I’ve known Mike Volpe for well over a decade, going back to his days as HubSpot’s first chief marketing officer. And I’ve spoken with him a few times over the years for the series, the last time being when he became the new CEO of Lola.com a little over two years ago. As a refresher, Lola.com is focused on making business travel easier for the travel manager and the traveler.

Being that business, it’s not surprising that the pandemic has had a major negative impact on Lola. But even that would be an understatement as the company lost 97% of its revenue when travel basically came to a screeching halt overnight at the beginning of the Covid-19 shutdown. 97%!

Knowing the industry that he was in, I remember checking in on Mike at the onset of the pandemic via email. He told me that I should check back in a couple of months because they were working on a plan. And roughly five months later, Lola just announced a new service offering called Lola Spend, that helps companies to track expenses and manage spending. And the new offering was actually in part a collaborative effort from the same Lola customers who stopped traveling.