Who is Dagmara?
Bathed in light from the 6-foot double-hung windows of their shared office, Dagmara, head of customer service, pours through the team’s workload — managing the inevitable chaos of an early-stage startup with a self-professed chaos that is all her own. She is perfectly composed — but the young woman hums with the jovial spirit of a bright mind in high gear. Almost immediately, I cast off extrinsic motivations as responsible. Dagmara was likely chasing something else; she seemed to be chasing the challenge of it all.
“I’m an all or nothing person”, she said pointing to two imaginary poles for added effect, “but when I have more work to do, I get much more done”. She playfully pauses for a moment to furnish an example, “if I only have one thing to do, and lots of time, it’ll take me much longer to get it done. I’ll think, ahh I can start it later, or I think about it too much,” she laughs broadly and throws me a look that says “what can I say that’s who I am”. The exposed brick and plaster walls of Hotailors’ Poznań office, a converted two bedroom apartment now outgrown by their team, make for an apt-backdrop. Strong structures clearly visible — but part-raw and part-refined.
Dagmara, who has been present for close to three years of the Hotailors’ adventure, recounts her arrival. “When I first joined, it was called Facebooking. We wanted to provide user information to hotels for personalisation, and confirm bookings by linking a guest’s Facebook account”, she half-laughs with an openness that disarms me immediately — “but this didn’t work so well.” She pauses to speak with a team member who enters, ending the exchange with a fist pump and visceral “yeeesssss”. In its infancy the team was already connecting hotel booking wholesalers with their platform. But the wholesalers weren’t keen on offering any extra services. “So we thought to ourselves, if we have good prices, then we can do business travels ourselves”, Dagmara recounts.
An early hire to the Hotailors’ team, Dagmara joined somewhere between her BA and Master’s — “the timeline is a little fuzzy”, she jests, “I was really doing a lot at the time.” In my short life, I’d met a few people like Dagmara before; open, intelligent and a proponent of the lead-by-example mentality. “Everything the customer service team does goes through me”, she said proudly. Her position as bulwark wasn’t one of control. Dagmara kept the ship right, and did so by working even harder than everyone around her by the looks of it. A messy desk and desktop displayed as a badge of honor; “don’t worry”, she said, “I know where everything is”.
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Dagmara joined the first team of four, along with then co-founders Filip and Mikal, “I was looking for something new and saw Filip’s ad, he called me back to set up an interview 5 minutes after I applied!”. “When I went to meet with him [Filip], it was 10:05, the meeting was at 10:00, so I thought I better call him [Filip]”, she recalls with a little nod to make sure I’m following her logic. “But when I called, he answered and said he was still in the toilet”, she laughs, eyes beaming — “my first impression was, he is late — and he still is today”.
I already knew that Dagmara and Filip were well-aligned — Filip had proclaimed in Warsaw, “Dagmara is my number two, she’s the best!” But Dagmara’s fondness for her friend and leader, echoed his own for her. It was a fondness that only develops by tirelessly riding the highs and lows together through iterations and failures. She trusted him, and he trusted her.
At Hotailors, we’re proud of our people and of the culture they create. That’s why we commissioned this series of interviews with some of the people that helped bring our dream to reality. And remember, for every story we release, there are five more that we have yet to tell.
Watch us build our own story as we disrupt the business travel market: www.hotailors.com. Follow Dagmara’s adventure, as well as our own, on the socials: LinkedIn and Facebook.
