Skift Take
Gerstner knows online travel and tech – he was there as both an investor and operator during e-commerce’s first wave.
Key Points
Summary
Brad Gerstner, founder of Altimeter Capital, has a notable track record in the online travel and tech industries, making significant investments in companies like Priceline (now Booking Holdings) and Google. He played a crucial role in expanding United Airlines' board through a proxy fight and urged Meta to streamline its operations, leading to a substantial increase in its stock price. Gerstner's current initiative, Invest America, aims to create investment accounts for newborns in the U.S. to promote financial literacy and close the wealth gap.
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Brad Gerstner founded Altimeter Capital in 2008, and his first trade was for Priceline at $50 per share. Now known as Booking Holdings, the company trades at around $3,440, and has a market cap of $115 billion.
That was a phenomenal bet from a guy who knows the online travel and tech industries well; Gerstner was there as both an investor and operator during e-commerce’s first wave.
In 1999, Gerstner was on the founding team of General Catalyst and served as co-CEO of NLG, which distributed cruises to virtually all of the major online travel agencies.
Before Altimeter, Gerstner built the technology practice at Par Capital with large early public investments in Priceline and Google, as well as private investments in Zillow, ITA Software and Farecast. He also invested in HotelTonight and Duetto, and throughout his career has participated as an investor in more than 100 IPOs.
A Skift article in 2013 labeled Gerstner a member of a Fab Five group of travel industry angel investors, but he’s much more than a travel investor. Altimeter manages more than $10 billion in public tech and venture capital funds. Gerstner attributes big wins to identifying “supercycles” in mobile (Bytedance and Facebook), cloud (Snowflake, Tableau and Amazon), and AI (Nvidia and Tabular).
When it comes to wielding influence, Gerstner’s Altimeter and his former employer Par Capital waged a proxy fight at United Airlines, successfully pressuring the carrier to expand the board.
And Gerstner, on behalf of Altimeter, wrote an open letter, “Time to Get Fit,” to Mark Zuckerberg and the Meta board in 2022 when its stock traded at around $90, questioning its mammoth investment in the metaverse, and urging Meta to streamline operations. In a win for Altimeter, Meta committed to doing just that in 2023, and Meta shares are now trading above $500.
Gerstner is a frequent CNBC guest, and appears on the All In podcast, as well as his own, BG2, where he teams with investor Bill Gurley.
Gerstner’s pet project these days is Invest America, which calls for legislation to create a 401(k)-like investment account for newborns in the U.S. seeded with $1,000 in the S&P 500. The rationale is to help close the wealth gap and to teach financial literacy.
Brad Gerstner at Skift Global Forum
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