On the TechTO stage ×2
TravelTechTO Panel | The Future of Selling Travel
Watch on YouTube ↗What Investors Actually Look for in your Travel Startup | Fireside with Janice Sousa & Alex Baker
Watch on YouTube ↗First seen on the TechTO stage in 2019. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Janice ↗
In their words
We founded a lot of businesses. Some worked. Most didn't statistically.
Do your homework on your investors. They're pretty candid. Their websites are increasingly very transparent about where they invest, what they're looking for.
People who experience the problems themselves are generally the ones who are the most passionate about solving it.
We had run tour operators, we had done wholesale divisions, and we kept coming back to this idea that if we could solve our pain point around making travel registration for group travel simpler, our former companies would have scaled so much faster.
The information asymmetry that existed five years ago between supplier and traveller, or even supplier and travel planner, is gone. So the role of the intermediary has shifted.
Around the web ×1
Quick answers
Who is Janice Sousa?
A sales coach at Deloitte who was previously co-founder and CEO of Groupdesk, a Toronto B2B platform for group travel bookings. Before founding companies she was VP of business development at Merit Travel, executive director of trips at Me to We, and director of sales at EF Educational Tours.
What did she talk about at TechTO?
A fireside with Relay Ventures managing partner Alex Baker on what investors in travel startups actually look for. Her opening advice to founders was to do the homework: 'their websites are increasingly very transparent about where they invest, what they're looking for.' (TechTO, December 2025)