If Not You Capital — Travel & Hospitality Venture Fund

Investment Thesis

Global travel and hospitality represents over US$11 trillion in annual economic impact. Yet enterprise adoption of new technology remains stubbornly slow. Airlines, hotel groups, airports and ground operators run on decades-old systems, with entrenched procurement cycles and limited capacity to evaluate and integrate emerging ventures.

Venture funding into travel technology has historically represented just 1–2% of total global VC activity. The gap between what the industry needs and what capital has been willing to back creates a clear and persistent opportunity for a specialist Fund with genuine enterprise access.

We believe the next generation of category-defining companies will be built at the intersection of artificial intelligence, enterprise software, dynamic commerce, operational infrastructure and customer experience, by founders who understand both the technology and the institutional complexity of deploying it inside large industry players.

Identify early

Back founders solving foundational enterprise challenges in travel and hospitality before conventional capital recognises the opportunity.

Connect structurally

Pair portfolio companies with committed enterprise partners through recurring commercialisation cycles: pilots, proofs of concept, and scaled deployments.

Amplify credibly

Provide industry visibility and validation through partnerships with leading global media and research platforms, reaching senior decision-makers across the industry.

How We Work

If Not You Capital operates a structured commercialisation engine alongside its investment activity. Enterprise limited partners — airlines, hotel groups, airports, cruise lines and technology partners — commit to active innovation cycles: surfacing real business challenges, evaluating curated startups, and progressing the best into pilots and commercial deployments.

The result is a meaningful reduction in go-to-market risk for founders, and a direct path to anchor customers that would otherwise take years to develop independently.

For Founders

Access to enterprise partners who are actively seeking technology solutions, not passive observers. The Fund brokers structured engagements, helps navigate procurement complexity, and works to convert pilots into scaled commercial relationships.

For Enterprise Partners

A curated pipeline of relevant early-stage companies, matched to specific business challenges. Enterprise LPs participate in the Fund's upside, sharing in the returns generated by the innovation they help commercialise.

For Co-Investors

A differentiated sourcing and validation model rooted in industry access. Enterprise engagement signal informs, but does not replace, rigorous product, market and financial diligence. The investment committee remains fully independent.

Industry Challenges We Back Against

Ancillary revenue and retailing. Disruption recovery. Loyalty and NDC enablement. AI-assisted customer service. Cost-to-serve reduction. Infrastructure modernisation. These are the problems our enterprise partners bring to us, and the problems we seek founders building against.

Stage

Pre-Seed to Series A

B2B technology focus

Initial Investment

$500K – $1.5M

Early conviction capital

Geography

Asia Pacific & Middle East

Primarily; global opportunities considered

Investment Focus

We back B2B software, data, AI and infrastructure companies solving material operational and commercial problems for travel and hospitality enterprises.

Artificial Intelligence Operational & customer-facing
Travel Technology Distribution, search, fulfilment
Hospitality Technology Property, guest, revenue
Enterprise Software Workflow & decision systems

Commerce & Loyalty Retailing, NDC, ancillaries
Payments Settlement, FX, embedded finance
Operational Technology Ground ops, disruption, recovery
Industry Infrastructure Data platforms, APIs, interoperability

Founder

David Peller

General Partner & Founder

David Peller is the General Partner and Founder of If Not You Capital. He brings over thirty years of experience building, scaling and advising technology-enabled businesses across the global travel and hospitality industry.

At Amazon Web Services, David served as the founding Global Managing Director for Travel and Hospitality. He built the vertical from the ground up into a business generating more than US$3.5 billion in annual recurring revenue, and negotiated multi-year, cloud-first partnerships with many of the sector's largest global enterprises.

Prior to AWS, David held senior leadership roles at Google following its acquisition of ITA Software, where he established ITA's international office in Amsterdam and secured data agreements with over 100 airlines globally, laying the foundations for what became Google Flights. He subsequently led teams within the Asia Pacific and global leadership organisations at Booking.com, and served as a senior executive at Yanolja Cloud.

David is currently a board director and advisor to private and public companies across travel, technology and hospitality. He serves as Industry Advisor to Thayer Investment Partners and Non-Executive Director of Branded Hospitality Ventures.

Backing exceptional founders transforming global travel and hospitality.

For Founders

For Enterprise Partners

For Co-Investors

Industry Challenges We Back Against

David Peller

Get in touch.