Eight Pieces of Advice for Hotel Tech Startups from Quore’s Founder
In November 2022, Quore celebrated its 10-year anniversary and announced that it has more than 5,600 hotels leveraging its platform to streamline operations, improve accountability and make internal communications seamless. Additionally, during the last 10 years the company’s customer base has expanded to all 50 states and into 35 countries, including a wide variety of property types from smaller independents to resorts and large properties. So, Hospitality Technology reached out to Scott Schaedle, CEO, Quore and asked him to share some of the lessons he’s learned during his last decade in business.
1. Build a Solid Business Model
“One of the most important lessons I learned before I started Quore was that you have to build a solid business model. You need to have a product that people want, that serves a purpose and that makes sense within the current market. And just because you think you have it right on paper doesn’t always mean it will succeed at first.”
2. Learn to Listen
“When designing your product, you must first listen, and then learn how to ‘read between the lines.’ Most people will tell you about their specific problem, but you aren’t looking to solve just their issue. You’re looking to solve a universal issue. But those conversations help you look deeper to figure out what the underlying problem is and then you can build a solution for that.”
3. Don’t Lose Sight of Your Goal
“Sometimes startups and young companies can get so caught up in the process that they forget where they’re trying to go or what problem they were trying to solve. It’s easy to spend too much time on something you shouldn’t, like building out the wrong feature, etc. But entrepreneurs need to learn how to figure out what matters most and focus on that.”
4. Stop Trying to Provide Perfection
“I used to say, ‘It has to be perfect before it ships.” But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned the need for balance. Instead, we are in the pursuit of perfection. Why? Because the world is constantly changing and evolving which means our products have to as well. What might have been perfect yesterday is no longer perfect today.”
5. Willpower is Essential to Success
“My advice to young entrepreneurs is: ‘It is all about willpower.’ There are a lot of incredibly smart people with great ideas in the world. But not everyone has the willpower to see their idea through to completion. Creating a successful business is tough. You are constantly hitting walls and having to find a way through, around, over or under them. But the trick is to take a deep breath and to keep going. Don’t give up just because it’s hard.”
6. Sometimes You Just Need to Take a Break
“When I was a kid, I used to love to paint. But working on a piece of art can be just as frustrating as building a business. When I felt that I didn’t know what to do or where to go with my painting, I would turn it upside down and walk away from it. When I came back to it, I would be able to look at it from a different perspective and see the flaws clearly. Similarly, you can almost always solve a problem in business by taking a break from it and trying to look at it from a different perspective.”
7. Learn When and Where to Draw the Line
“It’s really important for business leaders to be self-aware and to know when enough is enough. Learn where the line is and when it isn’t worth the fight. You can go too far, spend too much time, too much money on something and miss out on the real opportunity. Instead, ask yourself ahead of time: ‘What are we trying to do? What will we gain from this? Can we do it in the right amount of time with the right amount of effort for it to make sense?’”
8. Focus on Today and Tomorrow
“Innovative businesses need to always be running two parallel tracks. The first is the immediate, practical everyday work. The second is the futuristic, creative planning process. And you can’t get too involved in either track. You need to service the product you’ve made to keep your current customers happy. But you also need to be constantly innovating because technology will get old and stale and there will always be competitors looking to outdo you.”