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11 Reasons to Un-Hate Iceland

admin — Sun, 02 May 2010 13:26:00 +0000

Let’s be honest, Iceland had a lot of hate thrown it’s way in recent weeks. If you were one of the unfortunate travelers stranded by the ash cloud I can’t blame you for siding with this ranting Scotsman. Even before Eyjafjallajokull (good luck pronouncing that one), the collapse of Iceland’s economy placed the small island nation at odds with Europe’s goodwill. A spewing volcano that cast a dark shadow over European travel for a week only made things go from bad to worse…way worse. So you hate Iceland, I get it.

But you can’t hold on to that hate forever, right? They say time heals all wounds, but a giant earth crater filled with lava is a tough wound to cover up. Here at Joobili we wanted to give you a few reasons to “un-hate” Iceland when the time is right. Think about it, how many countries have a recognized holiday for Beer Day? Iceland also puts on one hell of a music festival in October. And if you still can’t find it in your heart to forgive Iceland, then do it for the puffins. You’ll find all these and more on our list of 11 Reasons to Un-Hate Iceland. Just consider it…that’s all we’re asking.

Joobili on BBC Click

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:53:53 +0000

Things were busy here at Joobili HQ over the weekend. Kate Russell from BBC Click, the UK’s most popular technology show, decided to feature us on her program. Check it out:

Joobili Seedcamps in America

admin — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:58:45 +0000

You may wonder why the title of this post turns Seedcamp into a verb. I did it for a good reason. Seedcamp is not a product, a one-time experience, a conference, or a bunch of startups gathering for a week in London. If it were only these things it would deserve to be a boring old noun. But Seedcamp is a platform. It’s a launching point for really understanding your business and meeting the people and ideas that will help you grow (or maybe even help you know when to quit).

I recently returned from spending a week in San Francisco and Silicon Valley alongside my fellow European Seedcamp Finalists (check out the write-ups by Don Dodge and VentureBeat ). The guys over at Shout’em gave a nice day by day summary of events, so I’ll just jump to my conclusions.

Seedcamp put Joobili in front of some incredibly smart entrepreneurs and VCs, 95% of whom are altruistically focused on helping startups reach their potential (the other 5% come to meet fellow VCs or look for a job). Mentoring is cool, but mentoring alone would not be worth the transatlantic flight. Remember, Seedcamp is a platform. It is validation that some smart people from Seedcamp thought Joobili was interesting, and therefore other smart people should take a closer look at us. That’s it! But that’s also enough.

With the Seedcamp endorsement in hand, Joobili was able to get meetings with Founders and CEOs of 9 travel websites including some really dynamic entrepreneurs like Gregg Brockway from TripIt, Mike Cassidy from Ruba, Josh from NileGuide…the list goes on. The result was a lot of good advice specific to online travel, a few partnerships and some potential deals. The willingness to share sensitive information and open up personal networks is why The Valley will continue to have an innovation edge on the rest of the world.

Some of the meetings were facilitated by mentors we met in London, others were through our own network. The point is that, like most things in life, Seedcamp is what you make of it. It is a foot in the door, a good excuse to send an intro email, but ultimately it’s up to you to make it happen.

Speaking of making it happen…applications for Mini Seedcamp Prague have just opened. I encourage startups needing validation (read everyone), especially those from CEE to apply.

Joobili on BBC – Social Media ROI?

admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 06:29:15 +0000

Is Social Media a waste of time or an powerful networking tool? I don’t think anyone really knows the answer to this question yet. When I put my MBA hat on I start spitting out words like ‘ROI’ and I feel the urge to divide Twitter-hours by estimated-promotion-value to arrive at some fancy effectiveness ratio. There are all kinds of Twitter and Facebook tools claiming to make a science out of Social Media. But honestly I’m okay with the ambiguity. I don’t expect Social Media to have the direct cause and effect relationship we’ve come to expect with other forms of online advertising. I believe that if you are out there interacting and genuinely engaging with the community then good things will happen…but it will never be easy to measure.

I still don’t know if Twitter is an effective use of my time, but I do know we have Twitter to thank for Joobili being featured on the BBC this weekend. BBC presenter Carmen Roberts was doing some research for her upcoming segment on the best travel websites. She posted a tweet and Darren Cronin from Travel Rants responded by recommending Joobili. I happened to meet Daren at a travel conference and we’ve exchanged tweets a few times over the past year. He has no financial motivation for promoting Joobili, it’s was just a case of Daren being a helpful guy. To make a long story short, the conversation was picked up on my Twitter search and before I knew it I was talking with Carmen directly and Joobili was featured on the BBC. The point is that on the one hand it would have never happened without social media and on the other hand I could never replicate this “success” or measure its exact cause. Herein lies the contradiction of social media that people find so frustrating. For me, I just accept it for what it is and enjoy the “ROI”…whatever that means!

Click on the link below to view our BBC debut. Joobili appears near the 2:15 mark on this video.

Joobili on The Gadget Show

admin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:17:06 +0000

I am in London for the World Travel Market and last night I was relaxing after a long day when the Joobili twitter account suddenly started buzzing. Apparently Joobili was featured on a UK television program called The Gadget Show. We were the number 2 best website you have never heard of – well not you – but the average Brit has never heard of. While I’d much rather be among the top websites everyone has heard of, you have to start somewhere, right.

Now I have no idea how popular this show is so I would be curious to hear from anyone in the UK whether this is a popular show or a late-night space filler. [UPDATE: Found out this shows airs on Monday nights at 8pm and has a viewership of over 1 million] Either way, it sent a big enough wave of traffic to Joobili.com last night that the site crashed and we had to scramble to get it back up again. So without further adieu I present Joobili’s television debut:

Joobili on The Gadget Show

While I’m on the subject, we also received high scores from the Daily Mail as the Website of the Week.

A little more SEO friendly

admin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:28:32 +0000

The keen observer may have noticed a few small changes to joobili.com in recent days. These improvements hardly warrant a big re-release party, but I figured they were worth mentioning in a blog post. The era of really long Joobili URLs with lots of weird symbols has officially closed. Our new URL structure is much cleaner and will finally put us on much friendlier terms with our old pal Google. You’ll also notice that clicking on an event now appears as its own page instead of a layer. We are planning more improvements to the event details page in the future, but breaking out of the layer opens up a lot more options. There are a handful of other minor tweaks and extra things to click on, but I won’t bore you with the details. Please keep the feedback coming and we’ll do our best to keep polishing up the site.