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 Thoughts

Be Happy With Less

September 3, 2013 Drew Meyers 4 Comments

If you are in the travel blogging community, you likely already know Anita Mac (Travel Destination Bucket List) recently committed suicide. I’m not going to write much, since I’d likely just be re-hashing everything that has already been written. Here are a few posts to read:

At the end of the day, remember to not get caught up in the thinking MORE of anything will make you happy. There is no prize out there – you have to be happy within.

Drew Meyers

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Online Travel Annoyances

Online Travel Annoyance: Reaching The Holy Grail of Travel

August 27, 2013 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

There has been a lot of money thrown at the online travel industry to make the travel experience better. Yet no one has reached the holy grail of travel. Not even close.

And that annoys me, because I know there is a better way.

I recently wrote a guest article for Tnooz on this subject. It’s message is angled toward industry veterans, but the primary goal was to get at the question of “What is the holy grail of travel (to YOU)?”

What is the holy grail of travel, for me?

No matter what city in the world I’m in, I want an app sitting in the palm of my hand that contains the knowledge, connections, and resources that a BEST FRIEND who lives in that city has at his/her disposal.

What does a best friend provide?

A friendly face to greet you at the airport.
A ride from the airport.
Free accommodation.
Answers to your questions within seconds. No need for Trip Advisor, as they already know fun things to do/see.
Someone to explore the city with.
An “in” to experiences with other interesting people in the city – usually their friends. It should go without saying that you’re likely to get along pretty well with your best friends’ friends.
Access to a car.
Great conversation.

So….what is your holy grail of travel?

[Photo via http://www.returnofthechrist.org.uk/]

Drew Meyers

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Blogging Advice

How to Make Money While Traveling?

August 26, 2013 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

There are a LOT of blog posts out there on the interwebs talking about how to make money while traveling.

But I’d urge you to change your thinkings on this subject.

Too many ask themselves “How can I make money to fund my trip?”

Instead, ask “How can I help others?”

We all know everyone has to make money to make financial ends meet to live, but you’ll find success a lot easier to come by if you think about helping others and adding value to THEIR lives rather than trying to simply enrich your own. Don’t just put out crappy blog content, offer a crappy consulting service, or write a crappy ebook — for the sake of making a few dollars for yourself if you’re not adding real tangible value to someone else’s life.

The people that take that mindset, are the ones likely to succeed. Those that don’t focus on helping others are going to be left diluting the web with more crap and an unsustainable business model once your audience realizes you are simply ripping them off for your own benefit.

[photo source]

Drew Meyers

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Oh Hey World Updates

Tech Startup Learnings: Finding a Co-Founder vs Outsourcing

August 21, 2013 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

Starting a tech startup as a business person, you’ll get all sorts of advice regarding getting the MVP for your vision built. Do you outsource? Or wait to build anything until you find the right technical partner for the long term? Everyone has an opinion, and I heard arguments from individuals firmly on both sides.

I am in the camp of finding the right long term partner. As a result, once I decided to do a tech startup in February of last year, I proceeded to spend the next 6 months scouring my entire personal and professional network for that perfect co-founder. I’m certainly glad I did, as it led me to Eric Roland.

What did that process look like for me?

A massive number of emails and phone calls (many on Skype since I was abroad much of the time) to friends, ex colleagues, and business connections. They generally followed the same pattern…

Me: “Hey, I’ve been starting down the path of building a travel startup and am in the market for a co-founder — know anyone I should be speaking with?”

Them: “Sounds like a cool project. Well, I’m not that person, but you might try talking to [insert engineer name] or [business person name who knows engineers]. I’m happy to introduce you.”

Me: “Thanks, an introduction would be amazing.”

Repeat that process, over and over and over and over. One phone call leads to another phone call leads to another phone call.

Which one of those conversations led me to Eric? One with John Rowles, whom I knew from his days blogging at BloodHound back in the heyday of the “RE.net”. He and I had met once or twice at conferences, and had some business development discussions while I worked at Zillow. He was a business guy, that knew technologists. I hadn’t spoken to him in 2-3 years, but timing worked out incredibly well as the startup Eric and he had been working on was winding down.

If you’re building a true technology company — then doing development in house is the only way to go in my mind. A technology company is not going to succeed with outsourced development, and in a perfect world, I’d rather have the right technical person at the helm from the beginning rather than trying to plug him or her in halfway through. If you’re doing a content/media business, or offline business that just needs a website, or if you need one specific product customized for your business but technology is not your core — then outsourcing is a viable option, and likely a cheaper one.

That’s just one person’s experience. Questions? Leave them in the comments…

PS – It goes without saying I owe a huge thank you to John for connecting me with Eric.

Drew Meyers

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Travel Gear

The BRCK – Every Long Term Traveler’s Best Friend

August 18, 2013 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

I went to a Ushahidi meetup on Friday here in Seattle to see Erik Hersman, whom I’ve known since back in 2006 when he was working for Zillow’s earliest competitor Eppraisal and later saw him at the iHub while my friend and I were in Nairobi in 2010.

Erik showed me the coolest piece of hardware I’ve seen in a long, long time.

The BRCK.

What is it?

The easiest, most reliable way to connect to the internet, anywhere in the world, even when you don’t have electricity

I’ve been in many places around the world where I would have loved to have one of these – and yes, Nairobi where the iHub and Ushahidi are based is one of those places. The BRCK has the chance to be every long term traveler’s best friend.

You can see the KickStarter campaign here

Congrats to Erik Hersman and the entire team for building something truly awesome that will help millions of people all over the globe stay connected to the internet even when there is no power! I can’t wait to see this go into real production.

Drew Meyers

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Inspiring Travelers

Travel Inspiration: An Interview with John Bardos

August 12, 2013 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

Today, I’m chatting with John Bardos — someone I met while in Chiang Mai early last year. In addition to travel, he’s big on social impact and leaving this world a better place, so we share a lot of common ground in that regard. Here’s a bit more about him, from his own mouth…

1) What do you do?

I blog at JetSetCitizen.com and run a teach English abroad portal at YouCanTeachEnglish.com, but I also work on non-profit projects like the UnconferenceforSocialGood.com and ABCfrog.org. Basically, I run several websites and volunteer for various projects around the world.

2) What was your biggest obstacle to traveling and how did you overcome it?

I think the developed world has a responsibility to share our good fortune and abundant wealth with the entire planet. There are still almost 2 billion people that live on less than $2 per day. I think it’s an abomination that developed countries have gotten so rich, while so many go without basic food and water. We have the resources to eradicate abject poverty, we just need the will.

I think a big part of that will be to increase global awareness. While air travel is incredibly polluting, I also think it’s important for more people to live in other countries, particularly the poorest regions of the world.

3) What are you most excited about right now?

I’m pretty excited about the Unconference for Social Good. I’ve been organizing meetups to try to get people to discuss ways to make the world better. I would love these unconferences to spread to more cities around the world.

4) What’s next for you?

My last unconference was postponed due to the state of emergency in Calgary from the recent flooding, it is now rescheduled for September 28th.

I’m also working on a social enterprise that I think has the potential to raise a lot of money for charities around the world and improve global awareness. I’m working to make that a reality now.

5) What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

I really like CharityWater.org. Providing clean drinking water to everyone on the planet is such a basic and inexpensive intervention that it’s hard to top in terms of improving the wellbeing of the poorest people in the world.

I don’t think there is any organization that is run more effectively than CharityWater.org. Everything they do is absolutely brilliant, from branding to fund raising to accountability. This is a great cause to help.

A big thanks to John for sharing his successes and projects; if you’d like to connect or find out more about John’s recent travels, you can find him on his OHW profile.

John on Twitter and Facebook
The JetSetCitizen.com blog

We regularly feature inspiring travelers who have taken the leap into travel as a part of our travel inspiration interview series. If you’re a traveler keen on being profiled here, sign up for an OHW account and fill in your profile — then shoot Shannon an email (shannon at ohheyworld dot com).

Drew Meyers

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Oh Hey World Updates

Getting Up to Speed with Oh Hey World’s History

August 8, 2013 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

Whether it be for product feedback, partnership development, or potential hires — I talk to a number of people about what we’ve been working on, and a large percentage of those discussions is spent outlining Oh Hey World’s history of how we’ve gotten to where we are today. Here are a few blog posts that you should definitely read if you’re looking to get acquainted with our company…

I’m planning to do a longer summary of learnings soon, but this will have to do for now…

Drew Meyers

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Entrepreneurship

The Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship

August 8, 2013 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

Of course I know who Richard Branson is, but I have to admit, I had no idea that the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship existed until today when I randomly saw a Tweet from my friend Bryan Byrne about a Hangout Branson was doing today with Elon Musk and entrepreneurs from the Centre of Entrepreneurship. I only caught the last 15 minutes of it, but it was just enough to see a few entrepreneurs from the Caribbean program (they also have a program in South Africa) ask several questions.

The centre focuses on four areas:

Access to Knowledge: A 12 week training programme focusing on practical business skills delivered by experts in the field as well as in workshops, 1on 1 coaching and mentorship.

Access to Networks: A platform of collaboration with peers and other national, regional and international entrepreneurs and facilitation of exposure to investors.

Access to Markets: A platform to showcase Branson Centre entrepreneurs to local and international markets.

Access to Resources: A physical hub with the infrastructure required to start, run and scale up a business including a small bank of pro bono hours with professional service providers such as legal, finance and marketing.

Here is the Hangout replay:

I love seeing programs like this focused on helping entrepreneurs in the developing world. If you know any other programs similar to this in other areas of the world, please leave them in the comments.

Note: If you’re interested in meeting others who think, go ahead and add “Branson Centre of Entrepreneruship” as an interest on your Oh Hey World profile (if you don’t already have an account, you can create one using this link). Learn more about connecting with others in the passionate communities you belong to.

Drew Meyers

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Oh Hey World Updates

The Ability to Find Nearby Members of the World’s Most Passionate Communities

August 7, 2013 Drew Meyers 1 Comment

If you are really passionate about something, then the chances are high that you’d have a good conversation with anyone else passionate about that same topic, activity, or cause.

There are a lot of passionate communities in the world. Kiva. Startup Weekend. Bold Academy. AVC. Mothers Fighting for Others. Unreasonable Institute. Startup Chile. Sailing. Cycling. TurnOn!. Foodies. Semester at Sea. The list goes on and on.

Anyone who has ever built a community knows that connecting members in person is the single most important thing you can do.

But how do you find the people in the communities you are a part of, and figure out who in that community is nearby to you in the physical world?

What’s needed is location aware community management. A directory of everyone in a given community, with proximity as the default sort order and notifications to let you know when others are nearby.

Good news. This exists already, if you know how to use it (we’ve got some UI/UX in the works to make it more obvious).

For Community Builders:

You can already use Oh Hey World to organize your community members by geography. Simply have them add your specified interest – ie “Kiva” – as an interest on their profile. If you are signed in, the results are ordered by geographic proximity to your most recent check-in.

In order to have a tag auto-created upon sign up, use these links to sign up for Oh Hey World and join the community that shares your passions.

Kiva – click here (see this updated community page)
AVC – click here (see this updated community page)
Vittana – click here (see this updated community page)
Microfinance – click here
Travel tech entrepreneurs – click here
Unreasonable Institute – click here
Startup Weekend – click here (see this updated community page)
Travel Bloggers – click here
HUB – click here (see this updated community page)

You can use these links to join the site and easily add any other interest you like onto the network. We have homeschooling travelers on the network as well as food-passionate travelers. Some involved in real estate and others keen to connect over a passion for the history and culture of a new place.

If you have a community you’d like to connect through the OHW network, just shoot us an email and we’ll work with you on the best way to onboard your users and connect them through the system.

Questions? Shoot them over to: drew at ohhheyworld dot com. Or leave them in the comments, we’d love to hear what you think.

Note: If you want people to join your community, you can use the following URL structure to auto create any tag upon a user registration – http://www.ohheyworld.com/?registration_code=0d8d9476-aafb-4510-8754-12e316e98fcc&organization_tags=travel%20bloggers. Just replace the “=travel%20bloggers” with whatever tag you want to add, for instance “=startup%20abroad”.

Drew Meyers

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Interview Series

An Interview with Wayne Lopez

August 5, 2013 Drew Meyers 1 Comment

Today we’re talking to Wayne Lopez, the founder of Ayoopa; a site that allows you to rent travel gear locally from other individuals. One of our primary goals at Oh Hey World is to connect like-minded people with each other. Being a co-founder of a tech company in the travel industry, one of my personal interests is learning more about other entrepreneurs building travel tech companies. I ran into Wayne in the comments of Tnooz a few weeks ago, and reached out to him to have him answer a few questions.

Without further adieu…

1) What do you do?

At Ayoopa we INVIGORATE LIFE! It’s an online rental marketplace for travel stuff on-demand, with stuff being a scientific term meaning gear, equipment, things. We curate our supply of travel stuff from local people who want to remove the clutter in their life while at the same time making money on their unused goods. Think of it as rental consignment. Then we make it easy for people traveling (adventurers, active lifestyle, traveling Moms) to get quality travel goods for rent through our website.

2) Why do you do what you do?

We’re true believers in collaborative consumption. Why keep buying when there are goods already around you. What we’ve seen is that in the travel space, goods can be quite costly. Sometimes it precludes you from enjoying your travel. You have to worry about storage, the environment and even getting true value from something used infrequently. We think in many cases, renting is a better option. Our goal with Ayoopa is to make it convenient to get access to goods only needed for temporary use.

3) What are you most excited about right now?

We’re excited that collaborative consumption is really taking the U.S. by storm. Parts of Europe, Australia and South America are further along in this concept. With companies like Airbnb, RelayRides and TaskRabbit, it’s making it more acceptable to use similar services like Ayoopa.

4) What’s next for you?

Right now we are focused on the Houston area. We find there are a ton of casual adventurers who live here. But we’ve also found that there are a lot of business travelers who come to Houston for conferences, trade shows and general business travel, so we’ve spun up our first mobile app. It allows them to reserve items they need that they either forgot or didn’t want to carry with them on their travels. Pretty soon we expect to expand to Austin and San Antonio then other strategically targeted cities throughout the U.S.

5) What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

I’ve been involved with Junior Achievement and other programs to teach under privileged kids about business, economics and entrepreneurship. I think it’s also important to stress the role technology has in our everyday lives. So I continue to participate in these types of programs so kids can increase their awareness and get opportunities that don’t always exist in their communities.

If you’re keen to connect with Wayne further, you can find his current location on his OHW profile. A big thanks to Wayne for sharing his motivations and current projects. If you’d like to connect on social media with Wayne:

Ayoopa on Twitter and Facebook

Wayne on Twitter

We’ll be featuring a number of other travel tech entrepreneurs in the coming weeks. If you are an entrepreneur in the travel vertical, and want to be profiled, please sign up for an OHW account and add “travel tech entrepreneurs” as an interest on your profile — then shoot me an email (drew at ohheyworld).

Drew Meyers

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1) What do you do?

2) What was your biggest obstacle to traveling and how did you overcome it?

3) What are you most excited about right now?

4) What’s next for you?

5) What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

1) What do you do?

2) Why do you do what you do?

3) What are you most excited about right now?

4) What’s next for you?

5) What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

Exploring the Wild Blue Yonder