Private Chef Vacation Rental Upsells: Earn $150+ Per Booking with Siddhi Mittal

Summary and Highlights

🎙️ From Wall Street to Private Chefs: How Siddhi Mittal Built the #1 Chef Marketplace and What It Means for Your STR

“The universe has your back. No matter what you’re doing, it’ll just work out for the better.”

That’s the philosophy that guided Siddhi Mittal through the rollercoaster of building Yhangry from scratch—and it’s serving her well as she expands into the U.S. market with explosive growth numbers that make even Airbnb’s recent services launch look modest.

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👩‍💼 Meet Siddhi Mittal

Siddhi Mittal is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Yhangry, a marketplace connecting customers with local private chefs at surprisingly accessible price points. Her journey is anything but conventional.

After studying Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at Columbia University, Siddhi spent six years on Wall Street’s trading floor before taking the entrepreneurial leap. Her startup, Yhangry (pronounced “why hangry”), emerged from a simple observation: hospitality workers are among the lowest paid, yet people assume private chefs are only for the ultra-wealthy.

Her credentials speak for themselves. Yhangry was accepted into Y Combinator—the prestigious accelerator behind Airbnb, DoorDash, and Instacart—where getting in is reportedly harder than getting into Harvard. The company has appeared on the UK’s Dragon’s Den (their version of Shark Tank) and has served a quarter of a million guests in under 4 years.

The numbers are staggering. In just eight months, Yhangry partnered with 130,000+ property units across the UK, including industry giants like Sykes, Travel Chapter, and Awaze. They launched in the U.S. in September 2025 and already boast the most extensive inventory of chefs in their category—surpassing Airbnb’s offerings on its platform by over 200%.

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🔍 The Discovery That Changed Everything

Yhangry’s pivot to the vacation rental space wasn’t part of some grand strategy. It came from paying attention to data.

Siddhi was analyzing booking patterns when something unexpected emerged: 55% of all bookings were happening at vacation rentals, not private residences. This was particularly surprising because their customer flow already included a checkbox alerting chefs when a booking was at a holiday home (chefs need to bring extra equipment for those locations).

Rather than ignoring this insight, Siddhi did what any curious founder would do—she started Googling. Within days, she discovered the STR conference circuit and simply showed up at Short Term Rental Scale in London. There, she heard industry leaders talking about the exact problem she could solve: guest experiences as a major differentiator in 2025 and beyond.

The timing couldn’t have been better. The vacation rental industry was actively searching for ways to stand out, and Yhangry had already proven the model with real customers.

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💰 The Economics: Why This Works for Property Managers

Here’s where it gets interesting for hosts. Yhangry’s affiliate model is refreshingly straightforward.

What You Do:

• Add an affiliate link to your emails, SMS, guidebooks, or website
• That’s literally it

What You Earn:

• 10% kickback on total order value
• Average booking in the U.S. runs $1,500-$2,000
• That means $150-$200 per booking in pure profit

Real Case Study: Kate & Toms, a UK property manager with 200-300 properties, implemented Yhangry integration across four emails and their guidebooks. In just 10 months, they earned $14,000-$15,000 in profit—simply by sharing a link.

But here’s what Siddhi emphasizes: the money is secondary to the conversion impact. Kate & Tom saw increased booking conversions because they were offering experiences upfront. Guests weren’t just choosing where to stay—they were choosing an entire experience package.

This aligns perfectly with what successful operators are discovering about guest lifetime value: when you create memorable moments, guests don’t just come back —they become ambassadors.

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🎯 Upsells at the Top of the Funnel (Not an Afterthought)

Siddhi dropped a counterintuitive insight that deserves attention: upsells shouldn’t come after the booking journey. They belong at the marketing stage—top of the funnel.

Here’s the data backing this up. A whopping 55% of vacation rental requests on Yhangry come from guests who haven’t yet booked their accommodation. They’re still shopping around, but they already know they want a chef experience. When your website prominently features this option, you become the property they trust because you introduced them to something memorable.

This reframes how we think about conversion optimization on direct booking sites. You’re not just selling a place to sleep—you’re selling the whole trip experience.

VRMA 2025 statistics support this shift. Around 50% of travelers now factor experiences into booking decisions. For Gen Z, that number jumps to 65-70%. They’re choosing destinations based on what they can do there, not just where they’ll sleep.

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💡 What Airbnb’s Services Launch Means for You

Siddhi had some fun with a LinkedIn post about Brian Chesky’s Halloween costume—he dressed as a chef right before Airbnb launched their private chef services. The timing was perfect for a friendly jab, since Yhangry already had 200% more chef inventory than Airbnb’s offering in the U.S.

But beyond the competitive angle, there’s a strategic lesson here. When Airbnb enters a category, it validates demand. Yet their instant-book model doesn’t translate well to personalized culinary experiences. A private dinner party isn’t like ordering delivery—guests want to message chefs, customize menus for allergies, and adjust for group dynamics.

Yhangry’s conversational booking flow addresses this. Rather than forcing instant decisions, guests submit requests and receive personalized menu proposals from multiple chefs. They can see chef profiles, past clients (sometimes celebrities), and negotiate directly. This builds trust in a way that commoditized platforms can’t replicate.

For property managers, the takeaway is clear: building your own direct booking channel puts you in control of the guest experience, including which services you integrate and how you present them.

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🍽️ The Booking Experience: From Request to Chef at Your Door

Understanding how guests interact with Yhangry helps you position it effectively on your own platforms.

Guest Journey:

1. Guest clicks your affiliate link and lands on Yhangry
2. Simple intake questions: party size, date, dietary needs, budget range (with slider options)
3. Guest submits request—no commitment yet
4. Within hours, chefs send personalized menu proposals
5. Guests can message chefs, negotiate prices, and customize everything
6. Final booking happens once both sides agree

Pricing Reality:

• Starting from $60 per person (includes chef, groceries, and cleanup)
• A bachelorette party of 10? Each person pays around $70—restaurant pricing for a private chef experience.
• Higher-end requests can run $10K+ for elaborate fine dining

The key insight? When you add up what guests typically spend on restaurants (food plus drinks plus tip plus Uber plus babysitter), a private chef often costs the same or less—while creating infinitely more memorable moments.

This flexibility makes it much easier to market to specific guest avatars. Hosting a property that attracts bachelorettes? Lead with that use case. Family reunions? Emphasize the convenience of keeping grandma happy without juggling restaurant reservations.

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🚀 The Y Combinator Lesson Every Host Should Know

Siddhi’s Y Combinator experience offers a masterclass in iteration that applies directly to STR operations.

Their first hypothesis was utterly wrong. They believed customers wanted the cheapest possible option, so Yhangry handled everything—grocery delivery, menu creation, all logistics. The chef just showed up.

The result? Growth was fast, but losses scaled faster. Worse, execution suffered. Imagine a chef arriving to discover missing ingredients, then Yhangry scrambling to DoorDash replacements during dinner service. Chaos.

Y Combinator forced them to confront an uncomfortable truth: people don’t want cheap. They want great value—and value means different things to different budgets. A $50K earner and a $1M earner both want “value,” but their definitions vary wildly.

The pivot? Yhangry became a pure tech platform. Chefs handle their own groceries and menus because they’re actually better at it. Yhangry provides the marketplace, payment processing, and customer experience infrastructure.

For property managers, the parallel is clear. You don’t need to do everything yourself. Strategic partnerships and tools let you offer elevated experiences without operational complexity.

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📣 Getting Started: Practical Integration Steps

Ready to test this for your properties? Here’s Siddhi’s recommended approach:

Positioning Language:

• Lead with “memorable stay” and “chef table meal.”
• Always mentionthe starting pricing ($60 per person) to overcome sticker shock
• Frame it around the occasion: “New Year’s coming—have you booked a special meal with your friends and family yet?”

Integration Points:

• Booking confirmation emails (highest impact)
• Pre-arrival messaging
• Digital guidebooks
• Website experiences section
• SMS touchpoints

What Works Best: Properties that integrate early—at the inquiry or booking confirmation stage—see higher conversions than those treating it as a post-booking afterthought. When guests visit you’ve curated amazing experiences, they trust you more as a host.

This approach mirrors what Kenny Bedwell teaches about marketing the destination first—guests aren’t searching for your cabin, they’re searching for unforgettable moments.

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🔥 Rapid Fire Highlights

📚 Book Recommendation: The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer

Siddhi calls this book life-changing. It teaches the practice of surrendering to the universe while taking action—something every founder (and STR operator) needs during inevitable low points. The author was a yogi who also built a billion-dollar company, proving that spiritual grounding and business success aren’t mutually exclusive.

💭 Mindset Advice for Starting Something New:

“Be optimistically crazy to believe you’ll make something happen. Back yourself to keep going. But also be open to when people dissent or disagree—those are data points. You can reject them along your journey, but first hear them out. Be humble enough to check yourself while maintaining strong conviction.”

🎯 One Tactical Tip for Direct Bookings:

“Around 50% of people now consider experiences when booking trips. For Gen Z, it’s 65-70%. If you’re starting in the direct booking space and want to differentiate, offering experiences on your website is a must. Half of our vacation rental requests come from people who haven’t booked their accommodation yet—they’re shopping around. Imagine if you just offered that on your website. You’d be the place they trust because they discovered a cool experience through you.”

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🔗 Connect with Siddhi Mittal

📧 Email: siddhi@yhangry.com 💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/siddhimittal23 📸 Instagram: @siddhimittal23 🌐 Website: yhangry.com

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🎁 Exclusive Listener Offers

For Guests: $200 gift voucher towards private chefs anywhere in the U.S.—use it at home or your next vacation rental booking.

For Property Managers: VIP priority onboarding for partnering with Yhangry. No cost to offer upsells to your guests, and for just 200 properties, you could be earning an extra $2,000-$3,000 in profit monthly.

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🎧 Listen to the Full Episode

This conversation covers so much more—from startup survival stories to the nuances of naming your company (yes, it’s pronounced “why hangry”). Don’t miss the full interview on your favorite podcast platform.

Ready to take control of your direct bookings? CraftedStays helps serious hosts create guest-first websites that convert—fast. Build your brand. Start booking direct.

Transcription

Siddhi : It. It kind of changed my whole perspective on life because as we were speaking earlier, we go through all these like stresses in life. As a founder, you don’t know if you’re gonna make it and the highs are high, but the lows are really low and you’re just like really stressed about everything and this book just teaches you, you could learn to really kind of just surrender to the whole universe and know that the universe has your back.

Siddhi : And no matter what you’re doing, it’ll just work out for the better. And I think it’s just how he writes this story. And this guy was like a yogi. He also built this like crazy billion dollar company. I don’t know, it’s just wild what’s happening in this book. But it’s just one of those books that like really kind of, um, resonated and that I was like, oh my God, this has changed my life.

Siddhi : So I really recommend if it’s a book yeah. To read, which might like give you a different perspective.

Gil : Before we bring on my guest, I wanted to talk just a little bit about something that I’ve been hearing a lot from Host. I keep on hearing the same thing. I know my website isn’t converting, but I can’t afford $8,000 on an agency to rebuild it. Here’s the thing, you’re letting all these marketing strategies, you’re driving traffic and you’re putting it all to work.

Gil : But if your site isn’t really built to convert, you’re basically lighting your energy and money on fire. And even if you could afford an agency build, every time you want to test something or make a change, you’re having to pay them again. You can’t iterate, you can’t test, and you really can improve on things.

Gil : You don’t need a custom $10,000 website to get the conversion rates that really matter. You just need the right platform. That’s why I build craft estates. It’s purpose built for short-term rentals and designed from the ground up to help you drive more direct bookings. You can finally turn that traffic into bookings and you can keep on testing and improving.

Gil : As you learn, you can make changes all on the platform. You don’t need to learn something new. So if you need some help or you wanna get started, go ahead and go to craft stays.co and start your free trial. Now let’s bring on our guests and dive deep into hospitality and marketing.

Gil : Hey folks, welcome back to the Booked Solid Show, the podcast where we bring top operators to discuss hospitality, operations, and digital marketing. On today’s show, I have the huge pleasure of interviewing the CEO of Yhangry, uh, her name is Siddhi Mittal. It was a huge pleasure just to get to know her. Understand where her story is, how she got to where she is, why she started the wine, Andre in the first place.

Gil : We took a lot of jabs about kind of the naming of it. Um, and also some of the LinkedIn posts. She, she talked about, uh, Brian Chesky, but she’s created an amazing platform that allows. You as a property manager to bring on a personal shift into your properties. Not like the similar experience that you may see Airbnb launch last, uh, earlier this year.

Gil : But she has built an amazing platform and I really feel like this is something that really elevates the hosting experience or the, even, actually more specifically the guest experience here. So I. Am thrilled about today’s conversation. Uh, hope you stick to the end. Uh, this one’s a little bit different because we got a little bit about some startup stuff and, and what it takes to kind of build a tech company and the things that you kind of fall, fall in.

Gil : Um, but she has some amazing stories and I’m really rooting for her to be successful. Um, and I just love kind of like what she’s built so far. So without further ado, let’s bring her in.

 Gil: Hey, Siddhi, welcome to the show.

 Siddhi: Hey Gil. So excited to be here.

 Gil: Yeah, we, uh, you hit me up on LinkedIn a little while ago, and I got a chance to meet your team at VRMA, so I’m super excited. Uh, I’ve come, I’ve seen your name come up a few times, um, over the last eight months, so you, your, whatever your marketing is doing, it’s, it’s definitely working,

 Siddhi: Yes, it’s basically a lot of ridiculous LinkedIn posts.

 Gil: It could be that, it could be that. Um, but for folks that may not have recognized your name or maybe have heard your company, do you mind giving folks an introduction on who you are and your company? I.

 Siddhi: Yeah, I’d love to. Thank you. So, hey everyone. I’m Citi, the co-founder of Y Hangry. Um, born and brought up in India. Uh, then went to New York for undergrad and actually then now I live in London. So y hangry essentially is a marketplace where you can hire a chef. Very simple. And the thesis behind this was we know hospitality workers are one of the lowest paid out there yet people think they’re super bougie.

 Siddhi: So we just thought, can we create a platform to connect customers and chefs and have an insane experience? That is what why Henry delivers. And we are the number one platform in UK by a mile, for example, we have over 5,000 active chefs and we’ve actually done, we’ve served quarter of a million guests in like less than.

 Siddhi: Four years. We’ve also been on the Shark Tank equivalent in London, which is called Dragon Den. Yeah. And now we actually launched in US a month ago. And a fun fact is that we’ve already surpassed and approach chefs, Airbnb has in their platform. So we have like 200% more and a very big pipeline. So yeah, very excited to be here and share more about what we’re building.

 Gil: Wow, that’s, that’s, that’s really impressive. Um, the growth that you, you’ve, you’ve seen and really the achievements that you kind of brought, um, maybe rewinding back just a little bit. Wait, first off, I did not know. It was called Yhangry? Uh, when I saw the name, I, I’ve never heard it spoken until I was at VRMA and I met your team and I always thought it was angry or, or some other variant of it.

 Gil: Um, so what’s, what’s the story behind the name? Is it just simply, why are you angry? Why are you angry?

 Siddhi: so back when we were coming up with the idea, it was just like, oh, we, we were looking for like a.com domain and we were like, we just need a word that makes sense. And suddenly, and hangry is a word that’s used quite a lot. Oh, I’m so hangry now. And then suddenly it was like, oh, why hangry? If you could book a chef and in that moment, the.com was available, so then we, we got this name and I’m not being funny.

 Siddhi: It’s, it’s like Marmite. People love it or hate it, but we’ve just sort of stuck with it over the years.

 Gil: Uh, I’ve been at many, many companies, many startups that we had to do a complete rebranding because the name that we originally came up with was like, okay, maybe that made sense in the very beginning, but I, I have a feeling this one’s gonna stick for, for a little while. You’re not gonna have to do a DBA all over it.

 Siddhi: Honestly, I hope so. I think by the time we were like, should we or should we not? Like we are really grown as a brand in uk and I was like, wow, that’s gonna lose all these benefits of SEO that you accumulate. But yeah, I think we have people who hate it also tend to remember it. So we’re like, okay, cool.

 Siddhi: We’ll see how far this takes us.

 Gil: I think that’s what is like the whole purpose of a brand is like love it or hate it, but you at least remember it. If it was something that’s a little bit more watered down or a little bit more generic, it wouldn’t have had made the impact that it has. And I’ve thought about like even Renaming Craft as days a bunch of times.

 Gil: I was like, I. Being at startups, I was like, oh, should, should it have been like a single word, not a conjoin word. Um, and we still do it as a conjoined word without the space in between to make it a little bit more SEO friendly. Um, but yeah, there’s, it’s, it’s hard. Naming is hard and,

 Siddhi: So many companies can name themselves Apple.

 Gil: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That, that, that one’s, that one’s taken and the mindshare’s all taken up on that one.

 Siddhi: Yeah.

 Gil: Um, so you mentioned that you’re, you were at Y Combinator or YC before. Mm. I think a bunch of our listeners may not know what that is and why that might be important. Why do you mention that or what is that thing?

 Siddhi: So Y Combinator is one of the biggest accelerators in the world. So like the likes of Airbnb, Coinbase, DoorDash, Instacart, all grew from Y Combinator. And I think the stat there is that like the market value cumulative of all those companies, like Trillion Plus, I mean easily now. Way more so it’s quite like a privilege to be accepted into Y Combinator.

 Siddhi: It’s sort of like getting into Harvard and actually more difficult, like 10 times more difficult. So yeah, when we got accepted and we got funded by yc, it kind of really helped us level up how we kind of built our tech platform, how good it is and how, yeah, how we serve our customers. So it’s just like kind of a badge to say that like we kind of know what we’re doing or we’ve been like taught by the best.

 Gil: You’re definitely right, like the, for folks like YC is, I, we, I’m in Silicon Valley, I’m, I’ve been in this space the entire time and having that YC badge, there’s a bunch of different VCs out there and bunch of different accelerators out there, but there’s nothing that has the same.

 Siddhi: Yeah.

 Gil: vibe, whatever you wanna call it, that, that YC has, it is a huge badge of honor.

 Gil: And I think like the, the coaching is probably one of the, the best coaches that when you’re a part of that program, they, they pretty much, they scrutinize you. They don’t take, they don’t baby you, they don’t, it took, it took, it takes a lot to get into the program. So once you get into the program, they make sure that.

 Gil: They’re breeding some of the best tech companies out there, so it’s a huge badge of honor. And I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m happy for you to kind of like shed a little bit of light on like why it is even important to even mention yourself as a YC company there.

 Siddhi: Yeah, I mean I think what you said just kind of was taking me back through a YC experience. Our group partner was actually Michael Sibel, who basically built Twitch and sold it to Amazon for a billion. So when you kind of have an office hour with someone like that in your Y Combinator experience, a you are trembling ’cause you’re like, oh my God, what can I say to a founder who’s built a billion dollar company and is gonna coach us?

 Siddhi: And then B used to be so intense ’cause we used to walk in and there was like. No, it wasn’t like, well done, keep going. It was like, why not this? That sounds really silly. Have you guys not thought about that? Actually? What are you guys doing? That makes no sense at all. So every single, like four weeks we went in, it was like, oh my God, the whole world is changing.

 Siddhi: And we really had to question our hypothesis and kind of build something. That was great. Which is very hard when you’re in it. So I think, yeah, I think when I talk about YC one is like the badge of honor, like you said, it brings, but the other is we just know through this process, we have built a company that our customers really want, and I just feel. It, it’s not, I just feel very confident in our platform versus like any other competitor could come up, but I know they’ve not done the level of thinking we have to serve our customers and chefs, we just obsess over them. So we’re the best platform in this space and we will continue to keep it trading, you know?

 Siddhi: So it’s kind of just like that belief and I think YC gives us a lot of that. So, yeah.

 Gil: it, it definitely does. Like, it, it, I think if I were to like encapsulate into one word, they scrutinize like your business model and the way that you’re approaching things in, in a good, in a good way. Um, that you don’t see in a lot of other, other industries. Like I think in the short term rental industries, it’s a very different culture where it’s a lot more comradery there.

 Gil: Um, in the startup space, it’s a lot about like, oh, do you have what it takes? Because it’s gonna be a long grind out there. A lot of folks. Um, it’s hard for them to empathize with what a startup tech founder might have to go through. So definitely if you’ve been a part of yc, that’s, you’ve been scrutinized more than anyone else.

 Siddhi: yeah, yeah. Enough or at least enough, yes.

 Gil: and I think like one thing that they do really well, um, is there’s a huge emphasis on product and product market fit in, in as part of yc. And so for folks that don’t know this, are not aware of this, when you’re building a tech company. Yes, you have to get mindshare. You have to get your product out there.

 Gil: You have to get people to know and know what you are. But more than anything, you have to create a product that people love and they’ll talk about, and that you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re addressing, uh, a problem, one that’s meaningful enough, and two, that you’re actually solving the problem at, at the very end of the day.

 Gil: And if you don’t. Do those things, right? You will not get product market fit and you ha you don’t have the potential to scale. And, and kind of like hearing your story arc, it sounds like you’ve gone through a lot of iterations where you had to scrutinize your company to kind of get it to where it is.

 Gil: Which kind of leads me to, and my next question is like, you started off from what I heard. Really serving kind of the home space, me trying to hire a personal chef either for ourselves or for an event that we may want to bring in specifically for ourselves personally. Things have evolved. That thesis has changed in terms of like where you see your product market fit, really, really being, walk me through one, what does that change?

 Gil: Um, and two, kind of how you got to that hypothesis and testing that.

 Siddhi: Yeah. Thank you for that question. So, yeah, we started off thinking very much that people will be booking this at their homes and they do birthdays or like a du ’cause people do still like a little bit of a celebration when a private chef is over. It’s not any day. And if they have a private chair over, it’ll feel like a celebration so that night will become special.

 Siddhi: So that’s what we learned. It wasn’t very casual, it was special. Great. So then we started serving all these like special occasions. And then last year after we grew like quite a lot, we were just thinking, right, how do we grow this company further? What is our next growth lever? Looking at our data, 55% of all of our bookings were coming from vacation rentals.

 Siddhi: And this blew my mind ’cause I had no idea what the word vacation rentals or STR meant back then. All I knew was I was looking at the data that told me. People are booking at holiday homes and they’re loving it and, and we knew this because the chef generally has a harder time with equipment. So we had built something in our customer flow that alerts the chef if it’s a holiday home, so then the chef has to bring more equipment.

 Siddhi: At that point, my mine was blown because we have a very strong word of mouth, so 50% of our customers come word of mouth, like why hangry grows quite virally. But then we pay Facebook and Google all this money to acquire customers. And at that point there was a new hypothesis. If 55% of people are booking in a holiday home, can I go find these people who have a holiday home and partner with them?

 Siddhi: And then over the next like five to 10 days after a bunch of Googling, this was November 20, 24. Yeah, I ran into a couple conferences happening in London. It, it happened to be the short term rental scale, and I just dropped up to it. I like, again, like I, like I linked into you. I linked into a bunch of people, um, got into the conference and actually one of them gave me like a Dragons Den style pitching slot in the conference, which was great.

 Siddhi: I was like, yep, happy to stand up and talk about my startup. And that was the first time. In that conference, I heard what the whole industry was talking about, and a large part of that conference was about ai, but it was also about guest experiences and how that will be a huge thing in 2025. And I literally recorded people talking about private chefs, you know, in holiday homes.

 Siddhi: So that was like the beginning of our hypothesis. Will this work? And from there, I guess like the very short TLDR is in eight months in uk we’ve partnered with one 30,000 plus property units with like the largest partners like Sykes Travel chapter away, and loads of luxury property managers. So really all different kinds and we’ve figured out how to integrate and most importantly, how to drive them actual money, but also improve their guest experience.

 Siddhi: So it’s been wild. So now half of our business is. A vacation rental serving vacation rental guests and the other half still remains. Yeah, we serve direct guests directly. So Gil, if you’re looking for a chef this Christmas or Thanksgiving, you know where to go.

 Gil: I was actually at Burma and I was talking to Emily and, and Rosie, and they left me with this card.

 Siddhi: Yes, yes.

 Gil: So I have a good excuse to put on one of the best holiday bashes. Hopefully I, I should actually book it soon so that I, I can get a slot in there. I get that. That’s gonna be a hot, a hot period.

 Siddhi: It is. Okay. Yeah. Whenever you book, I’ll make sure you get one.

 Gil: Awesome.

 Gil: Awesome. Uh, that’s a, that’s gonna be a clutch move, um, of being able to have your own private chef there at a holiday party that usually people bring in, in potluck style and everybody walks in with trays and you’re like, no, just come in with you and your kids and just enjoy yourself. Like that, that, that would, that, that feels like a moment of you made it type of thing.

 Siddhi: Yeah. Know when you look at the prices and realize they’re actually, you know, not crazy.

 Gil: Yeah, I, I mean that talk, talk to me a little bit about that. What’s, what’s the econ economics look like? Is this something that folks need to have really deep pockets or they’re really shelling out for big vacations and those are the folks that really can’t afford this? Or is this an experience that is munch able maybe several times a year on a regular like.

 Gil: Regular salary. Like what, what, what, what, what scale are we looking at?

 Siddhi: So let me give you a ver So for example, people will book us for bachelorettes. So let’s say a group of 10 girls. Um, they book this experience, each of them pays $70 per person, which really is like literally what they would pay at a restaurant. And that includes the chef groceries clear up, and they’re probably splitting the bill.

 Siddhi: Amongst themselves. So we also offer the option to split a bill on our platform, which is quite convenient. Um, on the other side, we have people who might be putting in a request for, let’s say, 10 K for like 10 people for like a smooth, like fancy dinner party because. Well, why not? They, they deserve the best in life.

 Siddhi: So we definitely see the, so we definitely see the whole spectrum. I guess in short, what I’ll say is if you generally tend to be a slightly larger group, it just suddenly becomes like a much better option than a restaurant where you are like trying to get a reservations and it’s loud, blah, blah, blah.

 Siddhi: And you can split the bills. It’s the exact same or cheaper ’cause you bring your own drinks and everything else. To the party. Party. And then, yeah, on the higher end we do really well because people expect to have a chef or expect to be able to book chefs. Yeah.

 Gil: That’s awesome. So, okay. It sounds like it’s pretty, pretty reasonable. Like $7 is in, in our area in San Francisco, it’s actually not that unreasonable already. Like. We, we have pretty insane prices. Uh, seven, I would say $7 is a, is a pretty decent, nice dinner outside. So if you can have that in the luxury of your own home and have a really unique experience, you can always go to a restaurant.

 Gil: But to be able to have that inside your home, that’s something special.

 Siddhi: Yes and no, and you’re not paying any markup on drinks, which is huge. 200, 300%. You’re saving that

 Gil: that’s true, that’s true. You can just go into your own fridge and, and grab whatever you want there. You’re not having to, that’s the

 Siddhi: Yeah, done. We’ve done the math on this so many ways. And then if you’re a parent, you save on childcare and then you save on Uber, like whatever. So I think that there are all these like ancillary costs with going out that people don’t bake in, but if you do it at home, all those sort of fall away.

 Siddhi: And that’s just the chef.

 Gil: Yeah. Do you have a, a model for families that have young kids? Like is there a model where like, oh, it’s economical, even if like. A lot of the, the, the mouth gr feeding are like, half of them could be kids. Like, for us, like a lot of our dinners are like, oh, we have the, the, the parents, but we also have two kids that go along with it.

 Gil: Like, it’s like, how does that work?

 Siddhi: Yeah, so actually our platform’s super flexible in that when you put in a request, firstly young kids are like already at half or less second, you might just like mention to the chef, Hey, like I’m just booking this for adults. Um, can you, or, but maybe can you just make one dish, which is for the young kids, dah, dah, dah, and just add a little bit extra and then you can message them.

 Siddhi: You can negotiate prices and be like, actually, like, do you think this, this makes more sense. Can we like change this around? You can call them and then you book. So it’s not actually rigid because we realize very quickly you can’t show a instant book menu. It makes no sense. There might be people that are pregnant or like nut free, dairy free, glu, gluten-free kids.

 Siddhi: So you could really just say, look, I’m looking to book for loads of people, but obviously like I can’t pay. $70 per person. So yeah, your budget’s like lower and then you figure out with the chef what they can do. Maybe it’s a standing style where you just get them to cook like a large batches of dishes and everyone just picks at it, which is way cheaper because the chef doesn’t have to serve and plate every individual dish.

 Siddhi: So yeah, you can kind of figure that out once you put in their request with different chefs on the platform.

 Gil: That’s, that’s, that’s really unique. So, so what does the booking experience look like? So walk me through. Like, I’m guessing me as a host, I have some automated message that allows. You to kind of go onto the site and kind of opt into it. There’s some sort of attribution that links it back to me. If there’s any type of like rev share commercials, I’m guessing I’m, I’m making a lot of assumptions here, so please correct me.

 Gil: Uh, but what is that from, from me as a host or me as a guest going on there and booking that experience? What prices do I see or how do I know that? Like I’m not gonna pay something that is outside of our budget. Like, what does that look like?

 Siddhi: Makes sense. So let’s say, I’ll just talk about the host first and then. The guest experience. So as a host, it’s quite simple. We just give you affiliate link where you can add this to your emails, SMS. You can add this onto your website. That’s it. Anytime any guest interacts with either of these areas, literally it could be anywhere.

 Siddhi: We can register the click request booking. So we will have all this data that you’ll be able to see and we’ll track how much you earn. And we actually give that 10%. So for average booking, which is like $1,500 to 2000, you can earn like one 50 to 200. Per booking. That’s like the host side. As a guest, when you see a message or on the website about this private chef, you click onto the link.

 Siddhi: So you then land on why he’s main website. You start exploring it. We’ve made the funnel quite simple where I just ask a few questions in the beginning. That’s where you can say, cool, this is this many people. There is a budget range and we’ve given different options of like fine dining casual, and you can kind of set a slider and say, yeah, cool.

 Siddhi: Actually my budget is, I’m 20 people, but it’s only a thousand pounds because you know, I think that’s what we want to pay. And then you just proceed and then you kind of just say, cool, send me kind of like quotes or whatever. What then happens over the following couple hours is chefs will send you personalized menus to you and you can message them back.

 Siddhi: So the whole kind of customer journey starts once you’ve just told us a little bit about what you’re looking for. But then the most exciting thing is people get quite excited when they get quotes. ’cause they can see the chef profile, they can see who the chef has cooked for. Sometimes it’s like insane celebrities and you know, you’re getting the chef for nothing.

 Siddhi: But the chef has cooked for, I don’t know, like Beyonce or. Like Taylor Swift and you’re like, oh my God, this is so cool. And then you can hear these stories. So yeah, that’s when you can really customize with the chef what it is that you’re looking for. Pricing and menu.

 Gil: yeah, that, that’s. That’s actually a really, really good flow. Um, and really what you’re kind of leading with is like really setting the expectations very early on with the guests there so they’re not feeling like, oh, this is outside my budget, or.

 Siddhi: Yes.

 Gil: I have to get all the details early on because that, that, that’s really one of the big challenges with anything that you’re doing.

 Gil: Any type of commerce there. When you’re asking someone to book open up their wallets, there’s this big overhead, we see this a lot in direct bookings where when people are shopping for stays, they’re not just looking at, is this property available, but how does it meet their family? How close is this to certain things?

 Gil: What type of attractions are, so we’ve learned over time like how to build these really high performing sites, and it sounds like you’ve done. Pretty much the same thing, but really thinking about what does the booking experience, how do you make it so that when you’re driving someone through that funnel, you have a well oiled machine so you don’t get drop offs at any given point there.

 Siddhi: Absolutely. And the thing is like often, and obviously you talk about e-commerce, everyone kind of knows the shorter the funnel the better it is. However, we just realize when people are booking a private chef for like a dinner, it just is more special and it is more custom. So the, if you just try to shorten it all the way, you are gonna, you will get some people saying, fine, but you are gonna actually.

 Siddhi: Forget all these customers that have these unique problems that really want something more custom for themselves. And I, I think like this way, we also catch a lot of, like the high end, for example, multiple day stays. Like anything a customer wants can be served by a chef, but they have to converse with each other first.

 Siddhi: And they also builds trust in a platform. ’cause they’re like, okay, cool, I’ve asked all my questions, this is great. This is what I wanna book. Whereas if we short circuit that process too quickly, people are like, oh, I’m not really sure. And they end up like not booking it. Yeah.

 Gil: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. What have you learned along the way as you’re kind of building this, like we in in tech for a lot of folks, we go through a lot of iterations, we go through a lot of assumptions and the way that we think that things should work or doesn’t work. What have you learned along the way where you’re like, oh, this is the right flow?

 Gil: And maybe it could be been the shorter funnel thing, or it could be something else, um, but where you kinda had to like resear the ship and, and readjust based on those learnings.

 Siddhi: Oh my gosh. Uh, so we actually started off. And this is like a first time founder just thinking we can make everything work and then really failing badly. We started by thinking, right, we will provide. Chefs and customers with the easiest experience, which means why hangry as a platform should do groceries, menus, and all logistics.

 Siddhi: So when we started for the first couple of years, we actually did grocery delivery. We created menus internally. ’cause then we said the chef has to do nothing. The chef just like rocks up to the customer’s place. ’cause why hang? We did all the work. It was insane. All that meant was we grew really quickly.

 Siddhi: Prices were very low. And then when the chef would get there, the chef would be like, wait, where is the ine? Has this not been delivered? Then our team would be sending like a DoorDash equivalent saying, oh my God, one second. It’s on its way. It was wild and really like it took us getting into Y Combinator to realize like how ridiculous that hypothesis was because. People don’t want the cheapest chef. People want great value for their money, and we realize the definition of great value differs. If you are someone who earns $50,000, great value is different for you than someone who earns. Like a million and actually like we should be able to serve both of those things without assuming what great value means.

 Siddhi: It’s not cheap. So I think that was like a very big pivot. And that’s when we started saying, right, as a platform, we only do tech. Like we will build the best platform to serve. Like all the tools, pricing and all that stuff, but we’re not gonna do the grocery shopping for them. That’s something they should do because chefs actually are really good at identifying ingredients they like, et cetera.

 Siddhi: So yeah, that was like a huge learning, which created like, yeah, and a lot of learning, but that was like a very big one for us.

 Gil: Was that, uh, was that hard for you as a founder to like stomach and like, wrestle and, and like, because what you’re gonna have to do is react to that and change the product roadmap, all the investments that you’ve done, you almost have to have like really strong convictions. Like, okay, we have to like pause this and like recalibrate and what you said, like pivot there.

 Siddhi: Yeah. You know, Gail, like we had already started generating decent amount of revenue before this like realization came to site, and that was actually because although our top line was growing really quickly, like six, seven XA year, it was like really fast. Our bottom line was also increasing too quickly, like the net burn was growing, so at some point we would’ve just run outta money.

 Siddhi: So at that point we were like, right, okay, this makes no sense. So overnight we just completely ripped, ripped our website to shreds like we just launched something else. And you know, for the next seven days we used to have revenue every single day and it was like 0, 0, 0, 0. And we were going through Y Combinator and I, we just remember panicking and being like, oh my God, what did we do?

 Siddhi: Like, did we just say goodbye to all the customers and are we ever going to come back from it? Yeah. So yeah, it was crazy.

 Gil: Did you, uh, did you watch the series? Uh, Silicon Valley on

 Siddhi: I have seen it, I have seen the couple of episodes that started. It’s hilarious.

 Gil: It is hilarious and for, for folks inside tech, it, it really hits home because some of the stuff that they go through is. It feels very farfetched, but as a startup founder, those are things that you kinda live through. Uh, it’s painful. It’s extremely painful, but there are some, some humorous parts to it.

 Siddhi: definitely.

 Gil: think you can laugh about it now. Uh, after, afterwards.

 Siddhi: I literally was just gonna say it. I’m laughing right now, but in the moment it was like the worst thing ever. And you thought you were just gonna die or like something so bad is gonna happen and you’re never gonna recover from it.

 Gil: Yeah, it’s probably equivalent to like someone on the short term rental side doing a bad deal or buying a property. They’re like, Ugh. Then they learn from it and they step back and like, okay, it’s not so bad after all. Um, maybe they’re not laughing about it, but hopefully they recovered quite well on it.

 Gil: Um, maybe pivoting a little bit on kinda like the, the experience side of things and kind of like, why do this, why is it worth it? Is it worth it for me to do? Talk to me a little bit about like, the impacts of offering a service like this. Um, because it’s, it’s, it goes beyond just. Ha, giving that access to your guests, there’s something that you get back in return as a host.

 Gil: Talk to me a little bit about some of the benefits there as, as a, as a host or a property manager.

 Siddhi: Absolutely. Let me just take an example ’cause it’s so much easier. So, and, and I can use this example and like the metrics because like this property manager is okay with us doing it, which is very nice of them. So there’s a property manager called Caden Toms in UK they have between 200 and 300 properties and a lot of them are like villa.

 Siddhi: So they really understand like when people are booking these properties, they’re looking for a little bit more than just like staying in a home. They really embrace the idea of like sharing, um, about why hangry private chef. So we are integrated in like four different emails. All of the guidebooks we’re soon going onto their website.

 Siddhi: The benefits that they get is number one, they are one of the first people I found in UK that were integrating it as high as possible. So they basically said, look, we send out this stuff when people are just. Requesting like, Hey, do I even want to book your property? And then the customers start asking about all these ancillary services.

 Siddhi: And when people end up booking, it’s just like way stickier because they’re like, amazing. You suggested all these options. So A, they see an increased conversion for their own customers by just offering private chefs upfront. Number two, they get a 10% kickback from us for every single booking on the total, total order value.

 Siddhi: So like I told you, like in uk, that is around, um. 80 pounds per booking, and in US it’s like one 50 to $200. So within just 10 months they have earned around 14 to 15 K in pure profit from us just by sharing this link, but also I think. I just want to focus here where they really are invested. Like they understand this is not a upsell that comes later on the booking journey randomly.

 Siddhi: They really believe this is the experience that customers are having and they see that ’cause we, and actually we see that also because they get their own guest reviews. We get guest reviews ’cause we see the property link. Of the manager come through our site and they share photos and it just looks insane.

 Siddhi: Like they’re enjoying this property with this like amazing chef and having a great time and people are laughing. So you really feel like memories were created at this property, you know, in this day? Uh, so yeah. I think like the benefits really are improved. Guest experience, you earn a lot more money and actually you have a better conversion for your website because you understand people are looking for this stuff.

 Gil: Yeah, and we, I mentioned this to you before the show, but we’ve had Annie from the host co talk about this as well too, where with oftentimes we think about upsells, um, or upsells can be perceived as a way of getting more money outta the guests, where they might feel like, oh, you’re trying to like nickel and dime before certain things.

 Gil: But actually it’s quite the opposite when you start to really elevate the experience and you’re allowing a guest. To really experience or discover different things that you can offer. It doesn’t feel like a, it doesn’t feel like you’re trying to be, you’re selling them on something. I know a lot of hosts, they’ll do a.

 Gil: Like if they have a couple’s retreat, uh, or couples stay, they will offer the ability to have like roses, like deliver, or like rose petals kind of played around the, uh, on the, on the bed chocolates delivered. I’ve done this for our own guests where if they tell me that they’re going here for a honeymoon, I’ll ask, I’ll ask.

 Gil: If it’s, if it’s the, the, the, the husband or the groom doing it, I’ll ask them, do you want me to make, make it extra special? And we have like rose petals already at the property. Like they’re fake rose petals, but they still look, look nice. Um. And it really makes a big difference on them. Um, so that experience there, oftentimes guests are more than happy to opt into those types of things, and a lot of times they’re not thinking about it.

 Gil: But like, if you deliver that type of experience, you bet that when they walk away and they come back, they’re thinking about their next day. They want it to be a memorable one. They want their, like, you now elevated the, the bar in terms of what they’re experiencing there. I think maybe this is a good transition to one of the posts that you posted the other day about Brian Chesky and all the different things that they’re doing in the services industry and his Halloween costume.

 Gil: Talk to me a little bit about that post for folks that hadn’t seen that post before.

 Siddhi: Yeah, so I ended up adding Brian on Instagram just because, you know, like I was like, oh, I wonder like what he posts about. And one day I saw that his Halloween costume was that of a chef. And I was like, oh my God, this is like too good to be to, I have to screenshot and create a post. And I think with Airbnb, like a couple of things are true.

 Siddhi: Airbnb, regardless of people’s opinions about Airbnb, there are lots of like positive but lots of negative, and I get the whole industry. But he talks a lot about actually creating real life memories. And it’s actually funny because like, I’m like, yeah, why Henry helps create real life memories in people’s homes, you know?

 Siddhi: And he was wearing this like chef jacket and he just launched private chefs and services and we have obviously been doing that for a while, and now we’re like bigger than I’m in us. So yeah, my post was just like kind of like a. I didn’t even know.

 Gil: a little jab.

 Siddhi: Yeah. A little bit of a jab and I was like, well, I think Brian’s trying to acquire y hangry, but we aren’t fully for sale ’cause we’re going to do this and do it really big ourselves.

 Siddhi: Yeah.

 Gil: I, I would say if I. I would love for you guys to hold out on an acquisition as long as possible, because if, if you end up selling to them, that makes it much more difficult for other hosts to be able to deliver a service like this. Like, and that’s kinda like the whole like direct booking movement is like a lot of folks are now thinking about how do I elevate the experience from the kind of the commoditized experience that you might get from, from Airbnb.

 Siddhi: You know? Absolutely. And yeah, I think for us, the plan really is partner with like all, all the different property managers. We’re not looking for acquisitions. Like we really want to make a difference. And also, I really believe like we’ve figured out how to deliver this experience, which like Airbnb’s website really hasn’t, like people aren’t looking for instant book for some dishes.

 Siddhi: It’s not like a delivery product. It, it needs to be special. So, yeah, no worries there. We’re excited about what we’re doing.

 Gil: Yeah. And, and Citi, we were talking about this before the show. I was like, I, I would love to do next year K craft estate. We’re gonna be opening up our platform for other, other types of providers to be able to build experiences within the K craft estates dashboard or platform. There. I would love to have, uh, Yhangry kind of incorporate into the overall experience.

 Gil: Um, and I’m like, I’m thinking through like. It would be really awesome for anyone that has a direct booking site with, with craft as days, they’re able to click a button. It brings in all of the details of the, the what they serve and really allows them to market it without any efforts on their side. So like, that’s something that I’m excited to kind of talk a little bit more about and figure out like, what is the experience like, what do we want people to discover?

 Gil: What do they, what are the questions that they want to ask in there? And make it almost like a one click simple setup for someone on, on the hosting side of things.

 Siddhi: Yeah, absolutely.

 Gil: ‘ cause I’m sure like at this point you’ve already know, like if you were to put this in emails, what it would look like if you were to put this in your messaging, how do you, how do you position it properly to set one the expectations, and two, really get them really excited about this?

 Gil: And like, I can think about the same kind of, kind of thoughts on the website, like how do you want to present it on your website And maybe kind of a, a little bit about that. Like what are some of the talking points like as you, as a host? Like how do you talk about this?

 Siddhi: Yeah, of course. So I think Firstly, you just know if someone is looking for celebration, and I guess this is just like the ICP, if obviously a lot of your properties people are just like coming in, like it’s just like very, yeah, but actually even two people, if it’s occasion, like you just said, someone has a honeymoon birthday, someone’s coming traveling with a group, which feels very special.

 Siddhi: They’re getting together with their friends. It’s just like, Hey, do you want to make your stay more memorable? Why don’t you have a chef? Table meal in your property and suddenly, and I think the big thing for us is pricing. We kind of always mention starting from $60 per person and suddenly a person’s like, no way.

 Siddhi: That’s not possible. Including the chef groceries and clear up. So I think there’s something about like the memorable stay in your property price point to allow customers, like you said before, to say, oh right, this is actually something I can afford. I should look into it. So I think that is like the initial sort of hook.

 Siddhi: And then I think what we really know that does well is, for example, now that holiday season’s coming, um, some of the, some of the things that are doing really well with, um, hosts in like UK that we’re testing this with this saying, Hey, new Year and Christmas is coming up. Like, have you booked a special meal with your friends and family yet?

 Gil: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. I’m excited about your growth. I, I’m, it’s a, it’s a very interesting story to just kind of see how you evolve from originally serving. Property or homeowners even, um, that are just trying to, trying to build great experiences for themselves and how that has evolved into now realizing that there’s actually a pretty big market and specifically the short term rental industry.

 Gil: Um, and you pouring so much energy more recently into, into that endeavor. So I’m, it’s phenomenal growth and really just seeing you guys, uh, be successful there. Um, I usually end the show with three questions. Uh, so first question first. Uh, what’s, what’s a good book recommendation? What is one book that, uh, you find that you recommend or you refer or you pick up every so often?

 Gil: What’s one that I should, I should take a peek at?

 Siddhi: Yeah, so this is what I found, or I rather it found me in 2024, I recommended to a bunch of people actually in the SDR space, I sent to them, it’s called The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer, and it’s just one of those books where it was just very left field. It came out of nowhere. It kind of changed my whole perspective on life because as we were speaking earlier.

 Siddhi: We go through all these like stresses in life. As a founder, you don’t know if you’re gonna make it and the highs are high, but the lows are really low and you’re just like really stressed about everything. And this book just teaches you, you could learn to really kind of just surrender to the whole universe and know that the universe has your back and no matter what you’re doing, it’ll just work out for the better.

 Siddhi: And I think it’s just how he writes this story and this guy. Was like a yogi. He also built this like crazy billion dollar company. I don’t know, it’s just wild what’s happening in this book. But it’s just one of those books that like really kind of, um, resonated and then I was like, oh my God, this has changed my life.

 Siddhi: So I really recommend if it’s a book Yeah. To read, which might like give you a different perspective.

 Gil: All right, and I, I ask this quite often as a follow up. Would you recommend this in audio form, Kindle form, or a good, good old paperback or hard back on this one?

 Siddhi: Actually, I’ll say, ’cause I also know people have different preferences of how they consume content. I’d say, to be honest, it doesn’t matter. Like I’m just a paperback person. But if you listen to audiobook, that’s fine. I think it’s just like the content is so great as long as you consume it for every single chapter.

 Siddhi: You’re not doing like a little TLDR on Google. That’s great. You just need to hear the story. Yeah.

 Gil: yeah. I, I think. For me, I, I’m, I’m pretty methodical of like how I want to consume it because I have like audio audible subscriptions, I have Kindle Limited, I have all those, all of those. Um, but I also like a good, a good hard copy as well too. But I find that the mindset ones. I really like audible versions, especially if they’re the narrator.

 Gil: Um, because oftentimes I’ll listen to it multiple times, maybe during the year. And so the mindset ones though, those are like the good pick me ups of am I ever in like a bad mood or a funk? I’ll, I’ll put on a good, um, audible there. But if I’m like learning something more tactical, I tend to do. The physical one, because then a lot of times you’re thinking about like, oh, I learned something and it was in this part of the book, or I can dog ear the corners there.

 Gil: And so like those ends up becoming the reference mental still. So like I’ve learned over time to not ha not consume it in one way because you, there’s different purposes of consuming, there’s entertainment purposes, there’s educational purposes or reference purposes. So yeah, that’s. And maybe I’m over engineering it, but that’s, that’s

 Siddhi: No, I love that. I feel like I’ve learned something new today ’cause I’m an avid book reader and I feel like sometimes two of my own detriment, I’ll always pick like a paper book and then the, the one time I picked up a audiobook, I was like, oh my God, I should really do audio a little bit more for some things, you know?

 Siddhi: ’cause I was actually really good. But yeah, I like this. This actually makes a lot of sense. So you should listen to this in audiobook actually.

 Gil: I might, I might, I might do that. Audiobook has sold like low pressure because I, I, given that I’ve already have the audible subscription there, it forces me to do it. And now I’ve racked up a bunch of, a bunch of like tokens or credits because I haven’t bought an, an audiobook recently. Um, but it’s just like, it’s low stress.

 Gil: Like if I have a long drive or I have an airplane ride, I can just put that in

 Siddhi: Very chill. Yeah.

 Gil: you can

 Siddhi: That’s someone’s story. Yeah.

 Gil: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Awesome. Second question, what’s one piece of mindset advice that you would give to someone that’s starting something completely new?

 Siddhi: Yeah, I love this question and I think my advice would be, it’s twofold, but I think both go in, it’s like the same advice where A, you have to just be like. Optimistically crazy to just believe you’ll make something happen. And the fact that you just back yourself to keep going. However, I would say along with that, be open to when people dissent or say they don’t agree with you ’cause you should be trying to hear.

 Siddhi: ’cause those are all great data points. You can reject that along your journey, and you will, because there can be so many haters and naysayers like it’s, it’s most of them until you start making it. But I do think there is value to you saying, ah, that person said this. Is there any truth to that? Or is there a hypothesis I can disprove?

 Siddhi: And both of those things can be true at the same time, you can be crazy optimistic and be like, I’m gonna make this, I’m gonna prove everyone wrong. But you kind of have to listen to some of those things to make yourself, make your iterations faster.

 Gil: You can’t, you have to be humble enough to be able to be open to to those things. I think a lot, a lot of folks, like the humbleness doesn’t come through. When you have really strong conviction, it feels like a lot of times it goes orthogonal to the humbleness, but it’s not like you can have strong conviction but also.

 Gil: Be able to check yourself every so often as well too.

 Siddhi: Yes, that’s way more eloquent. Love it.

 Gil: Yeah. Awesome. Last question. Um, what’s one piece of tactical advice that you would give to someone, um, that’s either trying to get started in direct bookings or amplify their direct bookings?

 Siddhi: Yeah, for sure. So actually the stat came out of VRMA in one of the conference sessions where. Around 50% of people now are looking at experiences when they book a trip and, and the Gen Z generation, which is like now becoming like a large traveler generation, which is scary to me. Um, which it’s like around 65 to 70% people are looking at experiences.

 Siddhi: So if you are starting something in the direct booking space and you really want to differentiate yourself, this is a must. Like, just offer that on your website, whether that’s like private chefs, like a link or it’s like restaurants or something cool to do nearby. It’s not a. It’s just something that will actually increase your conversion versus other venues and just factually we see that on why hangry?

 Siddhi: Because a whooping 55, like like half of all the requests we see in vacation rentals, people haven’t yet booked the vacation rental. They’re still shopping around, but they know they wanted to book a chef or something. Cool. So imagine if you just offer that onto your website, you would be someplace they trust more because they found out about a cool experience via you.

 Gil: Yeah, and I think like rewinding back a little bit, like when folks take vacation, they’re not just thinking about escaping, they’re thinking about all the different things that they need to do. And we’ve seen a lot of different services now start to pop up that makes it easier for hosts. Um, and I, I think that this allows us to elevate probably in the next like two years, we’ll probably see a lot of these services really start to solidify.

 Gil: Some may go away, um, but I think the really strong ones are gonna stick around and really allow. Host and property managers to deliver an experience that wasn’t there before. You almost have that travel agency type of experience from a property manager or a host.

 Siddhi: Yeah, absolutely.

 Gil: Awesome, Siddhi. It was a huge pleasure having you on. I had a lot of fun. I always enjoy talking to another startup founder and sorry folks, for folks that are tuning in that, um, maybe, maybe more used to kind of me interviewing the host and the host journey there. But I also have a great affinity to folks that are building technologies that makes it easier for folks to kind of deliver the experience that they’re looking for.

 Gil: So, Siddhi, it was a huge pleasure having you on.

 Siddhi: Gil, you are such a great host. I really enjoyed today and all of your questions.

 Gil: Awesome. Awesome. Well, till the next time, and definitely Siddhi will, we’ll circle back and figure out how do we build a, a really good experience for our CraftedStays users.

 Siddhi: Definitely. Bye.

 Gil: Awesome. Next time. Bye.