STARTUP STAGE: Squake provides sustainability solutions for travel companies

What
is your 30-second pitch to investors?

The travel industry is under extreme pressure.
We are in a critical decade during which the main and only priority is to
transform the entire industry to make it finally climate compatible. The
mission is complex, the industry still relies heavily on fossil-based energies,
the level of awareness needed for decision makers to feel empowered to make
better decisions is still too low, and making change happen requires tons of
effort and alignment across the very fragmented layers of this unique industry
structure. 

Squake’s end-to-end solution was born and
designed specifically for the travel industry. It’s a single application programming interface plug-in that
powers precise carbon calculations for all types of activities – flights, cars,
hotels and more – according to national and international standards; and
automates carbon reduction and/or compensation along the booking flow, from
vendor selection to inventory management,
invoicing and credit retirement. A single solution to raise awareness and
empower for better, reliable, impactful decisions. 

Squake’s solution is fully customizable
to blend with the end-user experience once
integrated at any point of the purchase path. Partners can decide what
calculation framework matches their regulatory context best or what framework
is most relevant to their product or program. They can also create their own
compensation portfolio to be selected from Squake’s curated partner network,
which includes certified climate protection organizations as well as providers
of innovative climate technologies and sustainable fuel providers. 

Team Squake has built sustainable travel
products for leading industry players for more than five years and all team
members have strong track records in the fields of travel, sustainability,
product development and solution engineering. 

Today, the Squake API runs in live systems of
the largest leisure and business travel companies worldwide, such as the airlines
of the Lufthansa Group, Reed & Mackay, ATG Travel, Atriis and HomeToGo.  

Describe both the business and technology
aspects of your startup.

 

• Business – Our solution is built upon three key pillars:
  • Calculations: Our API performs calculations of
    carbon emissions related to any type of travel and logistics activities: hotel
    stay, air travel, taxi, rail, cruise etc. Our clients can access the most reputable
    methodologies available to comply with any regional regulatory context. Our calculations
    can be performed from basic to granular data, allowing us to always
    provide calculations as close as possible to reality.
  • Compensation: Impact is
    the reason that pushed our team to do their best work every day. This is why we
    have designed a rigorous specification process going beyond industry
    standards, including third-party verifications and co-benefits (per the United Nations
    Sustainable Development Goals) when it comes to selecting the climate projects
    through which travelers will compensate for the emissions they can’t reduce or
    avoid in the short term. 
  • Integration: travel is a
    very fragmented industry. We built a solution that blends in any type of
    infrastructure and with all use cases. We provide full
    transparency on our documentation and full team support to better help our
    partners integrate in weeks (rather than in months, if not years in most other
    cases).
• Tech:
  • More than three years of development have been
    invested in building our API, now leading the way to achieve accurate
    calculations at scale and enabling millions of travelers to make better
    informed and conscious decisions.  
  • The infrastructure is designed as a modular,
    customizable solution. It is built on proven technology and can be tailored to
    each client’s specific needs and requirements. The stateless API is, citing our
    clients, the most performant carbon emissions API available on the market
    today. It is built upon a state-of-the-art tech stack, designed to provide
    secure, fast and accurate carbon emissions calculations at scale. 
  • Our API is already up-and-running in the live
    systems and critical paths of global industry leaders, such as the airlines of
    Lufthansa Group, Reed & Mackay or Atriis, covering the full spectrum from
    leisure to business travel use cases. The highest requirements according to
    data security and performance standards are met. Today, Squake handles more
    than 10 million requests per day with an average response time of less than 100
    milliseconds. 

Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.

• Strengths: 
  • Ultra-scalable and
    customizable to match complex market requirements
  • Tech superiority
  • Travel/transport
    background of the team and clear focus = relevance of what we built for these
    needs and not just yet another generic tool 
  • Strong and exclusive
    partnership with sustainable aviation fuels suppliers
  • Our collaborative
    mindset. We want all of our partners to succeed, so we go the extra mile to
    support our clients for a successful/fast integration and to participate
    together towards positive impact
• Weaknesses: 
  • Lack of brand
    awareness 
• Opportunity: 
  • Fast-growing pressure
    for the market to adopt sustainable travel options and offering to counteract
    the terrible effects of climate change, abide by a fast-evolving regulatory
    context and protect their market shares and reputation in matching their
    customers’ values and expectations
• Threats: 
  • Booming market with lots
    of new requirements popping up all the time
  • Lack of global
    regulation and alignment in standards causing uncertainty

What are the travel pain points you are trying
to alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspective?

Travel is a force for good for humanity; it is
time to reconcile it with being good for the planet too! 

The problem is travelers still have a very limited
awareness and understanding of their travel related emissions. And if they do,
they feel lost when trying to make decisions to limit their impact. Squake is
here to solve all of the above, with building sustainable travel awareness at
the heart of the existing huge network of travel booking outlets
and providing decision makers with tangible and carefully qualified
compensation solutions with real impact in just a few clicks. 

So you’ve got the product, now how will you get
lots of customers?

Sustainable travel must happen today and must
happen at scale! This is why we have been joined by experts from the travel
industry, whose network, expertise and passion has already convinced global
leaders to trust and implement Squake (Reed & Mackay, ATG Travel, Atriis
and many more to be announced soon).

Tell us what process you’ve gone through to
establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable
market.

Incubated at the heart of the industry, in the
Lufthansa Innovation Hub, the reason for creating Squake started from a
critical need already existing. We are not creating demand, we are providing
the solution that finally provides the right solution, the right way, with the
right purpose.

How and when will you make money?

Squake is an established business model and
therefore has been making revenue almost since day one. Our business model is a
mix between set-up fee and annual fee. 

What are the backgrounds and previous
achievements of the founding team?

Both co-founders have a solid track record in
their respective fields of expertise. One in pioneering
innovative tech-based products to unlock positive change in the travel
industry, the other in supporting scale-ups to define and deliver on their market
leading value propositions.

How have you addressed diversity and inclusion
within your business?

Squake is dedicated to creating a workplace that
provides opportunities for all backgrounds and personalities. This is something
we live and breathe from our recruiting process, to our employee experience
encouraging flexible and remote working, to our company culture overall where
everyone is welcome to share their opinion. For example, women make up 80%
of our leadership team (reporting directly to the co-founders).

What’s been the most difficult part of founding
the business so far?

Keeping up with demand! From day one, the market
has been manifesting pressing demand for our solution. We knew of the existing
pressure coming from the regulatory context, customer expectations and from the
financial markets. The relevancy of our technology has been confirmed to be
exactly what the market needed to respond to it. We have since been busy
helping teams and companies all over the globe implementing sustainable travel
across the many use cases we can serve.

Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough
time making an impact – so why are you going to be one of lucky ones?

Because impact is the core of everything we do,
every decision we make, every product feature we build and every client we
empower. Our solution is
already up-and-running in the infrastructure of global companies.

A year from now, what state do you think your
startup will be in?

We are already in integration phase with some of
the biggest companies in the world. A year from now, their clients will finally
experience their new, sustainably augmented, travel search and booking online
experiences. 

What is your end-game (going public,
acquisition, growing and staying private, etc.)?

We are fully focused on growth!