Pod22 Travel Podcast

Cory Jennermann is a runner, skier, outdoor enthusiast, and possibly the funniest person you might run into during a marathon. He is the co-Founder and Managing Partner of RunGuides Media, a platform that helps runners find races and clubs near them. RunGuides recently launched the Virtual Baton App to help organizations produce fun virtual team challenges and virtual relays.

Cory was born in Cold Lake Alberta. Because his dad was a dentist in the military, he moved a lot during his childhood, to Calgary, North Bay, and Germany until finally settling on Vancouver Island. He studied business at the University of Victoria, where he met his co-Founder Brendan Eamer, and where he joined his first 10k team.

Running quickly became an interest and a passion after graduating. Cory would eventually participate in marathons, an Iron Man and various Trail races. A friend once asked him which races he should look for - that sparked Cory’s interest, and he decided to create a directory for events in North America. Today, RunGuides offers information on thousands of races across North America, and ressources for runners who want to prepare and participate in these events. Never quitting, Cory and Brendan launched the Virtual Baton App after the pandemic hit, and their next big event is the Las Vegas to Tijuana. You can expect to start the race with a fanny pack of goodies, but with a craving for tacos.

Check out RunGuides: https://www.runguides.com/

Want to talk about running or partnerships with Cory? You can email him at [email protected].

Sylvain Morel est le co-fondateur et le COO de Sportihome, une plateforme qui offre des solutions d’hébergement pour les sportifs et les assoiffés d’activités extérieures. En plus d’être à la tête d’une entreprise en plein essor, Sylvain jongle deux autres rôles à temps plein: celui de père de famille et de zélé de kitesurf. 

Sylvain a grandi dans le sud-est de la France dans une famille de sportifs. Tout jeune, il prend part à des compétitions de voile. Puis, Il s’intéresse au parapente, et ensuite au kitesurf qu’il pratique religieusement depuis plus de vingt ans. Après avoir terminé son degré d’ingénierie, notre charmant entrepreneur s’introduit dans le monde du business, d’abord chez Keyence, puis ensuite chez Alpha MOS pour plus de 6 ans. Durant ses voyages d’affaires, il visite plus de 50 pays où il essaie d’y ajouter des sessions de kitesurf ou de VTT le plus possible. Il réalise qu’il aimerait rester dormir chez des sportifs qui partagent le même goût pour le plein air.

En 2015, durant un enterrement de vie de garçon, il partage son idée d’hébergement collectif pour les sportifs à son ami Fred Diaw. Par tout hasard, Fred avait exactement la même idée, il voulait héberger des sportifs chez lui et voulait bâtir une entreprise pour attirer les passionnés de sport, et tous les deux décident d’unir leurs forces. Dès janvier 2016, ils lancent une landing page et un an plus tard, ils incorporent Sportihome. Prisée par les amateurs de sport, l’entreprise de Montpellier est en plein essor. Elle compte désormais plus de 15 employés et dénombre plus 10,000 logements à travers la France et l’Europe. Si vous suivez Sylvain sur les médiaux sociaux, il ne jure que par trois mots: GO GO GO.

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Pour rejoindre Sylvain ou visiter Sportihome, veuillez consulter les liens suivants:

➤ Sportihome: https://sportihome.com/

➤ Sylvain (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/morel-sylvain-96981813/

Éric Gerardin est un entrepreneur et une source constante d'idées innovatrices dans le monde du tourisme. Il est le co-fondateur et le CEO de Doyoogo, un réseau distribution de plus de 450,000 d’activités disponibles dans plus de 3000 destinations. Il est également le co-fondateur et le CEO de Génération Voyage, un site qui propose plus de 5000 articles sur des villes et pays du monde entier.

Éric est né à Montpellier où il réside actuellement. Depuis qu’il a 17 ans, il voyage à une nouvelle destination à chaque année. En France, il passe d’abord par Poitiers, puis LaRochelle et il s’installe par après à Toulouse. À l’international, il étudie en Italie et durant son Master, il prend l’avion pour le Brésil. Éric possède un Baccalauréat en géologie et un Master en Hydrogéologie - des sujet enrichissants qui par tout hasard ont mené à une belle carrière d’entrepreneur en voyage.

En effet, c’est durant son séjour au Brésil qu’il développe un intérêt pour le développement web et pour la programmation, et qu’il continue à approfondir lorsqu’il se rend à Australie avec son co-fondateur Florian Colas. En 2013, Éric et Florian décident d’enfin poser leurs valises à Cracovie, et sous le ciel polonais, créent le réseau newsly.fr, le prédécesseur de Génération Voyage. Aujourd’hui, Génération Voyage accueille chaque mois plus de 2 millions de visiteurs.

Malgré la pandémie mondiale et le nouveau confinement en France, Génération Voyage est en plein essor avec une équipe de 16 employés. Montrant aucun signe de fatigue, Éric vient de lancer une nouvelle application mobile Exod, qui propose des activités à faire autour de Montpellier, et qu’il espère étendre à d’autres villes bientôt.

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Pour en savoir plus sur les projets d'Eric, veuillez consulter les liens suivants:

➤ Génération Voyage: https://generationvoyage.fr/

➤ Doyoogo: http://doyoogo.com/

➤ Exod: https://exod.app/

Eliot Jackson is a former professional Downhill Biker and World Cup Racer, and a Red Bull Presenter. He is also the Founder of the Grow Cycling Foundation, and the CEO and Founder of Reggy, an online discovery platform for mountain biking race/ride events. On Reggy, you can also connect with other riders and with the MTB community at large.

Eliot grew up in Oklahoma and would later move to California. At a very early age, he was infatuated with motocross, a passion he shared with his brother. Splitting his time between summers in Oklahoma and winters in California, he competed in several championships and claiming several titles along the way. 

At the age of 18, he decided to try out another sport: mountain biking. There was no stopping his thirst for competition, and for the next 12 years, Eliot participated in many US and World championships. In 2015, he finished 2nd in the Pro Downhill Class at Crankworx New Zealand.

Despite constant riding and competitions, Eliot worked on other projects in tandem. He pursued a degree in computer science and started his own music recording studio. Seeking to combine his love for the mountain biking community, his programming skills and a desire for entrepreneurship, Eliot created Reggy, where he hopes to inspire and help connect the next generation of racing and riding enthusiasts.

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Check out Eliot and his projects with the links below:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eliotjackson/

Reggy: https://goreggy.com/

Grow Cycling Foundation: https://growcyclingfoundation.org/

Oli Russell-Cowan is the CEO and Founder of Rad Season, a web platform with all-in-one information on action sports, adventure events and music festivals around the world.

Oli grew up in England and became a rad adventurer at a very early age, when he picked up bodyboarding during family vacations to Spain. While at Swansea University, he started surfing and immersed himself in the local surfer sub-culture.

His love for surfing brought him to the Gold Coast of Australia, and to the Canary Islands, where he met his partner Kat. For their honeymoon, they travelled through Central America and the US West Coast, touring festivals and discovering a plenitude of cultural and adventure experiences. And that’s when the idea of Rad Season started taking a hold. His new mission: to create a platform where others could find and discover similar events, and plan their next rad aventure.

With 900 events, increasing web traffic and a fresh move to Portugal, 2020 was shaping to be a great year. While the pandemic put a halt to some of the growth, it also gave Oli the opportunity to work on another project he is passionate about: the Rad Season Podcast. Showing no signs of slowing down, he is already at his 50th episode!

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Check out Rad Season with the links below:

Website: https://radseason.com/

➤ Podcast - Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/rad-season-podcast-action-sports-and-adventure-show/id1515470618

➤ Podcast - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4D35JwFbpVDcbyipisI4Ox

FOLLOW THEM ON:

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/radseason/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/radseason

Twitter - https://twitter.com/RadSeason

Vincent Brunet-Dupont is the CEO and co-Founder of Trebuchet, a Montreal development studio that specializes in VR games and experiences.

Vincent grew up on the south shore of Montreal. From an early age, movies and video production fascinated him. During a personality test at school, he scored high in the artistic, entrepreneur and social categories - the final sign that he should look at a career in the film industry. He enrolled in Film Production at the University of Concordia and graduated in 2013.

After developing a film coop called “On est 10” with fellow graduates, he decided to move in to the VR gaming space, and co-founded Trebuchet in 2017. Their first game, Prison Boss VR was released on Steam on in August of 2017. Transforming your living room into a prison cell, the goal of the game is to win enough social point by performing certain tasks without getting caught (for example, rolling cigarettes to sell), and ultimately become the Prison boss.

Using room scale intelligently led to the creating of Jousting Time, an interactive VR jousting show match game. During the process, they launched a Kickstarter, and a toured video arcades across Japan and South Korea. Trebuchet plans to launch their next game, Winds and Leaves, in the Spring of 2021. Much like their previous works, Winds and Leaves promises to be an impactful game by giving you the ability to roam through various biomes, and bring back life one seed at a time.

Winds and Leaves Trailer

Jousting Time Kickstarter Video

Interested in partnering with Trebuchet? You can reach Vincent by email at [email protected]

Clément Lhommeau est le co-fondateur et le CEO de Helloways, une plateforme dédiée à la découverte de randonnées et de microaventures à proximité de la ville.

Né en Vendée, Clément a grandi dans une famille toujours en contact avec la nature. C’est lorsqu’il est au lycée qu’il découvre son amour pour la grimpe, et pour les paysages qui l'accompagnent : des terres paisibles qui bordent la montagne jusqu’à la cascade qui gémit dans les roches et où faire un plouf entre 2 voies. Avec ses compagnons de montagne, il prend plaisir à vagabonder en France et ailleurs en Europe.

En 2013, il termine son Master à la Sorbonne et publie son mémoire sur l’éducation numérique. La même année, il est embauché par 360Learning, un LMS axé sur l’apprentissage en équipe, et devient son premier employé. Cette expérience lui permet d’approfondir ses connaissances en UX, en SaaS et en marketing. Il prend le rôle de CMO et l’entreprise décolle avec le recrutement de 80 employés en 4 ans. L’épreuve est quasi-lyrique : l'entreprise débute dans un grenier et se loge désormais dans un "château" en plein cœur du 16e à Paris, avec 2 autres bureaux à NYC et Londres.

C’est en 2017 qu’il débute l’aventure Helloways avec son co-fondateur Nicolas Chevolot. Le but ? Créer un catalogue à jour de randonnées uniques et accessibles au grand public. En 2020, à la suite du déconfinement, le site connaît une explosion du nombre d’usagers. Pour 2021, l’équipe se prépare à lancer une application mobile sur Android et iOS. Rien ne semble les arrêter dans leur but de démocratiser la randonnée - une mission très enrichissante et vertueuse. Après tout, n’est-ce pas le spectacle de la nature qui console tout ?

Vous aimeriez discuter de partenariat ou travailler avec Helloways? Vous pouvez les rejoindre à l'adresse suivante: [email protected]

Les microaventures préférées de Clément:

• La Trans'Bleausarde
• La Grande Traversée de l'Epte
• Entre terre et côte d'Emeraude

Mike Petrakis is the CEO and Co-Founder of Bach. BACH is a mobile app for groups planning bachelor and bachelorette parties to discover and book incredible experiences. Growing up in Philadelphia, Mike had a love for the outdoors and playing competitive sports which ultimately led to his passion for entrepreneurship.

While in college, he broke his neck during a snowboarding accident, and the experience changed his perspective on life. While his friends were at school partying, he was at home for a year thinking about his future and how he could make the most out of his career after his near-death accident.

His entrepreneurial journey started shortly after graduating from college while building ecommerce businesses in New York City. After running through the trials and tribulations of building startup apparel businesses, he was ready for his next challenge. He saw an explosive growth opportunity when exploring the BACH idea. He was intrigued by the wide open market opportunity and the ability to scale user growth quickly. With the help of his partner Greg Ramey, the team built the BACH MVP and launched their Beta product in January 2020. They quickly saw the virility of the product, gaining 150,000 users in their first 60 days from launch.

And then the pandemic hit. The timing couldn’t have been worse; the future seemed macabre. The BACH team saw the timing of this as an opportunity, as the world was on pause they learned from the data they gathered from their launch and used it to reinvent their product and expand the marketplace. Since then, Bach has expanded from three to fourteen cities across the US and now offers over 1500 curtailed experiences. The team is very excited to launch bookable accommodations this coming March as well.

The BACH team is beginning to see signs of a travel boom; their app is gaining three thousand parties a week and excited for the year ahead. Being recently accepted into Stanford’s StartX program and the tailwind of a travel comeback behind them, they are positioning themselves well to have an explosive summer in bookings. If you want to talk to Mike or the rest of the BACH team, you can reach them [email protected]

Sylvain Caucheteux is an entrepreneur and a tourism marketing guru. He is the co-CEO of Cirkwi, a French company that offers a database of over 3.5 million POIs and over 22,000 guidebooks to tourism professionals in any language required.

Sylvain always had an affinity for tourism and decided to make a career out of it. For Sylvain, tourism can offer a unique and sophisticated service, one that is entirely different than a physical product. It has the power to re-energize any individual and re-unite families. Before joining Cirkwi, Sylvain led in sales and marketing for European and worldwide leaders in the industry : Club Med, Pierre et Vacances and Belambra Clubs.

In 2018, he met Benoît Milan, the founder and co-CEO of Cirkwi, and his entrepreneurial journey finally took place. At the time, the company offered a platform with information on walks and hikes in France and Benelux that had already conquered 800 websites in France and Benelux. Fast forward to the summer of 2020 and Cirwki launches their StoryGuide widgets and API, based on a tourism search engine engine and content library. Through their service, Hotels, Tourism Offices, Tour Operators, Airlines, etc. can now offer their users curtailed information near their destination, and boost direct bookings. Cirkwi is on the race to become the Google of tourism, and it hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down!

If you are a tourism professional, you can find more information on their widgets and API here: https://pro.cirkwi.com/

Iris Wermescher is an outdoor enthusiast and the Business Development Director of Travel at Komoot. Born in Austria, Iris’s love for nature comes in part from her dad, an avid mountain guide. She rediscovered her love for the outdoors while studying business and tourism in Innsbruck - a city known for its love for mountains, no matter the season.

Like many of her student peers, Iris dreamed of working at the Austrian National Tourist Office (ANTO). After completing her Master’s, she landed an internship with the ANTO in Copenhagen, and then a full-time position at their Berlin office. Despite 7 great years with ANTO, Iris wanted to push her boundaries and engage into a new venture that would satiate her hunger for adventure and nature. And in 2016, something magical happened: she joined a small German startup called Komoot.

Komoot is an outdoor route-planning app. It helps users better prepare for their next hike, road cycling or mountain biking adventure by combining steps that best suit their needs. Being part of such an impact-driven company motivated Iris to push her own objectives to new levels. And the results soon followed: Komoot went from 2,7 million registered users in 2016 to 16,5 million today. They have created a community-generated database of routes and curated highlights to satisfy the needs of all different types of outdoor-enthusiasts: from the fast-pace road biker to the occasional sightseeing hiker.

If you'd like to get into contact with Iris or talk partnerships with Komoot, you can contact her by email: [email protected]