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Sam Shank

Entrepreneur, Board Member, Investor, former CEO HotelTonight

San Francisco, California

Invests in

Stages:

  • Min Investment:

    $10,000.00
  • Max Investment:

    $50,000.00
  • Target Investment:

    $25,000.00

Work Experience

  • Board Member

    2023

2019 - 2022

  • Head of Commercial Team

    2022 - 2022

    Included the functions of enterprise account management, sales enablement, revenue management, business development and commercial strategy.

  • Head of Guest Experience

    2020 - 2022

    Led a team of product managers, data scientists, engineers and designers responsible for Airbnb's guest-facing websites and mobile apps. Launched category-based home search. Increased conversion by simplifying and optimizing various guest flows.

  • Head of Hotels

    2019 - 2020

    Led an initiative to add boutique hotel inventory to Airbnb, which was put on hold during Covid.

2010 - 2022

  • CEO

    2010 - 2022

    Co-founder and CEO of the leading last minute hotel booking app. Raised over $100m and built a team of 350 people. Grew the business to profitability with revenues in excess of $150m. Successfully sold the business to Airbnb in 2019. Continued to run HotelTonight inside Airbnb as an independent business unit.

  • Board Member

    2013 - 2016

    Independent Board Member for this fitness tracking app. Worked closely with CEO to determine strategy, budget, product roadmap and helped position the company for its successful sale to ASICS.

2008 - 2010

  • Founder & CEO

    2008 - 2010

    Travel deals search engine.

2006 - 2007

  • VP, Business Development

    2006 - 2007

    Led the company's partnership distribution efforts including partners such as Forbes and Washington Post. Also involved with inbound and outbound M&A activities. Also, as General Manager of TravelPost.com, managed all operations of the TravelPost.com website, including P&L responsibility, product strategy and international expansion.

2004 - 2006

  • CEO and Founder

    2004 - 2006

    Raised angel and venture capital funding, hired team, secured key alliances and set product strategy to build the largest independently-owned hotel review and research site with over 250,000 user-generated reviews and 700,000 unique monthly visitors. Successfully sold the business to SideStep in October 2006.

2000 - 2002

  • Senior Manager, Business Development

    2000 - 2002

    Worded with e-procurement customers to develop a supplier hub to share product information from the same supplier across multiple buyers, for greater efficiency and improved user experience. Co-creator of a patent covering distributed search technology.

1999 - 2000

  • Director, Business Development

    1999 - 2000

    Ran product development. Launched the electronics category.

1998 - 1999

  • Manager, Business Development

    1998 - 1999

    Producer of the shopping category. Also did business development on the Excite CPC comparison shopping engine.