Paul Breitenbach is a co-founder of Priceline, the online travel company that became one of the top-performing stocks on the Nasdaq. Paul joins Adam to share his unique journey – from a working musician on the Jersey Shore to co-founding one of the most successful internet companies of all time – and his best lessons and advice. Paul and Adam discuss a wide range of topics: coachability, innovation, team building, marketing, and much more.
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Read the full transcript of Adam’s conversation with Paul Breitenbach.
Episode Summary
Paul Breitenbach grew up on the Jersey Shore as a working professional musician, joining a musicians’ union at 13 or 14. His clearest early lesson in adding value came from an ordinary paper route he and his brother ran, the largest in their town, where Paul offered a premium delivery option that placed the newspaper exactly where a customer wanted it. When an elderly woman’s grown children asked if he would personally carry the paper inside and hand it to her, he agreed without hesitation. The relationship that followed helped her stay in her own home for another seven years, and her family later helped pay for part of Paul’s college education as a thank you. He switched from studying music to studying technology within weeks of starting college, after a high school guidance counselor had earlier refused to let him try a business-shadowing program because he was, in the counselor’s eyes, just a musician.
Paul rates coachability as one of the most important traits a leader can have, describing himself as someone who strives for a perfect score on what he calls his own coachability index. He pairs that openness with a mentor’s warning to be careful who you actually ask for feedback, since not everyone offering an opinion has the standing to give a useful one. He compares an effective team to an orchestra, where one person’s weakness becomes someone else’s strength, rather than a group of people who all look and think alike.
That philosophy shaped Priceline from the start. Paul credits much of the company’s success to founder Jay Walker’s willingness to bring in people who were better than the founding team at specific things, rather than protecting anyone’s turf. When the company’s original pick for a spokesperson, Bill Cosby, turned the offer down, Paul and his colleagues turned to a fully retired William Shatner instead, writing every word Shatner said on camera for years and helping revive his career in the process.
Paul now runs an AI company called R4 Technologies, whose name stands for right product, right consumer, right time, right price, built specifically so people without a data science background can use predictive AI themselves. One current application uses the technology to identify some of the 30 to 40 percent of America’s food supply that goes to waste and route it to SNAP recipients, so that 300 dollars in benefits can functionally buy 600 dollars of groceries.
What You’ll Learn
- Why Paul believes real career satisfaction only comes from adding something genuinely new, not from being highly skilled at repeating what already exists.
- Why Paul insists on doing the right thing even with AI-generated music, arguing that building on someone’s work is different from simply taking it.
- Why Paul says today’s marketing has to be built around individual need-states rather than one message for everyone, a shift he contrasts with Priceline’s original brand promise.
- Why Paul’s Little League team, always the last pick and short on obvious talent, still made the championship game three years running by playing to each kid’s actual strengths.
- Why Paul tells kids overwhelmed by social media negativity to be ruthless about cutting out the non-believers in their lives and deliberately seek out the people who do believe in them.
- Why Paul treats working himself out of a job as a normal part of a healthy career, rather than staying comfortable in one role indefinitely.
About Paul Breitenbach
Paul Breitenbach is a co-founder of Priceline, the online travel company that became one of the top-performing stocks on the Nasdaq and, by his account, one of the best performers of the past 25 years. He grew up on the Jersey Shore and worked as a professional musician as a teenager before shifting his focus to technology in college. Paul served as Priceline’s Chief Marketing Officer, where he helped build the company’s brand and led the effort to bring on William Shatner as its longtime spokesperson. He is now the founder and CEO of R4 Technologies, an AI company focused on predictive optimization for uses including reducing food waste.
Related Episodes
- Episode 348: Waymo Founder Sebastian Thrun
Sebastian built a decision system around ownership and real-time data rather than gut instinct alone, similar territory to how Paul describes R4’s predictive AI matching supply and demand. - Episode 346: Techstars Co-Founder and CEO David Cohen
David hires first for intrinsic motivation over credentials, a similar bet to Paul’s insistence on bringing in people better than the founding Priceline team at specific things. - Episode 337: Headspace CEO Tom Pickett
Tom moved deliberately from fighter jets to technology to mental health, a similar comfort with reinvention to how Paul describes working himself out of jobs throughout his own career. - Episode 332: LPL Financial CEO Rich Steinmeier
Rich quotes Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry’s philosophy of building a system around talented individuals, the same orchestra-like complementary team Paul says made both his Little League team and Priceline succeed. - Episode 336: Former NFL Star Gerald McCoy
Gerald built a media career on doing things differently rather than taking the obvious path, a similar instinct to Paul’s insistence that real satisfaction comes only from adding something genuinely new.
