Supercharge your travel startup now!

VC Travel invests in and provides advisory services to travel startups. Make an appointment.

VC Travel also makes strategic investments in travel startups. Founded in 2017 with a significant European LP backer and a $10m fund focused exclusively on travel technology investments globally. We write checks anywhere from $10k – $100k for Seed and $500k-$1m follow checks in Series A.

More important than our checks, we add unsurpassed connections in the travel space and significant hands on experience in travel tech to accelerate success. A powerful and unique combination in the travel tech funding space.

Regardless of if we make a decision to invest in you, we can provide remunerated consulting, open our network and take on a board advisory role for your travel startup. Speak to Bryan today – make an appointment.

            

VC Travel (Venture Capital Travel – Investors & Advisors) is a multi-stage travel-focused investment and advisory proprietorship. We identify and grow successful travel companies of all sizes in high growth verticals and niches within travel. Our focus on select travel verticals allows a wide geographic scope which allows investment and advisory work in the United States, United Kingdom, LATAM, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific.

All of Venture Capital Travel’s advisors have experience managing companies which helps identify and provide hands on actionable help (capital, advice, introductions, best practices, purchasing power) to our portfolio companies we advise.

We know the niches, verticals and sub-verticals with in the 1 trillion dollar travel and hospitality industry to pursue (and avoid investing in) based on the geographic region, target client, current landscape, macro level trends, your resources and team and our value add beyond capital.

Investing in a consumer facing mobile destination content provider in one area would be a recipe for disaster whereas the same content in a different region to different target client disproportionately increases the chances of success for everyone.

The right management team,  founder & managing partner with outside experts and a growing network of worldwide contacts ensures an experienced brain trust to maximize mutual success. We focus on the history, experience and dynamic of the team (do we think your team can execute on what needs to be done?) and its prospective fit within the VC Travel family of professionals and companies we advise.

Investments & Advisory:

Highlights of our work & investments include:

• Getaroom (500 staff, $1B+ annual hotel bookings, exit – Private Equity)
• Travala (the largest crypto travel company, publicly listed on Binance: AVA, Market Cap April 2021 US$316m)
• Airbnb (largest home-sharing platform, pre-IPO investor)
• TourMega (disruptive tours & activities meta-search player)
• Expedia (the largest travel company in the world)
• Booking.com (the largest seller of hotel inventory in the world)
• Dtravel (decentralized vacation rental service, $5m raised, competing against Airbnb, backed by Kenetic Capital, Future Perfect Ventures, DHVC, Plutus. VC, GBV Capital, AU21 Capital, Changpeng Zhao, Andre Cronje, Shima Capital, LD Capital and NGC Ventures)

Links to some of our work and investments:

          

Schedule an advisory meeting:

• What happens: During your scheduled appointment, Bryan will meet you via a video conference call to discuss your business plan and your strategy. You can bring your presentation and we can go over the details, the strengths and weaknesses, and help answer any questions you have about travel technology, growth, challenges and so on. Be prepared to take notes and ask questions.
• Benefits: This is a great way to prepare for any meeting or to discuss previous meetings with investors. You can bring up to two people from your team. You will get the views of an active angel investor, as well as a consultant, and you will gain insights and tips to help you succeed with your travel startup. If your travel startup is promising, I can facilitate introductions to relevant connnections after our meeting.
• Other things to note: Bryan is a professional angel investor and does not sign NDAs. Bryan is not in the business of stealing ideas but will give you a lot of realistic information about travel technology and startups. This is not a way to get funded directly by Bryan.  There is a small booking fee as we use a third party platform, and it ensures that you will turn up as scheduled.

• Ready?: Check my availability & make an appointment.

References:

“Not often you encounter a person that closes mega deals for a listed company with the flair of a seasoned board member. That can talk about adtexts and best keywords practices. Bryan knows what makes the online travel world tick, and will go the distance to make it work for his portfolio. Watch him, because I think he’s only getting warmed up.”

Wouter Blok, Industry Head of Travel, Google

 

“Bryan has a fantastic understanding of the Digital space, and time and again demonstrates his ability to deliver significant value. Whether it’s business development and negotiation, relationship management and growth strategy, or specialist skills such as search, UX or UI Optimisation, whether in London, L.A or KL, Bryan has got what it takes to identify what matters, problem solve and then get people going on making it happen.”

Greg O’Gorman, Head of Ancillary Revenue & Partner Marketing, easyJet

“Bryan is a highly resourceful, entrepreneurial and creative individual who can be relied on to think outside the box and to find solutions beyond the obvious. We have a shared philosophy of eating our own dog food – even if that involves coding every now and again!”

Lily Cheng, Managing Director, China, Tripadvisor

“Bryan was one of the sharpest partners I’ve ever dealt with. He had clear understanding of loyalty marketing and how to drive acquisition through our database. Each campaign showed incremental improvement as Bryan tested and learned variables to drive a strong ROI. Highly recommended.”

Steve Baird, Strategic Planning Manager, Qantas

“Bryan is an extremely smart guy, he is assertive, quick to grasp things and ever hungry for more knowledge. His entrepreneur side allows him put himself in the position of who he is talking to and understand their needs, that’s why he is so good finding new partners and dealing with the existing ones. Bryan’s versatility and understanding of Ecommerce is so thorough that he could be doing any role in Ecommerce. It was a real pleasure to work with him.”

Jose Truchado, Director, SEO, Expedia EMEA

“Bryan is a born entrepreneur. With his flare of natural energy and business acumen he is able to deal with complex situations. A high achiever offering multi-national experience in financial services and e-commerce fields. I would recommend Bryan for is ability to lead and endless hunger to be ruthlessly successful.”

Ketan Samani, Global Head of Web, Standard Chartered Bank

 

“Working together on a strategic alliance it was clear immediately Bryan was someone operating with clarity, vision, focus and energy. A travel professional of the highest calibre. I hope our paths cross again.”

David Hughes, Director, Technology, Thomas Cook Group

“Bryan has an unusual talent for extracting the maximum strategic business advantage from very complicated situations without losing track of the little details. I enjoyed working with him – he is very clear about what he needs to achieve and explains the background well.”

John Dalzell, Senior Developer, E*TRADE

I had the real pleasure of working closely with Dominic … Dominic is extremely passionate and successful in managing partner expectations and growing their revenues; his charisma and ability to “put partners first” highlighted to me that having an open, fluid and continuous relationship with partners was a big contributor to driving growth. Dominic’s combined porfolio of EMEA accounts were the largest in our team and his ability to organise and prioritise technical and commercial milestones really helped partners to focus on the issues at hand. Dominic understands that all partners require specific solutions, and he can liaise effortlessly to all those involved so that team objectives are aligned appropriately. Above all else, Dominic’s great personality is infectious on Partners and that has proven itself through the trusted relationships he has built with our large EMEA affiliates. Dominic is a great asset to any organisation and I highly recommend him.

Imran Qureshi, Strategy & Innovation, British Airways / IAG

Dominic is probably the nicest person you will ever meet and will ever have the pleasure working with. In addition to that he is also … remarkable .. who always goes the extra mile for his partners. He is absolutely commercially savvy and always creates win win situations. And did I mention that he is wonderful to work with?

Dirk Gollnow, Director, Distribution Partner Solutions, Orbitz Worldwide

Managing Partner:

Bryan Lip, Founder & Managing Partner – bryan@vctravel.com  – 

Bryan founded VC Travel in 2017 with a significant European LP backer and a $10m fund focused exclusively on travel technology investments globally. We write checks anywhere from $10k – $100k for Seed and $500k-$1m follow checks in Series A. More importantly to our checks, we add significant connections in the travel space and significant hands on experience in travel tech to accelerate success. A powerful and unique combination in the travel tech funding space.

Bryan is a US based international executive with over 20 years internet industry experience in a range of sectors including travel, banking, broking, marketplaces & telecommunications. Worked for a range of organizations from startups to Fortune 100’s including directorship & head of roles, managing annual gross sales lines exceeding $1.5 billion. Qualified lawyer with experience as an in-house counsel, 7 years with online financial services pioneer, E*TRADE from the late 90s with senior roles in product, marketing & alliances. Held global divisional responsibility for Barclays ecommerce operations. 8 years with the world’s largest online travel business Expedia. Lead partnerships, corporate development and affiliate for Sequoia, GGVC, NEA, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers Series E unicorn startup & the world’s largest platform for home design & decor – Houzz.

Technical Advisors:

Derric Gilling, Technical Advisor – 

Derric co-founded Moesif Inc. and serves as the Chief Executive Officer since November 2016. He was the Chief Technology Officer at Trove Market, was a computer architect at Intel on the Xeon Phi CPU and began his career at Cisco Systems. He focuses on API design and development, debugging, analytics, and computer architecture. Derric is a graduate of Computer Engineering at the University of Michigan and has successfully raised funding for two of his own startups in Silicon Valley.

Derric has a particular interest in areas of highly parallel architecture and distributed systems. A deep understanding of caching protocols in hardware and software systems, scaling thread count, and managing concurrency. Topics of interest range from the memory subsystem to power management and uCode internals, to security.

Yiran Tian, Technical Advisor – 

Yiran is based in London, UK & Shanghai, China and has over 20 years experience in technology and architecture development. He built the world’s first hotel booking app on iPhone featured by Apple. He was also responsibile for the build of the biggest self-serving social advertising app (Social.com) which was later acquired by Salesforce. He has been a Principal Solutions Architect for Experian (which recently acquired London startup, ClearScore (the Credit Karma of the UK)). Yiran has also held CTO positions in multiple tech startups and currently serves as the CTO for Series C funded, Shanghai based Wenjuan.com (问卷网/众言网络).

Yiran spent 4 years at Expedia leading front end development from one of Expedia’s largest divisions and worked with many of the world’s leading travel brands including Norwegian Air, SAS, Ryanair, Carrefour, Air Mauritis, Alitalia and more. Yiran holds a senior degree in Computer Science from the University of Nottingham with first class Honors and has extensive experience in API technology including social media APIs and is fluent in Mandarin.

Xing (Xingheng) Wang, Technical Advisor – 

Xing has a strong technical and analytical background (Masters in Computer Science from MIT), which he applies to both Game Production and Product Management disciplines. At Zynga, he was promoted to Executive Producer where he lead the teams for some of the most profitable games. At Microsoft, he worked as PM on products such as MSN payment (which processed payment for all of Microsoft’s online products, including Xbox live) and Xbox before becoming a Producer at Microsoft Game Studios. Currently he is Co-founder and software engineer at Moesif, an API analytics platform.

He has written articles on product management and game production for game development trade publications such as Gamasutra in the US and Develop magazine in the UK. Xing had two patents granted whilst at Microsoft – Patent Codes US20050144099 A1 and US7591424 B2. As an investor and advisor, he has leveraged his know-how in the mobile and online space to help grow a mobile start-up (Hornet, a social app) to a profitable business with over 15 million users. His other investment EcitySky was aquired by YY. Xing has also successfully raised funding in the order of millions for his own startups in Silicon Valley.

Jason van Straalen, Strategic Advisor –

Jason’s story began as a young retail sales assistant who went from working for a great company at the time to starting his own. Branching out into several fields from there including travel and investing. Survival in any industry requires constant learning and listening to people and researching the direction that the market you’re investing in is going.

For Over 25 years, Jason has successfully run business in Consumer Electronics Retail, Consumer Electronics Wholesale, Commercial and Residential Property Development, Professional B2B Equipment import and distribution and business investment.