🚫 OTAs Suck ✅ Building a Book Direct, Decentralized, Open-OTA ➜ 🚀 Operators Get Direct Bookings ✈️ Travelers Get Rewards for Booking Direct 💰 Anyone Who Refers Travelers Owns Them & the Revenue Stream They Generate.

🐥 I'm a startup founder, launching a direct booking travel platform for the AI agent era.

Why? Today, Online Travel Agent (OTA) commissions are draining 10's of billions of dollars out of the travel ecosystem. They enrich "Big Tech" and "Big Travel", at the expense of everyone else. I know because I helped them do it. For years I was a super-affiliate of Expedia and other big OTAs. I fed $100m+ in hotel bookings to the OTAs, generating $10m in commissions, but adding little of value to the ecosystem.

Now, I'm building a new travel distribution platform and protocol that enables travelers and their AI agents bypass the OTA middlemen and book direct.

👇 Want to be notified when we launch? Leave a comment in the featured post below titled "AI-powered community", or reach out and connect! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Previously...

🐣 I co-founded a venture studio. We launched 3 notable ventures:
 
1️⃣ 3Genius International. Network of travel booking websites. $100M+ in bookings and $10M+ in gross profit.

2️⃣ Moola.com. Multiplayer game. Grew virally to 450k community members, $7.6M economy. PCWorld's “Best Places to Waste Time on the Web”.
 
3️⃣ Locationary. Local data and community platform. Rewarded users for crowdsourcing local business data (eg. like for Apple Maps). $4.5M in funding. Acquired by Apple.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

🧠 Current Interests: AI, community, machine learning, travel, fintech, loyalty rewards, web3 / tokens / blockchain, creator & influencer economy, social commerce, marketplaces, network effects.

Arlen Ritchie

Pareto Business School

The Pareto MBA is an 8 week mini-MBA cohort program designed to teach you practical business tools, frameworks and skills.

Founder

North House AB

North House is a digital solution for governing documents.

Board Member

Almi Invest

Fund Manager and CEO of Almi Invest Stockholm AB, with AUM of 350 MSEK.

Fund Manager / CEO / Advisor

Worked with ~15 portfolio companies, focusing on software and B2B SaaS. Led/co-led Almi Invest's investments in Learnster, Alva Labs, Roaring.io, Lingio, Mediatool, Madden Analytics, Gigital and Strivr.

Investment Manager

Benchmarking | Alliance

* Sold to Nordtech Group - deal closed 2022

Provider of daily KPI data for the Nordic hospitality industry, serving more than 1500 hotels in eight countries. I co-founded the company, secured the initial core customers and gradually transitioned into a CPO / developer role. Left daily operations in 2017 and served on the board until the company was acquired by Nordtech Group in 2022.

Assembler Ventures

Investment and advisory mainly focused on SaaS, EdTech and early-stage startups. Investments and customers include:

- Nordtech Group (LP)
- Propel Capital VI (LP)
- Hype Ventures (LP)
- Being and Investment (LP)
- Loop (Angel round)
- Lexplore (Seed round)
- Done Services (Pre-seed round)
- Strive School (Angel round)
- North House (Pre-seed round)
- Goodfeed (Pre-seed round)
- PinnOne (advisor)
- Binary Brains (Bridge round)

Founder / Owner

Propel Capital

Investor (LP) / Advisor

Techstars

Mentor

Nordtech Group

Investor in Nordtech group, a serial acquirer of SaaS businesses.

Investor (LP)

Gigital

Daymi

Recurring task management for the financial industry.

Creating the Pareto MBA - an 8-week mini-MBA for anyone who wants to level up their business skills (new leaders, entrepreneurs, tech specialists etc).

Previously Fund manager at Almi Invest in Stockholm where I led 15 startup investments and managed a portfolio of 60 investments with AUM of 30 MEUR. Before that SaaS entrepreneur - founded the company Benchmarking Alliance which was acquired by Nordtech Group in 2022.

MSc in Finance from SSE, MSc in Engineering physics from KTH.

taplio

The Battle

Arlen Ritchie

Jens Bäckbom 💡

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?