About Fabio

Fabio Cannavale is founder of Last Minute Travel Group (lastminute.com) and BHeroes, an early-stage investment firm. Returning for a second conversation, he explains why he thinks the next generation of companies should be built around AI agents from day one, drawing on his own experiments running a large travel business and investing in AI-native startups.

What we talked about

"Artificial" is the wrong word — why he thinks of AI as superhuman rather than robotic, and why that framing changes how you build with it.

Company of agents, not people — his blueprint for starting a new business today: hire agents first, add humans later if at all.

What it costs to run on agents — early comparisons between millions spent on people versus a fraction of that on AI.

Where travel intermediaries still matter — why brands like Expedia survive the same way big banks do, on trust rather than technical necessity.

Marketing at agent speed — analysis that used to take a team of 30 and weeks now runs in minutes, around the clock.

The real competitive risk — why falling behind on agent sophistication, not AI adoption itself, is what kills a company.

Sharpest moments

On why "artificial" intelligence is the wrong frame:

The word artificial intelligence is misleading... it's more creative, is more emotional, it's more kind, it's more artistic than any human.

On his blueprint for a new company:

If you start a new company today, what you do? You do a company of agents... You hire the agent, you pay the agent.

On the cost gap he's already seeing:

We are spending today, I don't know, 60 million in people... when we spend two, three million, five million in AI, it's a lot of money.

On what agents change operationally:

Agents work twenty-four seven... you go to sleep... and in the morning you have exactly what you need.

On the actual competitive risk:

If your competitor is much more sophisticated, if you're not sophisticated, you are done.

Key takeaways

• His model for a brand-new company: start with one or two founders managing a "company of agents" instead of hiring people first.
• Early estimates suggest AI can replace a large share of operating spend that used to go to headcount — his example put people costs at tens of millions versus single-digit millions on AI.
• Travel intermediaries like Expedia will likely keep winning trust the same way big banks do, even as AI agents can technically book directly.
• Marketing analysis that once needed a 30-person team and weeks of work can now run in minutes, continuously, through AI agents.
• B2B AI advisory — helping companies that don't know how to use AI — is, in his view, a real opportunity across travel and beyond.
• The competitive risk isn't using AI or not; it's how sophisticated your agents are relative to your competitors'.