# Barney Harford

> Barney Harford is a seed investor in Seattle backing Travel, Tourism and Artificial Intelligence. See 15 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Location: Seattle, United States
- Total investments: 15
- Last investment: Aug 2024
- Lead investor: 0%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/barneyharford
- X (Twitter): http://twitter.com/barneyh
- Website: https://x.com/barneyh
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barneyh

Barney Harford is a seed investor in Seattle focused on Travel and Tourism. Barney currently serves on the boards of directors of United Airlines and RealSelf. At United Airlines he serves on the Finance, Audit, and Public Responsibility committees. He has an extensive track record operating and governing large and rapidly growing technology-enabled companies. He has particular experience in the fields of loyalty andsegmentation, experiment-driven optimization, lean process improvement, cybersecurity, and transportation safety.Barney served as Chief Operating Officer of Uber from January 2018 to July 2019. As COO he was responsible for the company’s global ridesharing business, leading operations, strategy, marketing, customer support, safety and insurance in over 60 countries, and for the company's food-delivery business Uber Eats. Barney launched consumer and driver loyalty programs, increased focus on high-value segments, extended the platform to embrace lower cost transport modes in emerging markets, and significantly reduced trip defect rates. He led a 15,000 person organization during a critical phase in the company’s history, and played a significant role in the company’s May 2019 IPO, which raised $8B.Prior to Uber, Barney served as CEO and a director of Orbitz Worldwide (NYSE: OWW) from January 2009 to November 2015, leading a turnaround that culminated in the company’s sale to Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE) for $1.6B. While at Orbitz Worldwide he launched the groundbreaking Orbitz Rewards loyalty program and built the Orbitz Partner Network into a leading provider of private label travel solutions to airlines, hotels, travel agencies and banks.Prior to Orbitz Worldwide, Barney served in a variety of roles at Expedia from 1999 to 2006, including as President of Expedia Asia Pacific from 2004 to 2006, where he led Expedia’s market entry into China, Australia and Japan.Barney has previously served on the boards of directors of Crystal Orange Hotel Group (formerly Mandarin Hotel Holdings), eLong, GlobalEnglish, LiquidPlanner and Lola Travel.Barney is a Board Leadership Fellow of the National Association of Corporate Directors. Barney received an MBA from INSEAD and an undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University (Clare College).

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Seed | $1.2M–$6M |
| Series A | $3M–$10M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Travel | 4 | 27% |
| Tourism | 3 | 20% |
| Artificial Intelligence | 3 | 20% |
| SaaS | 2 | 13% |
| Internet | 2 | 13% |

38 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 6 | 40% |
| Series A | 5 | 33% |
| Series C | 2 | 13% |
| Angel | 1 | 7% |
| Series B | 1 | 7% |

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United States | 10 | 67% |
| Spain | 1 | 7% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Otto | Otto is a startup developing an intelligent and autonomous AI travel adviser for business travelers. | $6M | Seed | Aug 22, 2024 |  |
| Otto | Otto is a travel tech company that uses AI to plan, book and execute business trips. | $6M | Seed | Aug 22, 2024 |  |
| TROOP (formerly TroopTravel) | TROOP is a data aggregation and visualization technology that helps corporations plan in-person meetings using data instead of opinions. It aggregates data around safety, service, sustainability, and savings. TROOP is the single source of truth that powers these decisions for worldwide organizations across numerous industries by delivering all ofthe data needed to make decisions on how to meet, whether it's COVID-related constraints, travel and lodging costs, or other factors. | $8M | Series A | Sep 30, 2021 |  |
| TrovaTrip | TrovaTrip is an audience monetization platform for creators, entrepreneurs, and businesses. Hosts use their platform to easily plan and sell group trips, offer paid or donation-based livestreams, and sell digital products like ebooks and recorded workshops. | $5M | Seed | Aug 17, 2021 |  |
| Clearbrief | Clearbrief leverages cutting-edge AI and NLP to transform legal writing and the justice system. | $1.2M | Seed | Mar 23, 2021 |  |
| RealSelf | RealSelf brings transparency to the elective medical & aesthetic treatment market which represents a wide range of services—from a simple skin treatment to cosmetic surgery. At the heart of RealSelf is a community of people sharing personal experiences, unbiased stories, and candid advice. Thousand of medical experts also participate onRealSelf. Doctors and clinicians have posted over two million answers to questions and routinely upload educational videos, special offers, and patient before & after photos. The company is a Seattle based startup, backed by world-class investors and has achieved profitability. |  | Series C | Aug 10, 2018 |  |
| Redeam | Redeam is a five-time award-winning Boulder, CO-based global technology company that empowers the growth of tours, attractions, and activities so that more people can enjoy the world. By utilizing Redeam’s technology, operators can grow both revenue and their number of sales channels through advanced features like Redeam’s channel and yieldmanagement. Redeam also enables gate-ready scannable ticketing so operators can easily process mobile or paper vouchers and eliminate the costly, antiquated, time-consuming, and all-too-common practice of manually accepting, sorting and counting physical tickets—a practice that leads to lost revenue due to fraud, long lines, and negative online reviews. For its innovative solutions, Redeam has won such awards as the 2017 Phocuswright Award for Travel Innovation and 2018 Future Travel Experience Startup Competition Winner. The company works with hundreds of resellers and serves thousands of operators globally, including one of the world’s largest attraction theme parks, major event venues and boat tours, some of the world’s most-visited museums, and attractions like CitySightseeing/Gray Line New York, Boston Harbor Cruises, National Geographic Encounter: Ocean Odyssey, and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. | $7.7M | Series A | Mar 05, 2018 |  |
| PlayFab | PlayFab is a cloud-based provider of tools and services for building and managing online games. PlayFab offers services like profile management, multiplayer servers, and matchmaking, in-game commerce and marketplaces, deep analytics, server operations, and management, and much more. The experienced team at PlayFab is dedicated to arming the mostcreative game talent with state-of-the-art backend services and tools so they can focus on the fun while staying competitive in today’s market.PlayFab brings together all the features you need, from leaderboards to virtual currency to user authentication to purchasing, all without needing to write a single line of code. It also offers a range of pricing plans to meet the diverse needs of its customers, from free plans for small indies to enterprise-level plans for major publishers. |  | Series B | Dec 01, 2016 |  |
| YCharts | YCharts is a financial software company providing investment research tools including stock charts, stock ratings, and economic indicators. It builds an ever-expanding financial and economic data set - as well as the tools to access and interpret that data - to help investors and business people make better decisions. provide institutional quality data and analytics for investors and business professionals. |  | Series C | May 18, 2015 |  |
| PlayFab | PlayFab is a cloud-based provider of tools and services for building and managing online games. PlayFab offers services like profile management, multiplayer servers, and matchmaking, in-game commerce and marketplaces, deep analytics, server operations, and management, and much more. The experienced team at PlayFab is dedicated to arming the mostcreative game talent with state-of-the-art backend services and tools so they can focus on the fun while staying competitive in today’s market.PlayFab brings together all the features you need, from leaderboards to virtual currency to user authentication to purchasing, all without needing to write a single line of code. It also offers a range of pricing plans to meet the diverse needs of its customers, from free plans for small indies to enterprise-level plans for major publishers. | $10M | Series A | Mar 09, 2015 |  |

10 of 15 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Couchsurfing](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/couchsurfing-international) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Direct Travel](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/direct-travel) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Madrona](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/madrona-venture-group) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Madrona Venture Labs](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/madrona-venture-labs) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Startup Capital Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/startup-capital-ventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Top Seeds Lab](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/top-seeds-lab) — VC Fund, 2 deals together

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## FAQ

### What does Barney Harford invest in?

Barney Harford invests primarily in Travel, Tourism and Artificial Intelligence startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 15 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### What is Barney Harford's check size?

Barney Harford typically joins rounds of $1.2M–$6M at Seed and $3M–$10M at Series A. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Barney Harford participates in.

### When did Barney Harford last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Barney Harford closed in Aug 2024. Shizune tracks 15 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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