Journelism

Travel Made Easy: Anne Payne, the Founder and CEO of BeDynamic, Created a Software Company Based on her Love for Travel and Business

Giving up the comfortable life of a business project manager at Nordstrom, Anne Payne takes a leap of faith and pursues her two greatest passions of travel and business by founding BeDynamic in 2000, a company designed to make traveling easier through comprehensive location-specific databases. A year later, the September 11th attacks brought tourism to a halt as the fear of travelling escalated. BeDynamic was faced with two choices: evolve or give up the business.

Growing up in Seattle and graduating with a degree in business and a minor in Spanish, Anne Payne had always taken a strong interest in international business. Working her way through college at Nordstrom in the merchandising department, then moving on to become a business project manager, Payne was excited by the company’s apparel design and manufacturing business. “Nordstrom had designers in Seattle sourcing fabrics in Italy and thread in South America, and it’s all getting assembled in Asia. So you have this global entity, and I was absolutely fascinated by that.”

Though Payne enjoyed a solid career at Nordstrom, she also had an idea that she couldn’t shake. The aha moment came at 2 a.m. when she and a good friend (and ultimate BeDynamic cofounder) came up with the idea of compiling a database of things to do while travelling. From arts and entertainment to dining, customers would have all the information about what to do at their destination, all in real time. Being a passionate leisure traveler as well as frequent business traveller, the idea of a concierge-type database made perfect sense. “You fall in love with an idea and can’t stop thinking about it, and you get to a point where you have to pursue it,” Payne says. So with the support of her family, Payne and her cofounder cashed in profit-share money from Nordstrom and started BeDynamic in 2000.

After surveying about 100 different hotels on the West Coast, they found that concierges were naturally relying on the Internet for their information, but it was scattered throughout 500 bookmarks across their favourite Web sites. The problem was the lack of a centralized area to manage all of the information, which is how the concept of BeDynamic evolved.

The hopeful entrepreneurs then approached the W Hotel in Seattle, which agreed to license BeDynamic’s software. A few more hotels came on board and by August 2001, the company was flourishing until the September 11th tragedy brought everything to a halt. Hotels were cutting staff, especially in non-revenue generating areas like the concierge, which proved to be an obstacle for the young company. Instead of letting the attacks dampen Payne’s spirits, that singular catastrophe forced her to do things differently and work even harder. She and her team began to look at how to utilize data feeds and aggregate content directly from hundreds of city venues. This paid off, as Seattle’s Convention and Visitors Bureau became BeDynamic’s first online customer. In October 2001, the San Francisco CVB joined that list of customers as more bureaus began selling and promoting tourism. With hopes of getting people back on planes and into big cities following September 11, BeDynamic started to pick up again. The company answers the key question: What do you do once you get there? It aggregates all of the information (what they call Actionable Entertainment Content) regarding places to visit, eat or stay into one single database and feeds that content in real time to convention and visitor bureaus, airlines, hotels and other trusted brands in the travel industry. This has also led to the company’s becoming a targeted marketing firm, a natural outgrowth of their original mission.

While BeDynamic is still in its early stage and with several setbacks along the way, Payne maintains a positive attitude. She describes that being a CEO and company cofounder is a bit like playing baseball. “You’re not going to hit a home run every time. So it’s the ability to take a step back and say, ‘That didn’t work out; what are the ten things that did work out well this week?’ We try to balance out the mistakes with the successes.”

And despite “the thorn in my side” of raising capital ($3.5 million to date), Payne continues to be passionate and excited about what she does everyday. “I like the founder role. Jack of all trades, master of none,” she laughs. “Not like you’re walking in and you know exactly how your day is going to pan out.” The unpredictability of the business has taught Payne to become resourceful; among the most important lessons she has learned is that the light bill has to be paid from somewhere. “All the little things add up. It forces you to be really creative, to be a master at dumpster diving,” she admits with another laugh. “That’s actually kind of exciting.”