20VC with Harry Stebbings• Jun 23, 2025• 1:24:26Interview

GetYourGuide CEO & Founder, Johannes Reck: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank

From 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Johannes Reck•CEO & Founder, GetYourGuide

Executive Summary

Get Your Guide, a travel experiences marketplace, navigated early product-market fit failures and a strategic misstep after a large Series A round, which led to significant layoffs.
The company demonstrated extreme resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, where revenue dropped to zero.
By retaining its entire engineering team and raising capital, it was positioned for explosive post-pandemic growth.
Led by founder Johannes Reck, the company grew 10x in a matter of months post-COVID and is now five times its pre-pandemic size and profitable, highlighting the power of crisis management and long-term vision.
The narrative underscores the challenges and opportunities within the European tech ecosystem, contrasting its venture capital landscape with the US and advocating for policy changes to foster growth.

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Concerns Raised

Structural disadvantages of the European tech and venture capital ecosystem compared to the US.
Difficulty in hiring senior product and executive talent with experience scaling $10B+ companies within Europe.
The historical challenge of consumer internet companies being undervalued by public and private markets compared to SaaS and AI.

Opportunities Identified

Leveraging AI to dramatically improve efficiency on the supply side, reducing onboarding time from days to minutes.
Expanding into new, high-margin verticals such as touristic ticketing for sports events and shows.
Capitalizing on the post-pandemic surge in demand for travel and experiences, which has already driven 5x growth.
Consolidating a fragmented market of travel experience providers by offering superior digital tools and global reach.

Key Themes

Crisis Management and Resilience

The company faced two existential crises: a post-Series A strategic pivot requiring a 30% layoff, and the COVID-19 pandemic which reduced revenue to zero. In both cases, leadership made difficult, conviction-driven decisions that diverged from investor advice, ultimately enabling survival and explosive growth.

This provides a powerful case study on how to manage a company through severe downturns, emphasizing the importance of retaining core talent and maintaining a long-term vision despite immediate pressures.

The Founder's Journey and Evolution

CEO Johannes Reck reflects on his evolution from a self-described overconfident young founder to a more humble and inclusive leader. His early conviction was crucial for survival, but he later learned the importance of complementing his own skills and fostering a more collaborative environment.

This theme offers insights into the personal development required to scale a company from a student project to a profitable, multi-billion dollar enterprise, highlighting the changing demands on a CEO over time.

Strategic Fundraising and Investor Influence

The episode details the company's fundraising journey, from a $14M Series A that was retrospectively considered too large, to a $450M round from SoftBank. It explores how top-tier VCs can de-risk future rounds but also how their advice can sometimes lead a company astray, requiring the founder to have strong conviction.

This illustrates the double-edged sword of venture capital, showing how the right partners are critical but that founders must ultimately own the company's strategy, even if it means disagreeing with their board.

Navigating the European Tech Ecosystem

The discussion highlights the structural disadvantages of building a tech giant in Europe, citing a nascent VC scene in the early 2010s and a significant funding gap compared to the US. Reck advocates for policy changes, like tax incentives for stock options, to make Europe more competitive in attracting and retaining top talent.

This provides a founder's-level perspective on the macroeconomic and policy factors that shape a region's startup environment, offering a critique and potential solutions for Europe's tech landscape.

Pivoting to Achieve Product-Market Fit

Get Your Guide's initial peer-to-peer model was a commercial failure, generating only a handful of bookings in two years. The founders pivoted to a B2B2C model, digitizing the inventory of existing professional tour operators, which unlocked a massive, underserved market and set the company on its path to success.

This is a classic startup lesson on the importance of recognizing failure, learning from the market, and being willing to make a fundamental change to the business model to find a scalable opportunity.

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Topics

Travel Tech Marketplace Get Your Guide Johannes Reck COVID-19 Crisis Management Venture Capital Fundraising Series A SoftBank European Tech Berlin Startup Scene Pivoting Product-Market Fit AI in Travel

Processed Mar 29, 2026 yt-dlp + mlx-whisper + Gemini