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The Twenty Minute VCGetYourGuide CEO & Founder, Johannes Reck: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank
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At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
From Student Side-Project To SoftBank Unicorn: GetYourGuide’s Wild Ride
- Johannes Reck, co-founder and CEO of GetYourGuide, recounts the company’s journey from a failed university side-project to a multi-billion-dollar global experiences marketplace backed by SoftBank’s Vision Fund.
- He describes multiple pivots before finding product-market fit, brutal early years of near-bankruptcy, and the transformational impact—both positive and negative—of large US-led funding rounds.
- The conversation dives into lessons on dilution, founder re-ups, hiring at different stages, managing boards, and surviving existential crises like COVID, which wiped revenues to zero for over a year.
- Reck also reflects on angel investing, European tech’s structural weaknesses, and what Europe must do—capital, immigration, and policy—to compete with the US and China.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasDon’t over-raise early; manage dilution deliberately.
Reck now believes his large Series A was too dilutive, creating cap table complexity and misaligned incentives, and advises founders to raise what they can productively deploy at that stage rather than maximizing headline round size.
As a founder, you must set strategy—don’t outsource it to VCs.
After the Series A, GetYourGuide tried to follow board-driven ideas (SaaS for vendors, many markets, many segments), hired the wrong senior people, and saw growth fall; Reck only regained momentum when he pushed back, narrowed focus, and reasserted his own strategy.
Match leadership hires to stage; big-company stars often fail early stage.
Reck learned that executives from large, mature companies can be disastrous in a 30–50 person startup still searching for deep product-market fit; early-stage firms need highly entrepreneurial, hands-on builders rather than process-heavy managers.
In crises, build scenarios and optimize for survival plus rebound.
When COVID dropped revenues to nearly zero in three weeks, Reck rejected advice to fire almost everyone; instead, he modeled multiple scenarios, preserved core product and engineering, cut selectively, and used equity-for-salary reductions to be ready for the eventual travel surge.
Large, reputable US funds materially change perception and access.
The Spark-led Series A turned GetYourGuide from a “nobody” into a visible European startup, dramatically improving hiring and making subsequent rounds easier; Reck notes that having top-tier names like Spark, Sequoia, or Index on the cap table is a powerful signal.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesWe went from a nobody to a superstar literally overnight.
— Johannes Reck
We listened way too much to the VCs and completely lost our way.
— Johannes Reck
At Booking, the innovation department had one person – me – and it was called the ‘no department’.
— Johannes Reck (quoting Kees Koolen)
It took three weeks from that board meeting to us being at zero revenues.
— Johannes Reck
I want to be that sequoia after the COVID crisis, so let’s build that sequoia now.
— Johannes Reck
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
