There are not many industry figures who left the relative comfort of a job in the media sector to eventually launch a travel startup.

Fritz Demopoulos is one such entrepreneur, having quit Rupert Murdoch's News Corp in the late-1990s to create two web companies in China in quick succession before settling on Qunar.

The metasearch brand arrived on the Chinese scene in 2005, amid a massive upsurge in the country's economy and a huge desire by a growing middle class to travel.

There are many elements that Demopoulos brought to the startup from his time in the media, as well as by then having an extremely useful level of experience with getting a new business off the ground in China.

The company eventually went public (two years after Chinese search engine Baidu took a majority stake), only to de-list in 2017 after a sale to Trip.com Group (then Ctrip).

Demopoulos, who now runs the Queen's Road Capital finance house, is the latest guest on the How I Got Here podcast.

HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.

Other episodes: on PhocusWire and Mozio.

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