Today is a big day for Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig, who have taken Navan — the travel and expense platform — public on the Nasdaq. It’s also a big day for Frontline: Navan was the first investment from our US Growth fund and it becomes the first IPO in Frontline’s wider portfolio.
I met Ariel in early 2018 when the company, then known as TripActions, had revenues in the single digit millions. Ariel wanted to take on the enormous, outdated world of corporate travel and was raising a Series B to expand internationally. I got an immediate taste of his all-action style when he rerouted a European trip to meet me in Dublin. We spent hours at the whiteboard in the Frontline office, talking about his business and sketching out its European future.
When I look back at my notes from that meeting, I’m struck by how accurately Ariel’s vision has played out:
Feb 2018. Ariel wants to create a beautiful end-to-end experience of corporate travel for the traveler, not only the finance team…this will require deep travel infrastructure, not just a pretty app, and he wants to use modern technologies such as machine learning…He wants to provide rewards for the traveler to get incentives right…and maybe one day offer an expense solution…He wants to support US customers globally and sell to enterprise customers anywhere…global expansion is a top priority.
How Navan Shaped Frontline Growth
Ariel became our design partner as we shaped the nascent Frontline Growth model. To select the best city as European HQ, the two of us hopped on a plane and toured Amsterdam, London, and Dublin. To hire the right senior leader, I built a list of candidates and wrote the company’s first EMEA GM job spec. When Ariel wanted to meet European customers and partners, that became part of our playbook too.
He had recently hired a promising exec from Uber, Nina Herold, as VP International and asked for my help with her onboarding. I met Nina regularly and acted as a sounding board for a time. She didn’t need me for long (a quick study!) and went on to great things as CPO and COO of the company.
Flight Status: Indefinitely Delayed
By late 2019, Navan’s international go-to-market engine was firing and revenue was approaching $100m. But one thing Ariel couldn’t plan for was the first global pandemic in a century. As the world locked down, Navan’s revenue went to zero.
Amid the chaos, Ariel and Ilan never lost faith that people would travel again. They stabilized the company, doubled down on product development, and kept selling. In an internal note from the darkest days of 2020, I wrote to my colleagues:
Ariel and the TripActions team are so impressive — ambitious and relentless.
It took nearly three years for global travel to normalize. Under weaker leadership, Navan would not have survived. Ariel and Ilan’s resilience during that time was extraordinary.
Destination Everywhere, via Navan
Since 2020, Navan has expanded far beyond travel, now offering corporate cards, expense management, and AI-powered spend insights. It has become an end-to-end platform for managing business travel and spend.
In 2022, having outgrown TripActions, the company rebranded and became Navan. The palindrome has a silky mouthfeel that evokes global navigation and adventure. But as an Irishman, it would be remiss not to mention that Navan is also a small town near Dublin, a gateway to nowhere in particular, where cows outnumber tourists. The name change caused much merriment in Frontline’s Dublin office and gave us yet another reason to root for the company.
Ariel’s early vision has now become reality: LTM revenue of $612M (up 32%), with 41% coming from outside the US. Customers love Navan because it’s a great product. Frontline loves Navan because it helped us define our product as a venture capital firm.
Onwards
Thank you, Ariel and Ilan, for letting us be part of the journey. Congratulations on today’s milestone and good luck on the next leg.
– Stephen and the Frontline team
