The Story of Zartico: Building the Operating System for the $8.9T Visitor Economy

After eight and a half years leading a carbon fiber bicycle components company through turnaround and acquisition, Sarah Lehman made a deliberate choice for her next venture: she wanted to prove something to her teenage children.

“I wanted them to see mom do hard things and see mom tackle something that was totally new,” Sarah shares in a recent episode of Category Visionaries. That “something new” would become Zartico, a company reimagining how governments manage tourism and visitor economies.

Finding the Gap

The opportunity was massive but hidden. “Did you know that the visitor economy represents 10% of the global GDP?” Sarah asks. “And did you know that one in eight employees around the world are employed in the travel and hospitality industry?”

Yet the organizations managing these massive economic engines were stuck using annual surveys and spreadsheets. The gap between impact and tools created an opportunity for innovation.

The COVID Launch

In January 2020, Sarah joined co-founders Darren Dunn and Jay Kinghorn to launch Zartico. They released their MVP in March 2020 – just as the world shut down. Their planned go-to-market strategy, centered on trade shows, became impossible overnight.

The RV Pivot

Rather than retreat, the team got creative. “We’re going to rent an RV, and we’re going to drive it cross country, and we’re going to bring the trade show to the people,” Sarah recalls. That summer, while most B2B companies went virtual, Zartico’s sales team drove across America, setting up socially-distanced demos in customer parking lots.

Building Remote Culture

For Sarah, a self-described “walk around CEO” used to managing manufacturing facilities from 4 AM to midnight, building remote culture was a new challenge. The team experimented constantly, eventually creating innovations like their “This Is Me” sessions where team members share their stories every few weeks.

The Product Evolution

The pandemic also forced rapid product evolution. “We launched under the premise of bring us all your data and we’ll put it nicely into a business intelligence tool to realizing during COVID what entities really needed was situational awareness,” Sarah explains. This pivot from historical reporting to real-time insights proved crucial.

The Future Vision

Looking ahead, Zartico aims to become the true operating system for destinations. “You can imagine a world where we work with these small businesses that also benefit from the visitor economy. You can imagine a world where we work with the sporting events and stadiums within that destination,” Sarah shares.

This expansion across multiple verticals would create a comprehensive platform connecting all stakeholders in a destination’s visitor economy. As Sarah puts it, they’re “building a company that is going to be, and we believe, a sustainable, everlasting legacy.”

For founders, Zartico’s story demonstrates how constraint breeds innovation and crisis can accelerate category creation. Sometimes the hardest things – launching during a pandemic, building remote culture, slowing growth to strengthen foundations – become the very elements that define your success.