Sam Shank
Board Member at Operto Guest Technologies
San Francisco, California
Overview
Work Experience
Board Member
2023 - Current
Head of Commercial Team
2022 - 2022
Included the functions of enterprise account management, sales enablement, revenue management, business development and commercial strategy.
Head of Guest Experience
2020 - 2022
Led a team of product managers, data scientists, engineers and designers responsible for Airbnb's guest-facing websites and mobile apps. Launched category-based home search. Increased conversion by simplifying and optimizing various guest flows.
Head of Hotels
2019 - 2020
Led an initiative to add boutique hotel inventory to Airbnb, which was put on hold during Covid.
Lake Swan Properties is a holiday home rental company.
CEO
2010 - 2022
Co-founder and CEO of the leading last minute hotel booking app. Raised over $100m and built a team of 350 people. Grew the business to profitability with revenues in excess of $150m. Successfully sold the business to Airbnb in 2019. Continued to run HotelTonight inside Airbnb as an independent business unit.
HotelTonight is a mobile hotel booking application that allows users to find and reserve same-day hotel rooms from their smartphones.
Raised $126,885,000.00 from Notable Capital.
Board Member
2013 - 2016
Independent Board Member for this fitness tracking app. Worked closely with CEO to determine strategy, budget, product roadmap and helped position the company for its successful sale to ASICS.
Founder & CEO
2008 - 2010
Travel deals search engine.
VP, Business Development
2006 - 2007
Led the company's partnership distribution efforts including partners such as Forbes and Washington Post. Also involved with inbound and outbound M&A activities. Also, as General Manager of TravelPost.com, managed all operations of the TravelPost.com website, including P&L responsibility, product strategy and international expansion.
SideStep is a travel search engine that generates revenue via advertising and referral fees.
Raised $32,000,000.00 from Norwest Venture Partners, Saints Capital, Leader Ventures and Trident Capital.
CEO and Founder
2004 - 2006
Raised angel and venture capital funding, hired team, secured key alliances and set product strategy to build the largest independently-owned hotel review and research site with over 250,000 user-generated reviews and 700,000 unique monthly visitors. Successfully sold the business to SideStep in October 2006.
Senior Manager, Business Development
2000 - 2002
Worded with e-procurement customers to develop a supplier hub to share product information from the same supplier across multiple buyers, for greater efficiency and improved user experience. Co-creator of a patent covering distributed search technology.
Oracle is an integrated cloud application and platform services that sells a range of enterprise information technology solutions.
Director, Business Development
1999 - 2000
Ran product development. Launched the electronics category.
Wize Commerce operates as a digital marketing and online commerce technology.
Manager, Business Development
1998 - 1999
Producer of the shopping category. Also did business development on the Excite CPC comparison shopping engine.