Five students started a project to connect travelers with local tours, but realized few wanted amateur guides. They pivoted to aggregating activities from suppliers globally. As the engineering team grew from 3-8 people to 20+, they learned that everyone working on everything led to decreased speed. They introduced functional roles and Agile processes but lost focus. Stage III introduced dedicated product teams, daily testing, and data-driven decisions. They emphasized defining values like passion and learning to build a sustainable culture oriented around a mission to enhance customers' trips.

1. Growing Your Engineering
Culture
Techsylvania, June 1st, 2014

2. Agenda
07/06/14 GetYourGuide AG 2
! Overview of GetYourGuide
! Company Background
! Business Model & Market
! Scaling the Engineering Organization
! 3 Stages of Growing an Engineering Organization
! The Truly Test Driven Organization
! Building a Sustainable Culture
! Our Values & Our Mission

3. GetYourGuide Overview
Who we are & what we do

4. Our story starts in Switzerland in 2008

5. ! Original Idea
! 5 students from ETH Zurich
wanted to build a website where
students could offer tours in their
cities
! Travelers around the world could
book these unique activities
! The Team
! Founding team: Pascal, Tobi,
Johannes, Martin & Tao
! Everyone worked on the project
every night and on the
weekends
Five students started a project with the goal
to connect travelers with locals

6. Pascal
Tobi
Martin
Johannes
Our first Christmas Party J

7. We built the website, launched it and
discovered....

8. We went back to the drawing board and
came up with…
! Students & amateurs tour guides are a very
small market that is hard to scale
! There are hundred-thousands of activity
suppliers, museums, attractions and sightseeing
tour operators around the world
! There is no platform to aggregate and sell all
these amazing services online
June 7, 2014 www.GetYourGuide.com 8

9. …that few people wanted to book travel
activities from unqualified amateurs
07/06/14 GetYourGuide AG 9

10. 10

11. $24
$49
$20
$10
Market Size in Billion US$*
US
Europe
Asia Pacific
Rest of World
Travel Activities is a $100 Billion Market
Opportunity
! Key Facts
! Bigger than the car rental &
cruise industries combined
! The addressable online
market is 25%, growing at
13% YoY
! Online aggregators own a tiny
fraction of the market
! Average margins are greater
than 20%
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 11
*) PhoCusWright Study “What they do when they get there” 2011 & 2013

12. Discovery
There Are Significant Challenges In
Connecting Consumers & Activity Suppliers
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 12
Suppliers Customers
• Difficult to find & compare
activities
• Suppliers have limited
marketing capabilities
• No Distribution to Online
Travel Players
Trust
• Little reviews, vetting and
varying quality of activities
• Anxiety to miss the best
part of the trip
• Very hard to differentiate
USPs against competition in
an opaque market
Transaction
• Cannot book mobile,
online or last-minute
• Dependent on same day
offline bookings
• Very limited reservation,
ticketing & yield technology
G
A
P

13. GetYourGuide Has Built an Efficient Two-
Sided Marketplace for Travel Activities
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 13
Suppliers
Suppliers
upload
and
self-­‐manage
the
product
inventory
GetYourGuide
quality
controls,
op/mizes
&
translates
the
content.
We
also
add
professional
video
&
photo
content.
OTAs,
Tour
Operators
etc.
drive
traffic
&
cross-­‐sell
our
products
Partner
Network
Customers
35-­‐65
year
old
travelers,
spending
$160
per
basket
Get
Your
Guide

14. GetYourGuide Offers the Largest Travel
Activities Inventory Worldwide
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 14
800+
10,600+5,300+
800+
4,000+
2,000+

15. 120 City Cards
124 Snow +
Winter Sports
378 Rentals
913 Shore
Excursions
1011 Attraction
Tickets
1,079 Transfers
1,820 Culinary + Nightlife
3,089 Outdoor ActivitiesJune 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 15
Our Inventory Ranges Across Different
Categories of Travel Activities

16. Scaling the Engineering
Organization
Our Lessons Along the Way

17. Stage I: Everyone & Everything (3-8
people)
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 17

18. Stage I: Everyone & Everything
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 18
! From 2010-2011 we were 5 people in a tiny
room and everyone was involved in all
engineering projects (full-stack). All decision
making was in a group setting.
! The progress & development speed was
insane. It all ended when we hired more
engineers.

19. Stage I failed, because we needed more
resources to handle growing complexity
! As the code base grew and our system became
more complex, our development speed for the
individual parts of the system decreased
! Initiatives:
! Hire more people
! Get more functional knowledge on board (e.g. design &
front-end)
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 19

20. Stage II: Moving Towards Functional
Differentiation & Agile Development (8-20
people)
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 20
Design
&
Front-­‐End
Building
the
iniGal
prototype
&
front-­‐end
implementaGon
Engineering
Figuring
out
technical
specs
&
ImplemenGng
the
feature
on
the
back-­‐end
Quality
Assurance
TesGng
on
the
live
system
&
making
sure
that
it
scales

21. Stage II: Moving Towards Functional
Differentiation & Agile Development
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 21
! From 2011-2012 we built out a functionally
differentiated engineering organization
! This allowed us to improve the functional
expertise on each layer of the platform
! We started working with JavaScript libraries on the front-
end (e.g. Backbone.js, JSON)
! We built more scalable processes on the back-end

22. Stage II failed, because we completely lost
track of engineering resource allocation
! With increasing headcount in the engineering team
and only one general backlog, your development
loses focus & control. You end up over-staffed in
“nowhere-land”
! Initiatives:
! Come up with a clear strategy
! Group the teams according to focus areas
! Set KPIs, Objectives & Key Results
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 22

23. Stage III: The Truly Test Driven
Organization (20+ people)
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 23
Discovery
Product
Management
Design
Front-­‐End
Back-­‐End
Conversion
Funnel
Product
Management
Design
Front-­‐End
Back-­‐End
Mobile
Apps
Product
Management
Design
iOS
Android
Scalability
DevOps
Back-­‐End
Support
What’s
Next?

24. The Problem with the HIPPO (aka Highest
Paid Person’s Opinion)
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 24

25. Stage III: The Truly Test Driven
Development
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 25
! From 2013 onwards we built a matrix organization, where
small teams are dedicated to specific parts of the product
! We had huge increases in productivity, output & customer
satisfaction:
! On any given day, we launch more than half a dozen tests on the
website
! Any iteration is evaluated based on a set of consumer related KPIs
! If we find something interesting, we start digging in…

26. We don’t listen to opinions, we look at
data!
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 26

27. Building A Sustainable
Culture
…and why it matters to your
engineers!

28. What is NOT part of the culture…
! Pizza & Beer Events
! Hackathons
! Offering English Classes
! A Yoga Teacher
! Having an Office Dog
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 28

29. 02/25/14 GetYourGuide AG
Passion Commitment Learning Clarity Positivity
Our Values

30. Our Mission
We want our customers to enjoy the fun part of
the trip!
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 30

31. Summary: Our Key Learnings in Growing
the Engineering Culture
! Structure follows Strategy
! Formulate a clear product strategy
! Build a mission oriented team structure that supports the strategy
! Formulate clear KPIs, Objectives & Key Results
! Move towards test driven development
! Get rid of the HIPPO
! The only opinion that counts is the consumer data
! Build a strong culture
! Define the values on how you want to work together
June 7, 2014 GetYourGuide AG 31

32. Thanks for your time
Stay Curious!