Mike Bennett Joins goby as Chief Revenue Officer

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--goby.com (pronounced GO-be), the activity search engine that helps people find things to do with their free time, today announced the hiring of Mike Bennett as the company's first chief revenue officer. In this role, Bennett will focus on monetizing goby.com and the company’s popular mobile applications for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Android. As a key member of goby’s senior management team, he will also help shape and execute all future marketing strategies.

“His expertise in growing start ups will help propel the company forward as we continue to gain momentum in the online and mobile sectors.”

Bennett joins goby with considerable start up and consumer web experience. In 2009, Bennett founded healthetreatment.com, a social media start-up that works with patients, caregivers, doctors, educators and healthcare companies to collect and share information about their medical conditions. Bennett was also the first U.S. general manager for London-based Cheapflights.com, where he led all of Cheapflights’ commercial operations in the world's largest travel market. During his tenure there, Cheapflights grew from an early-stage start-up to become a significant player in the competitive U.S. travel media category, expanding its user base from 1.5 million in November 2007 to more than 3.5 million in July 2009.

Bennett joined Cheapflights in 2006 from Monster.com where he was responsible for several facets of the business including product, business development, general management, sales management, and mergers and acquisitions over a six-year period. During that time, Bennett managed a number of direct revenue and advertising business lines including consumer e-commerce, lead generation, co-registration, e-mail marketing and display advertising. Before transitioning to the online world, Bennett spent 10 years in marketing and advertising, first at Boston-area ad agencies and then at Converse footwear, where he launched and established the company's first web strategy.

“Mike will be establishing relationships with advertisers who want to reach goby's active audience of one million people using the service both online and via mobile device,” said Mark Watkins, CEO and co-founder. “His expertise in growing start ups will help propel the company forward as we continue to gain momentum in the online and mobile sectors.”

goby to Demo at PhoCusWright 2010

As goby continues to position itself as a leader in the consumer technology and travel, the company will once again participate in the annual PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit, This year’s summit, which brings innovators in the travel industry together to showcase applications and technologies that impact travel planning, will take place November 16-18, 2010 in Phoenix. In 2009, goby demonstrated its exploratory search capabilities; this year, the company will focus on the intersection of the geo-location services market and the travel space.

ABOUT GOBY

goby (www.goby.com) is a search engine focused on exploring new things to do with your free time, from taking a unique vacation to creating this weekend’s adventure. Rather than hopping from site to site, trying to make sense of it all, you simply tell goby What, Where and When and we surface the best results the Web has to offer, organized in a way that’s easy to understand and use. Launched in 2009 and based in Boston, goby is a privately held company whose investors include Flybridge Capital Partners and Kepha Partners.