From Algeria to New York City: The Journey of Selfbook Co-Founder Khaled Maneri

As a founder born in Algeria, I took the biggest bet and risk on myself, transforming my moonshot vision of New York City into reality through perseverance, stubbornness, and a relentless drive to create seamless experiences.

1. Khaled Maneri, co-founder and CEO of Selfbook, grew up in Algeria with a dream of New York City as his "moonshot."
2. Lacking a proper education and traditional route to entrepreneurship, Maneri felt he couldn't afford to fail.
3. He believes perseverance and overcoming hardships have made him a better founder.
4. Selfbook provides infrastructure for the travel industry, aiming to streamline the booking experience.
5. Inspired by Apple's product excellence, Maneri learned design and decided to create better products as a founder.
6. His business was accidental; he took on any job as an immigrant to survive and eventually found his path in design and entrepreneurship.
7. Two or three key people helped Maneri build a network, fundraise, hire, and gain new customers when he first moved to a foreign country.
8. When the iPhone launched in 2007, Maneri was inspired to create an innovative app – this led to the founding of Six Agency.
9. Before Instagram and TikTok, Six Agency's app showed one product per day with high curation and engagement.
10. The idea for Selfbook came when travel experiences were added to the app, revealing a need for better booking infrastructure.
11. Maneri pivoted from consumer apps to providing B2B booking infrastructure for hotels, focusing on end-to-end payment layers.
12. The company's rapid growth is due to relentless pursuit of an agenda in an industry that Maneri believes is "sleepwalking towards a precipice."
13. Selfbook enables digital wallet acceptance even when the underlying systems aren't compatible, solving challenges along the way.
14. To achieve high transaction volume early on, Selfbook focused on hotels with higher average daily rates (ADR).
15. In 2021, the company 3xed its revenue, helped hotels increase conversion on their websites by 40%, and reduced cancellations by 44%.
16. The vision for Selfbook includes providing a seamless travel booking experience across various platforms like Perplex City.
17. Maneri believes in working cohesively with existing systems rather than completely replacing them, such as integrating with Muse, a cloud-native property management system.
18. Nemain, the first customer of Selfbook, was a resort that shared the company's passion for providing a better user experience.
19. Maneri attributes his success to his passion for travel and the freedom he found by leaving Algeria, which allowed him to dream bigger.
20. He emphasizes the importance of perseverance in overcoming hardships and not giving up despite difficulties.
21. Selfbook aims to bring hospitality back into the travel industry, focusing on human connections rather than just rates.
22. The company's goal is to enhance the booking experience across the industry by building integration layers with various systems.
23. Maneri credits his success to people who supported and believed in him, even when he didn't have a full product or track record.
24. He encourages founders to focus on what they are good at, adapt when assumptions aren't accurate, and maintain a relentless drive to create something seamless.

Source: EO via YouTube

❓ What do you think? What is the most significant risk you've taken as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome any doubts or uncertainties to achieve success? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!