All posts by Drew Meyers

Drew Meyers is the co-founder of Horizon & Oh Hey World. He worked for Zillow from September of 2005 to January of 2010 on the marketing team managing Zillow’s API program and various online partnerships. Founder of Geek Estate Blog, a multi-author blog focused on real estate technology for real estate professionals, and myKRO.org, a blog devoted to exploring the world of microfinance. As passionate as you get about travel.

Travel Plans

My United States To-Visit List

January 29, 2013 Drew Meyers 0 Comments

I’ve been all over the United States. When I was young, we took roadtrips acorss the entire Western half of the United States. One year, a drive from Washington to Nebraska, with stops in Yellowstone and the Black Hills. One year to Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and New Mexico — with the Golden Arches being the big attraction. Christmas in the Florida Keyes about 7 years ago. Vegas for New Years. New York & Boston multiple times. San Francisco and Southern California more times than I can count. At Zillow, I traveled throughout the country during the height of the REBar Camp movement. A road trip to Texas in 2010. Portland numerous times.

You get the picture.

But it’s a big freaking country, and I haven’t been everywhere yet.

Where is the one spot I desperately need to get to?

That’s simple.

New Orleans — for Mardi Gras and/or JazzFest.

mardi_gras_street

Photo via http://www.1000lonelyplaces.com/

What other locations & events are on my short list?

Coachella — I’ve heard so many amazing things about it from many of my friends who have attended.
SantaCon in NYC — running around the streets of NYC with thousands of fellow Santas? How can that NOT be fun?
Maine – I’ve heard the country side in Maine is beyond gorgeous.
The South – aside from Miami & the Florida Keyes, I’ve never set foot anywhere in the South. Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina etc. That needs to change.
The Appalachians in North Carolina – I’ve heard they are gorgeous and well worth seeing.
Alaska – need I even explain?

Of course, I knocked Burning Man off the list this year (& it was awesome) — that one had been at the top for several years.

What are you must visit places in your home country?

Drew Meyers

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Festivals

My Thoughts on the SnowGlobe Music Festival in Lake Tahoe

January 28, 2013 Drew Meyers 1 Comment

10 friends and I spent New Year’s in Lake Tahoe, attending the SnowGlobe music festival.

The good

The lineup was top notch – including Deadmau5 and Chromeo.
I’m going to go on a limb and say we had the most awesome costumes there (we were 11 Yetis strong).
Cold – I’ll admit, an outdoor music festival in the snow was a pretty awesome experience.
Close friends – I went with a really tight group of friends, which is what matters to me.

The bad

The shuttle lines – the first night, was horrendously unorganized trying to get back to town. The 2nd and 3rd nights were better, but not totally seamless by any stretch of the imagination.
Cold – the 2nd night, it was 7 degrees. Now, that’s cold.
The crowd was largely a younger crowd, mostly under the age of 23. Don’t get me wrong, we certainly weren’t the oldest people there (the 11 of us ranged from 28-30) — but were on the upper end of the spectrum.
There were a few costumes in the crowd, but by and large, cool costumes were few and far between. For those who have been to Burning Man — it’s not even a comparison.
Tahoe Casinos on New Year’s Eve – walking around the casinos after the show ended the last night exposed me to a world I’ve been out of for a long time. The party scene for the 18-23 year old crowd. Was that what I was like when I was 18, 19, 20, 21? Scary.

The ultimate question – would I go back again?

The answer to that is probably no. Given the choice, there are other festivals and locations I’d rather try next time. I would, however, go back to Burning Man.

Official Recap Video

Drew Meyers

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Videos

El Teide

January 27, 2013 Drew Meyers 0 Comments

Take a look at the gorgeous scenery and skies of El Tiede, a mountain in Spain, in this video filmed in 2011…

Here are a couple photos I found online

Source: http://redius.deviantart.com/

Source: http://magazine.magix.com/

Drew Meyers

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Oh Hey World Updates

Tech Startup Learnings: Focus and Development Priorities

January 25, 2013 Drew Meyers 0 Comments

At any tech startup, product ideas are free flowing. The grand vision is always huge. Development & design resources are hard to come by. What are the next 3 features to build? In what order? Fix bugs or build new features and punt the bugs until enough users scream that you have to address it?

Development resources are a delicate balance, particularly early on. I thought product priorities was hard when I worked at Zillow and we had 10-15 engineers fairly early on. Now, we’re building an entire site with 1 engineer and 1 designer, so priorities and focusing on the right features is beyond critical.

My general advice?

Focus on the features needed to nail very specific user scenarios of your initial target audience. In some cases, prioritizing strategic features or custom work for specific potential influential users, clients, partners, or investors ahead of mass user features is the right decision. Don’t spend development resources on features that don’t add huge value but at hugely time consuming from a development perspective. Lastly, trust your gut.

How do you prioritize?

Drew Meyers

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Oh Hey World Updates

Oh Hey World Vision – Part 2

Aside January 20, 2013 Drew Meyers 0 Comments

Any entrepreneur will tell you that visions, and how those are articulated, get refined over time. We’re no different. The vision we’re chasing is largely the same as I mentioned in Part 1, yet the way we’re articulating it has changed as a result of dozens of discussions with avid as well as infrequent travelers. At this stage, shifting is a good thing — if you set your product and messaging in stone too early and ignore your users’ feedback, that’s a recipe for disaster in a startup.

In part 1, our over-arching goal was to “connect you with nearby people and things that are relevant to you.” That gets at the main component, but we’ve decided to really focus on the people aspect of that vision. We’ve shifted a bit, and the vision now centers around “Giving you the Inside Connection to Your Next Destination“. A great inside connection is certainly different for everyone. They are based on friendships, passions, experiences, and values. Our premise is that if we connect you with the right individual(s), whether that be leading up to your trip or on the ground once you get there, you’ll get the information you need. Travelers don’t ultimately want to spend hours researching every aspect of their trip; they’d rather speak to an individual extremely knowledgeable about the area(s) where they are going and get their specific questions and concerns addressed quickly. A knowledgeable expert to cut through the information overload problem is worth money to a large segment of travelers.

We think “LinkedIn for Travel” is a great analogy. When I think about LinkedIn, I think about it as a central network of all my business connections who can help me either get a job (when I wanted one), strike a business development partnership for my employer (when I had one), or grow my own business. Travel is an adventure. We are focused on connecting you with the people who will make your adventure as awesome as possible.

Drew Meyers

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Oh Hey World Updates

The Story Behind the Original Idea of Oh Hey World

January 11, 2013 Drew Meyers 1 Comment

Many people ask me where the original idea for Oh Hey World came from, so I thought I’d share it with those of you who I haven’t spoken with on the phone or in person.

OHWicon

The summer of 2010 was hands-down the best summer of my life. In early January of 2010 over beers in Belltown, my friend Ashley and I both decided to leave our jobs and spend the summer in Greece. Over the next month, we recruited my close high school buddy Dan (who was already in Europe) and two of our college friends, Chris and Brooke, to spend the summer with us. We decided on Santorini as a destination, and more specifically Perissa Beach, a place both Jerry and I loved when we traveled there on our trek around Europe in 2005 (Jerry actually took a job & stayed 5 weeks)

Ashley, Dan, Chris, Brooke, and I arrived in Santorini mid May and left early August. There were about 15 others between the ages of 18 and 24 who lived all summer on Perissa Beach with us – most worked at restaurants, bars, or hotels and just wanted to spend the summer somewhere other than home. The group consisted of a few Kiwis, Aussies, Irish, Canadians, and British. We had an amazing community of people to hang out with every single day. But let’s face it. No matter how much you enjoy your friends company, you want some variety every now and then. Sure, we met some awesome travelers who were in Santorini for only few days — but it was just those who we happened to meet at Atlas, Beach Bar, or by walking across the street to Youth Hostel Anna and drinking with the people outside. I guarantee there were some awesome travelers who visited Santorini in the summer of 2010 who had a lot in common that I never met for no other reason than I didn’t know they were there. One particular use case I wanted solved was an easy way to find others passionate about microfinance.

Hence, the idea for Oh Hey World was sitting in the back of my mind the entire summer…

Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was some way to get notified when like minded travelers arrived in Santorini to share a beer, sunset, or meal with?

Santorini is certainly my favorite place on earth — and, no surprise, it’s because of the people I went with and those I met while there. Yet it could have been even better if there was some way to meet fellow travelers who had common passions, interests, or experiences.

So, 3 years later, the frustration will finally be alleviated. Now, I guess I need to go back to Santorini for another summer to test it out…

Drew Meyers

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Travel Plans

Headed to New York City, and A Bit of History

January 8, 2013 Drew Meyers 6 Comments

I’m headed to the Big Apple this coming Sunday night on a redeye to spend a week. I specifically chose a redeye so that I didn’t miss the Seahawks play-off game this coming Sunday in the event they beat the Redskins. Turns out I made a wise choice, as they did indeed beat the Redskins and on Sunday thus are playing the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday.

Why am I going to New York?

Aside from the fact that I still want to move there, I’m going to see some old real estate friends (& a few new ones) in town for the Real Estate Connect conference, attend RE BarCamp NY, meet a few travel bloggers & an up-and-coming consultant/blogger, and talk to a several potential investors for Oh Hey World. I’ll be in town until at least the 22nd, so let me know if you’ll be passing through the city that week!

For those interested parties, here’s a bit of a history lesson about New York with video footage from 1949. Enjoy!

[Video H/T to Nicole Beauchamp on Facebook]

Drew Meyers

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Accommodations

The Ultimate Guide to Housesitting

December 21, 2012 Drew Meyers 0 Comments

Ultimate Guide to Housesitting

I met Dani and Jess (the Globetrottergirls) in Chiang Mai earlier this year and could instantly tell they were full of life and energy to explore the world, and as genuine as you get. Since they departed in March (I think?), they have pretty much traveled around the entire world by housesitting, and now they’ve written a book so others can learn how to do the same.

I plan on writing a book someday, and know that it’s going to be a massive commitment of time when I do. Congrats for a job well done!

For those interested in housesitting, you can buy the Kindle version for $9.99 on Amazon – Break Free: The Ultimate Guide to Housesitting (affiliate link)

The description on Amazon:

The housesitting movement is quietly exploding…

People around the world are discovering this unique win-win arrangement where people can live free rent in exchange for caring for someone’s home and pets.

But housesitting is so much more than that! It allows you to travel the way you always imagined you would, but never knew how to make it work.

Ever have a dream trip not turn out how you expected? Like a trip to Paris you thought would be filled with wine, art and sophistication, but when you finally got there, you were crammed into the only generic hotel you could afford, slogging from museum to museum with blistered feet and a sunburnt nose, not feeling very sophisticated at all.

Imagine instead you spent a few weeks housesitting in a luxury condominium in a quiet neighborhood, entirely rent-free. You walk the dog to the corner bakery where they know you by name, and no worries if you don’t get to the museum today. You can always go tomorrow.

If not Paris, this could be anywhere, from two months on a private beach in Mexico, a few weeks in your own Manhattan apartment to a luxury cottage in the Scottish Highlands.

You don’t have to be a Fortune 500 CEO, a rock star or a billionaire to travel the world this way.

Break Free authors Jessica Ainlay and Dani Heinrich should know. Since 2010, they have been traveling around the world, housesitting in dream locations across four continents, like a Caribbean beach house in Mexico, an LA apartment right in Hollywood, a B&B in Tuscany, a house in northern Thailand and a luxury condo in the most exclusive neighborhood in Santiago de Chile, to name just a few.

Even if you own a home, you can still escape on extended getaways. There is no need to feel frustrated about focusing on climbing the career ladder, buying a house, but deep inside sill wishing you taken off on an adventure after college.

You can still visit the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat, stop off in Tokyo and spend a few months traveling around Australia – all while knowing your house and pets are in the good hands of the housesitter you handpicked before you left. You just need to get started with housesitting.

Break Free: The Ultimate Guide to Housesitting has over 100 pages packed with everything you will ever need to know about housesitting. It addresses concerns that might hold you back, such as the safety of having a stranger in your home and answers questions like ‘what is it like to live in someone else’s house?’ Most importantly Break Free guides you through the entire housesitting process from:

1. How to find housesitting opportunities
2. How to find the right housesitter.
3. How to get a housesit, even with no experience
4. How write a stellar profile
5. How to get your housesitter up to speed before leaving for your trip.
6. How to deal with issues of homeowner’s insurance, contracts and emergencies

Also included is an in-depth expert analysis of over 20 housesitting websites including membership rates and pros and cons of each, plus samples of profiles and applications to model yours after and detailed checklists to use during housesits.

Throughout the book, the authors also share many of their own personal stories, offering readers an inside look into the world of housesitting.

As a special gift, those who purchase Break Free will find a discount membership coupon inside for one of the most popular housesitting websites, meaning the book practically pays for itself.

By the end of Break Free you’ll wonder why in the world you wouldn’t get involved in housesitting and you will have all the tools to start right away!

I haven’t bought or read the book yet, but plan to. That said, I trust Dani and Jess enough to recommend this as a valuable resource for long term travelers.

Drew Meyers

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Travel Thoughts

The “Overview Effect”, and Travel

December 20, 2012 Drew Meyers 1 Comment

The Bigger Picture

I’d encourage you to watch the “Overview Effect” below — and think about it in a travel context (I’m assuming you are a traveler if you’re reading this blog in the first place)…

As Jodi Ettenberg says,

That you cannot ignore the happenings in other places, or stick your head in the sand, because it’s too late – you’ve stepped away and looked at the planet in a different light. While far less vivid or spectacular than a space trip, travel does tend to push people to think about the forest through the trees and to constantly pin current observations against past experiences. We all do this, naturally. But I think that the more you see, the more you have to compare ‘against’, which then permanently alters your views of the planet and of its people. The ultimate example of this, of course, is seeing it all from above, an orb glowing in the darkness of space.

I believe Jodi is right. As a fellow traveler who has spent significant amounts of time outside the confines of the United States, it’s too late for me to bury my head in the sand regarding the realities of the world we live in. My views have permanently been altered as a result of the people, places, and things I’ve experienced traveling.

What would happen if every single person on the planet were forced to spend a month in Kenya and a month in China (note there is no specific reason behind choosing those two specific countries as examples)? Or if a 3-4 month stint abroad was required to graduate from college? Or if you got kicked out of the country for 2 months when you graduated high school? At a minimum, what if there was a requirement that every person who seeks to hold a public office has to have spent 3 months out of the country?

Those may sound extreme, particularly coming from someone who believes everyone should be free to make their own decisions in life — but unfortunately many people think meddling in other people’s business is their right – which leads to wars, treaties, loans, and contracts in the name of protecting our national best interests (read: oil prices). If people saw what everyday life consists of for half of the world’s population, maybe they’d stop acting out of self interest and work to improve the greater good, with everyone’s input? Maybe people would stop striving for material possessions and instead focus on relationships and enjoying what they already have?

I know I’m on the extreme of anti-consumerism; I freely admit it. I firmly believe friends and real-world experiences make you happy, not physical possessions. For me, travel was the catalyst for that realization.

Drew Meyers

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Videos

Where the Hell is Matt?

December 11, 2012 Drew Meyers 0 Comments

Matt dances everywhere in the world. Where has he been in 2012? Everywhere…

Truthfully, though Matt’s dancing has been a worldwide phenomenon for several years, I had never come across any of Matt’s videos until a couple months ago while in Boston with Brad and Chelsea. I guess I need to travel more.

Drew Meyers

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Exploring the Wild Blue Yonder