Peter Farrell - Founder - Vessa

We’ve all been there.

A WhatsApp group with friends.

Dozens of messages.

Still no restaurant booked.

That’s the exact moment Peter Farrell decided to fix.

His startup, Vessa, is an AI booking assistant that lives inside WhatsApp. You drop it into a group chat with your friends, and suddenly the endless back-and-forth of “Where should we eat?” or “Does 7:30 work for everyone?” dissolves into something seamless. It remembers your preferences - whether that’s vegetarian menus, late seatings, or a love of tapas and books accordingly.

Over breakfast, our conversation drifted toward what really makes a startup defensible.

In today’s world, building the technology isn’t necessarily the hardest part. 

Especially in AI, the infrastructure is already out there. The real question is: where’s the moat?

For Peter, it isn’t just in the tech. It’s in acquiring customers in a way that feels natural. It’s in retention and stickiness, becoming the tool you don’t want to make dinner plans without. 

And it’s in distribution, embedding Vessa in the everyday flow of group chats rather than asking users to change their behaviour.

In industries like dining, adoption can be slow. But that’s also where the opportunity lies: to create value by smoothing out friction in the experience we already have.

Sometimes the innovation isn’t the algorithm.

It’s the way you deliver it.