The GuideHop Blog

The go-to resource for guides, adventurers, and all practitioners of the GuideHop way.

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GuideLight: Brewpubs & Pedicabs, a New Austin Pastime

Each week in "In the GuideLight," we speak with guides about their activities, their interests, and what their guiding experience means to them.

In our inaugural interview Nathan L, owner Austin's Metrocycle Pedicabs, gives us an insider's perspective into Austin's competitive cycle rickshaw industry. We also learn about the health benefits of beer and find out one of the biggest perks of being a pedicab driver in Austin, TX: picking up celebrity fares. Out of all the things to do in Austin, taking a ride in a pedicab is a must. Just ask the Naked Cowboy.

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Sam: Beer and pedicabs: what’s the connection?

Nathan L: There are a lot of bars spread over a large area in Austin. So anyone that's ever been out drinking in Austin will have seen or taken a pedicab. Its just a fun and fast way to get around downtown. So beer and pedicabs has always gone together. The difference is now we're offering a daytime tour of breweries. There are a lot of new and innovative micro breweries in Austin, so I thought it'd be great to offer a pedicab tour that enables customers to sample these beers. The response from customers has been really positive... I guess it helps that they're drinking free beer!

S: Free beer is a wonderful thing. So is getting a discount on the activity. Lately you've reduced the price of your tours to generate some interest. Do you think that's part of the reason you got to the be the number two guide on the site?

NL: I had no idea I was number two on GuideHop. Honestly I think Aaron pulled a favor for me.... but I’m not sure.

S: Aaron is still number one and has been for a while. You have any plans for taking the throne? 

NL: Wow. Aaron lives and breathes adventure. He travels a lot and is constantly doing some fun outdoor activity. He definitely poses a challenge, but he doesn't drink alcohol. That's probably the only advantage I have over him.

S: You don't use beer to carbo-load before a day of pedicabbing do you?

NL: Well beer is made from grain so it’s got the healthy carbs.

S: Of course. That's why I drink beer... Anyway, next question: Who is the most famous person you or any of the Metrocycle drivers ever drove? And if you could choose any person (dead or alive) to have as a fare, who would it be?

NL: We've definitely ridden a few celebrities: Bill Murray, Steve-O, Johnny Knoxville, Owen Wilson, The Naked Cowboy, Wavy Gravy, Gwar, to name a few. I think it'd be cool to give a ride to Warren Buffet and receive a million dollar tip.

S: I like the idea that Warren Buffet walks around with millions of dollars cash just to tip people. His valet would be a billionaire. But barring the million dollar tip possibility, what are your plans for the future of your pedicab business?

NL: He could just give me a million dollar tip in stock market advice. Hehe.

When I started pedicabbing there were only about 70 pedicabs. In the last few years this number has swollen to 375!! 100 pedicabs were added just prior to this year's SXSW. So to be honest I'm holding back from doing anything and just watching to see how the pedicab market reacts to this.

I'm also looking at alternatives to solely working the nightlife crowd, hence the brewery tour and the Austin tour.

S: Have you looked into alternative forms of transportation? Like a Tuk Tuk powered by animal waste? 

NL: Wow thats pretty cool. I should get on that poop train.

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If you have any ideas about the future of pedicabbing, let Nathan and the rest of us know on our Facebook or tell it to @GuideHop.

-Sam

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This weekend GuideHop's Austin Community Manager Aaaron Bell hosted hosted an underwater engagement. The groom to be hid a treasure box on the bottom of a river and the couple "found it" together on their dive.

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Press Release: Thriving Dallas Startup GuideHop.com Announces Ustream Founder as Advisor

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thriving Dallas Startup, GuideHop.com, Announces Ustream Founder As Advisor

DALLAS, Texas (April 26, 2012) – GuideHop today announced that Brad Hunstable, co-founder and CEO of Ustream (www.ustream.com), the leader in live online video, will join Guidehop.com’s advisory board. Hunstable will bring his product strategy, business development, and operational experience and expertise in leading successful web startups to an advisory role at GuideHop. This marks a significant step in Hunstable's ongoing efforts to build a thriving startup community in his hometown, Dallas, Texas. Ranked among 50 "Digital Power Players" by the Hollywood Reporter in 2010, Variety also listed Brad as 1 of 25 Visionaries, Innovators and Producers for his work at Ustream through the Vanity Producers Guild of America Digital 25. As co-founder and CEO of Ustream, he is responsible for guiding the company's strategy and growth through partnerships, technology innovation and product architecture. His vast experience in these areas as well as his extensive industry contacts, are major assets to Guidehop as the new startup moves forward. “There is a flourishing ecosystem of entrepreneurial communities in Texas and tremendous opportunities to develop more incredible innovations that will change the way we work, play, and live” said Brad Hunstable, co-founder and CEO of Ustream. “I’m excited to be part of the Guidehop team and look forward to contributing to their growth and development.” GuideHop allows locals to post their own guided activities for curious experience-seekers to book. Offerings ranging from urban unique to out-there outdoorsy are welcome, including spelunking to an art gallery in Austin and discovering local music in Dallas. The site (Guidehop.com) launched just last October and has found relative success with hundreds of activities posted across the globe. “Brad is an integral part in  devising Guidehop’s scalable business plan for 2012 -2013, advising on business development strategies including strategic partnerships, sales, product enhancements, and marketing plans to lead more widespread adoption and awareness” says Ryan Schmitz, CEO of Guidehop.com. "We are excited to have Brad Hunstable join GuideHop as an advisor. His track record of successful growth in a competitive marketplace makes him an incredible asset to our company." This is just one step in Hunstable's mission to help bolster the Dallas Fort Worth startup community, and to help establish the city as a major hub for innovation. "Dallas is my town and web startups are what I do. Nothing would make me happier than seeing my city thrive in an ideas-based economy," said Brad Hunstable. GuideHop, which launched in Q4 of 2011 currently offers approximately 1000 unique activities around the globe. ###

GuideHop, Inc. A Dallas, TX based company, is a peer-to-peer marketplace allowing locals to share their own unique tours and activities with an online community of experience seekers. The company strives to change the way people discover and share new adventures while empowering local experts to get paid for doing what they love. About Ustream: Ustream, Inc. is the leader in live and interactive video streaming. The interactive platform connects broadcasters and viewers of unlimited size through innovative technology including co-hosting video features, IRC chat, Facebook, and Twitter. Ustream's free and premium solutions allow any broadcaster to create their own customizable channel with robust social and notification features to enhance visibility and virality across multiple platforms. In addition to activating the embeddable features on external websites, users are able to broadcast and view content while interacting in real-time directly from mobile phone devices, tablets, streaming players, smart TVs, and more. The company attracts millions of users ranging from music artists, celebrities, politicians, athletes, corporate executives, animal enthusiasts, and gamers which has contributed to Ustream's Guinness World Record for the “Most Content Ingested by An Online Video Service”. For more information about Ustream, visit www.ustream.com and follow us on our socials: Twitter (@Ustream); Facebook (facebook.com/Ustream). For more information or to schedule an interview please contact: Jeremy Roberts [email protected]

[guidehop-blog]

Guidehop.com lets anyone become a tour guide - Dallas Morning News

Stewart F. House/Special Contributor

Darren Woodson and Jeremy Roberts, two of Guidehop.com’s founders, stand in front of Roberts’ mother’s backyard chicken coop in McKinney. Roberts offers a tour of local chicken coops on the Dallas-based startup’s peer-to-peer activities site.

By SHERYL JEAN

Staff Writer

[email protected]

Published: 25 April 2012 06:24 PM

Startup Guidehop.com thinks the answer to finding the best local mountain bike trails or Texas brewery tours is in your backyard.

The Dallas-based peer-to-peer online marketplace lets people give and book tours and guided activities to each other.

The site can turn anyone with knowledge of a place or a hobby into a tour guide. Users can search the site by city — from your hometown to your next vacation destination — to learn what’s going on.

The booming peer-to-peer Internet space includes startups Airbnb , which lets users book vacations in other people’s homes, and Kickstarter, a peer-to-peer funding site. One distinguishing factor is that Guidehop helps people connect to expand their real-life experiences.

Former Dallas Cowboys player Darren Woodson and four others started Guidehop in November. He considers himself a rookie in the tech startup world.

“The hardest thing about it is that my passion is Guidehop, but football is something I’ve done since I was 7 years old,” said Woodson, who is both an angel investor and an NFL analyst for ESPN. “At this point in my life, I want to get involved in technology and do something different besides football.”

Guidehop co-founder and chief executive Ryan Schmitz got the idea for Guidehop a year ago after a bad travel experience. He wanted to backpack the Trans-Zion Trek, a 47-mile hike in southern Utah, but didn’t have a buddy and couldn’t find a guide. Someone answered an ad he posted on Craigslist, but the person was so inexperienced that they never went on the hike, he said.

“It was an absolute nightmare,” said Schmitz, who lives in Connecticut. “I said there’s got to be a better way.”

Schmitz met Woodson and Jeremy Roberts of Dallas while involved with another startup a couple of years ago. They came together again — with Tait Grove and Jeff Louden — to develop Guidehop.

Guidehop has about 1,000 activities for sale, ranging from a haunted house tour in McKinney to a tour of the 2012 Summer Olympic sites in London. Prices range from $5 to $600 for a group.

Even Guidehop’s founders offer tours, such as Roberts’ two-hour tour of backyard chicken coops in McKinney for $10 a person. Woodson once led a tour of Cowboys Stadium.

Guidehop is focused on Dallas, Austin and Chicago, but plans to add other cities, Schmitz said. For each booked tour, Guidehop charges a 3 percent processing fee to the guide and a fee of $5 or 15 percent of the tour price to the consumer.

Bookings have grown 20 percent each month since November, Schmitz said. If that growth continues, Guidehop can be cash-flow positive in 18 months.

Woodson, Schmitz and a few other investors initially funded the company with about $120,000. Now Guidehop is trying to raise about $1.5 million from angel investors or a strategic partner.

“The space is heating up,” said Roberts, an executive recruiter and social media marketer. SideTour, a rival focused on New York, raised $1.5 million in October. Last summer, Airbnb raised $112 million in venture capital.

Brad Hunstable, founder and president of San Francisco-based broadcast platform Ustream Inc., said he plans to invest in Guidehop in its current fundraising round. Last month, he joined Guidehop’s advisory board.

“I believe in the product and the idea,” Hunstable said. “There are a lot of people out there who want to share their knowledge and passion.”

Guidehop also fulfills Hunstable’s mission to help to build a thriving startup ecosystem in North Texas.

“I’m interested in helping Dallas-based companies stay in Dallas, and the way that I can do that is to leverage my knowledge and experience in the Internet world in San Francisco,” said Hunstable, a Granbury native who splits his time between San Francisco and the Fort Worth area.

[guidehop-blog]

GuideHop got a great mention on WorldNomads.com thanks to our partners at iStopover! Read more below or click here to read the entire article.

Experience London Like A Local - With A Local!

You’ve heard of all the “touristy” places to go: Big Ben, the London Eye, and Buckingham Palace. But let’s be honest, an exciting part of exploring a new city is getting to know the nooks and crannies that are off the beaten path. Knowing where the locals go to get the best food in town or where to discover that great little bar on a Friday night can make your trip that much better. That’s where GuideHop comes in.

GuideHop connects travelers with locals who offer various types of adventures, tours and activities in their hometown. Feel like taking a guided tour of the best pubs in London? How about a nighttime photographic tour of London? It’s easy to find these activities and more on GuideHop. Each tour ranges in price, so you can pick an activity that fits your budget. 

Exploring the markets on Portobello Road. Photo by wilski

Perhaps most importantly, make sure that you find the perfect accommodation for your stay in London. As a trusted partner of WorldNomads, iStopOver offers travelers unique short-term rentals from a community of Hosts who have extra space to rent. iStopOvermakes it easy to find accommodation in any price range and in any neighborhood across London. Say goodbye to stuffy and expensive hotels, and say hello to the comforts of your own London flat!

If you’re traveling to London this summer and the Olympics aren’t really your thing, make sure to check out these alternative events and truly experience that local vibe. It’s the perfect chance to see how these different events reflect London’s unique cultural history.

This summer, make sure you blaze your own trail around London!

[jeremy-roberts]

Another picture from an Austin news outlet #sxsw (via Opening weekend at SXSW ‘12 | Darren Woodson | photoMojo | KRQE.COM)

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Another picture from the GuideHop Party

[jeremy-roberts]

I found this picture on an austin news stations website :) (via Opening weekend at SXSW ‘12 | Jackalope rabbit hypes the Guidehop party | photoMojo | KRQE.COM)

[guidehop-blog]

An Austin news station posted this on their website during SXSW :)

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a GuideHop mention in Gadling, a travel blog from the Huffington Post

[jeremy-roberts]

Darren Woodson, one of my awesome Co-Founders, discusses GuideHop at SXSW

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A Video of Guidehop Co-Founder Darren Woodson at SXSW. 

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The Jackalope has been ejected from startup village.

[mashablehq]

This is the Mashable Times, our special print edition that’s being distributed at SXSWi . If you’re in Austin, find us and say hi! And don’t forget to tweet us your photos with the hashtag #MashSXSW — we hope to see your pics!

Photo by Mashable’s Sarah Kessler.

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Watch for the GuideHop Jackalope in Austin this weekend! #sxsw

[jeremy-roberts]

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GuideHop Made the List! (via The #SXSW Party Guide: The 22 Hot Spots for 2012 [infographic] | Social Media Today)

[tradepal]

TThis past January, Brian Chesky Co-Founder and CEO of Airbnb presented his views on the sharing economy and his future vision for Airbnb during his keynote at DLD 2012 in Munich. A native New Yorker, he gave many comparisons of peoples’ natural tendency to share. Dating as far back as 45,000 years ago, people were ‘hardwired to share’ and this was how tribes survived, according to Chesky. 

“Before World War II, people shared. Following that timeframe, Americans were told to spend and to help stimulate the economy…and eventually people stopped sharing. Over the last 50 years we have consumed more than in the entire human history before that period.”

Now 60 years in the future, the ‘new’ movement is coined the sharing economy. In his keynote, Brian Chesky states, “the average person uses one-third of every paycheck to cover their housing, and another $8,000 annually for car expenses”. 

The sharing economy enables people to make extra money with the assets they aren’t using. Chesky asserts that in 1995, the first wave of the Internet brought consumers online while the second wave connected them together through social networks. He refers to the new wave, the ‘third wave of the Internet’ as the convergence of online with the offline world; people become more social and share offline experiences.

Examples found in the sharing economy: 

Space Share - Airbnb, Loosecubes, Coworking spaces

Car Share - RelayRides, Zipcar, Getaround

Task Share - Taskrabbit

Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces - Farmers Markets, Tradepal, ThredUP

Experience Share - GuideHop

In view of the revitalization of sharing, Chesky stated,

“We used to try to keep up with the Jones’ and now we are sharing with the Jones’.” 

  Chesky shared his company’s vision to stimulate local businesses by enabling access to spaces. He hopes Airbnb will be the “protagonist” in helping expand the sharing economy by allowing people to ultimately gain access to any city, and be able to share any asset, any space within the next two years.

In contrast to the green movement of the early 2000s, the sharing economy is not evangelizing that we must sacrifice in order to save the world, but Chesky suggests, 

“What if it was actually better for us. We could save more money, have a more social life, share more and make the environment better.”

In closing, Chesky asserted that with a broader currency of trust, where we all have online reputations, we all could have access to more. In 2011, 5 million nights were booked on Airbnb. Access is more powerful than ownership. 

(Source: tradepal.com)

[guidehop-blog]

 Thanks for the mention!

[meetups]

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Official Tumblr SXSW meetup with ice cream provided by Coolhaus

Come see me and other people even cooler than me!

[guidehop-blog]

There's a lot to like about being a guide on GuideHop. This past January a bunch of the crew went out to Vail to meet up with a few guides, hit the slopes, and rediscover what GuideHop is all about. Here is what we found...