Hopper Culture Overview

- Our Mission Statement 1

- Our Tenets 1
- Our Operating Values 1
- Our Leadership Principles 2
- Our Organizational Model 3
- What We’re Looking For from Candidates 3
- What We Offer to Those Working at Hopper 4
- Benefits of Working at Hopper 4
- Books That Inspire Us 5

Our Mission Statement

We help customers spend less and travel better. We aspire to be the world’s best — and most fun — place to book travel.

Our Tenets
This is how we live up to our mission statement:

1. Impact real lives. The product we offer is not the Hopper app itself but is instead the Travel and Fintech products that
Hopper sells. We measure success, then, in metrics that reflect real value added to customers like money saved, time saved
and helping people take great trips.

2. Do right by the customer. We act only with the customer’s best intentions and hold their trust in the highest regard. We do
not presuppose to have a crystal ball telling us what a customer needs or wants. We let the customers speak for themselves
and measure the success of our products only through actual data on customer behavior.

3. Add value; not fees. We generate revenue through providing goods and services that customers gladly pay for - not through
added fees or markups on the underlying travel products. We work to offer the lowest possible prices on the widest selection
possible. We innovate to offer better prices and even more transparency.

Our Operating Values

This is what we care about as a company:

1. Customer Obsession. Many companies claim to focus on their customers, but true customer obsession is something different
and much more far reaching. At Hopper, we work backwards from the wants and needs of the customer and not those of
ourselves. We are not the customers; only our customers are the customers. We use data to inform our hypotheses, not
assumptions, and let customers have the final word.

2. Speed and Innovation. Hopper stresses the importance of making decisions at high velocity - speed matters in business!
Slow and passive decision making is not only de-energizing, but a competitive disadvantage. Instead, we embrace uncertainty.
Experiments, by their very nature, are prone to failure, but a few big victories can compensate for dozens and dozens of
experiments that don’t work. We believe that there are just as many learning opportunities in failure as in success.

3. Lower Prices. There are two kinds of companies: those that work to charge more and those that work to charge less. At
Hopper, lowering prices to make travel more affordable for our customers is an objective in and of itself. It’s counterintuitive, but
it’s through lowering prices and saving customers money that we grow our revenue, as this leads to more sales and more profit
on an absolute basis. Our innovation culture is therefore highly focused on coming up with new and unique ways to save
travelers money.

4. Grow Revenue. We work backwards from our customers, innovate and work tirelessly to lower prices all so that we can grow
our revenue. This is what it’s all about. Profitability is very important to us and our shareholders - we wouldn’t be in business if it
wasn’t. The way to reconcile this with our mission statement is to remember that it’s our goal to add enough value to the lives of
customers that they gladly and repeatedly pay us for our products and services.

Our Leadership Principles

These leadership principles embody the behaviors we value and expect from everyone at the company as they help us fulfill our
mission:

1. Dive Deep. Leaders exhibit this principle by operating at all levels, staying immersed in the details, gathering data and
employing first-hand knowledge while staying skeptical of any assumptions. It’s through diving deep that they earn the trust of
others and the freedom to take real ownership of our work.
 2. Take Ownership. Leaders are owners; not managers. They think long-term, believe no task is beneath them and act on
behalf of the entire company. They are vocally self critical and benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.

3. Bias for Action. Leaders deliver results, move fast and simplify problems that others find complex. Speed matters in business
and most decisions are reversible. We can almost always learn more through action than through analysis. Leaders do things;
they don’t just talk about things.

4. Do the Right Thing. There are two parts to this leadership principle. The first is having the judgment to identify the right thing
for the business and then doing it, most of the time. It’s important for leaders to be right a lot. The second part is taking a
long-term view of what’s right for the business and our customers and acting only with the best intentions. Good judgment +
good intentions = great leader.

Our Organizational Model

Hopper is organized in a single-threaded ownership (STO) model that seeks to give team members every opportunity to contribute
towards our goals and exhibit our leadership principles. The term “Single-Threaded Owner” was coined at Amazon and means that
leaders and teams are dedicated to the objectives at hand and aren’t expected to multi-task. One business objective = one team and
one leader. We implemented a version of this organizational model in early 2019 and the results for our business since have been
nothing short of spectacular.

A few things to know about our org:

Vertical + Cross-Functional. To implement STO, we moved away from a small number of large, function-based teams and we
replaced them with a greater number of small, cross-functional teams. So instead of having a unified product team, data
science team or engineering team, we have “product-development verticals” that are cross-functional and organized working
backwards from an actual customer objective or business objective. Each vertical has all of the functional competencies it
needs to deliver end-to-end results for our customers.

Roman-tent teams. Verticals are typically no larger than 12 persons, each with a single leader/owner who is directly
accountable for the output of the team. This small team structure has created an incredible culture of speed and innovation. We
think this is because it’s easier for a small team to build trust with one another and for persons within a small team to be
personally accountable for their work. This creates the opportunity for everyone on the team to be entrusted with real
decision-making authority.

Defined scope and ownership go hand in hand. Being a single-threaded owner means waking up and thinking about one
thing with no expectation to context switch or multi-task. The scope of ownership varies based on a person’s role. A vertical
leader will have the scope of an entire business line, whereas an individual contributor on the team will have a more narrowly
defined scope. Whether it’s a feature, product or an entire line of business, though, being the STO means it’s the only thing you
are expected to work on and you are the only person accountable for the results.

Decision rights drive speed and innovation. Hopper overcomes organizational inertia by delegating authority and bestowing
decisions rights broadly throughout the company to individuals based on their areas of ownership. This lends itself to speed
and innovation because information doesn’t need to flow throughout the organization to reach a decision maker. Considering
the smaller team sizes, it can be reasonably assumed that the person with decision rights is never more than a level or two
removed from the work being done. This proximity has a direct impact: decisions are made quickly.

Highly aligned; loosely coupled. Our organization is loosely coupled by design. We value speed and intentionally emphasize
action and learning directly from customers over a culture of coordination and careful analysis. Because decision making is
disintermediated in our model, it is not possible or desirable to build consensus for every initiative. What we lose in
coordination, though, we replace with alignment. Owners are expected to develop a detailed understanding of company
objectives, organizational values and cultural principles and to use those to guide their decision making.

Context not control. Single-threaded ownership is all about empowering individuals to act like owners and make decisions
autonomously. It’s hard for people to make consistently great decisions if they don’t have the business context they need. So
 instead of relying on processes or rigid rules to manage teams, Hopper encourages leaders to focus on setting clear context
and objectives so that everyone has the right information to make great decisions. We complement this with an org-wide
emphasis on transparency and information accessibility.

Accountability enables autonomy. Autonomy is not possible without accountability and leaders are accountable to the
business only through the results that they deliver. Hopper employs a variety of mechanisms to hold leaders accountable for
the results of their teams, to provide guidance and even course correct when needed. For example, we ask leaders to write
business cases and strategy narratives about their areas of responsibility, we conduct quarterly roadmap reviews and we hold
recurring meetings to discuss progress against roadmaps and revenue targets.

What We’re Looking For From Candidates

Our goal at Hopper is to hire persons who are competent, first-principle thinkers and a fit for our culture, in that order. It’s not our goal
to hire only perfect candidates. We’re willing to take a chance on candidates who demonstrate potential. We intentionally devalue
experience and degrees in favor of a person’s ability to build and do meaningful things for Hopper's customers.

1. Competency. First and foremost, our culture values competency. So we’re looking for demonstrated competency from
candidates in their respective fields. This is not the same as past experience, but is instead actual skills that are applicable to
the work at hand. This can be demonstrated in different ways: a designer can show competency through an amazing portfolio
and an engineer can do it through a coding interview, for instance.

2. First-Principle Thinking. First-principle thinking is the ability to simplify a complex problem to its underlying components and
drivers and then use those insights to innovate in unexpected ways. It overlaps with critical thinking but also includes an ability
to propose creative solutions to new problems and is more oriented towards action than analysis. At Hopper, we are looking for
people who can regularly demonstrate first-principle thinking as they invent and simplify.

3. Culture Fit. Anyone who is smart, creative and enthusiastic about helping us fulfill our mission of making Hopper the best
place to book travel is a fit for our culture. We value diversity of thought and don’t only hire persons who are similar to
ourselves. We try to give candidates an accurate picture of our internal culture so they can also determine fit for themselves.

What We Offer to Those Working at Hopper

The core of Hopper’s culture is based on trusting our employees. Our leadership model empowers individuals to make decisions that
are locally impactful and drive the business forward while creating value for our customers. That said, we ask a lot of the people who
work at Hopper, we hold them accountable to high standards of performance and it can be demanding to put the customer first.

In return for the hard work and dedication, we offer three things:

1. Autonomy. You will have actual decision making authority.

2. Ownership. The satisfaction of knowing that you are directly responsible for an outcome.

3. Impact. What you do will matter. It will matter to Hopper and to our customers.

Benefits of Working at Hopper

Fully-Remote workplace. Hopper made the decision early on in 2020 to fully embrace remote work. Since then, we have
ditched our full-time offices and hired hundreds of people across every US state, Canadian province and dozens of countries
around the world. We’re never going back to the old way of working.

Coworking spaces on demand. For those who do value having a workspace out of the home, we offer optional access to
coworking spaces. In some cities - Boston, London, Montreal, Paris and Toronto - we even have dedicated coworking spaces
just for Hopper.

Competitive base salaries. We compete with top-tier tech companies for world-class talent and we win much more frequently
than we lose.

Pre-IPO equity. Hopper gives employees the choice between stock options and restricted stock units as part of their total
compensation package. When choosing stock options, employees don’t have to worry about short exercise periods if they later
choose to move on. Instead we offer up to four years to exercise options after employment, depending on length of tenure.

Evergreen equity plan. We want to retain our highly valued employees. So when an employee is close to vesting all of their
options or RSUs, we refresh their grant. It’s as simple as that.

Healthcare coverage. In the United States, we offer employees great medical, dental and vision coverage with 100% of
premiums paid for by Hopper. In other countries, we provide private insurance to complement national healthcare programs.

Parental Leave. In the United States, we offer 18 weeks for primary parents and 10-12 weeks for secondary parents at 100% pay.
In other countries, we complement national policies on parental leave with top-up components.
 Severance program. Sometimes things don’t work out. Hopper offers a market-leading severance program that grants every
ex-employee some severance - up to 7 months depending on length of tenure - to help mitigate the financial impact of the
unexpected. In the United States, we pair this with financial support for healthcare continuation.

Unlimited time off. We’re a travel company. We actually mean it. To kick things off, we provide every employee with $200 of
carrot cash per year that can be used towards a trip on the Hopper app. It’s a great way to stop being an employee for a little
while and become a customer instead!

Hopper Founders Program. Entrepreneurs do well in our single-threaded ownership model. To encourage entrepreneurial
spirits and to attract more to Hopper, we have created a program that provides $500K in seed funding to jump-start founders’
next initiative after they put in 2-4 years of service at Hopper. This is an application-based program open to top performers
joining the company or who are already at the company.

Immigration assistance. Our culture says to “work from anywhere” and we mean it. Our legal team has created a program to
provide visa sponsorship and immigration assistance to both new employees and existing employees who (voluntarily) wish to
relocate to any of the countries we can support (nine and counting).

Internal Career Mobility Program. We put a lot of effort into recruiting the best people. We also want to retain the best people.
To facilitate internal career development, we created a program that lets any employee in good standing who has worked at
Hopper for at least 6-12 months apply to any job opening at the company to be considered for both promotions and lateral
transfers.

A culture of performance. Adequate performance at Hopper receives a generous severance package. Inspired by Netflix, we
employ the “keeper test” at scheduled intervals to ask leaders to re-assess their team members’ competencies, contributions
and answer the simple question: “would you hire this person again?”. The upside of this is that we have built a dream team of
top performers who also make great teammates.

Light internal meeting culture. Not only do we not like meetings; we actively discourage them. We ask that no one starts their
week with more than 25% of their calendar booked internally and have created a guide full of tips to help people avoid meeting
overload.

Straightforward travel guidelines. We don’t think frequent internal travel is necessary for everyday work in our remote-working
culture. When it is required, our travel policy is very simple: “Do what’s best for Hopper.”

Books That Inspire Us

Hopper’s business looks a lot like a travel version of Amazon and Walmart - two companies famous for their customer obsession - and
because of that we have found a lot of useful parallels in their internal cultures that we have been able to modify and adopt for our own
purposes. Netflix is another company that has inspired us and we have incorporated some of their cultural philosophies into our own
like leading with context vs control and their emphasis on building high-performance, dream teams.

Reading the following books can provide useful context on Hopper’s culture, business and approach to product development:

Marketplaces

- Sam Walton, Made in America.

- Brad Stone, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.
- Brad Stone, Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire.

Innovation

- Clayton Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.
- Colin Bryar, Working Backwards.
- Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Culture

- Reed Hastings and Erin Meyers, No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention.