How I Built a $300M Startup with No Degree and No NetworkㅣSelfbook, Khalid Meniri

As a founder, you are taking the biggest bet and risk on yourself and your life. Being born in Algeria, my moonshot was New York City and went straight to New York. I don't have a proper education, I don't have a proper sort of route to becoming a founder. For me, specifically, I don't have the option to fail. And so giving up is absolutely not on the table. Every decision I make, I doubt, but then there is a stubborn persona in me. So as long as your vision is the same and consistent, and what you're delivering is clear to the world. How you get there, it doesn't really matter. What is truly imperative is the reinforced principle of believing. You really have to believe that your product is helping people. And I think perseverance and any hardship I had going through life helped me become a better human first and then a better founder.

作为创始人，你是在自己和自己的生活上押下最大的赌注和风险。生于阿尔及利亚，我的大胆梦想是纽约市，并且直接来到了纽约。我没有接受过正规的教育，也没有明确的路径去成为一名创始人。对我而言，失败不是一种选择，因此放弃绝对不在考虑范围内。我做的每一个决定都会怀疑，但我内心有一个固执的自己。只要你的愿景保持一致，并且你传达给世界的信息清晰明了，那么实现的方式其实并不重要。真正重要的是坚信的原则。你必须真正相信你的产品是在帮助他人。我认为，坚持和经历过的种种艰辛让我首先成为一个更好的人，然后成为一个更好的创始人。

My name is Khalid Mineri, co-founder and CEO of Self-Bok. Self-Bok is really providing infrastructure for travel. So if someone is on the website and have intent to book that hotel, we should eliminate as much friction as possible to increase conversion. Before Self-Bok, you know, hotel in the world could accept Apple Pay, for instance. And so we brought in the digital wallets into the industry. And then now we're adding much more features to streamline the experience even more. Be born in Algeria, obviously. To politically, we were restricted, we couldn't travel. When the pandemic was an example for a lot of people, how they felt the need to travel, but they couldn't. So imagine a world in Algeria where you actually can't travel, because it's impossible to get visa or especially as a young kid. So when I was able to finally leave, my moonshot was New York City and went straight to New York.

我的名字是卡立德·米内里，我是Self-Bok的联合创始人兼首席执行官。Self-Bok主要提供旅游基础设施服务。例如，如果有人在网站上有预订酒店的意图，我们应该尽量减少各种阻碍，以提高转化率。在Self-Bok成立之前，全球酒店是无法接受Apple Pay的。因此，我们将数字钱包引入了这个行业。现在，我们正在增加更多功能，以进一步简化用户体验。 我出生在阿尔及利亚。我们的政治环境比较受限，以前不能旅行。疫情期间，很多人意识到了旅行的必要性，但却无法成行。想象一下，在阿尔及利亚，你真的无法旅行，因为办签证几乎不可能，尤其是对于年轻人而言。所以，当我终于能够离开时，我的目标是纽约市，并直接去了那里。

I walked up Fifth Avenue and discovered the Apple Store. It was beautiful. I remember the first iPod ad on Fifth Avenue or in Times Square. That was a big iPod ad. And I remember how beautiful that product was. I then learned design because they're open for 24 hours. They let you use the Mac. So that changed my life because I was really inspired by the design and was really inspired by truly obsessive excellence and product excellence. And so made me want to learn how to design and maybe better product founder. My business was purely accidental. As an immigrant, I had to do any job to survive. I really wanted to design products. But I had no education or network or any sort of background to earn the benefit to go and work for someone.

我走在第五大道上，发现了苹果店。那家店非常漂亮。我记得在第五大道或时代广场上的第一个iPod广告，那可是个巨大的iPod广告。我也记得那个产品有多么美丽。后来我了解到，这家店是24小时营业的，他们还允许你使用Mac电脑。这极大地改变了我的人生，因为我受到了设计的启发，也对追求卓越和产品完美的热情所激励。因此，我产生了学习设计的愿望，并希望成为更好的产品创始人。实际上，我的商业之路完全是一次偶然。作为一个移民，我必须靠做各种工作来生存。我真的很想设计产品，但我没有相关的教育背景、社交网络或任何其他可以让我去给别人工作的资源。

I think not going to school here or at all and not having a strong network when you first move in to a foreign country. You have to start somewhere. And so one friend can become your network. Or when I was fundraising, I didn't really know a lot of people. I knew two or three people. That's it. The three of them specifically that I have in mind helped me with a building network, fundraisers. They're still my close advisors and investors and even helped me hire and get new customers. So you really can't go at this alone. Some will change. Some will come. Others will go. But whether they will end up there or not, they'll always be part of your story.

我觉得，如果你没有在这里上学，或者根本没有上学，再加上在你刚搬到一个外国的时候没有强大的人脉网络，这会让事情变得困难。你必须从某个地方开始建立关系。所以，一个朋友可以成为你的起点。就像我在筹款的时候，我并不认识很多人。实际上我只认识两三个人。正是这三个人中的某些人帮助我建立了网络，帮助我进行筹款活动。他们现在仍然是我亲密的顾问和投资者，甚至帮助我招聘新人和获得新客户。所以，你实际上是无法单打独斗的。有人会改变，有人会来，有人会走。但无论他们是否能留下，他们总是你故事的一部分。

We're going to touch this with our fingers. When the iPhone launched in 2007, that sparked an idea to design an app. No one had designed for mobile before. So that was a really opportunity for us to start at the starting point. And that was six agency. I called it six agency because I was working out my apartment in 6A. So the name was easy to come up with. This app in particular, an idea that we wanted to push to some of our clients to say, you don't need a full catalog or products in front of a customer on a small device. The app would show you only one product per day. Sometimes it could be a pencil from Japan or it could be a beautiful watch. It was highly curated. This is before Instagram, before TikTok.

我们将亲手触碰这一领域。2007年，iPhone的发布激发了我设计应用程序的想法。当时还没有人专门为移动设备设计应用，所以这是一个让我们从头开始的巨大机会。于是，我们创立了名为“六号机构”的公司，因为我是在6A公寓里工作，所以这个名字很容易想到。我们想向一些客户推出这个特定的应用，告诉他们：在小设备上不需要展示整本产品目录。这个应用每天只会展示一个产品，有时可能是来自日本的铅笔，有时是精美的手表，内容经过精心策划。这是在Instagram和TikTok出现之前的事情。

And some of the products and experiences that we started adding is travel experiences. When we show these experiences, engagement won up 70%. So people really wanted to learn about an experience or buy an experience. But it was really hard to book on the app just because there was no proper booking infrastructure at the time. You had to leave the app and go find the experience somewhere else in some other marketplace to book it. And that's why inspired us to launch a travel app. It was an app designed where you can easily discover a hotel and book it right there and then. But the month we were officially launching it, the pandemic started. Every hotel in the world shut down. Yet I was thinking beyond that.

我们开始添加的一些产品和体验中包括旅行体验。当我们展示这些体验时，互动率上升了70%。这表明人们非常想了解或购买这些体验。但在当时，由于缺少合适的预订系统，通过应用程序预订体验非常困难。人们不得不离开应用程序，到其他地方的市场中寻找并预订这类体验。这激发了我们开发一款旅行应用的灵感，这款应用的设计目的是让用户可以轻松地发现并直接预订酒店。然而，就在我们准备正式推出的那个月，疫情爆发了，全世界的酒店都关闭了。但我依然在思考更远的将来。

When the world comes back and they would want to travel again. For me, every decision I make, I doubt. But then there is a stubborn persona in me and a relentless drive to create something seamless. And so we had to think of ways where we can pivot. Two key insight points that I received during that time was that no hotel. All in the world could accept Apple Pay at the time. And secondly, is that launching a consumer app is really, really hard. So for us was how can we leverage everything we built and still provide this unique customer experience to compete against OTAs was an impossible mission. Big OTAs use Apple Pay and they have a really streamlined booking experience, some at least. Hotels didn't have that. So they didn't have a leveled playing field. So self-book provided that to hotels. Instead of them just continuing to give 25% commission to OTAs because a lack of streamlined booking experience, we were able to bring that to them.

当世界重新开放，人们想要再次旅行的时候。对我来说，我做的每一个决定都充满疑惑。但内心有一个倔强的性格和一股不断追求无缝体验的动力。所以我们必须想出应对的方法。我在那个时期获得的两个关键见解是：当时没有酒店能接受苹果支付。其次，推出一款消费者应用程序真的非常困难。对我们来说，如何利用我们所打造的一切，仍能提供独特的客户体验来与在线旅行社（OTA）竞争，简直是一项不可能的任务。大型OTA使用苹果支付，并具备非常流畅的预订体验，至少有些是这样的。而酒店没有这个优势，所以竞争环境并不公平。Self-book为酒店提供了解决方案。酒店不再只是因为缺乏流畅的预订体验而继续向OTA支付25%的佣金，我们能够将这样的体验带给他们。

Our view was that if the guest really wants to book a hotel and they are on the hotel website, there is absolutely no reason for them to leave the website and go to an OTA to book that same hotel. They should book it right there and then. And that's where self-book really comes in to provide this booking infrastructure married with an end to end payment layer. We believe that building a guest first experience is so much better than just building a not-or-be-to-be product, even though it was a B2B company. When we think of the industry and we think of hotel as clients, obviously the industry is left behind from a technology perspective and every product that they have was really antiquated, especially on a guest experience. Some of these systems were built in the 60s. User behavior was moving fast but the change was really slow.

我们的观点是，如果客人真的想预订酒店而且已经在酒店官网上，那么他们完全没有理由离开这个网站，去OTA（在线旅行社）那里预订同一家酒店。他们应该直接在官网上完成预订。这正是自助预订发挥作用的地方，它提供了预订基础设施，并整合了端到端的支付层。我们相信，构建以客人为中心的体验要比仅仅构建一个企业对企业（B2B）的产品好得多，即使我们是一家B2B公司。当我们考虑这个行业并把酒店视为客户时，很明显该行业在技术方面已经落后，他们现有的产品非常过时，尤其是在客人体验方面。有些系统是在60年代建立的。用户行为的变化非常快，但这些变革却非常缓慢。

Our rapid growth since launch was mainly driven by really being charmingly relentless. You have to push an agenda to an industry that I felt and I still feel like the worst sleep walk into worse suppressor bus. A modern payment solution like Apple Pay that uses a cryptogram doesn't really work with a system like Saber. And so we had to build layers that allow us to use a Saber to accept it to wallet. And that was one of the challenges that we solved. But then as we kept on going, we've discovered a lot of other challenges and one of them is providing flexibility in rates or even providing single API for platforms to sell, travel without having to build every single component from the ground up.

自发布以来，我们的快速增长主要得益于我们充满魅力的不懈努力。我们必须向一个我认为在某种程度上麻木并走向更加压抑的行业推进议程。像Apple Pay这样的现代支付解决方案使用了加密算法，这种方式与Saber这样的系统不太兼容。因此，我们不得不创建一层层的解决方案，使我们能够使用Saber来接入钱包。这是我们解决的挑战之一。在不断前进的过程中，我们发现了许多其他挑战，其中之一是提供灵活的费率，甚至是为平台提供单一的API，以便它们可以销售旅游产品，而无需从头开始构建每一个组件。

And as a payment company at a core or a Finta company at a core, transaction volume was key. And so we had to achieve high GMV early or on because we were on growth mode. So we went for hotels with higher average daily rates or in the industry we call it ADR so that we can achieve that higher volume. Now again we scaled beyond just luxury but that was a starting point. And that's what helped us grow really fast. Last year, 2024 we three X Tower revenue. We also helped hotel increase conversion on their websites by 40% and we also reduced cancellations by 44%. So these are some of the ideas that we're working on.

作为一家核心是支付或金融科技的公司，交易量是关键。因此，我们在增长模式中，必须尽早实现高成交总额（GMV）。所以我们选择了平均每日房价（ADR）较高的酒店，以便达到更高的交易量。虽然我们后来扩展到了不仅仅是奢侈品领域，但这是我们的起点。这正是帮助我们快速增长的原因。去年，2024年，我们的Tower收入增长了三倍。我们还帮助酒店在其网站上的转化率提高了40%，并将取消率降低了44%。这些是我们正在努力的一些想法。

If you go to an agentic on AI search like Peplex City, a new searcher hotel, the best hotel in New York City or I want to stay downtown or in Soho, what if you can book them right there and then without leaving Peplex City. Bringing that to life is so powerful. We're suited to build this and we're super excited to deliver it. Murakami says pain is inevitable, suffering is optional in his memoir and it's true as a founder you're constantly debating different ideas. A keyword that we hear every hour of the day is trade-offs. You're constantly trading off different ideas and different assumptions. So sometimes you get it wrong.

如果你去像Peplex City这样的人工智能搜索平台，例如新的搜索酒店，然后输入“纽约市最好的酒店”或者“我想住在市区或Soho”，想象一下如果你能直接在Peplex City上预订，那将多么方便。这种体验的实现是非常强大的。我们有能力构建这种系统，并非常期待将其交付。村上春树在他的回忆录中说“痛苦是难免的，受苦是自愿的”，作为创始人，你会不断地权衡各种想法。我们每天都在听到的一个关键词是“权衡”，总是在不同的想法和假设之间做出取舍。所以有时候你会做错决定。

Our biggest assumption was that we could replace certain systems but that was more difficult just because hotels are setting their ways or perhaps they use an on-prem system that it will take decades to shift away from it. And so we had to pivot our ways of thinking and work cohesively with these systems and integrate with them as opposed to completely replacing them. We really focus on what matters most and focusing on what we are good at or we are the best at. So a perfect example, we use, they are a cloud native property management system. We're integrating with and we're really excited to work with them. We don't have to replace anything they do.

我们的最大假设是我们可以替换某些系统，但这比预想中要困难得多，因为许多酒店已经习惯了现有的运作方式，或者他们使用的是一个需要几十年才能替换的本地系统。因此，我们不得不改变思维方式，与这些系统紧密合作，并将其整合到我们的体系中，而不是完全替换它们。我们真正专注于最重要的事情，并集中在我们擅长或最出色的领域。例如，我们正在与一个云原生的物业管理系统合作，我们非常期待与他们合作，因为我们不需要替换他们的任何东西。

Working together with them, we enhance the book and experience. And so building an integration layer across the industry was key for our success and our scale. The first customer on SouthPoke is a result called Neymakollin. This is a time where almost every hotel in the world was shut down. In July of 2020, I flew to Pennsylvania and went to this result called Neymakollin and met with the team, met with the owner and they were really passionate about their product.

与他们合作，我们提升了书籍和体验。因此，在整个行业建立一个集成层是我们成功和扩大规模的关键。SouthPoke的第一个客户是一个名为Neymakollin的度假村。这是在几乎全球所有酒店都关闭的一段时间里。2020年7月，我飞到宾夕法尼亚，来到了这个名为Neymakollin的度假村，并与团队和老板见面，他们对自己的产品充满热情。

They were really passionate about hospitality. Despite the fact that we didn't have a full product yet and we didn't have any track record at the time or any client, they really believed in us, they believed in the vision. It wasn't because it was technical or it would convert better or anything like that. It was because we were obsessed about providing guests a better user experience and the owner really cared about that.

他们对待客户服务充满热情。尽管那时我们还没有完整的产品，也没有任何业绩记录或客户，但他们真的相信我们，相信我们的愿景。这并不是因为我们的技术有多高超或会带来更好的转化率，而是因为我们对提供更好的用户体验充满热忱，而且房东也非常重视这一点。

She said at the time, if it is hospitable, we want it. And so that's what we aimed for and that was our first client and they are still our client, we're proud of that. Travel is a human connection. Travel is a gateway to culture. When you walk into a store, you don't see just a sheet of rates. You see products and you have a conversation.

她当时说，如果这个地方好客，我们就想要它。所以我们朝这个目标努力，那是我们的第一个客户，他们至今仍是我们的客户，我们对此感到自豪。旅行是人类之间的联结，是通往文化的大门。当你走进一家店时，你看到的不仅仅是一张价格表，而是各种产品，并与人进行交流。

So I think SouthPoke has big visions of its existence, provide the hospitality that the industry is meant to provide anyways from day one. Shumacher, former the one driver, said, once the passion motivation is there and I feel my passion was always travel so I was motivated to do so. I think Levy and Algeria always allowed me to continue to dream bigger, having that freedom to create, regardless of your background or education or lack of which in my case was really beneficial.

我觉得SouthPoke有很大的愿景，从一开始就提供了这个行业本应提供的款待服务。前一级方程式赛车手舒马赫说，一旦有了激情和动力，我一直以来的热情就是旅行，所以我受到激励去做。我认为Levy和Algeria总是让我继续梦想更大，拥有创造的自由，不论你的背景或教育如何，而对我而言这种自由非常有帮助。

It's easy to give up but you can't be a quitter. You have to continue.

放弃很容易，但你不能做一个轻言放弃的人。你必须继续坚持下去。