Original Story Published by: Matthew O’Rourke for Yale School of Management
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2011, Xavier Curtis ’18 moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, with his partner, Eliza Richman. Working at local nonprofits, they found themselves frequently answering the same question at the end of the day: where do you like to eat?
“We didn’t move to Ethiopia with the intention of ever starting a business, but we soon realized this city had a growing tourism scene,’” Curtis says.
Curtis and Richman launched Go Addis Tours in January 2013 to provide food tours. They quickly added city and marketplace tours to accommodate growing demand.
“There would be these tourism groups coming through that would tell their clients, ‘Stay at your hotel, eat there, and we’ll get you tomorrow to take you to the countryside,’” Curtis says.
Tourists, he says, were missing the opportunity to really experience the city. “We thought this was crazy. There’s a lot to offer here. Within six to eight weeks of launching our company, we were the top-rated tour company on TripAdvisor.”
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