Congrats, Sonder!
Nasdaq: $SOND
Congratulations to the entire Sonder team on their public listing debut!
This milestone caps off an extraordinary period of Sonder’s growth, resilience, and determination during what has arguably been among the most challenging times for the travel industry.
Since its formation in 2014, Sonder has been on a mission to revolutionize the hospitality industry with a combination of innovative technology and world class design built with the modern traveler in mind. The company’s seamless, app-powered experience offered across a variety of high-quality accommodations around the world was quickly embraced by travelers and property owners alike. Investors – including Greylock, which has partnered with the company since 2017 – were eager to back the forward-thinking startup.
Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit and immediately upended the world – with the travel industry among the hardest hit. But Sonder responded to the initial setback with a number of pivotal decisions that have enabled the company to accelerate its momentum and emerge as an even stronger, smarter business oriented towards the future.
From getting in front of those who needed extra space for an extended period of time, like traveling healthcare workers and digital nomads, to its unique value proposition to property owners, and a focus on the next generation of business travelers, Sonder has demonstrated an impressive ability to understand the evolving needs of modern hospitality.
Sonder CEO and founder Francis Davidson recently sat down with Greylock general partner Josh McFarland on the Greymatter podcast for a wide-ranging discussion of the company’s journey.
You can listen to the podcast here:
Episode Transcript
Josh McFarland:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Greymatter, the podcast from Greylock, where we share stories from company builders and business leaders. I’m Josh McFarland, a general partner at Greylock.
Our guest today is Francis Davidson, who is the CEO and co-founder of next generation hospitality company, Sonder. Francis started Sonder in 2014 to revolutionize hospitality. The Sonder experience is powered by technology and world class design, providing better choice, comfort, reliability, and value. They now operate more than 35 markets across 10 countries around the world.
More importantly, they built a business that has not only withstood the pandemic – which hit the travel industry probably harder than any other sector – but emerged even stronger. Today, Sonder is making its public market debut and trading under the ticker symbol, $SOND.
At Greylock, we’ve been fortunate to know Francis and his team since 2017 when we invested in their Series B. Since then, I’ve watched the company make impressive maneuvers and difficult decisions always with a clear vision towards adapting Sonder for our new reality.
Today we’re going to walk through the key decision making and product strategy that has enabled Sonder to get to where they are now. We’ll also discuss the company’s plans for the future.
Francis, thank you so much for joining me today. Congratulations on your public market debut.
Francis Davidson:
Oh, thank you. Really thrilled to be here. Thanks so much.
JM:
So before we get into all the details of today’s news and the incredibly wild past couple of years that have led up to where we are, can you just give us a quick sense of what Sonder is, broadly and globally?
FD:
Yeah. We are a tech-enabled hospitality brand. And that’s a lot of words, but it means something pretty simple, which is that we are offering a hospitality experience – meaning apartments and hotels that you can stay in across the world, in more than 35 cities across 10 countries, that are really beautifully designed. They look great aesthetically. Guests, particularly Millennials, Gen Z, love to stay in them.
And we provide modern service. And modern service means that you can do everything you need on your phone on the Sonder mobile app. You can have access to information like what’s the Wi-Fi password, or you can request an early check-in or a late checkout and basically interact with our staff on your phone. We call that the lobby on your phone.
We’ve built really high-quality and consistency in the experience. So even if you’re getting a cool apartment in Dubai or you’re staying in a hotel in Paris, you’re getting really high quality and consistency, time and time again, through the technology that we’ve built and the processes that allow us to operate with really a high level of quality and customer satisfaction throughout.
So this is really the business and it’s evolved so much. What I just described is really far from where we were when we got started in Montreal, when I was back in college, exploring how to rent an apartment to travelers during the summer because I couldn’t find a subletter. And then I realized a bunch of other kids were in a similar situation and I could just rent their apartments to travelers, maybe during the summer and earn the difference between what the traveler would pay and what I’d have to give to that student.
And it’s been a journey from going from this kind of side project in the summer, to then realizing that, actually, there was no brand for short-term rentals, and setting out to build that first brand for alternative accommodations. But then also realizing that technology could play a phenomenal role in it, that we could really uplevel the quality of design so that we could meet the preferences of the next generation traveler (and younger travelers in particular) that aren’t connecting with the big box hotels that are being offered today, and that we could do this on a global scale and thereby reinvent hospitality.
So Sonder has a long evolution. I’m hoping that it’s going to keep evolving in the future. And we’re not going to stop at apartments and hotels in these 10 countries.
Our ambition is to continue expanding across the world, including to Asia and within Latin America, and beyond within the next handful of years, and offering not just the accommodations that we offer today. We’re also thinking about resorts, and what a Sonder residences model might look like, and glamping.