The Munich startup Holidu is a search engine for vacation homes. The company was founded in 2014 by Johannes and Michael Siebers. The brothers came up with the idea while planning a surfing holiday with friends. Today, the company, with more than 150 employees, offers its vacation rental comparison service in over 20 markets worldwide. We spoke with the founders.
Michael Siebers encountered the startup world early on. During and after his computer science studies, he worked at Zalando. He learned a lot from that time. Michael Siebers explains:
"I was an early team member and helped scale the Zalando team to over 600 developers. I worked closely with then-CTO Arash Yalpani, who was one of Holidu's first angel investors and remains an advisor and friend."
Michael's brother, Johannes, brings his business expertise to the table. The business graduate studied international business administration in Tübingen, Madrid, and Sydney. After graduating, he worked in venture capital at Siemens, supporting various startups. Johannes Siebers says:
"I saw that with good ideas and hard work, anything is possible. I took that enthusiasm with me."
The founding brothers divide the company's areas according to their expertise. As CEO, Johannes is responsible for areas such as business development, finance, and marketing. Michael, in turn, leads the technology team as CTO and oversees areas such as business intelligence and technical product management. Shortly after the company's founding, Rasmus Porsgaard joined as co-founder.
A strong network
Holidu landed in Munich, among other things, because Johannes already had an exciting network through his job in the VC sector and felt a strong connection to Munich. Johannes says:
"Anyone who has founded or wants to start a business in Munich knows how important support and a strong network are. Even before founding Holidu, we were connected to the Munich Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship thanks to the EXIST scholarship."
Michael adds:
"Munich is also great in the technical field when it comes to education in technical professions. And last but not least: the quality of life! Munich is an exciting city, yet cozy."
How a surfing holiday led to a business idea
The brothers came up with their idea—how could it be otherwise—during a trip. John recounts:
"We came up with the idea for a vacation home search engine when we were planning a surfing holiday with friends and were tasked with finding accommodation. We discovered that there are an incredible number of platforms offering the same homes, often at very different prices and with very different availability."
And: Before Holidu was founded, there actually wasn't a metasearch engine in this space. What makes Holidu special is that the company has developed image recognition technology that reliably detects whether the same holiday home is listed on different platforms. Prices for the same holiday home during the same period can vary by up to 55% depending on the platform.
Challenge: Finding employees
After its founding, one of the biggest challenges for the young company was to quickly build a top-class team, says Michael:
“In the beginning, when you have little to show for yourself and have to convince potential employees to get involved and trust that the company will develop successfully, it’s not so easy.”
Good developers, in particular, were in short supply. But Holidu has overcome this challenge and is now well positioned with a team of over 100 travel and tech-loving employees from all over the world.
Another challenge for the founders, of course, was imagining how everything would work before they founded the company. Therefore, outside advice was important for Holidu, as was being open to further development. Johannes says:
"It's been worthwhile in every area to benefit from the experience and advice of world-class people. But ultimately, you have to make your own decisions."
His brother Michael says:
"In a startup, important decisions usually have to be made quickly. This requires stable processes and a clear direction. But that's also extremely exciting."
One small disappointment: Although the founders think about vacations every day, they themselves don't travel as often as they used to. The Munich-based startup also wants to meet the high demand internationally and is therefore present in more than 20 markets worldwide. According to the founders, more than one million people have now spent their vacation with Holidu.
And where should Holidu's journey take it? Continued rapid growth and international expansion? Or should the focus be on consistent product development? Michael says:
“We are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence to help our users find the right holiday home even faster.”
The product area is also set to expand. Millions of offers are already being compared across around 500 different booking platforms. In the near future, more than 1,000 vacation home providers will be available for users to compare. And in three years?
“In three years, we want to make the entire range of holiday homes worldwide searchable and bookable on our platform,”
said John.
