Spinning out Otto: A first-of-its-kind AI business travel agent backed by a dream team of travel vets

By Mike Fridgen, Managing Director • Aug 22, 2024

At MVL, we have a longstanding history of creating innovative travel startups and have been at the forefront of building enterprise AI products. This is why today, we are excited to announce that we are spinning out Otto, an AI-based travel agent that autonomously plans, books, and ensures business travelers have the perfect trip. 
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Travel is ripe for radical transformation. Today’s experiences are dominated by decades-old legacy booking engines and the same tired transactional flows. Travelers are understandably frustrated by the lack of personalization as they enter previously provided travel details again and again. There is also an absence of modern automation, causing them to spend mind-numbing hours on the phone to make simple changes. 
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This is where Otto comes in. With significant advancements in natural language understanding capabilities, robust travel API capabilities, and soaring consumer adoption of AI, Otto is poised to fundamentally alter the travel industry with an entirely novel experience. Otto is like having the most competent and knowledgeable personal travel agent at your fingertips. Otto continuously learns the nuanced ways you love to travel, autonomously plans your trips, brings forward only the most relevant travel options for you, completes the booking transaction, and handles any changes along the way. Saving you time and hassle, but even more, ensuring the perfect business trip. 

In partnership with Madrona, we assembled a dream team of operators and experienced travel leaders behind Otto. First and foremost is Otto’s founding CEO, Michael Gulmann. Michael was most recently the Chief Product Officer for Expedia consumer products and has over a decade of experience in the travel domain. He truly personifies founder-market fit and a passion for redefining the travel experience. On the board and leading the Madrona investment is Steve Singh, the founding CEO of Concur and the driving force behind Madrona’s portfolio of business travel investments, including Spotnana, Direct Travel, and TROOP, and the architect of the perfect trip vision. 

Joining the board of advisors and investment group are Erik Blachford, former CEO of Expedia and travel startup investor; Barney Harford, former CEO of Orbitz and former COO of Uber; and Hugh Crean, former CEO of Farecast, a Madrona-backed company that was acquired by Microsoft. Joining the $6M seed round is Direct Travel, a leading business travel agency, under the leadership and in partnership with Christal Bemont. 

The idea for Otto originated as a five-minute pitch at an internal MVL offsite last year. As we validated the concept, we spoke with several industry experts, including Michael Gulmann, who contributed vital product insights, helped shape the vision, and ultimately joined as founding CEO.

As our conviction grew stronger, an experienced team of builders at MVL came together to drive the project forward, including Jay Bartot, founding CTO of Farecast, Jason Flateboe, founding designer at Farecast, Simon Tam, founding CTO of Egencia, and the rest of the MVL team. Jay led the technical effort, including a series of prototypes to validate AI agent capabilities, RAG systems, and multi-agent architectures. Jason led customer validation and testing to better understand business traveler behavioral patterns and the modern usage of AI. Sam Dore and Flora Ku led founder recruiting and operations, respectively. Throughout the process, we locked arms with the team at Madrona, partnering closely with Managing Directors Steve Singh and Matt McIlwain on the overall product vision, customer target, and business model.

We look forward to continuing to support Michael and Otto to revolutionize travel and become the new standard for multi-agent, AI-powered travel experiences.