how a €1M mistake at Booking.com didn’t kill his career

Maarten van Pijpen spent 15 years at Booking.com.a place where experimentation wasn’t a project.it was the culture.now he’s chief growth officer at Unravel.a travel app that feels like TikTok,but lets you book instantly.in his first 35 days, he:– chose an experimentation tool– lined up 10 experiments– started building a data foundationbut this conversation isn’t about tooling.it’s about:→ how to move from top-down founder energy to bottom-up ownership→ why shipping fast without tracking is dangerous→ how a €1M mistake didn’t kill his career(but actually strengthened it)→ why failures were celebrated at Booking→ how to scale leadership so you’re not the bottleneckwe talk about culture.trust.empowerment.and what it really takes to build a data-driven company —without killing speed.if you care about experimentation, growth, or leading teams in scale-ups and how all of these dynamics work, this podcast is for you.