Speaker: Daniel Hoffer, Founder, CouchSurfing

Couchsurfing.com is a global non-profit Web 2.0 project that modernizes the ancient tradition of providing hospitality to visiting travellers. With approximately a million members in ~220 countries, Couchsurfing enables travellers to stay anywhere in the world for free in someone's home so long as the guest is willing to sleep on a couch. Couchsurfing is sometimes described as a "social movement" and has received press coverage from over 500 newspapers, magazines, and TV shows worldwide.

Having launched its core service, Couchsurfing is now pursuing two initiatives to enable it to drive greater social value. The first project is "Couchsurfing Cares" which will work with disaster relief agencies to enable its hundreds of thousands of hosts to open their homes to displaced refugees of natural disasters. The second project focuses on enabling intercultural understanding by seeking to match travellers with hosts who offer different ways of thinking and living.

About Dan:

Daniel Hoffer has been working with online communities and the Internet since 1990, when he ran a non-profit online Bulletin Board System (BBS) and created a statewide educational program in Massachusetts to connect physically disabled patients with elementary and high school students online.

Daniel first worked closely with his CouchSurfing partners in 1999 at a venture-backed international soccer website he co-founded. Since then, Daniel has worked full-time as a management consultant, in corporate strategy at NEC Corporation, in marketing at Siebel Systems, and in product management at Symantec.

Daniel has appeared on the cover of Inc. Magazine and on the front page of the Boston Globe, and has been interviewed on TV (Nightline, BBC World, ABC News, NBC News), on NPR, and by the New York Times and Time Magazine. He has also been a guest lecturer at Columbia Business School, the Haas School of Business, and at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Daniel serves or has served on the Board of Directors of CouchSurfing International, the American Jewish Commitee, the Association for Strategic Planning, and on the Advisory Boards of Tangerine Wellness and Inner Circle Logistics.

Daniel received a BA from Harvard College in Philosophy and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

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