VRWS Leadership Interview of the Day

1. Before hospitality, you co-founded ventures in Germany spanning battery reconditioning technology, industrial food safety tech, and consulting for TEPCO on cleaning radioactive debris after Fukushima. What from that stretch of genuinely unrelated, highly technical businesses actually shows up in how you build a sales organisation today?

One thing those experiences had in common is that none of the products were easy to explain. Whether we were talking about industrial technology or environmental engineering, we weren’t selling features- we were helping customers understand complex problems and make high-stakes decisions.

That shaped how I think about sales today. Great salespeople aren’t product presenters; they’re problem solvers. I encourage my team to become trusted advisors who understand a customer’s business before talking about our software.

Those early ventures also taught me resilience. Building startups means constantly operating with uncertainty, limited resources, and frequent setbacks. That mindset has stayed with me throughout my career. I believe high-performing sales teams are built by creating a culture where experimentation is encouraged, failures are treated as learning opportunities, and everyone remains focused on continuous improvement.

2. At Christina’s in Vietnam, you helped grow inventory five times over, from under 100 rooms to more than 500, while leading a team of over a dozen managers. What did scaling that fast in hospitality teach you about growth that you had to unlearn once you moved into software sales at Hostfully?

Hospitality taught me that sustainable growth only happens when operations scale alongside revenue. Adding more properties is exciting, but if your processes don’t keep up, guest experience suffers very quickly.

What I had to unlearn in SaaS was the idea that scaling is mostly operational. Software companies have the advantage of iterating much faster. Customer feedback can influence product development in weeks rather than years.

One of the things I appreciate about Hostfully is that we’re building alongside our customers. Many of our roadmap decisions come directly from conversations with property managers. That creates a much tighter feedback loop than I experienced in hospitality and allows us to solve operational challenges before they become bottlenecks.

Ultimately, the principle is the same: growth should make your customers’ lives easier, not more complicated.

3. Hostfully’s 2026 Tech Stack Report mapped over 31,000 integrations across 2,200 operators and found dynamic pricing and payments near-universal, while other categories lag far behind. As Global Director of Sales, has that data changed how your team pitches Hostfully, or does it mostly confirm what you were already hearing in sales conversations?

It mostly confirmed what we’d been hearing from customers for quite some time.

Property managers aren’t looking for more software anymore – they’re looking for fewer operational headaches. Dynamic pricing, payments, and guest communication have become standard because they deliver immediate ROI. Beyond that, operators are much more selective. Every new tool has to justify its place in the tech stack.

That’s where Hostfully has a strong advantage. We believe customers should have the freedom to build the ecosystem that works best for them, which is why we’ve invested heavily in an open integration platform with hundreds of technology partners.

The report also gives our sales team something incredibly valuable: objective industry data. Instead of relying on opinions, we can show operators how similar businesses are building their technology stack and help them make more informed decisions about where automation will have the biggest impact.

4. You spent years as APAC Lead based in Vietnam before becoming Global Director of Sales based in Germany. What actually changes when you go from owning one region’s numbers to being accountable for AE teams performing very differently across every time zone?

The biggest shift is realizing that your impact is no longer measured by the deals you close – it’s measured by how many other people you’re helping close theirs.

During my time representing Hostfully across the APAC region, I was deeply involved in customer conversations, partnerships, and understanding the unique needs of property managers across different markets. I stayed close to opportunities and built strong relationships with customers, which gave me firsthand insight into how differently operators run their businesses around the world.

As Global Director of Sales, my role has evolved from being close to individual opportunities to building an organization that enables success at scale: hiring great people, developing managers, creating repeatable sales processes, and giving our teams the insights and tools they need to succeed.

One lesson I’ve learned along the way is the importance of empowering others. Earlier in my career, I thought good leaders needed to have all the answers. Today, I believe the opposite. Our Account Executives speak with property managers every day – they’re often the first to spot changing customer needs, emerging market trends, or new operational challenges. My job is to create an environment where those insights flow freely across regions and back into the business.

That’s one of the things I value most about Hostfully. We stay incredibly close to our customers, and their feedback influences how we evolve our platform. As a global sales organization, that means we’re not just sharing best practices internally – we’re helping shape the future of our product based on what operators around the world are experiencing.

Ultimately, global leadership isn’t about managing teams across different time zones. It’s about building an organization that can learn faster than the market changes. If our teams are continuously learning from customers, sharing those insights globally, and turning those learnings into better solutions, we don’t just create better outcomes for our customers – we help move the entire industry forward.