The weekly life of a travel startup - The beginning
This is the first guest post I did on Hotel blogs, I thought it would a good post to start Kukunu’s official blog.
My name is Itamar Lesuisse, to what people would typically answer ‘sorry?’ then ask me if I’m French. Born from a Belgian father and an Israeli mother, I studied Telecom engineering in Belgium and Canada. I have been a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group, a Product manager at Amazon where I launched new product lines, worked on ePayment at Visa and I’m now co-founder of Kukunu. I’m living in the UK and can be found on Twitter (@itamarl) or in any cafe in Soho with good coffee (I’d definitely recommend the Flat White)
The Start up roller-coaster didn’t start for me with a great idea or a disruptive technology but with a great Start up offering me a position of Chief Marketing Officer in London: perfect job, awesome team, great salary and equity in the company; I had 2 weeks to give them an answer.
I jumped on the Eurostar and met Gerald, my best friend, for a beer on the terasse of Cafe Belga. I told him about the job and after a few drinks we arrived to the conclusion that this was not the right move. It was time for me to build my own start up. The plan was simple:
1. Get the right best co-founder
2. Get an idea
1. Get the right best co-founder
I left Cafe Belga pretty relaxed. I knew exactly what I wanted and now the pressure was on Gerald. He had 2 weeks to let me know if he wanted to jump on the roller-coaster and be that best co-founder I was looking for.
I told him the job would be based in London, the opportunity was much bigger than in Belgium; I knew this wouldn’t be an easy decision for him who got married recently and just bought a flat in Brussels…
The next morning he was in.
This is the first and probably the most important step towards building Kukunu. How do you know you found the right co-founder? I guess you never know but in my case I have known Gerald for more than 25 years and I know he can handle me after a 100 hours work week and 5 espressos. I also know that he is smarter than me and as an engineer, PhD in Physics and great developer, he is the perfect match.
2. Get an idea
In 2 months we had disrupted more than 5 markets, changed the life of 500m people and generated more than £2b revenue, all that on some Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint slides. It’s easy to get ideas, even great ideas, not so easy to pick the right one.
So I asked the team (at that point, this was Gerald, me, wife, fiancee, sisters, brothers, friends and the Starbucks staff, all those who spammed us with great, fun and crazy ideas) to stop looking for ideas, this wouldn’t work. Instead I needed them to share their daily problems and frustrations, we would take care of the rest. You’d be amazed on how much frustration people can face in a single day, on a single working task or a leisure activity.
Few weeks later, when planning holidays with my fiancee, Kukunu was born…
