Sam Shank Joins Terra Mobility's Board of Directors

A proven marketplace operator joins the board

Shank built HotelTonight from a scrappy last-minute hotel booking app into the category leader, raising more than $100 million in venture funding before Airbnb acquired the company in 2019. He stayed on through 2022, leading Airbnb's Guest Experience organization and later its Commercial Team, giving him a rare vantage point on both sides of a global travel marketplace: the operators supplying inventory and the consumers booking it.

“Sam has spent his career building and running marketplaces that travelers trust, first at HotelTonight and then inside Airbnb's guest and commercial organizations. That kind of hard-won judgment about balancing supply and demand at scale is exactly what we want at the table as Terra Mobility enters its next chapter. We're thrilled to have him on board.”

From HotelTonight to Terra Mobility

Before HotelTonight, Shank founded DealBase.com, a travel deals search engine, and was CEO of TravelPost.com, a hotel reviews site later acquired by SideStep. Today, alongside his board seat at Terra Mobility, Shank is co-founder of Stand, an AI-native home insurance company, a visiting partner at a16z's Speedrun program, and an advisor to travel and marketplace startups. He also sits on the board of Operto Guest Technologies, a hospitality operations platform, which he joined in 2023. Shank holds an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a BA from the University of Virginia. He is based in San Francisco.

Shank shared his enthusiasm for joining Terra Mobility's board:

“As a founder, I know how difficult it is to build and scale a category-defining company, and I've admired the way LP has done exactly that over many years. I'm excited to join the board of Terra Mobility, support the team in its next chapter, and help pursue a mission and market opportunity that will create a truly enduring global company.”