Tell that to plentyoffish who took on the dating market and consistently ranked higher than big companies like match.

If bookings.com suddenly disappeared you would have hundreds of players ready to jump in with their own angle. What would you offer? Is bookings.com really holding you back?

Plentyoffish sold to Match a few years back, as I recall.

I do take your general point though.

if you gather a group of people with financial independence, and try to bootstrap and never sell a new reservation platform, you can make it happen in about a decade. The trick is to never bloat budgets and staff, and to stay away from KPI - your goal is to take over regions by dumping prices and providing near-zero commissions on bookings from your platform for as many hotels as you can handle. You can handle this strategy among a team of financially independent members who are interested in the field rather than quick buck. It's hardly possible if you're seeking VC money.

That's interesting because I feel like a lot of tech is in the kind of spot. If enthusiastic people come in and start building really good core products while charging fair value there are going to be a lot of bloated, wasteful tech companies that could end up in a world of hurt. At least that's my opinion.