About the Team
Jason Demant
Jason finds Will Ferrell to be hilarious, hates the feeling of velvet and has a strange phobia of touching his own belly button. He grew up in Northern California and didn't really leave. At 23 he got his first passport stamps and has been hooked on travel ever since. Jason and his wife were able to save for 2 years and in October 2009, they quit their Silicon Valley jobs to travel around Asia for a year. It was during that year abroad that he discovered the need for, and launched, Unanchor.
Jason focuses on the business side of Unanchor and occasionally dabbles with the code. His primary focus is marketing, writing and finding content, customer service and anything else that may come up.
Mohammad Forouzani
Having lived in 6 countries and travelled to over 40, Mohammad is a true travel addict. When not travelling, Mohammad spends his time snow boarding, riding motorcycles and coding web applications.
Mohammad's role is to lead the technical innovation for Unanchor's products and the platform's infrastructure. Having re-built the entire Unanchor platform using opensource technologies, Mohammad is responsible for developing and running backend systems, and constantly improving Unanchor's technical architecture.
The Unanchor Story
Unanchor began during Jason's year-long trip in 2010 through Asia. The constant frustration of figuring out what to do and how to get around sparked the idea. The "ah-ha moment" came during a stay in Beijing. While researching what to do, Jason found literally over a thousand attractions to see. How was one supposed to choose? And once you did, what was a smart way to plan the day and get around?
Jason settled down in South Korea for a couple months to solve this problem. He taught himself to code and launched the first version of the site. After launching, Jason realized the importance of a technical co-founder and began searching for one. He used the Hacker News Co-Founder Google Doc to advertise the opening. Mohammad found the ad, was impressed with the idea and reached out to Jason. As they say, the rest is history.