Mews PMS from Startup to $2.5B valuation. Matthijs Welle | Ep. 006

From two hotel guys with no tech skills to a $2.5 billion valuation. How do you reinvent an industry from the inside and what does it take to survive when no one will fund you?🎙 Episode 006 of HXD212: unfiltered conversations with leaders, rebels, and builders shaping what's next.Matthijs Welle, CEO of Mews, took the path most hotel professionals dream about — Hilton's management track, a fast career, a clear trajectory. Then he quit. At 30, with no mortgage, no kids, and no tech experience, he bet everything on building a cloud-native PMS with co-founder Richard Valtr in Prague. The early years were brutal: no funding, no sales, and never making payroll on time.Today, Mews serves ~15,000 customers, processes nearly $20 billion in payments, has completed 15 acquisitions, and is valued at $2.5 billion. Yet Matthijs argues the hotel industry is still only scratching the surface of what technology can do  and that the best luxury hotels still have the worst tech.In this episode, Thibault Catala and Matthijs Welle explore:◼️ Why two hotel guys with zero tech experience decided to build a PMS◼️ The brutal early years: no funding, no sales, never paying salaries on time◼️ Why legacy systems held the industry back for decades◼️ How Mews rethought everything from night audit to the reception desk◼️ The open-API marketplace strategy that changed their trajectory◼️ Why RevPAR is dead and RevPAG is the future of hotel revenue◼️ How payments became the backbone of guest spend attribution◼️ The case for dynamic pricing beyond rooms◼️ Why revenue managers need to become experimentation-led strategists◼️ Mews' AI roadmap: semantic layers, agentic workflows, and automation◼️ Why the best luxury hotels still have the worst technology◼️ The vision for invisible hospitality and what hotels look like in 2035◼️ IPO ambitions, scaling inflection points, and why likely the US🎧 Follow Matthijs Welle & Mews:Matthijs Welle on LinkedIn.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthijswelle/Mews. https://www.mews.com/Matt Talks Hospitality Podcast. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkaLcjp3VYOIES-_1Tp8nzzvMcBUMZ_AM&si=HVthwoaule5j0RfZ🔥 Follow Thibault & HXD212:Follow Thibault Catala on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/thibaultcatalaFollow HXD212 on Instagram. https://instagram.com/hxd212Follow HXD212 on TikTok. https://www.tiktok.com/@hxd212podcastCatala Consulting. https://catalaconsulting.co.ukRevenue Management Online Course. https://learn.thibaultcatala.com/revenuemanagement#Startups #Entrepreneurship #hoteltech #founderstory