Instinct says over half its transactions are travel

Instinct's founder has confirmed something I have suspected for a while. According to TechCrunch, more than half of all transactions on the platform are now travel related, and the company is growing about 10% day over day, with transaction volume climbing at a similar pace.

Read that again. A general purpose transactions platform discovers that its strongest vertical is travel. Not retail, not subscriptions, not creator payouts. Travel. That says a lot about where real money movement is happening, and it says even more about where founders should be pointing their pitch decks.

The hotel tech angle is obvious. Booking flows, deposits, no-show fees, split payments between OTA and property, group deposits, F&B tabs charged to a room. Those are messy, high frequency, cross border transactions, and hoteliers hate messy. If Instinct is winning travel volume this fast, the payment layer underneath hotels is where startup attention should go next, and where investors are already looking.

My read: stop chasing the hotelier as your first customer. Go get the fund. The next great travel tech company will not be sold to a GM at a breakfast meeting, it will be sold to a VC who understands why travel payments are an underpriced wedge.