The company supplies invoices and other equipment to some 3,000 businesses, operating for 500,000 consumers on its platform. Transaction volumes have increased by up to 300% and revenue is lately at 3x the pre-COVID level. CEO and co-founder Johannes Koeppel said he believes the numbers will double by 2023 “as a conservative estimate. “
Series B is led by Left Lane Capital, with previous backers Swift Ventures and Base10 also along with angel investors, adding Victor Jacobsson, one of Klarna’s co-founders.
In the past, WeTravel had raised only $7 million in the 8 years since its inception. We receive from the resources that this Series B was made with a valuation of just over $ 100 million.
The start-up has rightly made its own journey. Originally, Koeppel and his two co-founders Garib Mehdiyev (CTO) and Zaky Prabowo (CMO) had left Azerbaijan, Indonesia and Switzerland to start the company, only to locate it to navigate the visa waters and bring in engineers and other technical talents as well. . So, in 2019, the 3 founders of WeTravel moved across the pond to the Netherlands. COVID put an end to the concept that a startup deserves to have its team in one place, and today, most of the company’s sales team and consumers are in the U. S. It is incorporated there, while the 3 founders, as well as WeTravel’s engineering and product teams, are all in Amsterdam.
The hole in the market WeTravel is looking for is the one that turns out to have been created, ironically, with the expansion of online services.
In pre-internet times, agents reigned well when it came to booking e-tickets and vacations in general for many consumers and businesses, whether as Americans and teams. Online teams have replaced gambling for Americans, but interestingly, the same is not true for teams that want, for example, to book a vacation or multi-day retreat that possibly involves multiple hotels, activities, and meals, possibly involving many other people, multiple locations, potentially many providers (not just hotels and airlines, but also restaurants, tour operators, insurers and much more), and the need for flexible payment features: other people paying other amounts, installment bills and lump sum invoices that, in turn, need to be detailed among other providers.
“What’s vital is not so much the payment as what happens afterwards,” Koeppel said, “what the company has to do with those funds. A typical vacation can charge the user $10, the vast majority of which goes to suppliers. It becomes a matter of fund management. And the more holidays are involved, the greater the number of suppliers, from restaurants and shipping companies to airlines and hotels, etc. , is vital. Other payment strategies from one company to another, from one country to another.
WeTravel’s platform covers two main parts of this process: helping those who organize the organization organize suppliers and plan everything; and then manage the other facets of the payment process, whether it’s setting up installment invoices or running with other currencies and payment methods, and paying other vendors on their individual terms.
Koeppel describes the fintech aspect of the business as “the PayPal to travel” and says it’s complex enough that corporations like PayPal, Stripe and other big names in online bills haven’t been able to cater to the component segment of the market WeTravel serves. Especially when used in conjunction with the first component of your product suite to coordinate routes and suppliers.
Koeppel believes this is a style we may see more in the B2B fintech world. “I think in the coming years there will be more express SaaS platforms integrating invoices as parts of the express industries,” he said. (In fact, you’ve already tackled this factor for, say, good looks and health, with companies like Fresha, Boulevard and Style Seat building teams in particular for the desires of this vertical. )
This is also something that WeTravel consumers have also tried but have not been able to build on their own. While travel agents have become “travel advisors” and focus on those tailor-made travel experiences, some have turned, he said, to “bespoke systems that they build themselves. “, however, what I have learned is that what is missing is the final visitor experience. They don’t have time to create the beautiful billing system, payment strategies, and everything in between. »
One thing WeTravel doesn’t do lately is offer discovery to its users, meaning advisors can continue to turn to their black books, or on those days perhaps TripAdvisor, Yelp or other advisory and discovery platforms, to locate attractive restaurants and more. This is anything WeTravel can potentially incorporate as it grows.
“A vital elephant in the room is what happens when other primary platforms think about how they can do more in this area – they already have all the relationships with the big suppliers and may be building or buying equipment to address this use case. .
Vinny Pujji, who led the Left Lane investment, recalled that his parents once ran an agency, “so it was great for me to see it,” he said. “You run into big, stealthy markets and this is surely one of them. “. “
He noted that the COVID winter that has hit seems to be disappearing, even in the existing economic climate.
“The data tells us that’s more common now,” he said. However, he says the company has tripled since 2019, noting that WeTravel in particular could have shown the axiom if a startup can get through the pandemic. , you can completely avoid it. ” Religious groups, students, here are stronger sources of income than just bachelor parties. “