Year in Review from the SnapTravel team
There’s no doubt that 2018 has been a massive year for the SnapTravel team. We nearly quadrupled in size, moved into a brand new office, closed our Series A round of funding at $21.2MM USD, and further established ourselves as leaders in the conversational commerce space. 🔥🚀
In this post, we’ve pulled together 4 folks from across SnapTravel’s teams to share a bit about what they saw, learned and experienced in 2018…
Aditi is a Software Engineer on our Connectivity team, responsible for building and maintaining our connections, integrations and API’s with dozens of partners globally.
Jon is our Operations Manager, leading any User-facing support and the behind-the-scenes work that leads to free upgrades, fast response times and any other resolutions for our guests!
Natalia leads our Global Supply team, working from our office in Spain! She develops and maintains business relationships that allow us to get the best hotel rates.
Nehil is a Senior Software Engineer, leading our Data Infrastructure team. His team ensures that we have the Data, DevOps and Infrastructure needed to keep our business running quick and smoothly, 24/7!
1. What is something new that you learned at SnapTravel in 2018 that you didn’t expect to learn or do?
Aditi: This is my 1st time working in a startup, so I’ve gotten exposure to everything from architecture design to the deployment process. I’ve been able to build micro-services and get hands-on experience in pushing new features to production multiple times a week!
Natalia: Tableau! We’re a data-driven team, and I’ve been able to learn how to use a powerful B.I. tool like Tableau to build my own dashboards and reports, reducing my reliance on the Data and Analytics teams.
Nehil: This year I learned how to understand an eCommerce company from a Financial standpoint. As an Engineer I’m deeply embedded in the technical side of things, but have been able to look at the business holistically to identify key financial KPI’s (GMV, ROAS, Net Revenue) and better understand unit economics.
2. What accomplishment/project are you most proud of that you supported in 2018 at SnapTravel?
Jon: One of the best parts of being in a hyper-growth startup is the chance to wear many hats. Out of all the projects I worked on, I’m most proud of scaling out our Customer Success team from 5 to 50 full-time people across 3 offices. I’ve learned a lot about recruitment, training, operations and leadership.
Nehil: Our Data Warehouse project gave me the opportunity to take data from all of our different teams and systems and bring them together into one central place: Snowflake. This created a single source of truth for data, gave the Business team easier access to the data/metrics they care about, etc. Especially proud to have done this in a team of only 2 Data Engineers!
3. What was your favourite Team Event in 2018?
Aditi: Pumpkin Carving in October was one of my favourite events — it was my first time carving a pumpkin and it was pretty cool to team up with people that I don’t work with on a day-to-day basis. Was fun to get my hands dirty!
Jon: Going to a Toronto Raptors basketball game with the team in February!
Natalia: I’m based out of Barcelona, Spain, but have been able to visit our Toronto HQ twice this year! We did a Team Picnic in the Spring and the Elevate TechFest Week in September!
Nehil: Taking on the Escape Room at Casa Loma in March!
What’s next?
Our team is currently getting refreshed and recharged before 2019, but before everyone left for the holidays we recapped the goals (OKR’s) that we’d set for ourselves in 2018, and reviewed where we were successful and what we can do better.
We have some ambitious goals and aggressive growth planned for 2019. If you’re interested in being a part of the journey, check out our current openings! 🚀
