During the worst throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, few people were able to travel. Meanwhile, both 2021 and 2022 were predicted to be the years of "revenge trips" where people would do a lot more, or at least plan more.
an online space, hey go, allows people to travel virtually, either for pure interest or to plan their own trip. Live tours of hey go they are broadcast live by, he says, tour guides in more than 90 countries and counting.
Many people learned about the service and its usefulness during the pandemic, which is why hey go has raised a round of funding in Serie A of 20 million dollars, directed by Northzone. Lightspeed Venture Partners, Point 9 Capital, TQ Ventures and Ascension also participated.
hey go is tapping into a different kind of content creation economy. Your guides can share their favorite places and topics on their own live channels with a global audience while earning money. It hit a 300% growth in bookings this January over last year, and recently hit the 2 million bookings mark, the company says.
Co-founder and CEO John Tertan said: “We have everything from, you know, someone walking around Machu Picchu to giving cooking classes in Hanoi to chartering planes to touring volcanoes. So it's about conveying the real world and talking about what local people are passionate about or sharing stories about themselves or all those different places."
Viewers join for free, ask the individual streamer/guide questions, and then get paid by people based on the service received. The platform gets a share of the revenue, but the guides keep most of the money. hey go will also launch a dedicated streaming app now. This likely sets it apart from, say, Airbnb or Amazon virtual 'experiences' that have mushroomed during the pandemic.
«hey go it's one of those rare cases where a company has created a service that you think should have been around forever," said Michiel Kotting, Northzone partner and board member. “His guided and interactive broadcasts are the equivalent in Twitch of the hugely popular travel show and documentary genre, creating a new category of immersive world travel from home.”
Also in the round were a number of individuals including Guillaume Pousaz, Founder of Checkout, Lawrence Leuschner, Founder of Tier, Bastian Lehmann, Founder of Postmates, Scott Chacon, Founder of Github (via SCNE Ventures), Ian Hogarth, founder of Songkick, Matt Robinson, founder of GoCardless and Nested, Richard Mabey, founder of Juro, and others. As a result, Michiel Kotting, Paul Murphy and Kolja Hebenstreit joined the board of hey go.
