
Mark quizzes Michelle Denogean about Mindtrip’s proposition for consumers and businesses and how it differs from other products. She also delivers solid career advice for upward mobility in any company. Michelle Denogean is Chief Marketing Officer at Mindtrip and author of GrowUp: Take Your Startup To The Next Level.
"Mindtrip is an AI-powered travel platform, and where we are really focused on is the entire travel journey for consumers. So from discovery to planning to booking and on-trip experiences. We've been around for about 18 months. We launched our consumer-facing website in May of 2024, so this year, as we're recording. What sets us apart really is our emphasis on visual and interactive recommendations. So whereas a lot of conversational AI today is very text-based, right? Text-based outputs. Mindtrip, you can explore photos, maps, reviews while completely customizing your trip to meet all of your unique preferences."
[:01.6] - Intro:This is Brand USA Talks Travel, elevating the conversation about international travel to the United States. Here's your host, Mark Lapidus.
[:09] - Mark Lapidus: We're going to start with a tough question that I think could benefit many of our younger listeners who are growing their careers. You've had an incredible career across verticals from eHarmony to automotive to travel. In retrospect, what's been the key for you with upward mobility?
[00:00:23.690] - Michelle Denogean
Yeah, I think that "in retrospect" is a great point, because hindsight's always 20/20.
[00:00:29.180] - Mark Lapidus
Oh, yeah.
[00:00:29.630] - Michelle Denogean
But what I would say is, I never waited for opportunities to present themselves to me - I created them. My advice to young listeners is pretty simple. When you encounter problems outside of your role, don't ignore them; dive in and offer to help. Because that bold move may not only grab the leader's attention above you, but it also showcases your potential outside of the box they see you in. I think it's this mindset, Mark, that skyrocketed my career. I really refuse to stay in my box.
[00:01:02.970] - Mark Lapidus
You know what I find to be the worst possible answer to a question is, "That's not my job."
[00:01:08.890] - Michelle Denogean
Yep.
[00:01:09.430] - Mark Lapidus
When people say that, I look at them and go, "Wow, that is some statement, especially at the age you're at making that." It's incredibly limiting when people say that.
[00:01:18.660] - Michelle Denogean
Yeah, I think it limits you. It limits how people view you. And the key is to be able to do your job, and reach across the abyss and get involved in something that is not your job, because that's how people see your potential.
[00:01:32.900] - Mark Lapidus
Today, I'm excited to be joined by Michelle Denogean. Michelle is the Chief Marketing Officer of Mindtrip Incorporated. She's also a startup advisor and the author of GrowUp: A Guide to Scaling Your Business with the End Goal In Mind. Welcome to Brand USA Talks Travel, Michelle, it's great to have you here.
[00:01:48.830] - Michelle Denogean
It's great to be here.
[00:01:49.900] - Mark Lapidus
AI is a big topic we'd like to cover in this podcast, as you well know, because you've told me you've listened to the episodes. And we love hearing fresh takes, that's why you're here today, especially on consumer travel planning, so give us the pitch for your new company, Mindtrip.
[00:02:03.370] - Michelle Denogean
Yeah. So Mindtrip is an AI-powered travel platform, and where we are really focused on is the entire travel journey for consumers. So from discovery to planning to booking and on-trip experiences. We've been around for about 18 months. We launched our consumer-facing website in May of 2024, so this year, as we're recording. What sets us apart really is our emphasis on visual and interactive recommendations. So whereas a lot of conversational AI today is very text-based, right? Text-based outputs. Mindtrip, you can explore photos, maps, reviews while completely customizing your trip to meet all of your unique preferences. So in addition to what you would get traditionally with these large language models, we have a knowledge base of 6.5 million points of interest layered on top of the LLM, ensuring that we don't do things like mention a restaurant that's permanently closed - which I think is, unfortunately, very common, just because so many restaurants have closed, especially during the pandemic. So every element of Mindtrip is designed to be personalized and actionable, making travel planning more engaging and honestly more fun. I know we'll talk about this more, but we've recently expanded Mindtrip to offer Mindtrip For Business, enabling travel companies around the globe to seamlessly integrate what we've done on the consumer side into their websites.
[00:03:29.320] - Michelle Denogean
And we're also working on an iOS app that will come out early next year to enhance that on trip experience. So lots of innovation happening within the walls of Mindtrip.
[00:03:39.190] - Mark Lapidus
Michelle, when we first chatted, we referred to your product as a "trip-planning tool," and I could see you grimaced a little bit. Say more, what's that about?
[00:03:47.830] - Michelle Denogean
Yeah, so trip planning, in itself, I feel like, is such a narrow aspect of the overall journey of discovery and planning and booking and being on trips. So that's part of it; there's really no great category name that encompasses those that are actually addressing, like, the full life cycle of a consumer that's looking to travel. We've been toying with the term "super app," because we're innovating across all of these aspects, like we said, discovery, planning, you know, booking on-trip. I would love to hear from others that are maybe listening today if you think that resonates, because we have just been really looking at what is this category called. The other thing is, we're hyper-aware that there have been a lot of previous efforts to improve the trip planning experience, and that this has kind of created a negative perspective in the industry. But what we believe is, AI is really changing the game on this. So product centered on conversational AI, provide a fresh approach, they enhance the user experience, and really enable for the first time the ability to have that connected trip process where traditional methods can't really achieve this because all the content is so siloed.
[00:04:56.130] - Michelle Denogean
And with artificial intelligence we can really bring it all together and make all aspects of the trip entirely integrated.
[00:05:03.170] - Mark Lapidus
I'm one of those nerds that clicks on the About Us tab on websites - most people I know don't look at those - but I noticed the Mindtrip team really comes from some amazing brands. Apple, Google, LinkedIn. How did you attract the talent? You know, usually they don't want to leave those companies once they're in them. They don't leave till they get kicked out. So how did you get them to work in travel and tourism?
[00:05:24.270] - Michelle Denogean
It's a great question, and I would say at the hub of all of those people, Mark, is Andy Moss, our CEO. He is the glue. He's a five-time startup founder and 90%, I would say, maybe more, of our team is connected to him in some kind of former life, myself included. The majority of us actually come from his previous startup, Roadster, which was a digital commerce solution in the automotive space. That's a company that, in very similar ways, you know, we were embedding digital commerce solutions into other websites. Together we grew that company from scratch and sold it to the largest player in automotive for almost $400 million, so-
[00:06:04.210] - Mark Lapidus
I'm surprised you're still working.
[00:06:07.030] - Michelle Denogean
You know, we all have that bug. That's the problem, right? The entrepreneur spirit is real. So while none of us come from the travel industry per se, we are all avid travelers. I'm sure you guys in the industry hear that a lot from people that enter the industry. But our strength really lies in being technologists, and we're really focused on creating exceptional consumer-facing user experiences. So anybody that has seen the Mindtrip experience can attest to how beautiful the user experience is, and that is a testament to the people we have on the team. But where it really came from was when technology like ChatGPT and Dall-E came out, we really recognized travel as the perfect industry to innovate in, because it's very fragmented, it has lengthy planning cycles. It was really a perfect industry to sort of think about, how do you use this new technology in really interesting consumer applications? The other thing I would say, Mark, is we're really great learners. We study industries, and so we've been learning from people like you, who have been in the industry for a very long time. Like we don't think that we know everything.
[00:07:11.340] - Michelle Denogean
We never come at it that way. In fact, we're avid learners. We are learning something new every day, probably many times a day in this industry, and we love it. That's what we're all about, is really trying to deeply understand an industry, but bringing a fresh perspective.
[00:07:27.130] - Mark Lapidus
I've heard you say that travel has an hourglass problem. Explain that a bit.
[00:07:31.190] - Michelle Denogean
One of the very first things I noticed coming into the travel industry is how much inspirational content exists out there on the Internet. If you want to learn about your options, get excited about certain destinations, there is an abundance of information available, whether it's from the destinations themselves or media companies or content creators. It's amazing what you can accomplish and what you can see. The problem I see is that most of it is not actionable. You have this major gap in the industry today between this incredible amount of content and beautiful photography and videos, all this inspiration, and how you get to booking. So the hourglass analogy showcases how all of this inspiration that sits at the top. If you think about the hourglass, right, it sits at the top, and then at the very bottom, there are dozens of booking options, right? All the businesses you have to book across. And the consumer's sort of left in the middle trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B. There's really not a great way to navigate that maze. So I don't know if you do this, Mark, we certainly do: we end up in some kind of spreadsheet when we're trying to plan a trip.
[08:42.930] - Mark Lapidus
I wish I was that organized.
[08:45.210] - Michelle Denogean
Yeah, maybe it is the geek in us, but that's where we go. And there's just little support to help transition from what I call travel dreams to travel plans. Like, we're just not helping people get there really fast. So that's where I think AI comes in for the first time. We can take that beautifully-curated content and turn it into an actionable, customizable trip plan in seconds. It's really easy to get, like I said, from point A to point B in that way. So that's what we mean by the hourglass is just, when you look at all the inspiration at the top and all the booking, "How do I get from point A to point B as quick as possible?"
[09:22.080] - Mark Lapidus
So you mentioned Mindtrip For Business. How does that differ from your consumer product?
[09:26.330] - Michelle Denogean
Great question. It isn't all that different, except that we are now allowing all of these travel companies to embed what we've been working on and testing with consumers into their own website. So they have that capability to turn all of that inspirational content into action by having Mindtrip For Business on their website. I'll give you a little background on how it came about. Before we even launched the consumer side, when we went public, we were lucky enough to be invited to present at the Visit California Outlook Forum, and we introduced Mindtrip to all of the California DMOs that were there. And what we didn't know was, everybody who follows what Visit California brings to that conference. So after that event we started receiving so much inbound, like numerous inquiries. And it was not just from these destination marketing organizations.
[10:19.890] - Mark Lapidus
That is a very active conference, Michelle. I gotta tell you, I've been there. It's very active.
[10:25.260] - Michelle Denogean
Yes. Like I said, we didn't know. This is us being newbies, right? We didn't know. Anyways, we got a bunch of inquiries, and it was from destinations, it was from media companies, suppliers, travel advisors. It just sort of started coming out of the woodwork. And I think it's because there's a strong recognition that we're really at a pivotal moment in AI, and people are trying to understand what to do with it. But I think there's just a deep understanding we all have that this is very similar to like the rise of the Internet, when mobile technology came out, social media platforms, right? It's one of those life-altering moments, and so people are trying to figure out what to do with it, which makes a lot of sense. And when they saw what we were doing with our consumer-facing product, these businesses expressed a keen interest in integrating similar capabilities into their own website. So since then we've been piloting with destinations in particular, something we call our Lighthouse program. It's been about six months and some change in the making so that we could gather valuable insights. We're working really closely with the destinations to understand their specific needs so we can enhance the product with things that they really need to have in order to embed this on their website.
[11:35.820] - Michelle Denogean
And the feedback's been overwhelmingly positive. They're loving the user experience, because it is so interactive and visual, and they appreciate one of the things that we do, which we could probably spend a beat talking about, is that we index their website content, and also take into consideration all their partners or members or stakeholders, depending on who you are.
[11:55.480] - Mark Lapidus
Since you brought it up, tell me about the data sources that you use.
[11:58.730] - Michelle Denogean
So I think the big thing that we learned is that there's a need for control. There are a lot of things in destination-land that we have to take into consideration, like geographic areas, proprietary content the DMO has, and honestly the narrative they want to tell, and their partners'. And so we actually had one of our partners give me this great analogy, so I can't take credit for it. The way the data sources work is, it's sort of like a pyramid. If you think about it, at the bottom is the large language model, it's the LLM. On top of that we have Mindtrip's knowledge base, right? I said we have six and a half million points of interest. But on top of that, and kind of haloed over the whole thing, is the content that we get from the destination themselves. That piece is really what gives us some really great insights. So not only is it making sure we have, you know, the most accurate information about that destination, but unique information like road closures or recommended routes, or even if there's like a promotion that might be happening based on the packages, particular things like that that we wouldn't necessarily know from the general Internet of things.
[13:10.630] - Michelle Denogean
So we can surface all of those things, in addition to what's coming back from those data sources, as something we call key facts. So we have the ability to streamline what comes back when somebody asks questions through the Mindtrip experience.
[13:26.180] - Mark Lapidus
How often do you have people talking about hallucinations and asking you about that level of control? Must happen a lot.
[13:31.970] - Michelle Denogean
Yeah, hallucinations are interesting. It happened a lot more in the very beginning, when ChatGPT first hit the crowds, I should say. But advancements in where the LLMs are today versus even where they were a year ago have actually made hallucinations - and then it defined hallucinations as, like, the AI just makes stuff up. Not talking about, is it recent information, just like making things up - it's pretty rare. I think the more common thing that we still see is, is that information recent? Is it as accurate as, you know, today versus something that was said a year ago? Which is why we spent the time to really augment what comes back from the LLM, both with our content and with our DMO partners' content, to make sure that we're being as accurate as we can.
[14:21.540] - Mark Lapidus
There is a certain amount of risk involved in all this, though, that I think the industry just has to accept. This is my personal view on this, because there will be mistakes, there will be inaccuracies, and if it results in somebody being either terminated or yelled at, it doesn't help the industry. You know, the example I can give you here is, it would be pretty tragic if Brand USA had our own Mindtrip version and you sent a traveler to Canada. That would not be good for any of us, right? And while I could say it's not probable, it's not entirely impossible either, you know, and you have to be prepared for that possibility of it happening and maybe even a news organization picking it up and running with it. So everybody has to be aware of that when they get involved in this game.
[15:05.480] - Michelle Denogean
Yeah. I think the thing to remember when it comes to all of this stuff is it will never be worse than it is right now. Meaning, the level of accuracy, the level of fidelity will just continue to get better and better. But you're absolutely right, Mark. There is a level of risk, and not even in that case, because we actually do handle that case. So if we were to do something with Brand USA, we would not talk about Canada.
[15:31.140] - Mark Lapidus
That's good to hear.
[15:32.240] - Michelle Denogean
But things like, if you've got certain members and you can't talk about other businesses in your location, that's real. And what I tell people all the time is, we can prioritize those. But if somebody asks specifically for that boutique hotel that is not a member, do you really want to say, "I'm sorry, I don't know anything about that?" Because that actually hits that from a consumer experience perspective. Hits that trust. They're like, "Well, they don't even know their location. I know that boutique hotel is there, and they're saying that it doesn't exist, or I don't know anything about it." So I think there is a level of comfort we have to get to when the consumer is in control. And I really want to put the note on that versus the technology, because that's where a lot of those things are going to come from, is when the consumer asks a question and the response deems something that you may not be necessarily prioritizing yourself.
[16:28.990] - Mark Lapidus
In our last moment together, Michelle, tell me what your roadmap looks like.
[16:32.550] - Michelle Denogean
Well, I mentioned a little bit of it. So we just launched our Mindtrip For Business product. We are starting with destination marketing organizations, but because of the inbound that we've gotten, that will not be our ending point. Media companies, travel advisors, like, these are all areas that we're actively having conversations just to learn at this point what that might look like. And then we also have an iOS app that is coming. I think that's really interesting for destinations, not just for the consumer. Because when you have a tool that people use when they're on their trip, you can now connect insights from "what did they plan to do in my destination?" to "what did they actually do?" And I think that's one gem, like if you were to ask me an aha moment that I wasn't necessarily thinking about that has come through all of these conversations, I think, you know, of course the destinations want to know about partner handoffs, and of course they're looking for this type of engagement in planning your trip and planning your visit to show partner handoffs, but the one piece is the insights that they can glean so that they understand what people are actually looking for, or the questions.
[17:42.910] - Michelle Denogean
And it really helps them with planning their future content when they know where the interest lies. And so this is just another layer of that. It will be a Mindtrip branded app, but when somebody goes on the trip, we can now feed back insights to the destination that say, hey, they took the trip, their full plan is in the app. They even added things as they went, and this is what actually occurred. And I think that that is really interesting insight when they realize that it looked like they were planning all of these boutique hotels, but then they end up staying in chains. I don't know, like whatever the configuration is, or the types of restaurants that they were interested in that never hit the radar because they didn't plan those ahead.
[18:22.240] - Mark Lapidus
And what are you thinking in terms of Android and maybe WhatsApp? I'm asking that question because, obviously, our work is international, and that's where the audience is.
[18:30.530] - Michelle Denogean
We are starting with the iOS app, but we will need to expand, obviously, based on different audiences. We are looking at all the applications that are used more internationally for communication. I think that's going to be a really big piece of our roadmap moving forward.
[18:46.700] - Mark Lapidus
It's been so exciting to explore this with you, Michelle. How can people find out more?
[18:50.650] - Michelle Denogean
Mindtrip.ai is our domain name. If you want to find out about Mindtrip For Business, it is mindtrip.ai/business. We keep it super simple here at Mindtrip. And if you want to connect with me directly, I am just [email protected], that is the beauty of being a startup. Or you can connect with me on LinkedIn too.
[19:09.850] - Mark Lapidus
You know what? I almost forgot to ask you about your book. Give us 30 seconds on the book.
[19:13.940] - Michelle Denogean
So I wrote a book called GrowUp. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It is about the psychology of founders. I've worked with Andy, this is my second tour with him as a founder, but I've worked with dozens of others. And what I've really come to realize is one really simple truth, which is what makes you great at starting a company is not the same thing that's going to make you great at growing one. And so it dives into what are the different things that make people great. What are their superpowers and what are their blind spots? And what type of team do you need around you in order to scale and grow successfully? And like I said, it's based on my experience, my research, working with founders for... too many decades, now.
[20:03.530] - Mark Lapidus
Well, it sounds like you're still having fun.
[20:05.490] - Michelle Denogean
Always having fun. I love it. I love it, and truth be told, I love meeting new people. You will see, if you read my book, there is an archetype called The Connector and that is the one I identify with. And so I love it. We go to these conferences and there's so many in this industry we're learning about, but I love meeting new people. I will be the one that walks around the room and introduces myself. So I love that, and I love learning from other people and gaining knowledge in that way, and just connecting on a personal level.
[20:32.740] - Mark Lapidus
It's certainly been a pleasure connecting with you today, Michelle. I appreciate you taking the time.
[20:37.070] - Michelle Denogean
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Mark.
[20:39.220] - Mark Lapidus
And that's it for Brand USA Talks Travel. I'm Mark Lapidus, thanks for listening.
[20:43.640] - Outro
Your feedback is welcome. Email us at [email protected] or call 202-793-6256. Brand USA Talks Travel is produced by Asher Meerovich, who also composes music and sound. Media producer, Nthanze Kariuki, with assistance from Casey D'Ambra. Engineering, Brian Watkins, Kat Pommer, and Antonio Tyler. Art by Mimi Jung. Please share this podcast with your friends in the travel industry industry. You may also enjoy many of our archived episodes, which you can find on your favorite podcast platform. Safe Travels!

