STARTUP STAGE: Squake provides sustainability solutions for travel companies

What is your 30-second pitch to investors?

The travel industry is under extreme pressure. We are in a critical decade during which the main and only priority is to transform the entire industry to make it finally climate compatible. The mission is complex, the industry still relies heavily on fossil-based energies, the level of awareness needed for decision makers to feel empowered to make better decisions is still too low, and making change happen requires tons of effort and alignment across the very fragmented layers of this unique industry structure. 

Squake’s end-to-end solution was born and designed specifically for the travel industry. It’s a single application programming interface plug-in that powers precise carbon calculations for all types of activities – flights, cars, hotels and more – according to national and international standards; and automates impactful compensation via carbon removal and/or reduction. A single solution, simply embedded along the booking flow, to raise awareness and empower for better, reliable, impactful decisions. 

Squake’s solution is fully customizable to blend with the end-user experience once integrated at any point of the purchase path. Partners can decide what calculation framework matches their regulatory context best or what framework is most relevant to their product or program. They can also create their own compensation portfolio to be selected from Squake’s curated partner network, which includes certified climate protection organizations as well as providers of innovative climate technologies and sustainable fuel providers. 

Team Squake has built sustainable travel products for leading industry players for more than five years and all team members have strong track records in the fields of travel, sustainability, product development and solution engineering. 

Today, the Squake API runs in live systems of the largest leisure and business travel companies worldwide, such as the airlines of the Lufthansa Group, Reed & Mackay, ATG Travel, Atriis, Goodwings and more. 

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.  

• Business - Our solution is built upon three key pillars:
  • Calculations: Our API performs calculations of carbon emissions related to any type of travel and logistics activities: hotel stay, air travel, taxi, rail, cruise etc. Our clients can access the most reputable methodologies available to comply with any regional regulatory context. Our calculations can be performed from basic to granular data, allowing us to always provide calculations as close as possible to reality.
  • Compensation: Impact is what pushing our team to do their best work every day. This is why we have designed a rigorous specification process going beyond industry standards, including third-party verifications and co-benefits (per the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals) when it comes to selecting the climate projects through which travelers will compensate for the emissions they can’t reduce or avoid in the short term.
  • Integration: travel is a very fragmented industry. We built a solution that blends in any type of infrastructure and with all use cases. We provide full transparency on our documentation and full team support to better help our partners integrate in weeks (rather than in months, if not years in most other cases).
• Tech:
  • More than three years of development have been invested in building our API, now leading the way to achieve accurate calculations at scale and enabling millions of travelers to make better informed and conscious decisions.  
  • The infrastructure is designed as a modular, customizable solution. It is built on proven technology and can be tailored to each client’s specific needs and requirements. The stateless API is, citing our clients, the most performant carbon emissions API available on the market today. It is built upon a state-of-the-art tech stack, designed to provide secure, fast and accurate carbon emissions calculations at scale. 
  • Our API is already up-and-running in the live systems and critical paths of global industry leaders, such as the airlines of Lufthansa Group, Reed & Mackay or Atriis, covering the full spectrum from leisure to business travel use cases. The highest requirements according to data security and performance standards are met. Today, Squake handles more than 10 million requests per day with an average response time of less than 100 milliseconds. 

Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.

• Strengths: 
  • Ultra-scalable and customizable to match complex market requirements
  • Tech superiority
  • Travel/transport background of the team and clear focus = built from the industry, specifically for the industry
  • Strong and exclusive partnership with sustainable aviation fuels suppliers
  • Our collaborative mindset. We want all of our partners to succeed, so we go the extra mile to support our clients for a successful/fast integration and to participate together towards positive impact
• Weaknesses: 
  • Lack of brand awareness at this stage
• Opportunity: 
  • Fast-growing pressure for the market to adopt sustainable travel options and offering to counteract the terrible effects of climate change, abide by a fast-evolving regulatory context and protect their market shares and reputation in matching their customers’ values and expectations
• Threats: 
  • Booming market with lots of new requirements popping up all the time
  • Lack of global regulation and alignment in standards causing uncertainty

What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspective?

Travel is a force for good for humanity; it is time to reconcile it with being good for the planet too! 

The problem is travelers still have a very limited awareness and understanding of their travel related emissions. And if they do, they feel lost when trying to make decisions to limit their impact. Squake is here to solve all of the above, with building sustainable travel awareness at the heart of the existing network of travel booking outlets and providing decision makers with tangible and carefully qualified compensation solutions with real impact in just a few clicks. 

So you've got the product, now how will you get lots of customers?

Sustainable travel must happen today and must happen at scale! This is why we have been joined by experts from the travel industry, whose network, expertise and passion has already convinced global leaders to trust and implement Squake (Reed & Mackay, ATG Travel, Atriis and many more to be announced soon).

Tell us what process you've gone through to establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable market.

Incubated at the heart of the industry, in the Lufthansa Innovation Hub, the reason for creating Squake started from a critical need already existing. We are not creating demand, we are providing the solution that finally provides the right solution, the right way, with the right purpose.

How and when will you make money?

Squake is an established business model and therefore has been making revenue almost since day one. Our business model is a mix between set-up fee and annual fee. 

What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team?

Both co-founders have a solid track record in their respective fields of expertise. One in pioneering innovative tech-based products to unlock positive change in the travel industry, the other in supporting scale-ups to define and deliver on their market leading value propositions.

How have you addressed diversity and inclusion within your business?

Squake is dedicated to creating a workplace that provides opportunities for all backgrounds and personalities. This is something we live and breathe from our recruiting process, to our employee experience encouraging flexible and remote working, to our company culture overall where everyone is welcome to share their opinion. We are also proud to see women making up 80% of our leadership team (reporting directly to the co-founders).

What's been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?

Keeping up with demand! From day one, the market has been manifesting pressing demand for our solution. We knew of the existing pressure coming from the regulatory context, customer expectations and from the financial markets. The relevancy of our technology has been confirmed to be exactly what the market needed to respond to it. We have since been busy helping teams and companies all over the globe implementing sustainable travel across the many use cases we can serve.

Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact - so why are you going to be one of lucky ones?

Because impact is the core of everything we do, every decision we make, every product feature we build and every client we support. And, since our solution is already up-and-running in the infrastructure of global companies, we are talking about real impact, not wishful thinking.

A year from now, what state do you think your startup will be in?

We are already in integration phase with some of the biggest companies in the world. A year from now, their clients will finally experience their new, sustainably augmented, travel search and booking online experiences as the new normal. 

What is your end-game (going public, acquisition, growing and staying private, etc.)?

We are fully focused on growth!