About us

Who's behind the idea?

Jens Hoppe - born in 1974, resident in Munich.

Since 1995 I've been travelling as a backpacker, on roadtrips, and to web conferences - in Europe, the USA, Australia, Hawaii, South Africa, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Thailand et al.

The idea for roadbeat.com already emerged in 1998 during a trip through Australia where I was surprised to see how active the backpacker scene is there and how many small businesses were already meeting their needs. A downright feverish creation of new businesses within the independent traveller industry was noticeable there as well as in other countries.

Impressions of the unfair, strongly organized travel industry in South Africa added to this, as well as the immense meaning of having people you can trust when travelling through the unsafe Venezuela, and of course the almost surreal beauty of hidden spots in so many different countries.

The fun of travelling naturally also depends on the people you are en-route with or those you get to know along the way. And although I have met many very nice and interesting people on my travels and resolved to keep in touch, I have lost track of most of them later on because of too much work and for lack of suitable networks.

Since 2004 the project was developed part-time as a social network and has unfortunately overrun the time expected to complete it. In order to accelerate the development I took a four month sabbatical leave and travelled to Costa Rica, Thailand, and Berlin (during the soccer world championship) to develop the central part. Bolstered by the support of my company I am now happy to start the live beta.

More in Who's behind the idea - continued as well as on Jens' profile page in the network.

In addition Christoph, Bele, Joelle, Julien & Christoph II, a team of freelancers for inspiration, specific developments, translations, marketing & system administration.

What happens next?

We have lots of ideas for further features and improvements which we will integrate in short, small development cycles. This platform is a continuously growing project.

We believe in customer driven innovation. We are developing this platform for you; therefore once more my request: Tell us anytime what you would like to have new, different, or better! Please use the contact form or the email address features@roadbeat.net. We want to give you the opportunity of constantly participating in improvement and modification processes - and in reviews concerning them.

We use excellent technologies that allow us to be highly productive: ColdFusion, Railo, Caucho Resin J2EE Server, MySQL & the CONTENS CMS. Currently, we are hosting on four servers and have a good plan as to how we can scale further without the costs exploding.

You do not have to be a big company nowadays in order to launch an international web project.

Who's behind the idea - continued

Jens Hoppe - born 1974 in Düsseldorf, NRW, Germany, resident in Munich

• Experienced in the formation of companies, this member has a background in communication science and contributes special knowledge of web software and backpacker industries to the development of the platform.
• Experienced in realizing business models and in business management.

1994	Studies (business), communication science in Munich
Since 1996	busy in the field of web application development
1997	University lecturer at the LMU, 1. User generated content project for the radio station M94,5
1998	Co-founder of a multimedia agency; project management, application development; Customers: KirchGruppe, Discovery Channel, Lufthansa Globeground, brose et al.
1999	Founder of the CMS software company CONTENS; CEO & technical manager Customers: > 150, among others Ratiopharm, Siemens TS, Davidoff, Adecco, RTL
1998	1. domain spotguide.com for a platform for individual travellers
1999	Thesis "Motivation & Gratification of Participants of User Driven Content Websites"
2000	Course Cooperation with the Munich "Mediadesign Akademie" regarding spotguide.com
Since 2004	Development of social networking technology

The team of freelancers for specific developments, translations, and marketing will be introduced here subsequently.