Nearly 30 years after co-founding Concur – which reinvented corporate
expense reporting – Steve Singh is on a mission to help build the next
innovation in business travel.
As managing director of Madrona Venture Group since January 2020,
Singh has led early stage investments this year in Spotnana and Troop
Travel, a PhocusWire Hot 25 Startup of 2021.
In a conversation at The Phocuswright Conference 2021 with
Phocuswright senior vice president of research and product strategy Charuta
Fadnis, Singh explains why he expects to see “massive changes” in travel
technology architecture in the next five years as the industry shifts to
systems that serve the needs of the individual traveler for every trip.
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Singh also argues for an end to the subscription model-based
approach, which left many companies paying their travel management companies
for services that went unused when the pandemic brought travel to a halt.
Instead, he says travel management companies should adopt a consumption-based
business model, which ties their success to the success of their customers. “If
the customer is suffering, you should too,” Singh says.
That said, he remains optimistic about the future for business
travel, expecting it to come back “bigger than ever” but also different – with a
focus on travel that allows distributed teams to convene, in part funded by
money saved by eliminating office space.
Watch the full interview below.
Executive Interview: Madrona Venture Group - Steve Singh - The Phocuswright Conference