Kayak’s Steve Hafner on methods for weighing alternative and danger

How do you deal with diving into alternatives when you may have an organization to guard?

Effectively, you is likely to be a bit extra danger averse with an organization in your palms than you is likely to be normally, in response to Kayak co-founder and CEO Steve Hafner, who has stayed with the corporate since co-founding it 20 years in the past.

“I gamble [in] my private life, however I do not try this [in] my skilled life,” Hafner mentioned throughout a Middle Stage session at The Phocuswright Convention final month.

Whereas he wouldn’t get into the most important gamble he’s taken in his private life, he did contact on what misplaced enterprise alternatives have haunted him, equivalent to Google’s buy of ITA flight software program.

Years in the past, the search big outbid Kayak for the know-how.

“I do not know if anybody remembers ITA software program, however it’s mainly the tech engine that powers Google Flights outcomes. And, you understand, we got here very shut to purchasing. And if we had, as I mentioned, pulled that caper off … maybe Google could be writing us checks, not us writing them checks, proper? So we would be able to energy them,” Hafner mentioned. “It was an enormous miss.”

Mergers and acquisitions have been on the core of what Kayak does, the metasearch CEO mentioned. And whereas it has pulled off “a whole lot of very profitable acquisitions” he mentioned it might have been good to have that, too.

weighing alternative with the chance that comes with it although, is one thing that Hafner believes his firm has achieved effectively.

Kayak’s “tolerance for danger” might have held the corporate again from taking large leaps, he mentioned. However that’s truly been constructive for its improvement on the entire.

“You all the time take into consideration the alternatives you missed. However you understand, we acquired into Kayak Inns, for instance, [and] misplaced $20 million,” he mentioned. “Might we’ve gone greater? Yeah, however we’d have misplaced a billion like Sonder did, proper? So … I feel we’re very pragmatic on the areas that we select to discover, and that is general, served us very, very effectively.”

He additionally touched on synthetic intelligence, brokers, customer support, growth into Asia, company journey, the incumbent corporations and whether or not they may retain energy within the business, laws and extra.

Watch his full dialogue with Siew Hoon Yeoh, founder and managing director of Internet In Journey, under.