How Khalid Meniri built Selfbook from nothing to $300M startup

Executive overview

Hotels were losing guests to OTAs because their own websites lacked modern payment options and smooth booking flows. Selfbook solves this by embedding one-click checkout — including Apple Pay — directly on hotel websites, eliminating the need to leave for a third-party platform.

Khalid Meniri arrived in New York from Algeria with no degree, no network, and no safety net. His edge: obsession with product experience and a refusal to quit.

Frictionless booking infrastructure, built from the hotel's side out, is the missing layer that lets hotels compete with OTAs on their own websites.

From immigrant to accidental founder

• Arrived in New York with no education, no contacts, and no fallback — giving up was never an option
• Taught himself design using the Apple Store's open Macs on Fifth Avenue
• First venture, Six Agency, was a curated single-product-per-day app — before Instagram or TikTok existed
• Travel experiences drove 70% engagement lift on the app, revealing strong demand
• Booking those experiences required leaving the app entirely — the gap that led to Selfbook

The pivot that created Selfbook

• Travel booking app was set to launch; the pandemic shut every hotel the week it went live
• Two insights from the crisis: no hotel in the world accepted Apple Pay; consumer apps are extremely hard to scale
• Pivoted to B2B infrastructure: bring Apple Pay and modern checkout to hotel websites directly
• Hotels were paying 25% OTA commissions partly because their own booking experience was inferior
• Selfbook restored a level playing field without requiring hotels to replace their legacy systems

Technical and market challenges

• Legacy systems like Sabre are incompatible with cryptogram-based payments (Apple Pay); Selfbook built an integration layer on top
• Replaced the assumption of replacing old systems with a strategy of integrating with them
• Targeted high ADR (average daily rate) luxury hotels first to reach meaningful transaction volume quickly
• Expanded beyond luxury once early GMV targets were met

Results and what's next

• 2024: 3x revenue growth
• Hotels using Selfbook saw 40% higher conversion and 44% fewer cancellations
• First customer, Nema Colin resort, signed during peak pandemic closure — still a client today
• Next frontier: agentic AI search (e.g. Perplexity) where users can book a hotel without leaving the search interface
• Integration with cloud-native PMS providers like Muse to enhance experience without displacement

Founder mindset

• A small early network (two or three people) is enough — focus on depth, not breadth
• Self-doubt is constant; a stubborn belief in the vision is what overrides it
• Vision consistency matters more than the exact path taken to get there
• "Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional" — Murakami; trade-offs are hourly, not occasional