1 of 4 Case study: SuiteStory www.emba-global.com/americasandeurope Globalise your career

SuiteStory – what’s your story?

Worlds apart, working together

Balancing their elective schedule with customer acquisition, Vikram Pradhan (left) and Dmitrii Beliakov (right), both current EMBA-Global students, are taking their venture SuiteStory to market propelled by two power-house networks. Vikram, a stone’s throw from Columbia Business School (CBS), and Rotterdam-based Dmitrii, aim to change the way people book hotel suites.

SuiteStory isn’t the normal third-party booking website. It offers smart technology, intelligent categorisation and access to boutique suites you wouldn’t think to search for. Its technology allows the ultimate customised approach to travel – customers can clearly understand the exact features of each suite via informational beacons, they can interact, show their likes and dislikes and search based on their individual preferences. It will enable hotels to sell more of their suites and customers to embark on their travel experience as soon as they book.

The perfect suite of skills

Both studying in the same EMBA-Global class, neither Dmitrii nor Vikram could have predicted the entrepreneurial journey they were about to go on together.

“The very first time I met him, I knew he had everything that I lacked,” says Vikram about Dmitrii. “He’s laser-focused on execution, he’s skilled with data and he’s very direct – there’s no sugar-coating anything. There’s no way I would have achieved alone what we have so far together.”

And Dmitrii agrees: “Vikram could be a politician, he has brilliant negotiation skills. He knows who to call, what to say and when to say it. I’m a really straightforward person and I just don’t have those softer skills.

Dmitrii saw from the start that Vikram had passion, conviction and tenacity, three traits every entrepreneur needs. He says: “I need someone like Vikram next to me; we’re perfectly matched business partners. And his industry experience is priceless.”

Vikram Pradhan, Co-Founder and President of SuiteStory, has 10 years of revenue management experience in the luxury hotel industry. He joined the programme as Director, Revenue Management Strategy at Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. but

resigned in May 2015 to focus on SuiteStory.

“With Starwood I travelled all over the world solving problems at one hotel at a time. I fixed over 100 hotels in 30 countries within four years. That was my global exposure,” he says. After that he made a move into revenue strategy for the firm, focussing on 580 hotels in North America (NA).

“Once I took the NA-centric role I wasn’t travelling to Munich, Singapore, the UK and back anymore; I was travelling to Salt Lake City, Detroit and Fort Lauderdale. I needed more.”

Vikram explains that the explosive-sprint block week teaching structure of the EMBA Global programme was a big deciding-factor. “In my consulting role I would be on the road for two- week-sprints, the programme’s block weeks allow me to study the same way, it suits my working style,” says Vikram.

Dmitrii Beliakov, Co-Founder and CEO of SuiteStory, entered the programme as a seasoned entrepreneur with 13 years of cross-industry CEO experience. Having worked in the niche market of Maritime HR he was looking for new challenges.

“As an entrepreneur in Europe, I wanted to broaden my horizons, to immerse in a true entrepreneurship hub much like Silicon Valley. I joined the programme looking to meet new people and make connections to expand my perspective beyond Europe. I felt that I’d reached the ceiling of what I could achieve in my current environment,” he says.

But for Dmitrii, although he’d no immediate plans to launch a start-up on both sides of the Atlantic, SuiteStory was a different story. “I have a great partner with a fantastic background, who’s very different from me and complements my skills perfectly,” he says.

2 of 4 Case study: SuiteStory www.emba-global.com/americasandeurope Globalise your career

SuiteStory – what’s your story?

The suite idea

How did people-skilled Vikram bring data-driven Dmitrii on board? With his negotiation skills. Having worked in the hotel industry for 13 years, Vikram approached the problem of selling suites from a hotel’s perspective; it was only when he saw the size of the market opportunity that he realised the potential for a completely new way of working.

Vikram says: “I tried to convince Dmitrii by telling him how great the idea was, how it could change the industry and how together we’d create happy travellers. I wasn’t getting anywhere with this softer approach. Then, I opened my laptop and showed him some industry figures: that was the turning point.” That was July 2014, by September they had written their business plan, and in May 2015 they reached closed-beta pilot phase.

The problem they’re solving? According to Vikram’s research, up to 70 per cent of hotel suites are never sold; 40 per cent of the time they’re occupied merely as free upgrades. The SuiteStory business model addresses this well-known industry challenge: high-end rooms are hard for hotels to sell.

The team is now fundraising and looking for ‘smart money’ – dynamic investors that can “bring their expertise and connections”. The EMBA-Global network is key to their search for passionate and savvy investors.

Dmitrii says: “The network is huge in both schools. If I can’t solve a problem at CBS I will definitely solve it at LBS.” Dmitrii has taken advantage of the LBS discussion forum at “three critical turning points” so far. He says: “I sent one email asking for financial system advice and had 20 responses in 15 minutes, after that it took just one phone call and my problem was solved.” They also opened up the opportunity to invest in SuiteStory to the School’s network as they look to raise US$500,000 for the next phase. After one discussion post they received two strong ‘smart money’ leads from alumni connected to the industry and with a passion for start-ups.

The network from both schools hasn’t only been instrumental to their fundraising; it’s allowed them to see how start-ups are run both in London and New York. Vikram says: “The dual location is a blessing. It’s incredible how we can leverage the networks from both schools. The dual location has opened up so many entrepreneurial possibilities on both sides of the Atlantic for us.”

London Business School

Columbia Business School, New York

“ The dual location is a blessing. It’s incredible how we can leverage the networks from both schools.”

3 of 4 Case study: SuiteStory www.emba-global.com/americasandeurope Globalise your career

SuiteStory – what’s your story?

You can’t un-know it

“LBS and CBS have enabled me to see how things work in the US, Europe and beyond –and I can tell you, things are done very differently. It’s a whole new world for me,” says Dmitrii. This ability to translate business need into global demand is a life-skill that they both take away from their student experience and apply directly to their start-up.

The pair reflects on Professor Richard Jolly’s words from their orientation week, he told them: “The curse of knowledge is that once you know something you can’t un-know it.” And whilst they might not have understood the pertinence of his words at the time, they do now.

“Today I have a completely different understanding of the world’s financial system and when I read the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal now, it’s with a completely different perspective,” says Vikram.

Vikram explains how as a direct result of classroom theory they have put the lessons they’ve learnt straight into business practice. “We are looking at the world with different eyes now. I have a greater understanding of how the financials of a company work and how my role (at my previous company Starwood) ties into the bigger picture. And the leadership classes have given me more depth, I’ve flexed my style, for example I restructured my team by leveraging everyone’s strengths. Instead of being structured on segments, I deployed them based on job function. It was miraculous – productivity increased and everyone was happier.”

And the same goes for Dmitrii who has implemented best-practice tools and techniques to his business at every stage of the curriculum: “My team probably hate hearing about Customer Lifetime Value and profitability analysis – but it’s tangible because you can see it working in dollars,” he says.

The ability to see things differently has more benefits than the bottom-line for the students who have both changed career direction to pursue SuiteStory.

“It’s so important to learn about culture in a company,” says Dmitrii, adding: “You cannot read it in a book – you have to speak to the faculty who actually do the research.

“True innovative ideas are only born from people with different backgrounds: that’s where the programme’s dual location comes in. We have a global programme and every next student is from another country, so we share our different perspectives and experiences. We get more information from one single class together than a less diverse group would if they met several times.”

New York’s iconic Brooklyn Bridge, close to Columbia Business School

The understanding that everyone has something to bring, that everyone has their own story to tell, is crucial to SuiteStory. Vikram says: “When I joined the programme I wanted to be a great leader at Starwood; I had been with the company for 11 years and really had a satisfying career trajectory there. But my thinking was flawed. What the programme brought was the understanding of what was outside. The experience opened so many doors and validated my ability; it has given me all the tools I need to achieve my new entrepreneurial goals.

“I’m doing something that I’ve never done before with SuiteStory, but it doesn’t seem far-fetched to make a success of it. For me the programme’s been a complete life-changer.”

“ True innovative ideas are only born from people with different backgrounds: that’s where the programme’s dual location comes in.”

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SuiteStory – what’s your story?

More than the sum of its parts

SuiteStory operates as a middleperson, but the difference is that by solving mutually beneficial problems, its success lies entirely on the strength of its relationships with luxury hotel owners and the ability to bring customers’ travel experiences to life. Customers that book on SuiteStory get access to exclusive suites and rates while hotels realise the value of their premium offerings. To guarantee its point of difference, Vikram and Dmitrii have collaborated with classmates, the LBS and CBS network and the wider travel industry at every step of the way.

“We presented SuiteStory to our class and asked them to bring their perspectives. Where else can you find a group that represents investment banking, asset management, hotel owners, real estate, private equity, strategy consultancy and more in one room? We wanted to run our fundamental strategy by them: we want to make a difference to the industry by growing the pie for everyone. Third party websites such as Expedia and Priceline have always had a contentious relationship with hotels because they’re the middleman. So we’ve decided that hotels are our customers too, we’ll only make money if they make money,” says Vikram.

SuiteStory allows customers absolute transparency: they can see every option and choose their suite based on intelligent content. Instead of choosing a room by filtering up or down from price, it allows customers to compare

bespoke suites and their unique features, never just big-brand hotels. If you’re a workaholic and you want a room with a working desk or you hate showering standing in a tub but love a rain shower, if you want a personal pool or a top floor view, you’ll be able to search for a suite based on your exact preferences.

The pair who came up with the business idea formally in early 2015, are currently in pilot phase and will launch in New York, after that, they’ll expand further in the US and beyond that they’ll look to Europe.

Can SuiteStory change the travel industry? Vikram and Dmitrii expect other third-party booking websites in the future will look to replicate the technology they are bringing to market, so their intellectual property is water-tight. It’s the age of personalisation and customisation, and SuiteStory, with its clever categorisation (search by: floorplan, size, view, private pool, working desk, close to a golf course), is capitalising on the popular trend.

Vikram says: “I think people will expect more from a booking travel website because we’re giving customers the tools to imagine their travel experience before they’ve even booked.”

SuiteStory’s interactive website, rich in content, allowing customers to choose their preferences.

www.suitestory.com