Max Martin is the Co-founder and CTO of Oddysee, a collaborative travel app that makes planning your next trip with friends super fun and simple. 

So far Oddysee has launched a range of planning tools that take the headaches out of managing payments, making key decisions, and building an itinerary. They will soon be launching a booking feature so groups can find the perfect place to stay and activities that suit their interests.

👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

It is my job to turn our vision of 'making traveling with friends super simple and fun' into an actual product where this is possible. 

I design and build our mobile app where friends can connect to ideate, plan, and eventually book their entire trip, all in one place.

🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

I’ve never actually worked as a developer. My technical knowledge and ability to build the mobile app are actually purely self-taught, and every day I'm still learning. Really it came about from being unhappy working in finance and wanting to see what else was out there. 

🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

Getting the funding from the start-up accelerator, Antler. I took a leap of faith moving from London to Singapore, switching industries, and leaving a stable safe job. This was a nod that I had made the right decision and the risk had paid off. Especially as my co-founder and I were now able to build out our dream idea. 

🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

It's hard to look anywhere without generative AI coming up. I think for us it's a big opportunity for improving our speed and the product. Being a start-up with limited funds for hiring, I'm interested in looking at how we can use some of these products to increase what we are able to achieve in a short time frame.

💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry? 

I think the travel-tech industry has a lot of opportunities for a shake-up given a lot of the underlying technology hasn't changed much since the big aggregators came along. My advice would be to first learn about all the players in this industry, especially the new ones, and how they are targeting the market. Figure out how each party interacts and that will highlight a niche where there are inefficiencies and pain points to go after.

🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours? 

I love the creative side of ideating where our product and the industry can go to. It gets me super excited and fired up to keep improving what we offer our users.

🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show? 

Cool Runnings. I've watched it far too many times.

🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Always chocolate!

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