#6 Srin Madipalli: from spinal muscular atrophy to building an accessible travel startup, exiting to Airbnb and becoming Head of Accessibility
Entrepreneur, investor and advisor. Founder & CEO of Accomable, accessible travel startup acquired by Airbnb. Former PM & Head of Accessibility at Airbnb.
We are Pol Fañanás and Gerard García, two friends passionate and curious about tech, startups and VC sharing bi-weekly high value views from people creating the future. Thanks for reading !
Srin is a technology entrepreneur, executive and investor. He was CEO and Founder of Accomable, a London-based tech startup named "the Airbnb of Accessible Travel" that got acquired after 2-3 years of activity by Airbnb (recently IPOed world leading vacation rental marketplace with 800M+ users, 100k+ cities and $88B+ market cap). Following Airbnb's acquisition, Srin became an Airbnb's Product Manager (PM) and the Head of Accessibility. He is currently an angel investor in startups like Infogrid (IoT sensors and AI analytics for smart buildings, $15.5M funding by VCs like Northzone) and Prolific (on-demand research platform, YC S19, $1.2M funding by VCs like Pioneer Fund and Altair Capital), Member of the Board of Advisors at Included VC (VC fellowship empowering outliers with potential of having significant impact on VC and startup worlds) and Director at Disability Rights Advocates (leading non-profit law firm dedicated on cases of high impact help targeting people with disabilities in the US).
Previously, Srin worked as a corporate lawyer at Herbert Smith in London. He has an MBA from Oxford University - Said Business School, where he was selected to do a fellowship placement with Isis Innovation, the technology transfer company of Oxford University, and he holds a Bachelor of Science in Genetics from Kings College London.
Summary
👤 Brief intro: disability, passion to help, genetics, law, founder, exit
🥇 Win: selling his startup Accomable to Airbnb
🚫 Fail and lesson: lots, Accomable almost died from fundraising fail
🚀 Ideal founder: smart, resilient, committed, passionate, builder
💸 Ideal investor: rollercoaster ready, ok with risk, strong networks
📈 Markets: reactive and opportunistic, now travel & remote analytics
🦄 3 startups: Infogrid, Omnipresent, Prolific
👍 3 investors: can’t pick just 3, so many
📖 3 books: “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, “How to Start a Startup”, “Do Things that Don't Scale”, “The Hard Thing About Hard Things”, “Superforecasting”
Could you give us a brief intro about you and your origins?
As you guys know, my name is Srin and I grew up in London. Very early on in my life I got diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy and that impacted my life since then. At the beginning, I was not really able to work or do a lot of stuff, I was very conscious of it and that ignited in me the interest to help disabled people build more active independent lives, specially through the use of technology.
From a professional angle, I have a degree in genetics from Kings College London but I did not wanted to be a lab scientist so I retrained as a corporate lawyer and worked in that area for a period in the City.
Eventually, I left to do an MBA at University of Oxford - Said Business School while I started self-learning to code on my own. After the MBA, I founded Accomable, got acquired in 2-3 years by Airbnb and then I became the PM lead for accessibility at Airbnb.
What would you say has been the biggest win in your life?
The obvious win that comes to my mind is closing the deal with Airbnb and being able to sell Accomable to them.
It was the culmination of a huge amount of hard work from the team and I as well as long months of negotiations back and forth from San Francisco and London.
To get the deal closed with a top company like Airbnb ... beyond my wildest dreams. Would I have said that in 2-3 years after starting the company this will happen? No way, not even in dreams.
Related to the above, and your biggest failure?
Biggest failure? Oh !! So many !!
I tried to launch many startup ideas that never really went anywhere, I applied to so many different jobs, universities and incubators and failed considerably more than I succeeded.
From the startup point of view, maybe the biggest fail was our 1st attempt to raise money. We tried but failed, the deal felt last minute and almost killed the company. We were growing a lot but did not have the money to sustain it. Low resources, bad runway ... we were on the edge.
What is your ideal founder profile?
Sounds quite generic but I think you can apply it regardless of the type of business or vertical.
I think the ideal founder or team of founders need to be smart, hard working, resilient, willing to commit their life and passionate.
A team driven by the problems they are trying to solve, and with the skills that can get something up and running. At least, able to get a PoC or prototype to make a first validation to check if the solution solves the problem for anyone and it is gonna work.
I believe that, specially in earlier stages, the founders are more important than the business. 80% founding team, 20% business opportunity.
What is your ideal investor profile?
When I mentor startups I talk about the ideal profile of investors who have the right expectation about the volatility that early-stage startups go through. Early stage is full of zig zags and trying different things, and the investor has to understand it and be ready for a rollercoaster.
Additionally, pretty related to that first factor, there is a high chance of failing so the investor needs to be comfortable with that level of risk. A decent risk profile is needed to have proper performance.
Finally, an ideal profile would be someone who has strong networks and uses them as a force multiplier for the business. Potential introductions that can add value to the company and to the founders, and unique angle to a particular set of domains (e.g. fintech, travel, etc), can be two examples of this.
What present and future markets are you most interested in?
I tend to be more reactive than thesis driven.
There are lots of opportunities at the moment. The world has changed and we are gonna think different around key areas, such as healthcare where we are becoming more preventive.
More in a general sense, when there are periods of disruption, a lot of business struggle so people are more open to big opportunities, which creates space for new entrepreneurs.
I believe some amazing travel businesses could be build during this time because there’s so much disruption happening, key players like accommodation providers are going to be more open minded in trying new products since they need to regain terrain and progress. Additionally, we are already experiencing how global habits are changing which is really interesting and exciting.
I am also interested in remote analytics. We are increasingly in need of doing things efficiently with a remote angle, so solutions in this space are becoming valuable.
Could you share with us 3 startups you like and why?
3 startups that have done amazingly well and that I really appreciate and enjoy working with them (disclaimer, I am an angel investor in them and I support the founders) are:
Infogrid. IoT startup providing sensor solutions and AI based remote analytics for smart buildings. Through small and low cost sensors, Infogrid collects data, transforms it using proprietary algorithms and machine learning and obtains actionable insights with direct positive impact on cost savings and environmental damage. This last November they raised $15.5M from Northzone among other investors.
Omnipresent. It is a solution to employ remote teams worldwide that takes care of payroll, benefits, compliance, taxes and admin so the business customer can focus on growing the company. They raised a $2M seed round and other investors are Playfair Capital and Entrepreneur First.
Prolific. On-demand platform connecting researchers with instant, high quality, global research participants. They raised $1.2M from investors like Pioneer Fund and Altair Capital and were in Y Combinator S19 badge.
Could you share with us 3 investors you like and why?
Interesting question. However, I feel I can not say just 3 because so many come to my mind with so many different domains and verticals. I could give you a 30-40 list of individuals that I admire but it is impossible for me to pick just 3.
What are the 3 books you feel everyone should read and why?
Some are incredible cliché but I still think they are very valuable reads.
“Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman. No matter what, the fundamental human behaviour and psychology are important. Understanding your cognitive bias and those around you is a must for any founder.
“How to Start a Startup” and “Do Things that Don't Scale” by Paul Graham. Not a book but a series of essays. Really good flavour and guidance for early-stage founders. They help to understand better the kind of challenges that are ahead and how to accomplish and perform given difficult situations characteristic of building startups.
“The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers” by Ben Horowitz. As a founder, you can get a lot of value from it. Expect no-bullshit insights on how hard it is to build a startup. A rollercoaster of the building experience that is never going to fade away. He does a very good job of going through all the obstacles, navigating the challenges, and highlighting advice linked to them.
And as an extra one, I would like to mention “Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction” by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner. You can't predict the future but this book illustrates a really interesting thesis about how you can use insights and data points around you to build better probabilities of what the future might look like. Very valuable for a founder in terms of how to distill and understand chaotic situations and come with predictive mechanisms around what you should do.
WILDCARD QUESTION
Can you walk us through how Accomable came to be, how did the acquisition by Airbnb happened and what was the experience like in transitioning from founder & CEO to PM & Head of Accessibility?
The startup came about because I struggled to travel as someone disabled. I had a period in between jobs that I went traveling for 6 months where I found it very difficult to do so with a disability. So the goal was to solve the problem that I experienced. I wanted to make a more accessible world and that was strongly tied into the mission of the company and my personal dream of doing something important in that area. So many things interconnected from a personal angle!
Eventually, we raised money after the above mentioned initial struggle. We had more demand for growth than money to fulfil it but in the summer of 2017 we managed to get Series A funding. Afterward, one of the investors suggested "why don't you have a chat with a big travel platform for them to be a strategic investor? A lot of money is destined to build a big travel platform infra anyway and they have the scale already so why don't we reach out to them?". From the very beginning, Airbnb was the #1 ideal partner.
I eventually got introduced to Bryan Chesky, co-founder & CEO of Airbnb, and a couple of team members. We went out to California and did a presentation. The conversation kicked off then and it turned from a potential investment scenario to a "this is not an investment, we want to acquire Accomable and use your expertise and high-quality listings."
After that, the transition from founder to employee was tough. Big opportunities and huge scale, but you are now a small part of a very big company with lots of other priorities. It can be tough to push your work as a priority for the whole company, you have to spend time building consensus and winning over multiple stakeholders. Yes, you have more resources, but you also need more time to get things done. That is the trade-off I experienced: resources vs navigating extra complexities. In the end, a bunch of things got done. We did a lot and had a lot of positive impact, but wish we could have done even more.
Note from Pol & Gerard: After collecting feedback from interviewees and readers, we have included a new “Wildcard” question to serve as an additional personalized gate to interesting topics specifically linked to each interviewee, which will help to share more complete views.
Big thanks Srin for sharing your views with us !
Big thanks to you, reader, for your time and interest !
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