We’ve been thinking a lot about the future direction of Oh Hey World. You may have read the PandoDaily recap I wrote about a month ago. Part of that, is revamping our about page message.
Old Version
Arriving in a new city is a high stress moment that involves some combination of a wide range of disconnected services. You text your parents, and call your significant other. Email your three best friends back home. Text the friend you’re staying with and shoot an email to the friend you’ve scheduled coffee with. You look at Yelp for a restaurant recommendation. Check in to Foursquare, which in turn updates Facebook and Twitter. Order a car on Uber or Lyft. Finally, you may take a peek at TripAdvisor or Google to find things to do.
In short — it’s a total mess.
And we don’t like messes. So we decided to do something about it. Oh Hey World simplifies that process to one central experience driven from the palm of your hand. Location sharing is centralized over text, email, Facebook, Twitter, and even to a WordPress.org blog. We also understand that every trip is different, and that you may not want to broadcast your location every time you leave home (no one wants to be the “jerk” bragging about all their travels) — our private and public check-ins ensure the people who need to know, know … and those who don’t, well, don’t.
Arriving in a new city doesn’t need to be a disconnected mess that stresses you out. Shouldn’t it just require one click?
We think so.
Why?
Despite the enormous sums of money that have been thrown at the travel vertical, the online travel experience has remained stagnant for over a decade. In short, the current travel experience sucks, and we see a better way. A brighter future some might say (who says that? um…us). You see, our grand vision is to break down all barriers to travel and get more people traveling – a world where everyone not only has a passport, but a stamp in it (more on that here).
Current Thoughts
Sure, the online travel experience sucks and it should be better. We KNOW it will get better. Yet we realized, we aren’t going to centralize the entire arrival experience in one go. That’s a bit ambitious, even for a venture backed company — and certainly for a bootstrapped startup such as ourselves. We thought that was the right approach way back when, when we were busy with our elaborate plot to boil the vast vast blue ocean. Hint: it didn’t work. Lucky for us, centralizing the arrival process is not truly what we are setting out to solve anyway.
The high level goal for Oh Hey World long term is, and always has been, to connect people with shared passions & interests in person.
New Version (seen here)
In the simplest sense, Oh Hey World is the site you, a changemaker, visit when you want to meaningfully connect with others who share your passions and interests.
That’s the core of our company, and it’s why we believe you’re here. In-person conversations with fellow changemakers (or email/skype/phone conversations at the very least) are the holy grail of travel; what take your experience from enjoyable to life-changing.
The communities here on Oh Hey World allow you to connect with others in a new city or town (heck, even your own town!) who want to hold great conversations with others who have that same level of passion as you.
So, what do we mean by communities?
Well, you can rally around any number of causes, ideas, or organizations and find others who share that passion. Whether it’s startups, microfinance, photography, Kiva, social entrepreneurship, Apple, or any of a thousand other topics, we believe great conversations occur when you meet others in your community.
Our dream: two people with shared interests meeting eye to eye in the same room and forming real relationships. This is where the magic in life happens. People need to look up in life from time to time to enjoy the moment, to enjoy their environment, ideas and company of others who share their interests in life.
Our aim is to build a tool that creates this value for every person using it in a fast, simple way that they can use in their own town, but especially to make new connections when they’re on the road or traveling the world (more on that here).
Why?
Nothing happens in life without great relationships. And great relationships start as connections, and turn into real trusted & valuable relationships only after in person time is added to the mix. Networking, and finding those right relationships, is a horribly inefficient process – particularly when travel is thrown into the equation. We see a better way. A brighter future some might say (who says that? um…us).
We dream of a world where passionate people seeking to make this a better world can build a community of like minded folks to help turn their ideas for change into reality. One email, coffee appointment, glass of wine, happy hour, or free place to stay at a time.
Do you give a damn?
A Bit About Us
The Oh Hey World team is a diverse group of travel-lovers who banded together under a shared vision that there was a better way to connect changemakers to each other. With the disparate ways to “do good” in this world, we were frustrated by missed connections with great people in each new city we visited.
From that frustration we connected the dots into the idea that we could built that solution. We could create a passionate community of travelers who give a damn about making this world better by simply allowing them to enter into conversations with each other on the road.
You can read more about the OHW team here.
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.
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Currently, I’m buying one way tickets around Europe and just living moment by moment! For the past two and a half months, I’ve been living in Switzerland and nannying for a lovely family here. I intend to keep traveling around, doing exchange work, teaching English, and nannying.