Up The River With a Paddle – Paul English, CTO of Kayak Answers 10 Questions

Paul English is currently Chief Technology Officer at Kayak.com, a travel search engine website. The name does make you think of white water rafting, but Kayak’s actually focused on air travel (and ancillary services like car rental, hotels, etc.) The company was started in 2004, and Paul English was a co-founder.

I remember when the site launched there was quite a hubbub about the interface, style and speed of searching. After a couple of years it’s still pretty darn slick.

Kayak.com isn’t a travel agency; they gather information on the best deals online and make it available to you.

Paul English is responsible (at least managerially and from a vision-perspective) for much of the technology behind the scenes and for the company’s business philosophy. He was generous enough over the holidays to answer 10 questions. Paul’s got a long history as an entrepreneur, and continues to see lots of success with Kayak.com.

Interview Highlights

• Paul openly challenges his engineers/programmers to write software that works for everyone, not just other engineers.
• Paul expertly blends entrepreneurship and philanthropy.
• Paul tells us the only reason businesses fail.

The Interview

1. Tell us about Kayak.com and your role.

Kayak.com searches hundreds of travel sites to find you best prices on flights, hotels, rental cars and travel deals.

I’m the CTO and Co-founder of Kayak.com.

2. Seems like a very crowded space, what makes Kayak.com better?

Better team, and a better customer focus.

Our goal is to have Kayak become one of the fastest and easiest to use search engines on the web, as well as the most comprehensive travel search site.

And to have some fun while doing so.

Try us out, and let me know what you think.

3. If you had to name 1 thing that makes Kayak.com an awesome company, what would it be?

Rock star team.

Not just from the board/investors (including the key cofounders of Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity, with money from General Catalyst, Sequoia and Accel UK), but all the way across our team– from our product designers to programmers to QA engineers.

I have somewhat of a reputation as a recruiter, and we’ve worked really, really hard to build the absolute best team in all of travel.

4. Great customer service is a huge mantra for you personally and for Kayak.com. Do you think new startups can hang their hat on great customer service as a real differentiator? How do you SELL great customer service?

I will tell you a secret…

Yes, Kayak is known for great customer service. Of the ten million consumer searches we did last month, our 32 employees answered every single incoming question personally. Consumers are shocked by that. They don’t expect a “big brand” site like Kayak to be able to do real-time, personalized support. When a consumer sends us a question at 4am and gets a response within hours (or minutes) by myself or one of our engineers– we win points for that.

But as nice a benefit as that is for customers, the real winner in this bargain is Kayak.

Only by having me and all our engineers talking with customers EVERY SINGLE DAY can it enable us to improve our product every week with exactly what customers want.

If a customer is confused by something on our site, it is always our fault.

There is no such thing as a stupid customer.

When most companies get “stupid questions”, their engineers (if they ever see customer feedback) write them off as naive customers.

At Kayak, when we get a “stupid question”, we turn on the juice. I challenge our engineers–

“Any engineer can write software that technical users will love, but are you smart enough to make Kayak usable by any user?”

5. You’ve got a history of entrepreneurship, with companies like Boston Light Software and now Kayak. Why are you an entrepreneur?

Maybe because I am impatient. When I see something that delights me, I want to shout from the rooftops and get it to as many people I can. When I see something that angers me, I want to fix it. Immediately.

6. Philanthropy is a big part of your life and career. You started the gethuman consumer movement and you’re an adviser to Partners in Health. How do these efforts jive with your business goals? And, do you find entrepreneurs are generally a giving / socially conscious community?

I like to think that empathy and curiosity go hand-in-hand, and those skills can be helpful both to entrepreneurs and to philanthropists.

For example, having empathy allows you to connect with potential employees and customers and business partners.

And many other entrepreneurial skills (such as impatience) are worth gold in the non-profit sectors.

I have found many entrepreneurs to be very giving individuals, but there continue to be some major crises in the world today, and I would like to see us entrepreneurs do a lot more to help.

7. Why do so many businesses fail?

There is only one reason why a business fails– when it fails to create a product or service that is so simple and compelling that customers are delighted to pay for it and to recommend it to their friends.

When I worked at Intuit, I learned about customer focus, and about marketing.

These days, I’m focused just on the customer thing. While I love and admire great marketing, I get more pleasure– and profit– out of first focusing on building a great product.

8. You’re a technologist at heart. Do you still get your hands dirty with code?

I’d like to think that I was a very good programmer when I was coding full time.

But I’m a much better recruiter than coder these days, and every single programmer on the Kayak team can run circles around me.

9. What inspires you?

I love anything new; working with new customers, new product features, and new process innovations at Kayak.

I get energy from the team here– it really is an exceptional group of people, and their ideas and innovations delight me every single day.

10. When you co-founded Kayak.com how far ahead had you planned? Did you have an exit strategy in mind?

I am both short-term and long-term focused.

Short-term in that I’m impatient to get out the next great feature.

Long-term in that I can see how painful all software is to use today, and I hope that our little team can make technology just a tiny easier for folks over the coming years.

We don’t have an exit in mind. It has been great for the Kayak team to have earned many awards and kudos, but we know we still have a lot of work to do here.

Conclusion

I can see a follow-up interview might be in order. A big thank you out to Paul English for his willingness to spend some time answering these questions and giving us some insight into his entrepreneurial efforts and passions.

I’m not sure if Kayak.com is hiring, but sounds like a great place to work. Paul?

Happy Holidays to everyone…I hope you enjoyed this interview.