We are a team of veteran travel entrepreneurs, startup advisors and mentors dedicated to investing in and advising the world’s most talented travel entrepreneurs and early seed-stage travel technology ideas.

Matt Zito is a Managing Partner and Head Investment Officer for Travel Startups Incubator. Investing in private and public companies since the late 90’s, Matt is the published author of “Trade IPOs Online,” by John Wiley Sons, NY, NY, featuring Matt’s 715% IRR (Internal Rate of Return) on his investments and trades the year before the book was published. Matt’s investment advice and commentary has been featured at CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine and Bloomberg. Matt leverages both his financial skill set with domain expertise in travel having successfully built and sold CollegeSkiTrips.com the largest youth based ski travel agency (OTA) in the U.S. and the Yellow Breeches House Fly-Fishing Lodge. Matt has built one of the largest travel industry networks of travel CEOs and entrepreneurs in the industry and he leverages his contacts to help the portfolio companies gain traction for their products and services through strategic partnerships and business development deals.

Location: Orlando, FL area

Nicole Zito brings 20+ years experience managing the financial operations for two successful travel companies, CollegeSkiTrips.com and the Yellow Breeches House. Nicole works on the incubators business strategy working very closely with Managing Partner Matt Zito on a day-to-day basis. She works with our portfolio companies helping them setup accounting systems, financial reports and shares best practice strategies for preparing to pitch to investors. Nicole reviews every startup application vetting the startups she believes are the most viable. Her favorite saying is “show me the money.”

Location: Orlando, FL area

Kerri Zeil is an advisor to Travel Startups Incubator and the lead contact in our Innovation Partnership with Amadeus. She is responsible for the Amadeus for Startups program, identifying new business opportunities and supporting startups at various stages of their life cycle. The program provides online search and shopping technology, multiple solutions for optimization and merchandising through content and data, access to functional and technical specialists and many other specialized services to support and prepare startups for launch and growth. They engage with startups that compliment and supplement their strategies, work closely with their customers to ensure they are meeting their expectations, and fund continued improvements to their technology and solutions through R&D to achieve that.

Mahendra Yadav is a technology advisor and mentor for our portfolio of travel startups. Mahendra is the CEO of Tavisca one of the largest travel technology companies in India with 300+ employees. Tavisca’s technology platform empowers 35 travel companies across 4 continents, 1,000,000 travel searches a day, 10,000 bookings a day, across 55 suppliers, 900 airlines and 800,000 hotels globally. The Tavisca platform helps travel businesses focus more on their business and worry less about technology. Year in and year out, Tavisca is awarded as one of the top 100 businesses to work at in India.

Mike Putman is an advisor and mentor for our portfolio of travel startups. Mike is a prolific travel entrepreneur having started with a single travel agency that grew into the largest privately held travel agency in the Southeast. He founded 11thHourVacations.com that was acquired by OneTravel.com in 2001. Mike then became the president of Rovia, LLC, where he developed the company into a global competitor earning the World Travel Award, for the World’s Leading On-line Travel Agency growing sales from 14 Million to over 200 Million in his 6.5 years. Today Mike runs Travel Team Consulting working with growth companies in the travel space.

Dr. Florian Kandler is an advisor and mentor for our portfolio of travel startups. Florian Kandler co-founded Ulmon, a leading mobile travel platform based in Vienna. He was responsible for business development and user acquisition, growing downloads from zero to 15 million. He lead the efforts to raise 1.2 million Euro from Oliver Samwer’s venture firm Global Founders Capital last year. Ulmon is Florian’s third start-up after his four years working for an IT company in Munich, Germany. Before that, he wrote his PhD thesis at the E-Commerce Competence Center in Vienna, Austria; and his Master’s Thesis on the startup economy at DTU in Denmark. As a student, he founded Austria’s first entrepreneurs club. He loves to travel and build businesses. 

Daniel Friedli is an advisor and mentor for our portfolio of travel startups. Daniel is Managing Director and co-founder of  Travel in Motion, an industry consultancy focused on the travel industry. Travel in Motion has a special focus on distribution, retailing, and sales related business and IT processes. Daniel has years of experience designing and developing airline distribution systems working for companies like EDS and Hewlett Packard. From 2011 until 2015, Daniel was a member of the IATA Simplifying the Business Think Tank from where the NDC and ONE Order concepts were initiated. Daniel works with travel companies and industry organizations to develop business strategies, support in redesigning business processes and evaluating and aligning IT systems.

David Millili is an advisor and mentor for Proxce one of our portfolio companies. David is the former CEO of Pegasus Solutions. David has 20+ years of experience in the hospitality industry. As a former hotel General Manager, he has experience in all aspects of hotel operations and management, ranging from managing pre-opening operations to spearheading budgets in excess of $5 million annually. Open Hospitality is Mr. Millili’s second online venture. As co-founder of Timeless Hospitality, David was directly responsible for the successful launch of a start up company that generated profits within six months of launch, generated over $20 million in revenues for hotel clients in 2002 and raised $1.5 million in venture capital funds.

Kevin McLaughlin is an advisor and mentor for our portfolio of travel startups. Kevin is known as a fast-moving innovator, CEO and visionary with extensive experience starting, growing and leading travel technology and Internet companies. Most recently, he is the founder and CEO of Redeam.  He is the former CEO of Smart Destinations, the world’s leading attraction pass-company. He’s been on the leadership teams of successful venture-backed startups over the last 20 years, including Exhange.com (acquired by Amazon) and Netspoke (acquired by Premier Global).

Joe Bous is an advisor and mentor for our portfolio of travel startups. Joe is a travel entrepreneur, investor, advisor and inventor. He is the Founder of Airfare.com, a large discount airfare OTA in the U.S. He is an Internet systems architect and has successfully sold a portfolio of patents in the credit card linked offer space to Google (GOOG). He is the founder of Valor Valor, focusing on real estate development in Washington DC.

Robert Meza Robert leads the Travel division at the ENTERTAINER. He’s been involved since the beginning of his career in business and product innovation, entrepreneurship  and meaningful digital transformation across industries. His experience spans over four continents and always connected to the technology industry, from artificial intelligence to solutions for loyalty and of course, travel. Robert was a partner advocate for IBM and its Watson program based in Singapore, he also worked as head of business development and partnerships for several travel technology companies. He is currently focused on mobile, emerging tech and in further digitalizing the in-destination market around the world.