Gareth Williams and his two co-founders, Barry Smith and Bonamy Grimes, built the first prototype for Skyscanner in 2001/2002 in the docks area of Edinburgh and launched it in 2003. That means almost a 15-year journey before it was acquired by Ctrip for US$1.7 billion last November, proving there’s no short cut to success.
In a fireside chat to startups held recently at The Working Capitol in Singapore, Williams, who remains CEO of Skyscanner, shared these tips. The interpretations are all mine.
Gareth Williams: “Our aim was to get to breakeven, keep building and stay focused on the traveller.” Photo credit: VisMedia
- Dream big but start small
“Pre-Skyscanner, we always had side projects and set unrealistic goals. We thought our widgets would change the world and got quite disillusioned when they didn’t work. At Skyscanner, we tried to achieve something more modest, and worked on something we cared about. We set ourselves 10x goal, that hasn’t changed although it’s now 100x.”
Lesson: It’s modesty that gets you the big win
- Those good old days were not always good
“It was two years before we got our first revenue – we earned £46 in one month. Yes, I miss those days but it’s easy to forget the struggle of the startup days. There’s a lot I don’t miss.”
Lesson: Nostalgia is only sweet on hindsight.
- Stay focused
“Our aim was to get to breakeven, keep building and stay focused on the traveller.”
Lesson: Do it one step at a time but don’t lose sight of why you are doing it in the first place.
- Funding is not success
“Funding isn’t startup success, traction and retention are. Funding is a choice you take to buy time. You should feel sad about funding, it’s a little bit of the company you give away, which means less for employees. But it’s absolutely the right thing to do if it’s necessary to build business.”
Lesson: Funding is not something you crow about, it’s something you do to grow your business
- Knowledge and trust are key building blocks to relationships
“We started building knowledge and trust with Ctrip four to five years ago. It came about because we set up an office in Singapore when we wanted to expand from low cost carrier flights in Europe to worldwide flights.”
Lesson: Invest in building relationships because one day, it may pay you back in spades.
- Go outside for talent
“Talent is a global problem. If you are in a tech hub, 50% turnover in software engineers is the new norm. So why not go to different places that do not have an Internet economy yet – pick someone from there and move them to a tech community. If you take less funding, you can give equity to the team – ask yourself, do you have something that people really care about building, is it a fulfilling place to work?”
Lesson: Look for obvious talent in unobvious places and reward and inspire them beyond the obvious.
- Design like you are right, test like you are wrong
It’s one of the quotes Williams refers to in his blogs. “An opinion is just an opinion, you work with the data but craft is developed through experience. An opinion isn’t worthless but you have to have courage and conviction to build something right. If the data says that wasn’t a good thing, change your mind – divorce yourself from the original decision. It’s the use of data vs craft.” 
Lesson: Art and science, like yin and yang – you got to get the balance right.
- Going global and doing PR early worked well
“What we did right in the beginning was we did a lot of public relations, we went international quite early and soon we were top 10 in markets around the world, and we hired locals.”
Lesson: Telling the story early is never a bad thing.
- Keep learning
“Of a collection of horrendous failings, learning is my strength. I enjoy learning. I always found the time to read blog posts, related or unrelated. The desire is there.”
Lesson: You don’t ever have to make time for learning if it’s what drives you.
- Don’t be caught up in stuff you love
“The hardest thing for me personally is I like to build stuff, but now my job is to help others build stuff. I confess I am currently diverted by natural language understanding, so I have to apply discipline. Being a CEO has made me a more rounded person – dealing with more people than I have to.”
Lesson: It’s always tempting to do what you know and love but that’s not right if you are a leader.
- The C in CEO means Communications
On one thing he could have done differently – “My role as founder and CEO is to act as the communication and interconnecting hub, it’s a massive part of my role rather than something on the side.”
Lesson: Be the chief communicator
- The difference between persistence and tenacity
“You need to really care about the difference between persistence and tenacity. Doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is insanity. Tenacity is running at the wall from a different angle. It’s the same amount of grit and persistence, but coming at it from a different angle.”
Lesson: Persistence can be painful on the head, tenacity frees the mind.