An entrepreneur, an attorney and a techie travel the world together.
No, this isn’t the setup of a joke. Rather, it’s what inspired three local friends to launch a startup of their own.
Meet Jamie DeBole, Rad Wood and Russ Briscoe, who founded Austin-based GlobeKick in 2015 to help others share in their love of travel, adventure and cultural exploration.
“Travel has changed me in all of the best of ways, and I would love to help more people do the same,” said DeBole.
At its inception, the company set out to organize three-month trips for entrepreneurs, remote workers and those living the digital nomad lifestyle. GlobeKick coordinated housing, excursions, networking and more. In 18 months, they completed three 90-day international trips with 80 participants.
While each trip went swimmingly, DeBole said the team realized three months was a tad too long for their trippers.
“Taking people away for three months was appealing in theory, but not practical for most,” said DeBole. “It’s too inaccessible for people, even for those interested in travel who work remotely 100 percent of the time.”
So they went offline and into stealth mode to revisit how to make meaningful global group travel more accessible and more fulfilling.
Now, they’re ready to relaunch.
GlobeKick went live today with a new website and membership offering called GlobeKick Connect. For $1,200 a year, members of the GlobeKick network will have access to three, five-day immersive trips scheduled throughout the year. Members can attend one or all three trips based upon their own availability and are only responsible for covering airfare.
“The idea is to connect people around a shared experience that is going to bind them together for life, similar to the way our travel did,” said DeBole. “Let’s give them access to one another through a closed social network that allows them to have adventures together, learn from another and leverage one another’s network.”
The three trips for 2018 include a camping trip to Morocco with a camel trip in the Sahara Desert, a mission visit to Cambodia to volunteer on an elephant sanctuary and a trip to the San Blas Islands of Panama.
The memberships will initially only be open to members within GlobeKick’s current networks. In February, an application process will be made available to the general public.
Questions on the application will prompt applicants to define what travel means to them, describe their interest in establishing cross-cultural connections and share how they take care of themselves mentally, physically and emotionally.
“We’re looking for people interested in sharing in real experiences; not people who are just about how many likes they can get on a photo on Instagram,” said DeBole. “The beauty of travel is meeting people of different cultures, races, religions and seeing how similar we are at our core. The more diverse — the better.”
