term rental market
, you have Europe and Japan andAustralia and just all these
incredible places with existinginventory, with existing
operations and, of course, auser base that's already
(28:25):
traveling to and experiencing it.
And so the idea for Wander tobecome a global company it's
sort of I mean, that's why ourlogo is the globe was because I
wanted to represent, like, ourglobal ambitions as early as
possible, which I think when wehad three properties was less
obvious than today and hopefullycertainly in a year from now
will be very obvious.
(28:45):
As you're well aware, there area lot of complications going
internationally, from legal,regulatory, even, just like
expense management team, allthose different pieces.
But the network effects andflywheel that can happen when
Wander is a known brand inEurope and Europeans are coming
to America or in Asia orotherwise, becomes pretty
(29:09):
significant pretty quickly.
And obviously there's quite abit of travel and tourism in
those markets as well.
And when you look at the bighotel brands, they'll have
locations internationally and soWander will certainly follow
suit.
It's something I'm excited for.
I also love the branding that'sattached to it and like Wander
Australia, wander Japan, wanderEurope, like it just kind of
(29:31):
flows and feels really good.
So, yeah, something I'm excitedfor.
But I also recognize that whenyou expand internationally, you
have to do so from a position ofincredible strength.
Otherwise you end up realizingthat it's more expensive than it
is and you don't have theresources to finish it.
But fortunately, I have a lotof smart people on the cap table
who have experienceinternationally, so I look
(29:52):
forward to using it and usingyour opinions on that.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Dynamite.
I love it, I love it, it wasfunny.
I was having dinner with one ofour former portfolio CEOs who
had an exit a couple of yearsago and he's actually living in
Barcelona and he was telling meBarcelona past New York as the
most visited tourist destinationin the world last year, which
kind of hard for me to believe.
It's so much smaller of a citybut good to see international
travel up and running again andit took a big dive during the
(30:15):
COVID year, so it's great to see.
So look, if you look out a yearor two years, five years into
the future for Wander, you'vealready talked about one major
change, which is, hey, I startedas a, I'm going to balance
sheet these properties and nowI'm mostly focused on
non-balance sheeted propertiesas a way to scale in a more
capital efficient way.
You've talked aboutinternational expansion.
(30:36):
Are there other things on thehorizon or do you think those
two are enough and you'll befocused on those?
Speaker 2 (30:42):
No, there are certainly other things.
I mean, one of the things thatI enjoy the most is thinking
about the future and all theproducts and things that you can
build.
I realize that for a lot offounders, you're constantly
being told to focus andotherwise, but for me, thinking
about the future brings me joy,and thinking about new products
and otherwise, so I always makesure to allocate a little bit of
(31:03):
time to it.
One of the really cool thingsthat we just launched is the
ability to talk directly withour concierge inside of Wander
systems, through the website,through the app, those different
pieces, and we've already begunto add these large language
models, so the concierge canthen say generate responses and
(31:24):
all that sort of cool stuff.
The next iteration, which we'relaunching in Q1, and it's funny,
I'll say Q1 or Q2 so the teamdoesn't kill me for setting
expectations is integrating theability for this AI concierge to
book things like your flights,your rental cars, different
locations, packing lists, allthose different pieces directly
(31:45):
through the Wander app.
So when you want to go and stayat a Wander, it feels like you
have your own personal conciergethat's just purely dedicated to
making your trip as incredibleas possible, and obviously you
can imagine the potential fromthere, where my goal is to make
the product so good and socomplete that, even if you
aren't staying at a Wander, evenif you're just trying to get
(32:09):
back, it's like this is justsitting in your pocket.
So I'd say that's the otherreally big feature that I'm
excited about, and because wehave the distribution to 200,000
plus people, you have thisgreat feature with a
distribution mode, which is thewhole power of the platform.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
You know, I know company culture is really
important to you.
I mean, I've heard someinteresting stories on sort of
frugality is kind of one of thecore aspects of it, but I'm sure
that's only one of several keyaspects to culture.
I wonder if you could just kindof talk a little bit about the
Wander culture and you'velearned from experience building
a couple other companies.
What are some of the hallmarksthat you've tried to instill in
the Wander team?
Speaker 2 (32:47):
We believe in this idea of shared virtues and I
think that that idea reallykeeps the team tightly aligned.
Certain things like tomorrow isa lazy man's, today or we can
take a punch, or just thosedifferent pieces Like we don't
walk by, right, if there's trashon the ground we pick it up.
And I think instilling that inthe company very early is
(33:10):
certainly something that youlearn as a second time founder.
You sort of learn theimportance in your first company
and you learn to document itand its importance.
But it also sort of sets thistone and the ability for people
to run on the same operatingsystem, which is incredibly
useful.
And so, even though Wander is aremote company and an extremely
(33:30):
high output, the fact that wecan have people from all over
the world with different virtuesand ethics and ideas, have this
shared operating language andexpectations, I think is why
Wander moves as quickly as itdoes.
I mean, we're still less thanthree years old.
We're going to turn three inabout six months and I think
(33:55):
when you go to wandercom and youlook at the company we've built
so far, it doesn't feel likethat young of a company and I
really credit all of that to theteam and to the culture we've
built around it.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, some of this is you were sort of building in
the middle of COVID, but you'vechosen to build a company
totally remote, spread aroundthe world.
Any regrets on that?
You know, is that sort oftotally working, or are there
places where you're like, look,if I was actually all in San
Francisco or all in Austin,texas, or pick your location, it
would be a lot easier to dowhat we do.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Coder was an all in-person company and so I think
, like a lot of startup founders, they've run in-person
companies or they run remotecompanies.
Very few have run both and Ialso think very few have run
high output versions of both.
Coder was an incredibly fastmoving startup, very much in
line with Wander.
I think that there are certainadvantages to building a remote
(34:44):
company.
One of the biggest is cost peremployee, which I think is a
metric that very few peoplemeasure.
If you run a business that isdistributed you know, in
Wander's case we have locationsall across the US there are
certain advantages to havingpeople nearby or just who
understand the area.
And then the other big piece is, if you're going to have a
(35:05):
remote company, you have to hirepeople who work well in a
remote setting.
Like, if you hire people whoare best in person and you ask
them to work remotely, it's likedoesn't work right.
It's kind of how a lion is notvery comfortable in the like
Antarctic, and like vice versayou take a polar bear, you stick
it in the Sahara, like it's notgoing to be happy.
And so when you build a companythe types of people that we had
(35:28):
at Coder, for example, like wehad many who were best in
in-person environment and thenin Wander, the vast majority are
best in a remote environment,and it's something that we
interview for certainpersonality traits, organization
, those different pieces and soI think that a lot of companies
that struggle and end up wantingto do hybrid or XYZ, well, a
(35:50):
lot of them built in-personcultures to begin with, and so
if you built an in-personculture, it went remote.
During the pandemic, like now,you have this hodgepodge and it
can be pretty difficult.
You know, I think a lot ofpeople who try and build a
remote company hire people whoare best in office, and that
also is difficult.
So I'd say, if you're nottaking advantage of the benefits
, managing your cost peremployee and access to global
(36:12):
talent and hiring people who arebest remotely, then you should
100% be in office.
I'm not an either or person.
I'm not super pro, remote orsuper pro in office.
I love offices, I love grindingwith my team and then, of
course, I also love working lateat night, you know, in my
apartment, and I can do either.
I do think it's aninevitability that Wander at
(36:33):
some point needs like a realmailing address, but we'll see
when.
That is, offices are expensive.
Which kind of comes into thefrugality piece of like?
Like I hate spending companymoney and so it's hard for me to
justify.
Like a fancy office you got 50properties in the portfolio.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
So maybe you can just have a rolling office when
they're not being utilized?
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Yeah, absolutely that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Well, look, you talked about your, how strong
your culture was and howimportant that is.
I would guess that it's harderto establish such a stronger
culture remotely.
Maybe I'm wrong on that.
Having sort of done that inperson with Coder and now done
that remotely with Wander, howcould you kind of contrast and
sort of think about sort oflearnings on what needs to be
different in that regard?
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah, so with an in person culture, a lot of it is
visual, right, you see whatother people do, how they talk,
how they think.
In a remote culture it's youknow it's very much written,
right, it's written in itsoutput, which I think is
probably the easiest way tothink about it In an office
(37:38):
culture.
You're looking at a lot ofinput, right, are they at their
desk, what time did they show up, et cetera.
Versus, for a remote company,it's really purely output which
I tell the entire team, like Iwill measure you on your output,
like I don't care how manyhours you worked, like or
whatever else, if it didn't getdone, then it didn't get done,
which can sound like prettyhardcore and obviously, like
(37:59):
anyone who works with me knows,I'm like an empathetic leader,
but it's very difficult tomanage people on their input in
a remote world, and so I wouldsay that's probably the biggest
thing is that in person is veryvisual, it's very input oriented
and you have to make it aneffort to manage to the output
and remote is very muchmeasuring the output and
(38:19):
obviously you have to becognizant of the input.
Cool.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
How would you articulate your best superpower?
And, conversely, is theresomething in particular you can
point to that you wish you werebetter at or you're actively
working?
Speaker 2 (38:31):
on.
The thing that I'm best at istaking a group of people and
aligning them towards a singulargoal.
I think that's probably thething that people love the most
is the camaraderie and theteamwork and the excitement and
the motivation and thisunderstanding that we're going
to get this done and it's goingto be incredible.
(38:52):
There are, of course, a lot ofother things to that end that I
truly love Like.
I love working with the designteam.
I love working with the productteam.
Candidly, I love every singleaspect of building a company.
I love it.
There's like there's no pieceof building a company that I
haven't fallen in love with.
You know, one thing as acompany scales is.
You know, as a founder, youneed to learn new things right.
(39:14):
Wander is reaching a prettysignificant scale very quickly,
not just in terms of people, butalso looking at our plan and
the fact that we're hitting itLike, if this trend continues,
like it's a pretty decent sizecompany in six months, like a
radically different one than itwas six months ago.
I mean, for context, it tookabout a year a little over a
(39:36):
year for us to add our first 13properties and it's like now
we're going to add that in amonth.
That's a big shift.
You know, the month after thatis more, and then it's more
after that and like it keepsgrowing, which I know is how
it's supposed to go.
But what comes with it and thisis something that y'all have
taught me is almost this idea oflike managing the back book
right, or like managing to themetrics.
(39:57):
Like you, almost as a founder,in the early days, you're so
busy at the front of house,right, talking with customers,
like designing a menu, cookingall those different pieces, but
at a certain point, using therestaurant analogy, you have to
go into the back and you have todive over your financials and
dive over your metrics and howmany tables turned and if we
change this just a little bit,what efficiencies are created
(40:20):
over the next year.
And you know that's justsomething that when you're like
in the midst of the chaos as afounder, you don't tend to see
that you need to go and makethat transition and of course
you get to do the rest of thefun stuff, but it's like, hey,
you need to spend, you know, afew hours in the closet managing
that back book.
You know, and that's somethingthat, like having a good board,
(40:40):
is really useful for Because youknow you all have a bird's eye
view of hundreds of companiesyou know, and different stages
and as a founder, like you're init, and so that's one thing
that I've really been working onas a founder and, candidly,
like I've fallen in love withthat too, which Chuckie finds
very entertaining, but Ireference it like a video game,
this idea of like hitting plan.
(41:01):
But yeah, I'd say that that'sone thing that I'm really
actively trying to master, whichI realized too, of course, like
if this becomes the companythat I hope it can be, if we're
so lucky, like it's reallyimportant having that
repeatability and making surethat if we eventually went
public, that like we don't missour quarters, and that kind of
fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
No, it's awesome.
I love the introspection there.
We had a chance to talk to yourCMO, kyle Tibbets, as part of
the research for this interviewand asked him the superpower
question, and let me just sharea bit of his answer.
John Andrews, an incredibleservant leader.
The more you know about him,the more it makes perfect sense
that he's building a hospitalitycompany.
A couple of years ago, afterfilming a video at one of our
properties, I was leaving tohead back to my house, which was
(41:43):
three hours away.
He insisted on driving mehimself.
We stopped for lunch and had anincredible three hour
conversation Interesting to hearthe kind of hospitality nature,
given what your business is for, what it's worth to the leaders
.
I had the same exact experiencewith you where you came and
picked me up at the airport, youknow, brought me who knows how
far away to the number oneranked barbecue place in Texas
(42:04):
and we sat in line for an hourand a half waiting to get in
there and had an incredible meal.
So kind of that orientation topeople that matter is pretty
stunning and it's clear you'vegot an amazing following within
Wander.
So congratulations on buildingsuch an awesome kind of rapport
with folks who are working withyou.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah, and that barbecue was great, so it was
pretty darn killer, that's forsure.
It lived up to its ranking.
We're getting close on timehere.
There's probably two questions.
I'd like to finish up with onewhich came from Kyle.
So if you had to pick oneWander to live in for the rest
of your life, which one wouldyou pick?
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Gosh to live in for the rest of my life.
It's funny because I'm going tolike overanalyze the question,
right.
It's like you know, okay, Iwant kids one day.
So it's like, how many kids?
And then I'm going to get old.
So which ones, like you know,have an elevator, that kind of
stuff?
I'll simplify it.
I'll like take all thosevariables out, because otherwise
it's going to get toocomplicated.
I would probably say BandonBeach.
(43:00):
You know, you have, obviouslyBandon Dunes golf resort right
there, which is absolutelyincredible.
You have the beach and just thePacific Northwest and the
feeling that you get out thereis pretty magical.
So I would do that, though,once I had kids, that house
would get pretty cramped,dynamite if you had to go away
for a three day weekend, whichone did you pick?
(43:22):
You're going to hate me for thisanswer, but candidly, like they
are all spectacular.
That is the whole idea.
The whole idea is that they'reall perfect and it's literally
just like.
What flavor of ice cream do youwant?
Like it's all ice cream.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
So you can't pick among your children.
I can respect that answer, butI've heard from you and Chuck E
Bandon is obviously have sharedthe golf course before, so I
will definitely get to theBandon place soon.
Last question and we tend toend all of our interviews with
this Hopefully we've got anumber of young entrepreneurs
who will be listening to thissooner or later.
What's one tip from yourmulti-pronged journey that you
would share with a youngentrepreneur thinking of
(43:57):
starting a business?
Speaker 2 (43:58):
It's incredibly important to be like a good
person as you build a companyand there are so many moments
that you face with difficultdecisions, whether it's letting
someone go or how you presentyourself in a meeting or what
investors you work with and sohaving like a very correct and
empathetic moral compass, Ithink it's like pretty important
(44:18):
, which, of course, there are alot of like very ruthless
business leaders who get throughand not saying that you don't
need to be ruthless to a certainextent, but like you still need
to be a good person and conductyourself well.
The other thing is that ifyou're smart and you're kind and
you're working on the rightidea and you're unafraid to
pivot, you will be successful.
It's just a question of likehow long it's going to take and
(44:40):
obviously I realize there's alot of variables in there
working on the right idea, youknow, unafraid to pivot, etc.
But I think that that's likeone thing that a lot of people
should recognize is that it'scertainly possible.
It's a recipe and just be kind,work hard, make adjustments,
have that courage and I'mcertainly rooting for you.
I know that there's a lot ofpeople who like, for whatever
(45:00):
reason, root against companiesto fail, but yeah, for whatever
it's worth, I'm rooting for you,and I guess this bill is as
well.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
That's awesome.
I love the advice.
Well, look, john, andrew, it'sabout awesome having you and
sharing so many of your storiesfrom the past.
I'm sure we could have gone waylonger, but I'm sure you're
quite busy in the process ofbuilding Wander, so we'll let
you go and really appreciate youspending the time with us today
.
Thank you so much for having me.
It was awesome, perfect and toall you listeners, take care and
thanks for listening.
This has been the FinTechThought Leaders podcast your
(45:35):
window into the world of venturecapital and financial services
with today's digital disruptors.
Qed is proud to provide thebest FinTech advice you can get.
To learn more or to read thefull show notes from today's
episode, check outQEDinvestorscom and be sure to
also follow QED on Twitter andLinkedIn at QEDinvestors.
Thanks for listening.
You're listening to the FinTech Thought Leaders
podcast from QED Investors.
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FinTech companies all the wayfrom pre-seed to IPO.
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(00:30):
If you're looking to learn moreabout what motivates our
founders and team members tosucceed, you're in the right
place.
Hello and welcome to theFinTech Thought Leaders podcast.
I'm Bill Salufo, head of EarlyStage Investment at QED
Investors.
Today on the podcast, I'mexcited to be joined by John
Andrew Entwistle, founder andCEO of Wander.
John Andrew, welcome to thepodcast.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Thank you so much for having me.
It's great to be here andtalking with you, obviously.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Nice.
I'm looking at John Andrew athis apartment in Sausalito and
looking out his back window atone of the most beautiful views
I've ever seen.
If I look like I'm ogling you,it's your view that I'm
incredibly jealous of.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Listen, I'll take it.
I did my hair this morning.
I'll take the compliment.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Nice, we're going to get into Wander a little bit
later in the podcast, which isthe company that you're
currently CEO of.
Just to orient the audience, Iwonder if you can give us about
a 60-second elevator pitch onwhat Wander is and what you guys
do.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I think a lot of people have rented a vacation
rental it was, say, airbnb orVRBO and had a bad experience,
whether it be the place didn'tlook like the photos, or the
beds were uncomfortable or theinternet was bad.
The whole idea with Wander isto verticalize the vacation
rental industry to really ownthe distribution and the
(01:47):
operations and effectively haveall of the homes be consistent
the same beds, linens, views,amenities, those different
pieces.
Obviously there's a lot ofverticalization behind that
infrastructure, from ownershipto operations and beyond.
The real idea is for thecustomer to have this really
incredible consistent experiencewhere you can go to wandercom,
(02:09):
book any of the properties andknow that you're going to have
an incredible time.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
No, that's awesome.
I've certainly heard from many,many people how amazing that
experience is.
I keep looking to book my trip,but I spent so much time
overseas I haven't been able toget to one of them domestically
yet, but I'm looking forward tochecking it out.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
We'll fix the overseas problem soon.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
You can be in charge of launching our international
markets, that's perfect, butlook, as a start, I'd love to
get into your entrepreneurialjourney.
Wander's not your first rodeo.
It's either your third orfourth, if I'm not mistaken.
I believe you actually startedyour first company at age 13.
I'd love to go all the way backand hear about what that
company was.
But, more importantly, what isit that really drew you to
(02:48):
entrepreneurship at such a youngage?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, it's actually a pretty deep question.
I was raised by a single dadlawyer.
When I was pretty young Iwalked downstairs and I saw him
working at his computer.
It was like five in the morning.
I'd woken up in the middle ofthe night.
All of a sudden it reallyclicked for me the sacrifices
that he was making and watchinghim work to support me and my
(03:10):
sister and then somehow take usto school and then go to work
during the day and then do itall over again at night.
I think a lot of it was like Iwanted to work like dad,
candidly, it's like.
Then I was like okay, well, Ineed a computer.
I built my own, which he wassupportive of.
Then from there you have thisyoung kid who has access to the
(03:31):
internet and all the thingsaround it.
I just became incrediblypassionate about software and
design and product.
In terms of that first company,I think a lot of young
entrepreneurs started with videogames.
The first thing I did wasdownload a few different video
games and so excited to exploreand have fun and all that fun
stuff.
(03:52):
Very quickly I wanted to playwith other people.
Of course, back then you had togo and set up servers for
everyone to go and join.
Then you get exposed to theearly cloud and hardware Before
you know it.
It had a little company thatwas really all designed around
hosting and allowing people toplay together and those
(04:13):
different aspects.
That was that first company wasreally around hosting game
servers and allowing people toplay together, obviously built a
lot of infrastructure aroundthat as well and exposes you in
the early days to a lot ofreally cool dynamics of the
internet.
Yeah, that first company didfairly well.
We were doing low six figuresin revenue.
(04:34):
What was joke?
I was not focused on myhomework at all.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
That was probably the right call, judging by that
number.
You had a little nonchalantstatement in there that you
passed over, but I've got to goback to so age 13,.
Hey, I wanted a computer, so Ijust decided to build one.
Probably not something thatmost 13-year-olds are thinking
about.
How did you have the confidenceor decide to jump into that?
Is it something you had beendoing as a hobby before, or was
(05:01):
this just completely out of theblue?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
You can't only be.
Building a computer is not thatdifficult.
So to any parents who arelistening if your kid wants a
new computer, definitely try andget the parts together for them
to build it themselves.
I think definitely with adulthelp it's pretty easy.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Probably not with my adult help.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, I shouldn't say easy, I don't want to offend
anyone.
No, it's really doable.
Anyone can do it.
For me.
I wasn't allowed to play videogames growing up.
I wasn't allowed to watchcartoons or those different
things.
I'm a super strict householdsense, more of the sense of hey,
we live in a beautiful world,go out and explore it, that kind
of vibe.
And so I had grown up tinkeringwith RC cars.
(05:47):
That's how I got my exposure toelectronics, was building RC
cars and the motors and all thatfun stuff.
And so it was like when Iwanted to access the internet, I
already had this coreunderstanding of components and
how to put something togetherand, I think more so just an
ethos of if you don't know it,look it up, follow the manuals,
(06:09):
read, ask people.
There's a lot of greatinformation out there to
discover, and so I think that'swhat led me to it at a young age
and, of course, also anincredibly supportive pop.
It's like before I had anymoney, someone bought those
initial computer componentswhich he gets massive credit for
.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
You had this video game business.
Sounds like that was doingpretty well.
But flashing forward a fewyears you actually started your
first really substantial company.
That was less out of a hobbycalled Coder.
I wonder if you can just talk alittle bit about that journey,
of how you came upon that and alittle bit of the Coder story.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
So I had enrolled in high school online really to
spend time with my pop.
He would travel all around theworld trying cases and beyond
and I figured like why not?
Which also gave me a lot offree time, because I was able to
do years worth of school workin like 30 days.
It was really useful.
And so during that time, me andmy co-founders, we started
(07:03):
Coder, which essentially movesthe development environment
where software engineer writescode to an organization's cloud
infrastructure, really with thevision of bringing, like, the
productivity of a startup to theenterprise right, basically
like enterprise security andspeed and all that sort of fun
stuff.
And so I started that companywhen I was 17, 18.
So still in high school, and wewanted to get an office, so we
(07:28):
moved down to Austin.
I was in New York, kyle was inSaskatchewan, canada, which is
very far away, and Amar was inAlabama and moved down to Austin
to start that company.
The product was incrediblytechnical, very difficult to
build, took a lot of time andengineering power, but when we
launched we saw incrediblereception and we also at that
(07:50):
point had a small team and we'recertainly also running out of
money.
So I'll never forget being like18, 19, cold emailing VCs you
know it didn't even have aLinkedIn at the time saying like
hey, I have like this companyand this product and it's
starting to grow and like it hasa ton of potential.
Can I please pitch you?
I think a lot of earlyentrepreneurs sort of wonder,
(08:12):
like how do I get in contactwith VCs, how do I raise money,
like those different pieces, andcertainly easier, like if you
can get warm intros or otherwise.
But you know, one thing thathappened as that company started
to grow was that like peoplejust started to take notice
because your cold emails now hadmetrics and progress.
I didn't have a resume, but mycompany and how awesome it was
(08:34):
was starting to be that resume.
We went on to raise our seed.
That was led by Redpoint andUncork, along with Founders Fund
joining and a few others.
And then shortly after, weraised our Series A and then
eventually our Series B and nowCodeServe is one of the most
popular open source projects inthe world and our enterprise
(08:54):
product powers dozens of Fortune500 companies.
So if you've ever streamed a TVshow, a lot of them write their
software on Coder.
If you've ever sent a wiretransfer, a lot of the banks
build their software on Coder.
So yeah, ran that company asCEO from 18 to 23 and was an
incredible experience.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
That's amazing.
So your first business reallystemmed out of a hobby, right,
you played video games, youwanted to play people and you
know, take a few steps forwardand it becomes a business.
This one seems extremelydifferent.
Many business ideas come out ofpersonal experience.
I don't know if you hadpersonal experience from your
first startup.
How did you even come up withthe idea of doing this so?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
the original idea for Coder was actually basically a
consumer ID, right.
It was like we wanted to writecode in the cloud.
That was like the whole idea,and the same way that you use
Google Docs to edit whatever anessay or whatever else we wanted
it to be so that you could openyour browser and code in the
browser, which is now a likethere are lots of products that
(09:54):
do that.
But back then, like therewasn't anything.
As we launched that product,what we saw was we turned on
monetization.
We had like 60,000 users.
We had just raised our seed andno one wanted to pay.
I think we made like $20.
And I immediately told the teamalongside my co-founders and
(10:14):
said guys, this isn't going towork.
We have 60,000 users.
This is the best way tomonetize.
Like no one's willing to payfor it, like the product has
issues but it's relativelystable.
We're going to have to pivotwhich, after building a product
for two years and having a teamand just raising a seed and like
you feel like you're on top ofthe world.
People think you're a littlecrazy and it certainly feels
that way to you as the founder,but that's what we decided to do
(10:38):
and with it we created our opensource project code server.
We released that alongside,effectively, an enterprise page
that said if you're a companyand you like this technology,
you know, sign up and give us acall and code server.
When we released that,basically the engineering
community was ecstatic.
It became the fastest growingproject ever and with it
(11:00):
thousands of companies, and Iwas on the phone with all these
massive Fortune 500 companieslike pretending that coder was
bigger than it was and liketrying to understand exactly
what they wanted and eventuallywe built that product for them
and obviously they ended somepretty massive initial contracts
To answer your question interms of like, how did you come
(11:21):
up with the idea?
You know it started almost witha like technical vision of the
future and inevitability, likewe thought that software
development was eventually goingto move to the cloud, but the
end business model radicallyshifted as the market sort of
told us what to do.
No, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
I mean it's an interesting flavor on a freemium
model, right Like come up withthis open source product to get
all the engineers hooked andthen when the engineers have
jobs and the companies need it,then you can monetize that way.
It's a pretty cool little hackthere.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, the business model is called OpenCore, which
obviously we did not know at thetime, but it's pretty popular.
There's a lot of like big opensource projects like HashiCorp
and various databases etc.
That follow that model.
Such a successful company.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
You talked about all the different people on it.
What made you make the call toleave coder, decide to not be
CEO, and we'll talk about whatcomes next with Wander here
shortly.
But what caused you to?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
take that leap.
I had been running the companyfor the last five plus years and
had a pair of two otherincredible co-founders and
ultimately, at different stagesin the company, you kind of have
to look at what the companyneeds and who's potentially best
to do it, and we made thedecision together that it was
going to make most sense for myco-founder, amar, to step into
(12:36):
the role and for me to exploreand see what was next.
And it's always like adifficult moment right when you
step away from something you'vebuilt for so long.
If I think about it, I thinkbuilding that company was like
40% of my life.
Let's say that you becomeconscious at 16.
So then it would be like thevast majority.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
You started a company at 13.
So we'll rewind the clockfurther for you.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
It's always difficult but like, at the end of the day
, right, you do what you thinkis the best job possible, and
it's always a transition.
I think anyone who's gonethrough it will probably
understand why I'm havingdifficulty putting words around
it, but it was a really lovelything.
I stayed on the board for abouta year afterwards and Wander
started very quickly after, andso I had my hands full.
(13:24):
But yeah, coder was anincredible experience.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Is there a way to point to the single hardest part
about it, or is that toochallenging?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
I'll never forget my last all hands.
I knew that I wasn't even goingto be able to think through it
live, so I ended up just beinglike, okay, I'm going to
memorize exactly what I'm goingto say, because you see all
these faces and people who youdeeply love.
I think that's one thing for meas a founder that I don't think
people truly understand, is itlike?
(13:53):
I feel such a sense ofprotection and love for the team
, for our shareholders, for thecompany and the product, for our
customers, and so it's justdifficult.
So I memorized that one andblacked out and went through the
spiel.
But yeah, that was probably themost difficult piece.
And then, of course, after whenyour phone stops buzzing and
(14:16):
email stopped flying in andthere's just silence, is a
pretty trippy experience.
And then you're like I'mstarting from scratch.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
You mentioned that you first started playing around
with electronics through RCcars.
I know that electronics wasn'tthe only thing to stem from that
.
The car piece became a prettyimportant part of your life.
I'd love to share with thelisteners your auto journey and
kind of what that's all about.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
It's definitely, I think, something that's less
covered.
I have a passion for vehiclesand motors and going fast and
when I was a kid I think Rick,around like 15 or so my pop took
me to this racing school out inArizona to kind of like get my
first taste of not just likedriving a car but also like how
(14:59):
to do it responsibly and like ona track.
And in a setting like that Iabsolutely fell in love with
racing cars and that whole world.
And at the end of their lessonsthey had a car called the
Formula Mazda, which is aFormula car but powered by a
Mazda engine.
And that's when I fell in lovewith Formula racing.
Very quickly ended up joining ateam out of Dallas and so raced
(15:24):
Formula cars, formula Mazdas,all across the country in
amateur races and ended upfinishing second in nationals in
my second year doing that andthen moved up to Formula four so
the entry into the Formula oneseries and ended up joining this
incredible father son team andraced with them.
(15:46):
And I raced with them up untilI ended up breaking my back,
racing at the Indianapolis MotorSpeedway.
And at that point, of coursealso Coder was like happening
right, like I was still buildingCoder.
So it was like 17 about to turn18, or maybe I just turned 18.
And after I broke my back twoweeks later I was with my back
brace setting up the desk setupslike you know, surviving on
(16:13):
like whatever the rest of theprescribed like pain killers
were that like the hospital gaveme, like setting up the office
for the team, and so that wassort of like my racing journey.
I still like raced cars afterthe back healed up would race
like trophy trucks down in Bajaand that kind of cool stuff
certainly got much more dialedback and I never viewed it as my
(16:34):
future, like I was going tobecome the next like Max
Verstappen or something whichwas.
I appreciate it.
I'm glad I had that foresightat a young age but certainly
made the most of it, which waspretty cool.
And obviously you get to learna lot of other things about life
Beyond just business.
You learn about competitivenessand team dynamics and you know
a whole different world and, ofcourse, characters like how do
(16:56):
you deal with this?
You know 50 year old man who'slike pissed that you beat him,
like those different things werelike really interesting.
But yeah, I was extraordinarilygrateful and it was a really
wonderful childhood and got tosee a lot of the country, which
was cool.
It's fascinating doing thisseries.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
How many of our entrepreneurs have pretty cool
background stories that you justdon't really know about.
Are you a huge Formula One fantoday or is it kind of hard,
given that you know you were init and, you know, ended with a
probably not so pleasantexperience?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I'm a fan of Formula One.
I think they've made like thecars and the tracks quite a bit
safer.
But I do think, though, thathow dangerous it is really isn't
properly shown to the audience,and I think people forget that.
I think nowadays a death ispretty rare, but you flash back
even 20, 30 years and peoplewere dying every season.
(17:48):
And of course, the other piecesis, these drivers are trained
to not crash in a way thatthey're going to kill themselves
, which I know sounds weird, butit's like they're going to try
and hold on to that car as longas they can, and so I do wish
that they showed that piece likejust how dangerous it is.
So those young kids like mewatching who think they're
(18:08):
invincible are sort of remindedthat they're not.
But yeah, I certainly loveFormula One, the engineering
behind it, the team dynamics,the logistics of taking this 500
person team all across theworld it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Super cool, super cool.
You had left Coder.
You were kind of thinking aboutwhat to do next.
You know you made it sound likeWander came pretty quickly, but
that's a very, very differentbusiness than cloud coding
infrastructure.
What is the origin story aroundWander?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
So after I stepped down, I'd went to this cabin out
in Colorado to sort of get awaythink about the world, you know
, quarter life crisis and when Igot there the place just didn't
look like the photos.
Beds were uncomfortable,internet was bad.
And so I opened up my littlelike notepad and put the idea
for Wander next to all the otherideas that were not similar at
(18:57):
all and Candidly had nointention of building the
company, like you know, had theidea and closed the notebook.
And then you know the rest ofthat week, which is how long I
wanted to give myself totransition, you know, I was
supposed to just relax, read abook, get my head straight, but
the idea for Wander just endedup keeping me up at night, like
(19:19):
I couldn't help but think aboutit and want to work on it.
And so, you know, after I leftthat cabin I just started
working and thinking about allthe reasons why this company was
going to die and like why notto start it?
At that point I wasn't ignorantto this idea that whatever
company I started next, I wouldspend eight plus years on at the
(19:39):
minimum, just to you know, andall the torture that comes with
building a company, and so youwant to make sure that it's
right, like you want to makesure that it could work, and you
also want to make sure it'ssomething that you want to do.
And so I spent about threemonths working on the idea,
crafting it, thinking throughthe different models.
What would happen if plan Afailed?
What's you know the fall back?
What are all the you knowadjacencies?
(20:01):
Because at that point too, Ialso wasn't ignorant to the fact
that your first idea inside ofthe space is tends not to be the
one that becomes like themulti-billion dollar outcome.
Right, there's always like thatlittle adjustment that takes
place.
And so, yeah, just reached thepoint where I loved every single
second of working on it.
I felt like happy again and Icouldn't help but start the
(20:26):
company and was really fortunatethat a lot of people had seen
me work and seen who I was andwanted to do it all over again.
And so we raised our pre-seedand seed that was led by Red
Point, who led Coder Seed inseries A, and so got to work
with Alex Bard over there allover again and it's wild, he's
been like on my boards since Iwas like 18.
(20:46):
So it's like, yeah, it's likethe story continues.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
It's always good when you do one startup and the firm
wants to lead your next one.
That's always a great sign.
Yeah, so look, you talked aboutalmost knowing up front that
whatever you came up with thefirst time wasn't going to be
the exact thing that you woundup doing.
I'm assuming that when youstarted the company, you did not
assume interest rates weregoing to go from zero to five
percent in the matter of acouple months and change the
(21:11):
world of real estate sodramatically.
You know, I wonder if you canjust talk through a little bit
of from the original idea towhere you are now.
You know how was that impactedby the crazy landscape that you
wound up building this into?
Speaker 2 (21:23):
A lot of people who have a heavy real estate
background.
They sort of have the contextof like how wild the current
transition and times are versus.
For me, it's like I'm just likeOK, like this must just be
normal.
You have like 300 year oldbanks collapsing and all this
sort of crazy stuff.
When we started Wander, onedynamic that exists with
marketplaces is called the coldstart problem, right where you
(21:47):
have to have supply to havedemand and you have to have
demand to have supply, andtherefore you end up in this
cold start problem.
And so the idea with Wander wascould we kickstart that demand
by effectively owning our firstfew assets, right building on
balance sheet, and what wouldthat look like?
And as we were exploring thatmodel, obviously we were in a
(22:09):
historically low interest rateenvironment and the capital
markets were far more homebentthan they are today, obviously,
and so that was an avenue thatwe were able to pursue, and I
think we were able to pursue itpretty far, not just beyond our
first few assets, but call itour first 15, which, candidly,
was, I think, although likedifficult to scale, really
(22:35):
incredible for honing in theactual product, building out the
underlying operations, thosedifferent pieces, because we
understood not just what it waslike to be the platform and the
distribution, but we alsounderstood what it was like to
be the actual property owner andthe operator and all those
different components that comewith it.
As interest rates began to rise, obviously, like it becomes
(22:57):
less feasible, the cost ofcapital begins to rise and at
that point we had already had abrand, we had, I think, over
150,000 users, and it was reallytime to ramp up scale, and so
we began to explore adding thirdparty properties into that mix
and, candidly, I wasn'texpecting the reception that we
(23:17):
saw there.
I think in November we're ontrack to add like 10 new
properties, which is prettyincredible for us, given how old
the company is.
And so things transition andchange.
But as a founder, you sort ofhave to look at what's happening
.
Is the ground shiftingunderneath your feet, what's
working, what's not, and,candidly, have a little bit of
courage and be unafraid to makethose adjustments.
(23:39):
I think you know everyone wantsyou to like, grab on, to like
an idea and like run it into theground and it's like.
No, the purpose is to build atruly valuable and important
company and there are going tobe adjustments and changes along
the way.
The pivot may not be as drasticas going from a video game into
Slack or Instagram, going from,like you know, a hotel booking
(24:02):
company or whatever it was, intoInstagram, but there are always
going to be little pivots alongthe way.
I actually think that everyfounder knows that.
Who made it to the end?
And so that's the one thingthat I would say to like any
founders listening, is that ifwhat you're doing isn't working
or things are changing, likepivots and adjustments and
evolutions are not a bad thing.
(24:22):
I'm sure in your seat you'veseen hundreds of them along the
way, and the good companies tendto do it very well and in a way
where they don't skip a beat.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah, I mean Nigel likes to joke that out of 200
investment securities made, twoever have sort of hit their
numbers the whole time straightthrough, and I'm pretty sure
even those who have had, youknow, lots of movements and
changes along the way.
So it's probably literally 100%if you actually get underneath
the covers.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah, I'm sure if you asked those founders there
would be like mid-quarter panicsthat took place.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Your original idea that led toWander was hey, I stayed in
Airbnb.
This Airbnb kind of suckedrelative to my expectations.
So one of the early days ofWander's, hey, I'm going to own
the inventory so I can controlit and I can do whatever.
Now you're going to a bit of athird party thing.
Does that bring back the Airbnbproblem?
How do you deal with that?
(25:15):
I mean, is it still kind of thecore idea?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
I mean, that sounds like a pretty important change,
given the origin story of thefirm, the key dynamic was taking
control over the underlyingasset right, this idea that,
when Wander would come in, thatwe controlled everything end to
end, right from the furnishingsto the beds, the operations of
the property, the maintenance,all those different pieces, to,
(25:40):
effectively, the point where theonly difference was where the
underlying real estate capitalcame from.
And so in that context, when webegan to test it, guests didn't
even know that these propertieswere owned by a third party,
which makes sense, obviously,because you know, if it's
branded like a wander and lookslike a wander and everything's
the same, who owns the actualreal estate on paper, it doesn't
(26:02):
matter to the end customer.
What was really cool, thoughand I think something that isn't
realized is that Wander'sstrategy of building a brand and
building our own distributionresults in pretty dramatic
outperformance relative to thebroader market, very similar to
sort of the big hotel chains howthey outperform, you know, some
mom and pop hotel and thatdynamic we found people were
(26:28):
like, willing to pay for withinthe short-term rental world, and
so that's what I think hasallowed us to scale and start
scaling as quickly as we have,is that we can very quickly show
that Wander leads to a, youknow, 30 plus percent B in
occupancy, 30 percent plus B inADR and obviously in terms of
like your gross revenue on a T12, that's pretty meaningful.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah, that's awesome.
How many properties do you haveon your platform now?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
It's changing pretty rapidly now.
We'll finish November with over40, and we're targeting 50 by
the end of the year, which isexciting.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
That's awesome because as a vacation brand,
obviously the broader the depthis, the more different people
you'll attract, so there'sprobably a nice positive
flywheel too as you get thatnumber up.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Oh, the flywheel that's starting to kick off is
something that I hoped for andprobably was in like some like
in the thesis that a lot of likeVCs had when, like, we started
the company.
But seeing it start to reallykick off now is pretty
remarkable.
We have guests who stay in NewYork who then go to Malibu,
guests who stay in Calistogathen go to Cave Creek and all of
(27:33):
a sudden, as that networkbuilds, you have this like
flywheel of people justexploring all these destinations
.
They have their accounts soyou're remarketing and
distributing to them.
It's really speeding up.
I'm very grateful, like thepace that Wander's now operating
at and the clarity of thepotential we have.
I recognize how rare it is andI'm super grateful to be
building it Very cool.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Well, very early on in this chat we talked about
international and sort of yourdesire for international
expansion.
Wander, if you can talk aboutsort of your views on that?
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Wander, as a travel company, by definition, has to
become a global business rightIf it's to reach its full
potential.
And when you look at thebroader short-term rental market
, you have Europe and Japan andAustralia and just all these
incredible places with existinginventory, with existing
operations and, of course, auser base that's already
(28:25):
traveling to and experiencing it.
And so the idea for Wander tobecome a global company it's
sort of I mean, that's why ourlogo is the globe was because I
wanted to represent, like, ourglobal ambitions as early as
possible, which I think when wehad three properties was less
obvious than today and hopefullycertainly in a year from now
will be very obvious.
(28:45):
As you're well aware, there area lot of complications going
internationally, from legal,regulatory, even, just like
expense management team, allthose different pieces.
But the network effects andflywheel that can happen when
Wander is a known brand inEurope and Europeans are coming
to America or in Asia orotherwise, becomes pretty
(29:09):
significant pretty quickly.
And obviously there's quite abit of travel and tourism in
those markets as well.
And when you look at the bighotel brands, they'll have
locations internationally and soWander will certainly follow
suit.
It's something I'm excited for.
I also love the branding that'sattached to it and like Wander
Australia, wander Japan, wanderEurope, like it just kind of
(29:31):
flows and feels really good.
So, yeah, something I'm excitedfor.
But I also recognize that whenyou expand internationally, you
have to do so from a position ofincredible strength.
Otherwise you end up realizingthat it's more expensive than it
is and you don't have theresources to finish it.
But fortunately, I have a lotof smart people on the cap table
who have experienceinternationally, so I look
(29:52):
forward to using it and usingyour opinions on that.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Dynamite.
I love it, I love it, it wasfunny.
I was having dinner with one ofour former portfolio CEOs who
had an exit a couple of yearsago and he's actually living in
Barcelona and he was telling meBarcelona past New York as the
most visited tourist destinationin the world last year, which
kind of hard for me to believe.
It's so much smaller of a citybut good to see international
travel up and running again andit took a big dive during the
(30:15):
COVID year, so it's great to see.
So look, if you look out a yearor two years, five years into
the future for Wander, you'vealready talked about one major
change, which is, hey, I startedas a, I'm going to balance
sheet these properties and nowI'm mostly focused on
non-balance sheeted propertiesas a way to scale in a more
capital efficient way.
You've talked aboutinternational expansion.
(30:36):
Are there other things on thehorizon or do you think those
two are enough and you'll befocused on those?
Speaker 2 (30:42):
No, there are certainly other things.
I mean, one of the things thatI enjoy the most is thinking
about the future and all theproducts and things that you can
build.
I realize that for a lot offounders, you're constantly
being told to focus andotherwise, but for me, thinking
about the future brings me joy,and thinking about new products
and otherwise, so I always makesure to allocate a little bit of
(31:03):
time to it.
One of the really cool thingsthat we just launched is the
ability to talk directly withour concierge inside of Wander
systems, through the website,through the app, those different
pieces, and we've already begunto add these large language
models, so the concierge canthen say generate responses and
(31:24):
all that sort of cool stuff.
The next iteration, which we'relaunching in Q1, and it's funny,
I'll say Q1 or Q2 so the teamdoesn't kill me for setting
expectations is integrating theability for this AI concierge to
book things like your flights,your rental cars, different
locations, packing lists, allthose different pieces directly
(31:45):
through the Wander app.
So when you want to go and stayat a Wander, it feels like you
have your own personal conciergethat's just purely dedicated to
making your trip as incredibleas possible, and obviously you
can imagine the potential fromthere, where my goal is to make
the product so good and socomplete that, even if you
aren't staying at a Wander, evenif you're just trying to get
(32:09):
back, it's like this is justsitting in your pocket.
So I'd say that's the otherreally big feature that I'm
excited about, and because wehave the distribution to 200,000
plus people, you have thisgreat feature with a
distribution mode, which is thewhole power of the platform.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
You know, I know company culture is really
important to you.
I mean, I've heard someinteresting stories on sort of
frugality is kind of one of thecore aspects of it, but I'm sure
that's only one of several keyaspects to culture.
I wonder if you could just kindof talk a little bit about the
Wander culture and you'velearned from experience building
a couple other companies.
What are some of the hallmarksthat you've tried to instill in
the Wander team?
Speaker 2 (32:47):
We believe in this idea of shared virtues and I
think that that idea reallykeeps the team tightly aligned.
Certain things like tomorrow isa lazy man's, today or we can
take a punch, or just thosedifferent pieces Like we don't
walk by, right, if there's trashon the ground we pick it up.
And I think instilling that inthe company very early is
(33:10):
certainly something that youlearn as a second time founder.
You sort of learn theimportance in your first company
and you learn to document itand its importance.
But it also sort of sets thistone and the ability for people
to run on the same operatingsystem, which is incredibly
useful.
And so, even though Wander is aremote company and an extremely
(33:30):
high output, the fact that wecan have people from all over
the world with different virtuesand ethics and ideas, have this
shared operating language andexpectations, I think is why
Wander moves as quickly as itdoes.
I mean, we're still less thanthree years old.
We're going to turn three inabout six months and I think
(33:55):
when you go to wandercom and youlook at the company we've built
so far, it doesn't feel likethat young of a company and I
really credit all of that to theteam and to the culture we've
built around it.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, some of this is you were sort of building in
the middle of COVID, but you'vechosen to build a company
totally remote, spread aroundthe world.
Any regrets on that?
You know, is that sort oftotally working, or are there
places where you're like, look,if I was actually all in San
Francisco or all in Austin,texas, or pick your location, it
would be a lot easier to dowhat we do.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Coder was an all in-person company and so I think
, like a lot of startup founders, they've run in-person
companies or they run remotecompanies.
Very few have run both and Ialso think very few have run
high output versions of both.
Coder was an incredibly fastmoving startup, very much in
line with Wander.
I think that there are certainadvantages to building a remote
(34:44):
company.
One of the biggest is cost peremployee, which I think is a
metric that very few peoplemeasure.
If you run a business that isdistributed you know, in
Wander's case we have locationsall across the US there are
certain advantages to havingpeople nearby or just who
understand the area.
And then the other big piece is, if you're going to have a
(35:05):
remote company, you have to hirepeople who work well in a
remote setting.
Like, if you hire people whoare best in person and you ask
them to work remotely, it's likedoesn't work right.
It's kind of how a lion is notvery comfortable in the like
Antarctic, and like vice versayou take a polar bear, you stick
it in the Sahara, like it's notgoing to be happy.
And so when you build a companythe types of people that we had
(35:28):
at Coder, for example, like wehad many who were best in
in-person environment and thenin Wander, the vast majority are
best in a remote environment,and it's something that we
interview for certainpersonality traits, organization
, those different pieces and soI think that a lot of companies
that struggle and end up wantingto do hybrid or XYZ, well, a
(35:50):
lot of them built in-personcultures to begin with, and so
if you built an in-personculture, it went remote.
During the pandemic, like now,you have this hodgepodge and it
can be pretty difficult.
You know, I think a lot ofpeople who try and build a
remote company hire people whoare best in office, and that
also is difficult.
So I'd say, if you're nottaking advantage of the benefits
, managing your cost peremployee and access to global
(36:12):
talent and hiring people who arebest remotely, then you should
100% be in office.
I'm not an either or person.
I'm not super pro, remote orsuper pro in office.
I love offices, I love grindingwith my team and then, of
course, I also love working lateat night, you know, in my
apartment, and I can do either.
I do think it's aninevitability that Wander at
(36:33):
some point needs like a realmailing address, but we'll see
when.
That is, offices are expensive.
Which kind of comes into thefrugality piece of like?
Like I hate spending companymoney and so it's hard for me to
justify.
Like a fancy office you got 50properties in the portfolio.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
So maybe you can just have a rolling office when
they're not being utilized?
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Yeah, absolutely that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Well, look, you talked about your, how strong
your culture was and howimportant that is.
I would guess that it's harderto establish such a stronger
culture remotely.
Maybe I'm wrong on that.
Having sort of done that inperson with Coder and now done
that remotely with Wander, howcould you kind of contrast and
sort of think about sort oflearnings on what needs to be
different in that regard?
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah, so with an in person culture, a lot of it is
visual, right, you see whatother people do, how they talk,
how they think.
In a remote culture it's youknow it's very much written,
right, it's written in itsoutput, which I think is
probably the easiest way tothink about it In an office
(37:38):
culture.
You're looking at a lot ofinput, right, are they at their
desk, what time did they show up, et cetera.
Versus, for a remote company,it's really purely output which
I tell the entire team, like Iwill measure you on your output,
like I don't care how manyhours you worked, like or
whatever else, if it didn't getdone, then it didn't get done,
which can sound like prettyhardcore and obviously, like
(37:59):
anyone who works with me knows,I'm like an empathetic leader,
but it's very difficult tomanage people on their input in
a remote world, and so I wouldsay that's probably the biggest
thing is that in person is veryvisual, it's very input oriented
and you have to make it aneffort to manage to the output
and remote is very muchmeasuring the output and
(38:19):
obviously you have to becognizant of the input.
Cool.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
How would you articulate your best superpower?
And, conversely, is theresomething in particular you can
point to that you wish you werebetter at or you're actively
working?
Speaker 2 (38:31):
on.
The thing that I'm best at istaking a group of people and
aligning them towards a singulargoal.
I think that's probably thething that people love the most
is the camaraderie and theteamwork and the excitement and
the motivation and thisunderstanding that we're going
to get this done and it's goingto be incredible.
(38:52):
There are, of course, a lot ofother things to that end that I
truly love Like.
I love working with the designteam.
I love working with the productteam.
Candidly, I love every singleaspect of building a company.
I love it.
There's like there's no pieceof building a company that I
haven't fallen in love with.
You know, one thing as acompany scales is.
You know, as a founder, youneed to learn new things right.
(39:14):
Wander is reaching a prettysignificant scale very quickly,
not just in terms of people, butalso looking at our plan and
the fact that we're hitting itLike, if this trend continues,
like it's a pretty decent sizecompany in six months, like a
radically different one than itwas six months ago.
I mean, for context, it tookabout a year a little over a
(39:36):
year for us to add our first 13properties and it's like now
we're going to add that in amonth.
That's a big shift.
You know, the month after thatis more, and then it's more
after that and like it keepsgrowing, which I know is how
it's supposed to go.
But what comes with it and thisis something that y'all have
taught me is almost this idea oflike managing the back book
right, or like managing to themetrics.
(39:57):
Like you, almost as a founder,in the early days, you're so
busy at the front of house,right, talking with customers,
like designing a menu, cookingall those different pieces, but
at a certain point, using therestaurant analogy, you have to
go into the back and you have todive over your financials and
dive over your metrics and howmany tables turned and if we
change this just a little bit,what efficiencies are created
(40:20):
over the next year.
And you know that's justsomething that when you're like
in the midst of the chaos as afounder, you don't tend to see
that you need to go and makethat transition and of course
you get to do the rest of thefun stuff, but it's like, hey,
you need to spend, you know, afew hours in the closet managing
that back book.
You know, and that's somethingthat, like having a good board,
(40:40):
is really useful for Because youknow you all have a bird's eye
view of hundreds of companiesyou know, and different stages
and as a founder, like you're init, and so that's one thing
that I've really been working onas a founder and, candidly,
like I've fallen in love withthat too, which Chuckie finds
very entertaining, but Ireference it like a video game,
this idea of like hitting plan.
(41:01):
But yeah, I'd say that that'sone thing that I'm really
actively trying to master, whichI realized too, of course, like
if this becomes the companythat I hope it can be, if we're
so lucky, like it's reallyimportant having that
repeatability and making surethat if we eventually went
public, that like we don't missour quarters, and that kind of
fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
No, it's awesome.
I love the introspection there.
We had a chance to talk to yourCMO, kyle Tibbets, as part of
the research for this interviewand asked him the superpower
question, and let me just sharea bit of his answer.
John Andrews, an incredibleservant leader.
The more you know about him,the more it makes perfect sense
that he's building a hospitalitycompany.
A couple of years ago, afterfilming a video at one of our
properties, I was leaving tohead back to my house, which was
(41:43):
three hours away.
He insisted on driving mehimself.
We stopped for lunch and had anincredible three hour
conversation Interesting to hearthe kind of hospitality nature,
given what your business is for, what it's worth to the leaders
.
I had the same exact experiencewith you where you came and
picked me up at the airport, youknow, brought me who knows how
far away to the number oneranked barbecue place in Texas
(42:04):
and we sat in line for an hourand a half waiting to get in
there and had an incredible meal.
So kind of that orientation topeople that matter is pretty
stunning and it's clear you'vegot an amazing following within
Wander.
So congratulations on buildingsuch an awesome kind of rapport
with folks who are working withyou.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah, and that barbecue was great, so it was
pretty darn killer, that's forsure.
It lived up to its ranking.
We're getting close on timehere.
There's probably two questions.
I'd like to finish up with onewhich came from Kyle.
So if you had to pick oneWander to live in for the rest
of your life, which one wouldyou pick?
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Gosh to live in for the rest of my life.
It's funny because I'm going tolike overanalyze the question,
right.
It's like you know, okay, Iwant kids one day.
So it's like, how many kids?
And then I'm going to get old.
So which ones, like you know,have an elevator, that kind of
stuff?
I'll simplify it.
I'll like take all thosevariables out, because otherwise
it's going to get toocomplicated.
I would probably say BandonBeach.
(43:00):
You know, you have, obviouslyBandon Dunes golf resort right
there, which is absolutelyincredible.
You have the beach and just thePacific Northwest and the
feeling that you get out thereis pretty magical.
So I would do that, though,once I had kids, that house
would get pretty cramped,dynamite if you had to go away
for a three day weekend, whichone did you pick?
(43:22):
You're going to hate me for thisanswer, but candidly, like they
are all spectacular.
That is the whole idea.
The whole idea is that they'reall perfect and it's literally
just like.
What flavor of ice cream do youwant?
Like it's all ice cream.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
So you can't pick among your children.
I can respect that answer, butI've heard from you and Chuck E
Bandon is obviously have sharedthe golf course before, so I
will definitely get to theBandon place soon.
Last question and we tend toend all of our interviews with
this Hopefully we've got anumber of young entrepreneurs
who will be listening to thissooner or later.
What's one tip from yourmulti-pronged journey that you
would share with a youngentrepreneur thinking of
(43:57):
starting a business?
Speaker 2 (43:58):
It's incredibly important to be like a good
person as you build a companyand there are so many moments
that you face with difficultdecisions, whether it's letting
someone go or how you presentyourself in a meeting or what
investors you work with and sohaving like a very correct and
empathetic moral compass, Ithink it's like pretty important
(44:18):
, which, of course, there are alot of like very ruthless
business leaders who get throughand not saying that you don't
need to be ruthless to a certainextent, but like you still need
to be a good person and conductyourself well.
The other thing is that ifyou're smart and you're kind and
you're working on the rightidea and you're unafraid to
pivot, you will be successful.
It's just a question of likehow long it's going to take and
(44:40):
obviously I realize there's alot of variables in there
working on the right idea, youknow, unafraid to pivot, etc.
But I think that that's likeone thing that a lot of people
should recognize is that it'scertainly possible.
It's a recipe and just be kind,work hard, make adjustments,
have that courage and I'mcertainly rooting for you.
I know that there's a lot ofpeople who like, for whatever
(45:00):
reason, root against companiesto fail, but yeah, for whatever
it's worth, I'm rooting for you,and I guess this bill is as
well.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
That's awesome.
I love the advice.
Well, look, john, andrew, it'sabout awesome having you and
sharing so many of your storiesfrom the past.
I'm sure we could have gone waylonger, but I'm sure you're
quite busy in the process ofbuilding Wander, so we'll let
you go and really appreciate youspending the time with us today
.
Thank you so much for having me.
It was awesome, perfect and toall you listeners, take care and
thanks for listening.
This has been the FinTechThought Leaders podcast your
(45:35):
window into the world of venturecapital and financial services
with today's digital disruptors.
Qed is proud to provide thebest FinTech advice you can get.
To learn more or to read thefull show notes from today's
episode, check outQEDinvestorscom and be sure to
also follow QED on Twitter andLinkedIn at QEDinvestors.
Thanks for listening.
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