Our rapid growth since launch has been driven by a charmingly relentless push to modernize an industry that I believe is sleepwalking towards a precipice, especially regarding payment solutions like Apple Pay that don't integrate well with outdated systems.

Before Selfbook, no hotel could accept Apple Pay, but we introduced digital wallets into the industry to streamline the experience.

The pandemic hit just as we were launching our travel app, which was designed to allow users to easily discover and book hotels. Despite the shutdown of hotels worldwide, I focused on the future, believing that people would want to travel again.

This experience led us to decide to manage payments ourselves, not for profit, but to enhance the overall hospitality experience.

Instead of trying to completely replace existing hotel systems, we pivoted to work cohesively with them, integrating our solutions to enhance the booking experience.

We were the first site to allow users to book accommodations and pay online through the app, which was a significant innovation at the time.

We realized it was surprisingly easy to make money from iPhone apps, but we wondered why we never charged for anything online, discovering that accepting payments on the Internet was a hassle.

We faced challenges in providing flexibility in rates and creating a single API for platforms to sell travel without needing to build every component from scratch, which is essential for a fintech company like ours.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we had to pivot quickly. Instead of laying off our team as advised, we chose to be transparent and asked everyone to take pay cuts to weather the storm together, which ultimately helped us find our product-market fit.