Subject / opening note
Fifteen years inside the hospitality technology stack. Now working with the operators, brands, and investors fixing it.
Cross-stack vendor experience across nine SaaS categories. Hands-on hotel operations leadership at the property and corporate level. An active AI engineering practice that ships working systems weekly. The kind of profile that does not fit cleanly into any one column on an org chart.
For the busy
- 01Fifteen years selling SaaS into hospitality across nine categories.
- 02Hands-on hotel operations leadership at property and corporate level.
- 03Active AI engineering practice shipping working systems weekly.
- 04Most career hospitality SaaS reps stayed in one category. He did not.
A partial list, in alphabetical disorder
Brand and management company buyers across nine SaaS categories. Fifteen years.
The Subject1 min / 3 min expanded
Most career hospitality SaaS people stayed in one category for fifteen years. This one did not.
The vendor world treats him as a salesperson. The buyer world, the capital world, and the advisory world treat him as a unicorn. Different prices for the same person.
The Set
Three circles. One uncommon intersection.
Most career hospitality SaaS reps stay in one vendor category. Most operators never sit on the vendor side. Most AI builders have never managed a P&L. The seat I am applying for is the one where all three are required at once.
- CRM
- CDP
- CRS
- DMP
- RMS
- CCaaS
- PMS
- Payments
- BI
Sold across nine SaaS categories into the world's largest hotel brands. Knows where each system lies and where it breaks.
- 200-room hotel command
- 300-staff F&B program
- Front-line ops, 15 years
Carried the P&L. Hired the team. Sat on the buying side of every demo the rest of the industry was selling.
- Ships working AI weekly
- 200+ automation routines
- Personal infra he uses daily
Writes and ships AI code from his laptop daily. Not a slide deck about AI. An operating system he uses to run his work.
Provenance1 min / 5 min expanded
Nine SaaS categories. One buyer set.
Fifteen years of demos, RFPs, pilots, renewals, and lost deals leaves you with a specific kind of map. Each category leaves a specific kind of read.
Operational footprint1 min
Before the vendor years, the operating years.
The career sits on a real property foundation, not a marketing slide deck about hotel experience.
File photograph
Alex Setzler
Portrait commissioned for the dossier. Reproduction permitted with attribution.
Active work2 min / 6 min expanded
Not a slide deck about AI. Working systems.
Four shipped builds running on a personal Mac rig today. A short, deliberately incomplete list.
Live activity / Klause
The personal AI operating system running on his Mac, glanced at in the open. Each line is a real automation routine firing. The feed updates every 90 seconds while this page is open.
A working operating system, not a slide about one. The contents shift across the week as the routines run.
Voices
Voices from the other side.
Endorsements being collected. Three slots, each from a different vantage point. Filled with named, on-the-record quotes only.
VP, brand or management company
InvitingPE deal team or operating partner
InvitingFounder of a hospitality tech company
InvitingIf you have worked with him on the buyer side, the deal side, or the founder side, the door is open.
For operators2 min / 5 min expanded
If you run a brand or a management company.
The corporate HQ seat that gets a lot of vendor pitches and very few honest answers.
I have sold the systems you are being asked to evaluate. For fifteen years. From inside nine different vendors. Bringing that visibility to one operator's stack, full-time, is the version of this story that compounds.
- 01Within 30 days: a written read on your current commercial stack, vendor by vendor, with the questions vendors are dodging on your behalf.
- 02Within 90 days: a prioritized retire/renew/replace recommendation tied to revenue, cost-to-serve, and integration debt.
- 03Ongoing: a buyer-side voice in every major vendor conversation, with the field references that confirm or kill the pitch.
If you are recruiting for a corporate commercial technology seat, or thinking about creating one, this is the door.
Open a conversation →For capital2 min / 5 min expanded
If you back hospitality technology.
Vista, Thoma Bravo, TA Associates, Inflexion, Marlin, Permira, KKR. Every fund with a hospitality tech portfolio runs into the same diligence problem.
Most diligence calls about hospitality SaaS pretend the categories are clean. They are not. Knowing exactly where one vendor stops solving a problem and the next one starts is a different conversation than the one most experts on your call list can run.
- 01One-off diligence read: written assessment of the target's competitive position across the relevant SaaS category, with named field references from buyer-side contacts.
- 02Portfolio acceleration: a quarterly read on commercial motion, win-loss patterns, and category positioning for a named portfolio company.
- 03Operating-partner engagement: 1 to 2 days per week embedded with a portfolio company on commercial strategy, RFP response posture, and customer expansion.
Deal teams welcome. One-page memo on the current stack available on request.
Open a conversation →For founders2 min / 4 min expanded
If you are building in hospitality tech.
Product is real. First ten logos are not in the right account profile yet. Pricing is half-guess. You need a commercial leader, but not full-time.
The cheapest mistake a Series A founder can make is hiring a VP Sales who has never sold into hotels and learning that lesson three quarters too late. The next cheapest is hiring one who has, but never operated one.
- 01Within 30 days: an honest read on your account profile, your pricing posture, and your first 10 deals. Where the leverage is and where the leakage is.
- 02Within 60 days: a tightened GTM motion, a refined demo, and a calibrated outbound pattern that fits your specific buyer.
- 03Ongoing: 1 to 2 days a week embedded with your team. Weekly pipeline review. Board update support. Hire the right first AE, not the next available one.
Two to three engagement slots open. Briefer the intro, the better. Lead with what you are trying to sell and to whom.
Open a conversation →Writing1 min
In preparation.
A series on AI adoption inside hotel commercial organizations. Not the version full of vendor marketing. The version written by someone who has sold those products into those buyers for fifteen years and is now building AI tooling himself.
First piece due summer 2026. Subscribe early if you would like the first reads.
Drafting
Why hotel commercial orgs are still bad at buying AI.
Outline
The cross-stack vendor read most operators never get.
Notes
Nine SaaS categories, one buyer. A field report.
Press & stage1 min
Speaking, podcasts, and editorial.
Speaking submissions in for HSMAI ROC and HITEC. Podcast appearances and contributed pieces will be catalogued here as they ship. The bias is toward conversations that get into specifics, not panels that recycle the same five sentences.
Pending
HSMAI ROC 2026 submission
Pending
HITEC 2026 submission
Open
Slot reserved for the first relevant booking
Open
Skift, Phocuswire, Hotel Dive contributions
Contact30 sec
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