This week’s winner of the Praise Relay is Zipbob, chosen by the previous winners at Stubby Planner.
Stubby Planner, how did it feel to be selected as the fourth winner of the Praise Relay?
It was an honor to be selected by Kids Note. We still have a long way to go but we will always strive to bring a better value service to travelers.
Stubby Planner Praises Zipbob!
About one month ago, I had the chance to meet and talk with Yang Seokwon who is well known for his shared-economics “CO-UP” projects. The day after talking to him I also got to meet the CEO of Zipbob, Lynn Park. (Turns out we were in the same office space too.) When meeting her for the first time, despite the topic of our conversation being about “business”, she was friendly and talkative. I think maybe her philosophy for Zipbob came out naturally during our conversation. It was a special experience for someone like me where most meetings revolve around work and not people. Because of this I’ve come to look forward to the new type of relationships which Zipbob will create.
What is Zipbob?
Zipbob is a social-dining service where those with similar interests can come together over some good food and talk. Meet-up events are not mentoring, business, or matchmaking events. It is purely a social meeting where people can meet each other and chat while having a meal. This is a service for those who want to meet new people.
Special Features of Zipbob
A genuine place for communication and meeting others
Usually offline services have a specific goal such as dating, alumni meetings or seminars and education. It’s easy to get suck at awkward 1 on 1 meetings, more formal meetings where business cards are the only things exchanged, or seminars where you just listen to what someone is saying. Zipbob encourages all participants to talk together about topics of common interest.
Don’t wait up!
Arranging for a group of alumni to meet together can be a long and tedious process, and it is difficult to meet outside regular meetings. At Zipbob, anyone can easily book a meeting and take part.
Keeping it casual
Usually for other “offline” meet-up servcies, a lot of information is requested and users have to pay a fee to keep their membership. Zipbob is open to everyone without any special requests of participants. It is a place where people come when they casually want to meet up with others.
Zipbob’s Future?
Zipbob originally communicated with users via social media networks and platforms and in May opened up its WordPress site.
We started by trying out the concept of social dining and had a really good response. The number of meet-ups increased to four per month and despite not having a proper website, people volunteered to be hosts and participants at events. Zipbob was covered in both The Kyunghyang Shinmun and the Joongang Daily and later also featured on the television channels MBC and KBS.
Also, as a leading “shared-economy” startup, Zipbob was chosen to operate a booth and give a presentation at the Smart Cloud Show which was held at COEX on August 2nd. To satisfy the sudden new interest we plan to revamp our site once again later this month.
What does Zipbob want at the moment?
We imagine that a lot of startups have a similar problem and we have been thinking a lot about our team. We are the first company to take on the new concept of social dining in Korea and are ready to welcome new developers. Please contact us at lypark@zipbob.net anytime if you are interested.
Check out Zipbob’s website here and there Facebook page here.