Travel Through the Lens of AI with with Booking.com CEO Glenn Fogel

**Glenn Fogel** (0:00)
There is no such thing as a moat. There is no such thing as something where you're going to be protected against innovation. Today, we have a competitive advantage on areas. Absolutely. But those can go away tomorrow. The only way to win long term is to continue to develop new services, new ways to do things. How can we do your business better? What do you need? Where you need more demand? Where are you hurting? It's so much more complex if you think you're just going to come in and do this business and knock away these very big players. I think we should really understand what the business is before we decide to commit to Capper.

**Elad Gil** (0:43)
Today on No Priors, we're talking with Glenn Fogel, the CEO of Booking Holdings, 20-something-year veteran of the company, who joined when it was just Priceline and worth a few hundred million dollars in the year 2000, and has since helped grow it to a hundred billion dollar plus company with multiple massive assets across travel that are now being used in the AI era. We will talk about a variety of topics with Glenn that span everything from the growth and changes that have happened in bookings over time, as well as his own career and perspective on AI.
So Glenn, thank you so much for joining us today.

**Glenn Fogel** (1:16)
Well, thank you very much for having me.

**Elad Gil** (1:18)
Yeah. So you've had a really interesting career.
You know, you went to Wharton, you went to Harvard Law, along the way you worked in, I think, the MIS program at Morgastown. I'd love to just hear a little about your early background and how that led you eventually to booking.com and eventually Booking Holdings.

**Glenn Fogel** (1:37)
Yeah, I can do that. So, real short, I came out of Wharton with Green Finance, and now I end up at the back office at MIS.
My first job is putting tapes on a drive in a data center.
IBM 3084s and the tests that went in the tape drives, and putting the tapes on the drive. That's where I started. There's an operator, actually being an operator of a mainframe, very different, nothing that you prepare for that in college for that. And I then become, you become a developer, and you basically learn that this is not a career for me, I should do something else. And all the people I knew, undergrad at Wharton, were going off to invest in bank and make all this money, and I thought, yes, I should try to do that. But you can't go. I've now gone down one chute, and you can't just jump out of that one to go and become an investment banker. So I got a degree in finance at Wharton, and Harvard let me in the law school, so I'll do that because that's another route. I did that, and I end up getting a job on Wall Street as a banker. I did that until 1995
And then the bank was bought by another bank, and they fired all the bankers almost. Not every banker. They fired most of them, including me. But not everybody, because they fired everybody. I said, well, they fired everybody. But they didn't fire everybody. So there was actually some people who were picked to stay. That was not one of them. That's pretty bad. So a real good lesson, though, having been fired and no one wants to slide, that is something that I've kept with me throughout my career about how to do it right, not do it wrong, and understand what goes to the other person when you tell them that, I'm sorry, but there's no longer a room for you here and it's not the place for you to be.
I really learned that first-hand being on that side of the table. So now I'm unemployed and my father had just died, we didn't know, not that long before this happens. My father's died, lost the job.
My grandmother died and even the dog died, which is kind of sad. I'm like, what do I want to do with my life now? My young thirties, I'm saying, whatever.
I said, I always want to write a book, so I start writing a book, I write a novel, I get it done, and now I'm going to try and get it published, and it's not really self-publishing, you're doing it on your own, you're trying to get some agent to pick it up. I was introduced to a woman as a blind date for a friend. I think she's a lawyer, but I don't know. They said, well, she used to work at Random House as an editor. I said, oh, I'm very interested in the book. And so we have a date and the book never gets published. I do end up marrying her and have two great kids. There's wonderful life. But while I was trying to get the book, an agent to be interested in it, eventually she said, you know, if this relationship is going to go forward, you should get a job. I said, Jim, I didn't want to go back to banking. And I said, I don't know. And a friend of mine from law school was a senior type person at Morgan Stanley. And I told him, look, Amy says, I have to get a job. He had any thoughts? He said, well, we have this trading position here that you could do. I never traded anything in my life. Don't worry, you'll be fine. He's like, OK. So I end up being head trader for a guy named Barton Bay. He's kind of a Wall Street legend and stuff. I did that for a number of years. But I just don't like it. It's not that exciting. It's just not for me. And that's when the internet was really taking off. That first real explosion, the internet boom, that's late 90s. So 1999, I started trying to interview. And I'll say, well, I got some skills. But when I was an IT person, I got that. And I know a little bit about corporate development because being just a banker. And I started interviewing. The only real company on the East Coast at the time of internet abilities was Priceline. And they had a job for corporate development.