Today we’re talking to Sarah Neill, the founder of DOODAD; which delivers
“INTERNATIONAL DATA THAT YOU WON’T HATE”. 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. The other day, I saw a tweet from my friend Jessie Speilvogel that included #travel and #tech to Sarah — and instantly sent out a tweet to Sarah to see if she wanted to be profiled here. I’m happy she obliged.

If you’re keen to connect with Sarah further, you can find her current location on her OHW profile.

Here is a bit about here…

1. What do you do?

We give travelers access to mobile internet they don’t have to worry about.

DOODAD is a data-only travel SIM card, that when in your smartphone or tablet will give you access to pre-paid data in 54 countries. You simply buy DOO-DATA, which lasts a year, and can be used in any of our countries. There are 4 rates, starting at 30c/MB, depending on which country you are in.

And because not many people understand how much data they want to use, we let people choose a daily budget instead. This way, there’s no scary surprise bill when you return home, and people can stay in control of what they spend.

2. Why do you do what you do?

We rely on data for a lot of things. Business, getting directions, finding where to eat, and staying in touch with people who matter. So we found it odd that when traveling internationally, data was complicated. And inaccessible. And freaking expensive.

Around 75% of people turn off ‘data roaming’ when they travel, and literally fall off the grid as soon as they leave their hotel Wi-Fi. We knew there had to be a better way. So we started DOODAD.

3. What are you most excited about right now?

Being data-only is a really new idea within Telco. But, with VoIP apps like Skype, Viber, WhatsApp people don’t need traditional voice and sms, to be able to speak to, or message people. I really believe that within the next 5 years, everything will be data only, and phone numbers as we know them won’t exist. It’s an evolving market, and really exciting to be a part of.

4. What’s next for you?

So, so much. In the next month we’ll launch our nano SIM (so people don’t have to cut our SIM down to fit their iPhone 5), start shipping internationally (at the moment we are just USA/Canada), and we’ll be announcing some more countries to add to our coverage. There’ll also be a few price drops too, in case that’s not enough.

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

The St. Luke Foundation in Haiti is one in particular which I think is pretty incredible, I was exposed to it through a friend who volunteers her photography skills to charities around the world. She’s done quite a bit in Africa, and recently in Haiti, where she worked with St.Luke.

I’m a big believer in using the skills you have to help others. I think my friend is a great example of how you can do this, to provide invaluable resources.

A big thanks to Sarah for sharing her current passions and projects, if you’d like to connect or find out more about Sarah:

DOODAD on Twitter or Facebook

---

We’ll be featuring a number of other travel tech entrepreneurs in the coming weeks as a part of our interview series. If you’re 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 dot com).