That time in 2015 when Richard Valtr met a senior leader from a major hotel company on the dance floor, showing our mobile optimised PMS on his smart phone... Back then, this was unheard of... and it got us an invite to pitch to their senior management team in Chicago. We walked into the board room with our deck and after 5 minutes their CIO told us he was not interested in slides. He rather asked us to draw the system architecture on a whiteboard for him. Safe to say we were back on the street within 30 minutes. Definitely the hardest rejection we ever received. It was also a major motivator to prove them all wrong, and try even harder. That evening at dinner the fortune cookie predicted our future perfectly.
My stomach still ties up in a knot every time I think of that pitch…
Love this! Signs from a hard earned lesson, followed by a “stuff it” attitude to rejection, AKA let me show you how this can be done. Good drivers! I met my business partner over windows (nice long story, lucky encounter in short) and we started Herobe 1 month later, thought we would build tech and get buy in from people in the industry to connect the tech we wanted to build, we got rejection. As consultants, we created Nuvho on the back of this rejection to be the influencers / decision makers, master of our own destiny, get paid for advice and outsourced commercial services, in fact making decision on whether to keep the software of the company who rejected us, with many clients. Nuvho became a good business and we do keep that tech software, it is good and got us to create a good deed, put us on a good path. Herobe now is our software distribution business, we realised reselling tech can also also profitable as making it (given the low odds of being an unicorn). Nuvho has grown to a multi million $ business, and we include tech in our services, so the eco system of Nuvho / Herobe ticks along. Rejection is one thing, how you handle it, learn from it, channel it in the right way, is another! In our case it helped!
As a founder myself, it's always inspiring to hear about the downs, not just the ups. Thanks for sharing the story, Richard and Matthijs. It's these moments that truly shape our journeys. My hardest rejection was when I met an investor, and he gave such rough feedback that he actually emailed an apology afterward. But his feedback forced us to pivot and eventually gain product-market fit. The rejections are always more valuable than the positive feedback.
What in the system architecture was it, that made them decline? (the cloud?)
100 % spot on! If you aren’t a bit shy about your first product launch, you launched to late! Isn’t it Matthijs, Richard & Ria? You guys are doing amazing this, we here it literally everywhere in our industry. Keep booming! We keep building on top of it 🫡 Now, we just to be added to your marketplace 😉 Cheers from Otamiser!
That's some motivation you guys got there. Is there any follow up to the story? Did you prove to this hotel company that they were wrong?
In addition to being innovative and amazing, you have also proven to be resilient. I have enjoyed watching MEWS grow even years after leaving hospitality. 👏 🙌
I would be interested to know now with your success if that same Hotel would contract you now … ?
Principal at CW Hospitality - previously COO - Europe at HFTP
1moI remember ‘helping‘ you put up your stand at HITEC in 2015. So much has changed 👍