Shep's 2018 in Review

As the new year really kicks into gear this week, I decided it'd be a great time to look back at 2018 and recap the progress, challenges, awards, partners, and investors we encountered along the way.

Looking back at 2018

We began the year by announcing a $1.4M seed round, led by Moonshots Capital and Capital Factory, with participation by a group of respected travel angel investors, including Founders, CEOs, Presidents, and Senior Executives from Sabre, Travelocity, HomeAway, Abacus, and SoFi. The personal investment by such experts proved early on that Shep solves a major problem and has the potential to change the way business travel is booked.

Online booking tools (like Concur) were introduced to the world 20 years ago and for two decades, the corporate travel industry has operated with a gaping blind spot. Shep helps companies understand, manage and save on the 30-40% of business travel that is booked on consumer sites like Expedia, Airbnb, Orbitz, Southwest etc.

We started the year, building for, and serving the SMB market with a lightweight, frictionless way to start managing and tracking their travel. We on-boarded a few of these smaller companies but quickly discovered that large enterprises and corporate travel agencies who had bigger problems, bigger budgets, and were actively searching for a solution to solve their “off-channel” blindspot. So, in late October at the BTN Innovate conference, where we won runner-up despite being the “youngest" company there, we announced a move upmarket to enterprise. The post-event coverage called out that,

“ Shep’s strategy of installing a layer of management on top of off-channel bookings will become increasingly important as the travel booking ecosystem evolves.”

At SXSW this year, luck, location, and preparation came together as a friend texted me that the CEO of Reddit, Steve Huffman, and the founder of Capital Factory, Josh Baer were “talking about Shep onstage” at SXSW. And, in one of the most surreal moments of my life, I rushed downstairs to try and slip Steve a card but was unexpectedly invited onstage to pitch him. As the co-founder of Hipmunk (sold to Concur), Steve understands the travel ecosystem incredibly well and said, "I’m trying to grill you but I honestly think people would love this.” His statement has proven true as since then, we’ve signed up affiliate deals and partnerships with more than 20 of the most popular travel sites around!

"I’m trying to grill you but I honestly think people would love this .” - Steve Huffman, CEO @ Reddit & Co-Founder @ Hipmunk

In September, we joined 200 companies in applying for the world’s top travel tech accelerator, Plug and Play’s Travel and Hospitality program. We were selected and joined 20 amazing companies for one week a month in the Bay Area, taking meetings with airlines, hotels, online travel agencies, and corporate travel agencies, one of which (Flight Centre) we announced a reseller partnership with. The program culminated in a demo day in December—where Shep took first place—making us (probably) the most awarded travel tech startup in the last year, including:

• Business Travel News (BTN) Innovators You Should Know 2017
• Skift 2018 Corporate Travel Innovator
• BTN Innovate Conference 2018 runner-up
• PhocusWire Hot 25 Startups 2018
• Plug and Play Travel and Hospitality Batch 6 2018 winner

Looking Forward to 2019 and Beyond

As 2019 kicks off, Shep will be launching and announcing pilots with large, global enterprise customers and multi-billion dollar corporate travel agencies. And while our credibility, traction, and market focus are dramatically different than when we entered 2018, we begin this year much as we did last, raising another round of funding to accelerate our move to enterprise. The trend towards traveler autonomy and open booking just continues to grow - 50% hotels and 28% of air is booked “off-channel." Employees want the freedom to make their own choices, earn their own points and often save their companies money by booking travel on their favorite sites.

More and more companies are recognizing that productivity, ROI, employee satisfaction and ultimately retention should be driving their culture and travel programs. They’re starting to think that possibly hammering square (and rectangular, oval, and hexagonal) pegs into the round hole of traditional booking tools doesn’t work for everyone. As long as companies get the savings, data, and policy compliance they need to manage travel and keep their on-the-road employees safe, Shep can help them evolve travel programs to be more complete, transparent, and employee-centric.