Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel reflects on his early experiences navigating the world before smartphones.
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00:00That was the late 90s and the internet was booming and I just said gee I'd like to be
00:06part of that and the only real internet company of size was Priceline.com which went public
00:12in 99 in the spring. So I started you know interviewing with them and I got a job offer
00:18and I said okay I just want to wait until I get my bonus for $19.99 and you don't get that check
00:23until about February 2000 so I'll come over as soon as I get that. So I quit my job as a trader
00:31in the last week of February of 2000. Of course a week later that was when the Nasdaq peaked
00:38in the dot-com boom and the fact that I went long internet then you know week before it peaked
00:45proved that it was good that I left being a trader because I have to have no idea of value
00:50or anything like that actually and so I did that and it was it was kind of you know it's exciting
00:55and all that and within a year less than a year our stock dropped to under a dollar a share and
01:02we we had gone public at 30 billion which back then 30 billion was a that was a big number and
01:08now we're worth a few hundred million even my mother thought the company had gone bankrupt.