Kelvin Crosby: 0:06

Welcome to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast. We're not waiting for change, we're investing in it. Join us as we speak with entrepreneurs and thought leaders that are focused on creating a more accessible world.

Kelvin Crosby: 0:29

Hey, so good to see you, even though I can't see you. It's another beautiful day in the neighborhood and I'm so excited that you are here at Investing in Accessibility. Wow, dude, we got a show for you today. This guest. He comes from the South America's world and now he's here in the United States doing amazing things for people with disabilities. But before we get to our guest, let me introduce you to my co-host, Chris Maher. How you doing, man?

Chris Maher: 0:58

Hey Kelvin, how are you, my friend? Good to see you, pal.

Kelvin Crosby: 1:00

I'm doing good, and so why don't you kind of set us up today, for I guess, like, where did you find this man? I mean this man has an accent. He comes from a different part of the world but now he's doing amazing things for people, for travel.

Chris Maher: 1:17

He is. He and his company are doing amazing things in the world of accessible travel. So our guest today is Alvaro Silberstein, who is the co-founder and CEO of Wheel the World, which is, as I said, an accessible travel company, and we're going to get into that. But it was pretty serendipitous how I met Alvaro and his co-founder, Camillo. I actually just read an article about the company back in early 2023, reached out on LinkedIn and they got back to me and we started a conversation and that turned into a series of conversations and then full disclosure Samaritan is an investor in Wheel of the World and from that point on, I feel very grateful that I and Samaritan have been along on the journey that Wheel of the World is on in the world of accessible travel. I'm really excited to get into that conversation today. So with that, Alvaro, welcome my friend.

Alvaro Silberstein: 2:15

Hello Kelvin. Chris, I'm excited to be here talking with you all.

Chris Maher: 2:20

Alvaro, I think where we should start is with your personal story and that lived experience which really led to you starting Wheel of the World. So if you could give us a little, bit of that background that'd be wonderful.

Alvaro Silberstein: 2:34

Sure, so almost all my life until I was 30 years old, I lived in Chile. All my family lives there. I grew up there in Chile, the southernmost country of South America, so far away where I am now here in Berkeley, California, and um, when I had 18 years old, I had a car accident, broke my neck at level C5, so I am a complete C5 quadriplegic.

Alvaro Silberstein: 3:02

Since then moved myself in a manual wheelchair, sometimes in a power wheelchair, and, as I would assume many of the audience has experienced before, I started to get used to living with a disability, realizing how challenging it is to accept a life-altering experience, but also realizing that the world hasn't been designed for someone who has a disability to live it to the fullest as I wanted to live it.

Alvaro Silberstein: 3:40

I was very lucky to have a lot of support of my family and friends to get as independent as possible, get back to college, get back to work, to have social life, to be happy again, and so that's pretty much about my background. I'm an engineer. I worked for different startups and consultancy firms back in Chile and I came to the US in 2015 to do my MBA, to do a master's program and my essay to apply to that business school program was that I wanted to become an entrepreneur to solve problems for people with disabilities, and so that's how I came to the US and after my studies I started Wheel the World with my co-founder, Camilo, and so that's pretty much about my story pre-Wheel the World.

Kelvin Crosby: 4:44

So I'd be curious to ask you this question as you started traveling from Chile to the United States and really learning your traveling experience, like how do you travel as a quadriplegic and what did that look like? And honestly, from my perspective as a blind guy, I'm trying to visualize that. So could you kind of describe that a little bit?

Chris Maher: 5:09

And also just to piggyback on that, and how did that shape your vision for the company that you started?

Alvaro Silberstein: 5:16

So that's a great point and great questions that so, as I started to get used to my new life being disabled, one of the things that I always felt bad and felt disappointed was realizing that I always wanted to see the world and now I would not and that was something that frustrated me a lot at the beginning, and then I started realizing that was possible with the right information, with the right preparation, with understanding what to expect and how to prepare to travel to different places.

Alvaro Silberstein: 5:58

How do I travel as a quadriplegic and wheelchair user, as Kelvin asked? Well, I like to prepare as much as possible, understand how accessible would be the places that I would stay, understanding how I would move around because I also need accessible transportation and what would be the places that I will visit or, if it's work travel, if the places that I would go would have the right accessibility for me. Right? What's that accessibility that I need? For example, if I need to take a shower, I need a rolling shower in the bathroom. I will need in the place that I will stay, a room that is not higher than 23 inches to be able to transfer independently. I will need places that have like minimum accessibility, of course, when it comes to like spaces and doors and width, and turning radius, etc. And and and one of the challenges also that needs to be solved is the flight experience right, yeah, and I know that every single airport in the world they have assistance and I have enough experience to explain that assistance that I have when I go into the airport experience to explain them. How do they need to help me to transfer to an aisle chair? An aisle chair are those narrow chairs that allows you to get inside the plane and then transfer to my seat. When I have long flights, many times I um on purpose, I dehydrate a little bit so I don't need to go to the bathroom inside the plane and I have some medications also to avoid going to the bathroom. And if I have a, let's say, an eight hour flight, that takes me every day every year when I go to visit my family in Chile, and so it is challenging and I love to travel. So I got used to it and and I also have I'm I already know how to prepare and how to anticipate so I can have a great travel experience and it's possible. I have traveled to more than 30 countries around the world.

Alvaro Silberstein: 8:36

I have traveled to Japan, to Korea, all South America, a lot of places in the US, Europe. And I have done crazy adventures, hiking in Patagonia and doing the Inca Trail in Machu Picchu, so it is possible. And that's something that for me was very rewarding, given that, when I just got injured, for me travel was something that I thought that I would not do anymore.

Kelvin Crosby: 9:07

Well, I think what's cool you're a true example of living beyond your challenges and I think that is awesome. And I think what's really interesting is, like my experience as a deaf-blind guy. I mean, I just got off a plane a couple weeks ago or a couple days ago and I tell you I'm good. Everybody wants to help but at the same time you need the help. But how much of that do you need as an independent? So I think what I would love to kind of dive into is you talked about planning ahead and I think that is something that is really crucial in what your business is all about is preparing people for that travel, that lifetime experience. So kind of tell us like, how did you start your company?

Alvaro Silberstein: 10:10

Yes, so I was, um, well, I I still, but um, in 2016, I was living in Berkeley doing my MBA and, as I mentioned, I came for a reason and that was coming here to silicon valley to do business school, to become an entrepreneur, to solve problems for people with disabilities, and I was convincing my classmates to go on different projects. That ended up not successfully. And at some point, my co-founder his name is Camilo, great guy, he was living still in Chile. Today he also lives here in the Bay Area and we started talking because we are longtime friends since I was very young, even before my accident. I was trying to convince him to come here to the Bay Area because he also was seeking entrepreneurial opportunities and living abroad.

Alvaro Silberstein: 11:05

And back in the day, we had the dream to do a trip together to the most beautiful and the most visited destination in Chile. That is, Patagonia. Patagonia is not a brand. Originally, it's a place in the world that is beautiful, that is in the south of Chile. We can say that it's kind of the Alaska of Chile full of mountains, rivers, lakes, a lot of also like fauna, and it's the most visited tourism destination in my country, but I always assumed that it would be impossible for me to travel to this very remote place in the world. But having this experience in California that I was like, very inspired to do different things, I was living abroad, I felt that I was much more confident in my life than before and also having the experience of exploring natural places in California that are very accessible, right, I was able to go to the different national parks over here. So I said, Camilo, okay, let's figure it out, I'm visiting my family for Christmas and New Year's Eve, let's figure out to plan a trip to Patagonia. Camilo got super excited and both of us started to reach out to the locals over there and making research about how someone in a wheelchair, plus four other friends, would explore this place in specific that is called Torres del Paine National Park, and we realized that there was zero information about accessibility, zero, and no accommodations that said that were accessible, not any transportation service. We talked with locals that were that worked for the travel industry over there and they told us, like, how wide is your chair? It's like 70 centimeters. Okay, the the the widest trail in the national park is like 30 centimeters. There's no way that a wheelchair we have never seen a wheelchair here before, so so we got kind of disappointed. But also we said, ok, there must be a way right, and we started making research.

Alvaro Silberstein: 13:32

I was doing my internship for a mobility company here in the Bay Area that is called Wheel. It's a Japanese company that they do like high-end equipment as wheelchairs and other equipment and I was able to go to a show, to an abilities expo, and there was there like a specific chair that was specially designed to do hikes with people with physical disabilities. It's a chair that is assisted. It's one person pushing from the back, one person pushing from the front and it has only one wheel. It has suspension, it is designed so other people can assist you very comfortably on a hike, on a trail, going up a mountain whatsoever. And we said, ok, this will allow us to do this trip. This chair is a company that is based in France, this equipment is manufactured in France and the chair costs like $5,000. So we said like we don't have the money to acquire it, only for a trip of one week. So we said let's rent it out, ship it to Patagonia and then back to France. That cost like $7,000.

Alvaro Silberstein: 14:55

It was even more expensive. So that was the moment that we decided, okay, let's transform our trip into a project the very first time ever of a wheelchair user to complete the W Trek in Patagonia. So we could like crowdfund the cost of the chairs and also a scouting trip of my friend and co-founder today, Camilo, to figure out what were the accessible accommodations, that we would stay, how we would move around and do like a scouting trip, to figure out that this trip was feasible and also the equipment was an enabler to do this experience. So we fundraised the equipment, this scouting trip we went to, like around seven friends, I became the first person ever in a wheelchair to complete this trip, and then what we did is we left the equipment over there and we built like an online guide on how to do Patagonia in a wheelchair.

Alvaro Silberstein: 15:56

Our story went viral because we developed different content of videos and pictures. We were on the news in the San Francisco Chronicle here in the US. Mark Zuckerberg posted a video of our story and I always say that that was just an anecdote, but because the amazing thing that happened there it was that many people, hundreds of people from all over the world started reaching out to us through our Facebook account that they wanted to repeat this trip, and we started organizing this trip to other people, basically because we had the information on where to stay, how to move around, who had the chair, how the chair was used, and we were helping people coordinate this trip to allow them to have this great experience, as we did. And this was amazing, and, given that I wanted to become an entrepreneur also, Camilo, we started not studying much here at UC Berkeley and putting a lot of effort on organizing this trip to other people, but also to figure out what to do with this right and what was the opportunity. And we fastly realized that the opportunity was huge, not only to organize trips to people that were crazy, to do a crazy adventure in the end of the world, but also to find what were the accessible accommodations to stay in Miami or in Mesa, Arizona, or the transportation services that are accessible in Seattle or in Barcelona or in London. Right?

Alvaro Silberstein: 17:42

We have framed the problem that it's an information problem. Information of accessibility is hard to rely on current information. It needs to be very detailed and it needs to be spread digitally so people can understand what's accessible and what's not. And it needs to be very detailed, because people with disabilities will have different needs. Of course, someone who is blind compared to someone who uses a wheelchair is totally different, but also it's different someone who uses a manual wheelchair compared to one that uses a power wheelchair, or someone who is able to use their triceps compared to someone who cannot. So going to this level of details allows someone to understand if something is accessible or not for them.

Chris Maher: 18:35

Your lived experience puts you in a position that you are very much a subject matter expert and so, starting this business, you had a very clear vision of what it would be. But talk about exactly what the company does. There's a direct-to-consumer side and a B2B side. But also, over the last several years, that process working with hotels and destinations and venues and where they were a few years ago in terms of how they were thinking about accessibility, versus where they are today and the progress that's been made would be great for you to shed some insight on that.

Alvaro Silberstein: 19:12

So, yes, wheel the World. We have the purpose to making the world accessible and we consider Wheel the World the expert solution for accessible travel. On one site we put together wheeltheworld. com. That is an online travel platform to find and book accessible travel experiences, with all the accessibility details people need and with a recommendation system that we recommend you what best fits your specific needs.

Alvaro Silberstein: 19:43

Today we are doing around 10,000 people every year travel using wheeltheworld. com and on the other side, we have Destination Verified that is a seal of approval service for destination marketing organizations and tourism bureaus that we are helping them to evaluate, assess and promote the accessible travel services of their destination. Okay, we started with wheeltheworld. com making people travel and how we were having the right offer to be published at wheeltheworld. com so people can book hotels and transportation services. And everything that we offer at wheeltheworld. com was by collecting the details of accessibility through an app that we have developed that is called the Accessibility Mapping System, and we are sending mappers as, for example, Instacart or Uber Eats has shoppers. Wheel the World has mappers that we carefully train and we send them to do site inspections in hotels, restaurants, tourism attractions, to collect all these details of accessibility that are relevant for travelers with disabilities. We're collecting more than 200 data points of accessibility of hotels and museums and restaurants, etc. Once we collect, these data points automatically are published at wheeltheworld. com so people can book it through our website, understanding exactly, with pictures and detailed data, how that accessibility looks like, and we are covering the information that is relevant for all types of disabilities.

Alvaro Silberstein: 21:30

By doing this we realized that destination marketing organizations let's say, visit San Diego or Visit Fort Lauderdale or Mesa, Arizona or Ann Arbor or Miami and Seattle are part of our customers.

Alvaro Silberstein: 21:48

They realized that they also wanted to help us out and to understand how was their accessibility and how they could promote it to visitors with disabilities. So we started, we package a service for these organizations in which we are helping them to evaluate, with our mapping system, all that accessibility and we provide them platform, a SaaS platform, in which they can evaluate how all the properties that are site inspected have their accessibility, how many bookings, how many travelers with disabilities they are like receiving, and giving them also resources so they can incentivize those properties to improve their accessibility with the key points that we have identified that can be improved to for a better accessibility. So nowadays we are working with around 100 destinations in the U. S., helping them map more than 10, 000 hotels, restaurants and tourism attractions, providing them incentives so they can improve it, that accessibility, and, of course, promoting it to the more than 100,000 travelers with disabilities that are part of the wheeltheworld. com community.

Kelvin Crosby: 23:12

That's awesome. A question for you. If you're somebody with a disability and you wanted to be a mapper, how would they get involved in that process?

Alvaro Silberstein: 23:22

Yes, so we are recruiting people all over the US because we do need more mappers to help us do these site inspections. You can go online on our website. Go down and you will find the contact center saying that you can register as a mapper and our team will contact you to pass you through this online process in which we will train people on how to use this app, on what is needed to do site inspections, so you can enroll in our community of mappers that today we are more than 400 mappers we have in different places of the world, not only in the US.

Chris Maher: 24:12

So let's get into, kind of the business, the economics of it, and so a few stats for our listeners. In the US, what is it? One in four adults has a disability. Anecdotally, what I've heard across the travel industry is that the DMOs, these destination marketing organizations and venues, are realizing that people with disabilities like to travel just as much as people without disabilities. You're a great example of that, Alvaro. And when they travel, they tend to travel with their families and friends. And if your destination, hotel, venue can't accommodate the person in the group with a disability, then the likelihood is that entire group is going to go somewhere else. And so, as destinations are leaning in and asking you folks to help them more and more about verifying their accessibility, do you have a sense of the economic, the return on that investment, or the increase in revenue for destinations or the increase in travelers? Do you have any numbers at this point where they're seeing the return on that investment around accessibility?

Alvaro Silberstein: 25:16

There's 15% of the world's population have disabilities, right, between 15% to 20% depends on the country. In the US, as you say, it's like one every four people. And if you consider our families and friends, right, our people that are directly related to us, you can get to 60% of the world's population, right, and that's what's happening at wheeltheworld. com. com. Okay, wheeltheworldcom. com wielderworldcom, we are making around 10,000 people travel every year and one-third of them are people with disabilities. Two-thirds are companions of someone who has a disability. So, on average, every booking that we have in our platform is people, people one disabled person plus two companions. 50% of the times is not the disabled is the The one who makes the it booking is the companion. So many it is is the companion the one doing the purchase decision, right, seeking for accessibility. The majority of the times is the companion, the ones who makes the review after the trip. So those are interesting things to consider. That this is Because, historically, right, when I started my company, many times I reached out to investors and said, no, the disability segment is is too small, right, and that's not true, right?

Alvaro Silberstein: 26:54

Yeah, because we are 15% of the world population and and this segment in specific is demonstrating that actually accessibility is impact much more people, three times the number of people with disabilities right, and we always love to say that accessibility is not something for a few, because all of us will have a disability sooner or later because of aging. So accessibility impacts everyone at some point of our lives. And when it comes to the economics, at least 15 million US Americans with disabilities are traveling once a year. 15 million Americans with disabilities. They travel normally with one or two companions and they are taking 40 million trips per year. This, as a consequence, we can estimate that it's a $120 billion market. So it's a huge market.

Chris Maher: 28:07

Can you say that number again so everyone understands how large this opportunity is? $120 billion with a B.

Alvaro Silberstein: 28:15

Yes, billion dollar market.

Kelvin Crosby: 28:17

He didn't misspeak. It's not just M, it's a B.

Alvaro Silberstein: 28:22

Sorry, my English is my second language. I'm still struggling.

Kelvin Crosby: 28:27

No, you're good, You're good. We're just making sure it's clear to everybody. Yes, you know.

Alvaro Silberstein: 28:36

So it's a huge market and we are estimating the destinations, what they are investing in the projects that we do together, that in a period of two years is returning three times the investment, considering the bookings and the expenditure that is estimated on every traveler that we are making to travel to this destination, that they are spending at the destination, because it's not only the flight and the hotel, of course, it's the restaurants, it's the services that they that they acquire over there, the transportation, the Uber, etc. All that is an investment that has a return, of course, for the city, for the businesses over there, for the taxes, etc.

Kelvin Crosby: 29:21

Yeah, when I think what's huge about this it is it's that whole concept, universal design, and really getting into that depth. And I think that is what's so important about having access to travel. I mean, I travel a lot for work and so forth, and it's one of those things where it's like you never know what you're gonna get yourself into. But this resource for somebody like myself and we talked about billions of people to have access to like this, and the economic opportunities for all of this, is incredible, and so I'm super excited to see how you guys continue to grow, continue to really develop your especially the B2B side of your business.

Alvaro Silberstein: 30:17

I believe that this economic opportunity of the accessible travel segment it's the same for any type of accessibility investment. Digital accessibility, infrastructure, information, education. At the end of the day like, investing in accessibility, has return on investment and that's why the reason that since the I don't know 60s or 70s, this community has evolved so much and accessibility has evolved so much and so many products, services, technologies, infrastructure has improved. It's not because we have invested more in something that didn't have return. It has returned because there's more access to jobs, more access to education, more people being able to be part of the economy, and that's why accessibility has positive return of investments in general. A nd that's why many VCs, great investors as Chris, has decided to invest in this segment.

Chris Maher: 31:39

Wheel the World, and travel is a great example for why investing in accessibility is good business, and I think you summarized it there perfectly, Alvaro. As we wrap up and let you go, people who are looking to travel and or people who are on the business side of things, how can they find Wheel the World and learn more about what you're doing?

Alvaro Silberstein: 32:02

WheelTheWorld. com. We have all the information over there and if you want to reach me out, LinkedIn can be a good platform to find me out and send me a message.

Chris Maher: 32:16

Terrific. And we'll put all that in the show notes. Alvaro, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. It's a pleasure as always, and Kelvin take us out.

Kelvin Crosby: 32:25

Thank you so much for being at Investing in Accessibility and, as I always say, go live beyond your challenges and we'll see you in two weeks.

Kelvin Crosby: 32:44

Thank you for listening to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast, where we invest in change for accessibility, not wait for change. If you want to follow us, you can find us on YouTube or LinkedIn at Samaritan Partners. If you would like to invest in Samaritan Partners, email Chris at chris@ samaritanpartners. com. If you'd like to learn more about us, go to www. samaritanpartners. com. You can take the first step in investing in change by giving us five stars and sharing this podcast with everybody that you know, so we can spread the word, so that we can give access to all, by Investing in Accessibility.