2015-05-13 Camp Native Founders (Deck)
The Camp Native team: Mitchell Hymowitz, David Woodbury, Brian Martell, Chris Rimple

It’s been a whirlwind year for serial entrepreneurs David Woodbury and Brian Martell. A month after conceiving the idea for a service that helps people find and reserve campsites, they had offers to join four different accelerators across the U.S. They ultimately decided to join 9Mile Labs’ spring cohort in Seattle and just a few weeks ago, Camp Native officially launched.

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David Woodbury on stage at Milestone9

“A great way to think about Camp Native is that we’re like Hotels.com for camping,” Woodbury told a crowd of over 600 at Milestone9, 9Mile’s Demo Day, this morning.

(Editor’s note: Follow our coverage of the other 9Mile companies that presented today here, and check out our report from Milestone9 event here).

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Camp Native allows users to search campsites by zip code, filter by activities, and reserve and pay online. The startup plans to close its seed financing round by the end of June and launch a national database of over 20,000 campsites by the end of the year.

“We chose 9Mile Labs in Seattle because we both love Seattle and we thought the Pacific Northwest would really embrace an outdoors-focused startup,” said Woodbury, the company’s CEO. “So, we packed our bags and moved west.”

We caught up with Woodbury for this Startup Spotlight, a regular GeekWire feature.

Explain what you do so our parents can understand it: “Camp Native is the best place to list, discover, and reserve a campsite. People use Camp Native to find and reserve unique campsites all over the country.”

Camp Native CEO David Woodenbury
Camp Native CEO David Woodbury

Inspiration hit us when: “As avid campers we have personally felt the pain of trying to find and reserve campsites. Many campgrounds did not have websites and those that did were pretty terrible. Online reservation systems were difficult to navigate and the majority of campgrounds were requiring the camper to call or email for a reservation. I thought, ‘why can’t reserving a campsite be as easy as reserving a hotel room?’

After doing some research and realizing that campground reservations were a multi-billion dollar market  — and that 97 percent of the 40 million people who camp every year were spending considerable time trying to plan their camping trips ahead of time — we knew this was a strong business idea in an industry we were extremely passionate about.”

VC, Angel or Bootstrap: “Camp Native is a great investment option for either a small VC or a larger angel. We are currently working on closing our seed round of investment and have interest from both types of investors. As previous entrepreneurs (all founders have been working in startups since 2008), we have previously bootstrapped and funded companies. Ultimately it just depends on how fast the entrepreneur can go and how interesting the idea is to investors. We have decided to bring on funding for Camp Native because we want to scale the company very quickly.”

Our ‘secret sauce’ is: “A veteran management team with a track record of execution. From a product standpoint we are allowing people to search campgrounds based on activities they would like to participate in. So if you like to fly fish, you would only see campgrounds near fly fishing streams, etc.”

The smartest move we’ve made so far: “Moving to Seattle and joining the 9Mile Labs accelerator has proven to be a great move for us. We were provided with fantastic mentors and in fact one of those mentors has now joined the team as CTO (Chris Rimple).”

The biggest mistake we’ve made so far: “We relied on some inexperienced engineering early on and ultimately we wasted two months of time and money because we couldn’t get the job done right. We refocused and hired a CTO and veteran full stack developer which has cost us significantly more, but ultimately the job is getting done right.”

Would you rather have Gates, Zuckerberg or Bezos in your corner: “Gates. Bill knew how to sell. I want everyone on my team to know how to sell.”

Our favorite team-building activity is: “Ummm … camping.”

The biggest thing we look for when hiring is: “You must be passionate about the outdoors.”

What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to other entrepreneurs just starting out: “Your startup’s success relies solely on your ability to get other people excited about it. Know your strengths and weaknesses, and find co-founders to fill your gaps.”

Editor’s note: GeekWire is featuring each of the companies participating in the 9Mile Labs incubator spring cohort. 

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