“With five mouths to feed, I got to stick around”
Born in Lima, Peru to a Swedish mother and American father, Steve Hafner, CEO of KAYAK, spent his early years in Costa Rica and Guatamela “and bouncing around between a bunch of different cities in the US as well as in Sweden”. And it is this early nomadic upbringing, he believes, that has shaped him as the man and leader he is today.
“I got a love of travel very early on but I also learned how to make friends quickly and to get a good read on people in terms of who I get along with and who I wouldn’t, and also, I got a love of experiences versus things,” he said.
This ability to read situations and people may also explain why, 10 years after its acquisition by Priceline.com for $1.8 billion, Hafner remains as CEO of the company he co-founded with Paul English in 2012.
Asked what’s the secret to navigating his own, independent path within a large corporation, Hafner said, “We sold to a really great company with really accomplished leadership who understood delegating responsibility and trusting the folks that they hired.
“(They) paid up a nice sum for us and they did that not because of the brand but because of the people, and they’ve entrusted us along the way and supported us. And I’m incredibly thankful for that … I’m surrounded by very talented people who helped me grow, who challenged me and I do the same for them. And it works. And it’s a heck of a lot of fun.”
Referring to colleague Omri Morgensthern, who rose to become CEO of Agoda eight years after his startup, Qlika, was acquired by Booking Holdings in 2014, Hafner said, “As long as you have an environment where good people can prosper and good ideas are elevated and bad ideas are quickly pushed down and learn from, then you got something great …
“We just had our best quarter ever – so impressive and such a turnaround versus two years ago. So I’m delighted to be still with the company after all these years and I hope they keep me here many years to come. With five mouths to feed, I got to stick around.”
The good stuff that’s come out of the pandemic
As tough as the last two years have been, Hafner said it also accelerated “a lot of really good stuff”.
“Consumers now are willing to think differently about where they travel and how they travel and for how long they travel. Businesses are much more flexible in terms of how they permit people to do their work, and go about that. And there’s new modes of actually being digital when you are travelling.
“So on our dining side of the business, people aren’t calling restaurants anymore. And they’re not walking in, they’re booking ahead online, which is great for our business. So if you look at it with those three lenses, I think it’s been especially been pretty good for society.”
Different thinking post-pandemic
As to how he is thinking differently now versus before the pandemic, he said he’s spending a lot more time thinking about “how I motivate my team, how they’re also distributed and how do I make sure that they gel”.
On the personal side, he’s asking “how can I fit in the right amount of business purpose into that trip to make it effective and to ensure that I can actually stay at that location longer”.
Hafner is particularly bullish about the new-found flexibility around work and the ability to work anywhere for people without mortgages or kids in school. “The whole idea that you can be a global citizen these days, and move every couple of weeks to a new location and still be productive, it’s pretty pretty darn cool.”
And while some may dismiss this as a trend that applies only to the developed world, Hafner said, “That’s how it starts – everything starts somewhere, and then it trickles down”.
What he’s observed since his companies moved to its work from almost anywhere policy is “the folks who were being paid a lot of money in New York or San Francisco actually went to other places where their purchasing power was far greater. And that actually elevated everyone’s income in that area.”
What he’d like to see – next step – is “for folks who have kids in school like me, I’d love it if there were branded schools in different countries, so that I can actually pick up my kids and move them every couple of months to a new location”.
And if you think Airbnb was first with its Live And Work From Anywhere programme, Hafner said, “We launched ours first. We operate in 60 countries, they operate in more than we do, but we have employees across 35. We now have employees in all 50 US states, we’re very active in making sure that our folks can travel the world and anywhere where we file taxes, and someone has a legal ability to work, they can work on our behalf.”
The great equaliser of talent – companies now competing on flexibility
And it is clear that Hafner is pretty excited about how this new world of talent could evolve. “It so used to be that we would compete for talent in markets, where we knew the talent pool was deep. We build great offices, then we tried to have a culture that invited everyone into the office, and we made it just amazingly addictive to be there. High energy, great facilities, great amenities, great benefits. Great fun times with other folks.
“Now we’re competing with flexibility so we can go find talent anywhere in the world, we can move it anywhere in the world that it wants to go to, we have an understanding of the rules and regulations and the benefits so that we can, we can actually pay you anywhere in the world and provide you health benefits.
“And then the next step is to actually not go location, location, but the speed and frequency of that. The average American, I think, lives in three different places. Unfortunately, all three of those places are usually in America. Wouldn’t it be great for the idea of a global citizen where people lived in three different countries? Every 10 years? It would make the make the world a much better place. And ultimately, that’s why we started the company is to make the world a better place through travel.
“I firmly believe that great intellects are evenly distributed across the world, talent is evenly distributed across the world. It’s just a manifestation of that talent in terms of education, in terms of access, in terms of being found, and hired – it hasn’t been equal. It’s been concentrated in certain well developed cities and this is the great equaliser. It’s amazing, the whole concept that you can be born in Indonesia, and end up in somewhere in France or somewhere in Texas, or, God forbid, Miami Beach, my hometown.”
No less interested in Asia and we need China
On whether the slower opening of Asia has made KAYAK less interested in the region, Hafner said, “It hasn’t made us less interested but it’s made us more aware of the challenges of doing business there.”
One less headwind is the disappearance of cheap capital. “You had a lot of local players there with great access to cheap capital, which we didn’t have. We like to build great products, but we also like to make money and for a long time, no one was making money in that market. I think that’s kind of rationalised its way out. So I’m actually more optimistic about our chances in APAC.”
And while some quarters have started to think about how the industry has to learn to live with less Chinese travel for now, Hafner said, “I don’t think it’s a good thing. The whole mission of KAYAK is to help people more easily experience the world … so I want Chinese travellers going abroad, and I want international travellers going into China.
“I expect that barrier to come down and when it does, I think there’s going to be an overwhelming avalanche of people going both directions.”
His worry is how the countries on the periphery of China will handle those big groups coming in “because it’s going to be massive”.
On AI and human imagination – don’t leave it all to the machine
Given the evolution of AI and how good it’s become, will there be a need for leaders to imagine beyond the machine? How good is he at imagination?
Said Hafner, “I like to think that I’m pretty good at it. But I also am not … an active proponent of AI and machine learning as other people because when you get to a sort order on a website, for example, and where the people who are deploying that sorter can’t explain how it works, I think you need to take a step back, and maybe apply some more human common sense and ingenuity to it …
“I like simplicity. I love the amount of data that we have available to us and Open Table but I also want to make sure that we’re putting it through the lens of humans who consume the website and consume the services. And if you can’t explain to me why you’re showing me the things that you’re showing me on my websites, then maybe we should re-examine that. So when I think about reimagining things, I think in terms of delivering a better outcome or a solution to a problem. Computers can help but they’re not the not the whole thing.”
How to ace media interviews
“Smile a lot. I mean, look, you just have to have a personal connection, which is what we’re having. We’re having a conversation about stuff that matters. And my job is to inform and to inspire. And your job is to make sure that that what I’m saying is informative and inspiring.”
by Yeoh Siew Hoon
