Keep pulling the thread on Johannes Reck.
Get Your Guide's 2013 Series A round, led by Spark Capital, totaled $14 million at a pre-money valuation of $30-35 million.
Following its Series A, Get Your Guide's VCs advised expanding into SaaS products and new markets while hiring senior executives, a strategy the CEO now believes is detrimental for a Series A company.
Approximately one year after its Series A round, Get Your Guide laid off 30% of its employees to correct its strategy.
Kees Koolen, the founder and former CEO of Booking.com, joined Get Your Guide's board and personally invested $1 million in the company during a critical turnaround period.
In 2019, Get Your Guide raised approximately $450 million from SoftBank Vision Fund and Temasek at a valuation of $1.5 to $1.6 billion.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Get Your Guide's revenue dropped to nearly zero within a three-week period.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Get Your Guide employees voluntarily reduced their salaries by an average of over 30% in exchange for company shares, with some in leadership taking up to an 80% cut.
Throughout the two-year COVID-19 pandemic, Get Your Guide laid off only 15-20% of its staff and made no cuts to its engineering or product teams.
Get Your Guide experienced a 10x growth in business from late 2021 to March 2022, and its total volume for 2022 was double its pre-pandemic (2019) levels.
During the pandemic, Get Your Guide raised an additional $100 million through a convertible debt note from existing and new investors.
As of mid-2024, Get Your Guide is five times its pre-pandemic size and is operating profitably.
It is nearly impossible to hire a Chief Product Officer with experience scaling a business to a $10B+ valuation within Europe, forcing companies like Get Your Guide to recruit from Silicon Valley.