Startup Spotlight #27: The Three-Act Strategy
Today's startup is disrupting the travel space with a rather unique approach.
Project Overview
Today’s startup is particularly fascinating not only for its business model, but also for its origin story. Founded in Ireland back in 2017, Nuitee spent years growing and evolving entirely on its own revenue. Only now has it ventured into external funding, securing a whopping $48 million in its first-ever round.
Nuitee offers a technology platform designed to simplify the creation of travel applications or seamlessly integrate hotel booking services into existing apps and services. This innovation allows companies to bypass intermediaries like Booking.com, offering users direct booking options.
The platform caters to three key types of customers. First, companies in the travel sector, such as airlines, travel agencies for both personal and corporate trips, and travel marketplaces.
Second, startups or organizations looking to embed hotel booking features into their own services. For example, a bank might want to provide hotel search and booking options through its app, creating added convenience for customers and unlocking a new revenue stream.
Finally, Nuitee serves influencers — travel bloggers, musicians, or event organizers — who want to offer hotel booking options to their audiences, generating additional income. Think of a musician enabling fans to book nearby accommodations along with concert tickets or a conference organizer bundling lodging with registration.
To make integration easy, Nuitee provides two types of APIs: a lightweight version for simpler use cases and a professional-grade API with advanced functionality, reliability, and response times. Additionally, the platform includes a no-code builder, empowering users to create custom hotel booking services under their own brands without writing a single line of code.
Nuitee’s ability to attract $48 million in this round was bolstered by participation from notable industry figures, including the chairman of Booking.com, the founder of HotelTonight, and a former Priceline executive. Their involvement signals strong confidence in Nuitee’s business model. Moreover, the round was led by Accel, a venture capital heavyweight, with input from Stripe’s chief business officer — a particularly fitting endorsement given that Nuitee dubs itself “the Stripe for travel.” This claim, coupled with a tenfold increase in revenue since 2022 without external funding, suggests that Nuitee is poised for even faster growth with this new injection of capital.
What’s the Gist?
The travel industry is increasingly seeing the rise of platforms like Nuitee that enable companies to easily add services through APIs or plug-and-play tools. These platforms not only simplify technical integrations but also create new revenue opportunities through cross-selling.
Another Irish startup, Meili, operates similarly by offering an API for embedding global car rental services into external apps. Like Nuitee, Meili has drawn significant investor interest, raising over €20 million so far. Airlines, for instance, can use Meili’s API to offer car rentals alongside flight bookings.
Beyond travel, platforms like these are gaining traction across various industries. Consider InHouse, which has developed a marketplace for upselling services like restaurant reservations, excursions, and transfers to short-term rental guests. Hosts can share this marketplace with their visitors, splitting commissions with InHouse.
Or Air Doctor, which provides a platform connecting travelers with doctors worldwide for urgent care or consultations. Initially aimed at direct users, Air Doctor now partners with travel agencies and insurance companies, offering its service as a white-label solution.
Other sectors are witnessing similar growth. Gigs, a platform for becoming a virtual service provider, recently raised $73 million, helping companies sell mobile connectivity under their own brands. MealMe, with $8 million in new funding, enables developers to integrate food delivery options from over a million restaurants into their platforms. Even Dealt, with €6 million in funding, facilitates the integration of professional installation services into e-commerce sites.
Notably, some of these platforms circle back to travel. For example, Gigs helps companies offer affordable international roaming, while MealMe allows services like TripAdvisor to integrate food delivery into their apps.
This trend underscores the growing demand for platforms that empower businesses to upsell complementary services. By simplifying cross-sales through robust technology, these platforms are reshaping industries.
Key Takeaways
The rise of platforms like Nuitee reflects a broader trend driven by the increasing cost of customer acquisition across industries. As it becomes harder and more expensive to attract new buyers, companies are focusing on increasing the average revenue per existing customer. Cross-selling complementary services — made easier by platforms like Nuitee — is proving to be a highly effective strategy. These platforms serve as intermediaries, aggregating service providers, maintaining the relevance of their offerings, and providing the technology to seamlessly embed these services into apps and websites.
This trend aligns with a growth framework described by Accel, the leading venture capital fund behind Nuitee’s $48 million round. Accel, known for backing industry-changing companies like Facebook and Slack, uses the metaphor of a “three-act play” to describe the lifecycle of such platforms:
1. Act one: The platform grows its valuation from zero to $1 billion, typically by targeting and gradually overtaking smaller market players. For Nuitee, this means pulling market share away from smaller aggregators and wholesale hotel distributors — companies that buy rooms in bulk and resell them to travel agencies and marketplaces.
2. Act two: The valuation grows from $1 billion to $10 billion, a stage where the platform starts challenging larger incumbents, like major marketplaces (e.g., Booking.com). At this point, its success begins to disrupt industry giants.
3. Act three: An ecosystem emerges around the platform, with third-party developers building new services on top of it. This is the phase where platforms like Stripe and Twilio became transformative forces in their industries, enabling countless businesses to create innovative solutions.
This perspective from Accel helps explain why they, along with other prominent travel industry leaders, see so much potential in Nuitee. They’re betting not just on Nuitee’s ability to grow, but on its potential to redefine the travel tech ecosystem in a way similar to how Stripe reshaped online payments.
The key takeaway for startups is that external funding should not be the starting point. Instead, the focus should be on building a product that is both relevant and self-sustaining. For example, Nuitee’s tenfold revenue growth since 2022 came without outside capital, proving that it could thrive on its own before taking on investments. Funding, when eventually pursued, should be a means to accelerate growth at the right time—like moving into the “second act” of scaling and market disruption.
In short, investments should serve as a springboard to capitalize on a proven opportunity, not as a lifeline for survival. For startups aiming to build platforms that could dominate their industries, Nuitee offers a blueprint for doing it the right way.
Company info
Nuitee
Website: https://nuitee.com/
Last funding round: $48 million, 18.12.2024
Total funds raised: $48 million over 1 round