Category Archives: Oh Hey World Updates

Month of Microfinance and Oh Hey World

February 24, 2013 Drew Meyers 3 Comments

We’re pleased to announce our partnership with Month of Microfinance to provide the technology platform to help microfinance advocates all over the world find other microfinance advocates nearby.

To help us achieve our goal of bringing microfinance advocates together in person:

Sign up for the beta
Add “microfinance” as an interest on your profile
Take a look at other microfinance advocates here.

What exactly is Month of Microfinance?

WHAT: Month of Educational, Awareness and Fundraising events for Client-Centered Microfinance

WHEN: April 1 – April 30, 2013

WHERE: Everywhere

WHY: We are a low-budget (correct that, no-budget) grassroots movement of student organizations with a passion for microfinance and an intense commitment to learning.

HOW: Take 3 Steps

Learn about Client-Centered Microfinance

Act in support of Client-Centered Microfinance

Grow the Client-Centered Microfinance Movement

The goal is to organize the world’s microfinance community into real life communities. If that sounds ambitious, you’re right. It is. Finding others passionate about microfinance in cities all across the globe has been a personal pain point for me over the past 3 years traveling, so it’s safe to say I’ve beyond excited to have an imminent solution to this problem. Once Oh Hey World is live (read: before April), you’ll be able to sign up for an account, tag your profile as “microfinance”, check-in to your current location – and see others passionate about microfinance close by.

To help us achieve our goal of bringing microfinance advocates together in person:

Sign up for the beta
Add “microfinance” as an interest on your profile
Check in to your current city
Take a look at other microfinance advocates here.

More to come…

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.

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The Easiest Way to Update Your Current Location on Your Travel Blog

February 6, 2013 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

If you’re like me, you have a “currently in” module on your travel blog. Maybe your location is listed on your about page or maybe it’s listed on your sidebar or footer (or both). If you’re like me, you also probably still update that current location manually via html or widget text every time you change locations. If you’re like me, you forget — resulting in the current location often being out-of-date/wrong on your site.

Now, there’s an easier way for those of you with WordPress blogs. The Oh Hey World WordPress Plugin.

One click (or email or text) and you’re all set — without touching a line of code or messing with your widget settings.

Below are two examples of the plugin in use…

Example Widget

Seen on http://hmshenning.com/

Example shortcode

Seen on http://alittleadrift.com

I’m looking for 10 beta testers for our new WordPress plugin to make sure we catch all the bugs and make the product as valuable and easy to use as possible. If you want access to the plugin ahead of public release (& are willing to provide a bit of feedback), shoot me an email at drew at ohheyworld or leave a comment.

Drew Meyers

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Tech Startup Learnings: Focus and Development Priorities

January 25, 2013 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

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 Vision – Part 2

Aside January 20, 2013 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

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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The Story Behind the Original Idea of Oh Hey World

January 11, 2013 Drew Meyers 2 Comments

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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Tech Startup Learnings: Summary of Startup Weekend Seattle – TravelAngel.co

November 28, 2012 Drew Meyers 2 Comments

Last weekend, we (Eric and I) participated in the Startup Weekend Seattle. It was my 3rd Startup Weekend (Amsterdam in July and San Francisco in September) and Eric’s 2nd (Louisville). Timing for the event (November 16th-18th) turned out great, as I already had a ticket into Seattle on the 13th for the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. Further, the event was hosted by my former employer, Zillow – so was a great chance to go see some old colleagues and work on a new travel idea for a weekend.

We worked on TravelAngel.co. “Connect with a local expert in 60 seconds.”

The concept was a peer-to-peer marketplace to connect travelers with extremely knowledgeable locals, expats, or long term travelers.

The premise of the idea is that many people don’t want to spend 10 or 15 hours researching their next trip. They’d rather talk to someone knowledgeable about the area (either a current resident or traveler who has spent a lot of time in a given destination) for 30 or 60 minutes and get their specific questions answered. Heck, many of those individuals would love to pay that person to plan the whole trip for them (I just spoke with a friend last night who wants to pay someone to plan the logistics of her upcoming honeymoon).

The traditional travel agent model is broken. If I’m planning a trip to Beijing, I’d rather get advice from someone living in Beijing rather than someone sitting in an office down the street, who has likely never even been to China or maybe only been there once 4 years ago.

Similar to a site such as AirBnB, the business model would be based around transaction fees. For instance, if someone booked at $75 consultation with a Beijing expert, we’d make 15% of that as a transaction fee.

We proved this business model and actually made revenue over the course of the weekend. We connected someone we found planning a trip to Beijing in three weeks with Will Moyer, who has lived in Beijing the past two years. Thus, we earned 15% of $25 ($3.75).

Of the 35 people we surveyed, 49% said they would pay for the service. I know enough long term travelers who would be way more qualified than travel agents to give advice, and all of whom would love the chance to make some money for sharing their advice. We know both the demand and supply is out there – it’s just a matter of connecting the two.

Our team:

Eric Roland – ruby/ios architect
Yann Riche – UX
Pascal Carole – ruby
Chip Dong Lim – design
Paul Buxton – program management
Chris Kelly – marketing
Amit Deshpande – finance
Drew Meyers – 3 years of travel, ex zillow

Even though we experienced a technology fail during the final pitch — our slide deck crapped out and I had to wing the pitch with no deck for the 1st 3 minutes of the 5 minutes allotted – we took home third place and a $250 gift certificate.

At the end of the event, someone came up to me and said he wanted to sign up to be the Libya expert — which further proves the supply side of this model is out there. If you’re interested in being a local expert for a given area, shoot me an email (drew at ohheyworld) or leave a comment.

We’ve taken the website down for now, but we plan on bringing the travel angel concept back under the Oh Hey World umbrella down the line. Overall, it was a fantastic experience working with some really amazing people.

Slide deck for those interested:

Version with no videos – https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BwCtu5ygepbZMk1XN2RRVGFhcDQ
Version with videos (large file) – https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BwCtu5ygepbZcEVYWktXZVlfbVU

Drew Meyers

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When Software Bugs Result in Good

November 25, 2012 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

As you probably know if you’re following this blog – we’re in super private BETA right now. A couple weeks ago, we ran into a software bug. Don’t get me wrong, most software bugs suck — but this one actually turned out to be great.

Why?

It resulted in a concrete real world example of a user scenario that happens all the time — and it only happened because of a software glitch. I won’t get into the technicalities of the bug, but the gist of it is that the wrong people were notified of one of my check-ins.

The user scenario that came from that is close friends introducing their friends to people if they happen to know their friend is in the same location as someone they know (& the connection would be mutually valuable). In fact, I just did this tonight with a friend who is in Las Vegas this weekend, where one of my closest friends from high school runs marketing for Koi Ultra Lounge. I sent texts to both of them, and told them to meet up if they can.

The problem with those kind of connections are that they only happen when you know where your friends are traveling to and when they will be there — and whether the people you know in that location are actually going to be around. Yet these types of introductions should happen at least twice as often, except I don’t always know where my friends are and think to introduce them to other friends in that city. If I didn’t happen to be on Facebook today, I wouldn’t have known my friend is in Las Vegas for the weekend and, therefore, never would have been able to introduce her to my friend that has lived in Vegas for the past 8 (ish) years.

You and I both know an inside connection from a good friend is always welcome when traveling in a foreign city. You and I both also know there is a better way to facilitate inside connections for travelers than the current process.

And we’re going to build it.

Drew Meyers

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The Growth in International Incubators

November 24, 2012 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

I think it’s safe to say Startup Chile is the most established and successful international incubator out there — at least from what I’ve heard. As I’ve said before, it’s a brilliant strategy by the government. Pay entrepreneurs to come live in your country for 6 months, have them teach the local population what it takes to build successful companies, be part of the “story” of 100 companies every 6 months, and as a result have hundreds (thousands eventually) of well connected entrepreneurs traveling the globe who tell all their friends about Chile. It’s a proven fact that non profits’ best donors are the people that come visit because they form an emotional bond to the organization — and countries are no different. A countries most passionate advocates are going to be those who have spent a considerable amount of time as a resident. If you live in a country for 6 months (length of Startup Chile), you’re going to develop an emotional bond toward the country — I’ve spoken to about 8 or 10 entrepreneurs who have gone through Startup Chile and they all rave about Chile, so the government has succeeded on that front.

Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if 3-5 countries launched their own government-funded programs in the next 3 years. It wouldn’t surprise me if Indonesia was in that list — with Startup City Bali as the catalyst. Or Kenya with the iHub. Or Ghana with Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology. Or Israel. Or India.

Incubators are certainly not going away. I’d say we’re going to see this scene explode in the next few years, as countries and cities jump in on the quest for the best entrepreneurial & engineering talent all around the globe.

We hope we’ll be one of the 100 startups in Chile for the next class starting mid January…

Drew Meyers

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Building a “Give a Shit” Culture

November 1, 2012 Drew Meyers Leave a comment

The other day, I watched this video interview with Krisstina Wise of the Good Life Team (Chris Smith’s first Reveal video interview):

The reason I relate so well with Krisstina is because she truly “gives a damn”. I’ve spent time with her in Austin and at several conferences, and it’s blatantly obvious she cares deeply about her customers and employees. She’s a true leader with a ambitious vision of a better real estate brokerage.

Building a company is a massive endeavor. You’re faced with an endless to-do list and countless critical decisions, on a daily basis. Building a company involves a massive amount of time and, in many cases, money. It takes years to succeed.

While some succeed, most fail. By any indicator, Krisstina and Good Life Team are succeeding.

The universal indicator of success?

Across the board — successful companies, and the leaders (& employees) behind them, give a shit.

It goes without saying company culture starts at the top with its leader(s). Their work ethic and values flow through the entire organization. If they don’t give a shit, no one will.

Successful leaders give a shit about their legacy. That their customers are having a hard time solving their problems. That their website has a bug preventing someone from editing one tiny field on their profile. If it takes 3 days for their team to resolve a customer issue. If paychecks are 1 day late. If their employees don’t love their jobs. That some employees haven’t taken a single vacation day in 9 months. If their customers do not get the highest level of service, each and every time they interact with the brand. They give a shit if their product and service are not great.

In short, successful leaders give a shit about everything. And they fill their organization with others that give a shit.

Krisstina gives a shit (“damn” as she says in the video). So does Spencer Rascoff, who ran marketing while I was at Zillow (now the CEO).

That’s why they succeed.

So, what am I hungry for?

The answer is simple. People that give a shit. About anything. About everything.

Like the Good Life Team and Zillow, and every other successful company, we’re building a “Give a Shit” culture at Oh Hey World. If you fall in that bucket and love travel, let’s talk.

PS: My apologies for the profanity 🙂

Drew Meyers

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Do You Love People? Do You Love Travel?

October 22, 2012 Drew Meyers 9 Comments

Do you believe travel leads to more simplistic, and less materialistic lives? Do you believe traveling is a good thing? Do you believe we need simpler web experiences, built around less information from trusted sources rather than more information from strangers? Do you love people? Do you believe life is about more than money? Do you love traveling? Do you love technology?

We’re on the lookout for an amazing community builder to join the team…

What will that person (eventually it will be multiple) be doing?

Building strong relationships with travelers all over the globe
Helping community members get answers to whatever travel related questions they may have
Relaying feedback from the community into the product development cycle
Speaking on behalf of Oh Hey World at meetups and conferences
Online marketing (& some search engine optimization)
Finding ways to bring community members together in person
Facilitating discussions between community members online
Building a presence on the top 5 travel communities
Monitoring the Oh Hey World brand
Writing – keeping the Oh Hey World travel blog full of amazing stories
Traveling abroad — a LOT. Absolutely nothing replaces meeting people face to face

Prior community management and technology experience is a plus, but certainly not required.

I get asked all the time how to make money from abroad. This is that chance. But if making money for doing nothing is your goal (which is the sense I get from many who want to work remotely while traveling), don’t bother following up. Community building for a startup is a 24/7 job (I did it for 4 years at Zillow) — you need to live and breathe the company, which of course means believing in the grand vision of creating a travel experience based around information from those you trust.

It’s my firm belief that community building is the single most important component to building a lasting company, particularly a web brand. If an entrepreneur doesn’t understand and invest in building a community, they don’t stand a chance to succeed. This is certainly one of the most important hires for Oh Hey World. You’ll get in on the ground level, have a chance to make a lasting impact and advocate to millions of people that traveling is a viable option for every single person. Our goal is to create a world where every single person has not only a passport, but a stamp in it.

Interested? Let’s talk.

[Update: The starting point to expressing interest is to write a few guest blog posts for the Oh Hey World blog. If you’re not willing to go through that effort, then you don’t truly want this job – you likely just want to travel and earn money. That’s fine, but that’s not the type of person we’re looking for.]

[Photo via http://www.echoditto.com/]

Drew Meyers

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Exploring the Wild Blue Yonder