Building a marketplace from scratch, with Hipcamp founder Alyssa Ravasio

Alyssa Ravasio loves using ‘coyote trickster energy’ to get more people to put down their technology. Her camping marketplace, Hipcamp, has grown into the largest source for booking campsites on public and private land. She talks with host Jeff Berman about scaling the company, learning to prioritize your health as a founder, and more. Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribe See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 1:18Speaker 02

  I really had a good understanding of scale and the internet, but then it was combining that with nature and the outdoors. I did not have clarity on how we were going to make money. How are we going to build a company?

• 1:28Speaker 00

  When did you know it was working?

• 1:29Speaker 02

  I remember waking up that morning and opening up our backend systems. I think we'd gotten like four or five people to sign up at that point, and there were hundreds. And I got to just scroll through. And I started crying.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  I bet.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, because you're like, oh, people want this. I would get really angry letters from people. That's the last place that I could still go without six months notice.

• 1:51Speaker 00

  Oh, they were gatekeeping.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  They were gatekeeping, but it was also genuine scarcity. The biggest challenge has been like managing my own health and energy. I got shingles at one point. Feel very lucky. I went into the ER that day and the doctor took one look at me and said, this is shingles. You're way too young for shingles. Can we talk about our job? What's going on?

• 2:11Speaker 00

  Because they knew this was stress related.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  With us today is Alyssa Ravasio, who is the founder and CEO of Hip Camp, which if you are camping, is the way to book your spot with, I think, over a half million locations now, millions of trips booked. This is a really interesting scale story. Welcome to Masters of Scale.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.

• 2:40Speaker 00

  Thrilled to be here with you. Why this problem? Why was this the problem you wanted to take on?

• 2:47Speaker 02

  I was really lucky. My family went camping a bunch growing up. My childhood is filled with memories of making mudslides, catching frogs, rekindling the fire in the morning from like early little embers that were left over. Like, that's how I think of growing up. And when I started trying to have those experiences more as an adult, trying to book a campsite for myself, I really couldn't believe how broken, how fragmented, and how difficult that process was. You know, at a moment when you can order any food, a car, a hotel with like the click of a phone, like, why, why is getting outside still feel like we're in the 80s? And the idea was just to make it simple to get outside in hopes that that would get more people outside.

• 3:27Speaker 00

  You started Hip Camp in 2013, is that right?

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Yes, it's been a little over a decade.

• 3:30Speaker 00

  So it's post-launch of Airbnb, if math is right? Was part of it like, let's just do Airbnb for camping? Or did you have a different vision for what this would be?

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was a different vision to start. So originally, we were totally focused on public campgrounds. I had a trip I'd planned in particular where I was looking for a campsite on the coast to show my, my boyfriend how beautiful it was. And when you want to camp on the coast in California, that could be a national park, a state park, a Forest Service park, a county park, maybe even a private park. That's like 15 different websites. Like, the fragmentation was, was really crazy. This trip in particular, after planning for hours, choosing a campground, I found out, once we arrived, we walked up to the campground, everyone had like surfboards and wetsuits. And I was like, what's going on? We walked out to the coast and there was a beautiful surf break. And I love to surf. And I had left

• 4:22Speaker 02

  my board at home, because even though I'd done hours of research, no one had mentioned that.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  Oh, you're so bummed.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  I was so bummed. So the first version of Hip Camp, which is called California Camping, by the way, was really just about pulling together that fragmented information and creating a space for campers to help each other learn about what's good to know about each campground. And so the first version of the problem was I wanted to put the existing campgrounds in a map. And it actually took a few years until we realized the problem had a much deeper layer.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  Alyssa, did you envision it as a business at first? Or was it more a coding project to solve a problem for you that might be helpful for others as well?

• 5:01Speaker 02

  I wanted it to be a business because I didn't want to go get a job. I had worked at a couple startups before Hip Camp, and I'd learned a ton, but had also learned as part of that time that I was really wanting to run my own company and kind of be my own boss.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  Can we click in on the, the couple of jobs that you had? What did you learn there that said to you, this is not for me? I'm going to go start my own thing?

• 5:23Speaker 02

  The biggest thing I learned is that when I figure something out, it's really hard to not act on that. I found myself in situations where I had to do something that I didn't think was the right thing to do. And that killed my soul. I couldn't do it. It was just like, this is not what I want to put energy into. This isn't how I would approach the market. Things like that, that just really led me to decide, you know, even though at the time, it was, you know, 23, like, it's time to start a company. It's time to get to do things in the way that I think will be best and feel, I guess, most exciting to me. I've always liked starting things and leading teams. So my first business cards for my first company, I got my dad to print when I was, I think, 10.

• 6:01Speaker 00

  Baller, walking around.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  It was Spiral Films production. We made movies. My sisters were my employees. I paid them in mac and cheese.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  Awesome.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I was the only one who could use a stove.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  Well, you know, there you go. That's leverage.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  I had a resource locked down. I needed the right idea. I knew I didn't want to just go start something to start something and see if I could make some money, right? For me, it was about solving a problem that I thought was worth solving, right? And was worth the, the years and the energy that it would take to solve that. I really had a good understanding of scale and the internet and how this new technology can totally change and will totally change how the world works. But then it was combining that with nature and the outdoors and the passion I have for getting people to basically reconnect with the biosphere and nature. It was like those two things together that that was, that was worth going all in on.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  How did you actually get Hip Camp off the ground? Both from a, how were you financing it? And how did you get a website or, or an app in consumers' hands?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. So originally, I had to learn how to code. And I had this idea. And I tried to start a couple other startups, maybe like in between different moments at different parts of my life. And that had always required, like, the big blocker was finding a software engineer who wanted to build this. And I found that it was just time to be able to do that on my own. And so I went to Dev Bootcamp, which had just started at the time.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Right. This is before vibe coding.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Gosh, yes.

• 7:28Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  I don't regret learning to code, but man, things would have been a lot faster if I had, if I'd had codex. That would have been great. But I did it. So I learned how to code. And I ended up enlisting my sisters again, my first boy, and a couple friends and actually, you know, building this very early version of the site that actually got some traffic and got people using it early on. And we got traction, we got people. I think we were getting close to having probably one of the biggest search engines for camping.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  How did you find those customers earlier? How did they find you?

• 8:01Speaker 02

  A little of everything. I mean, this was an era where I was going to like every meetup I could. I would just walk around with my laptop handing out stickers. Big sticker fan. I brought, I brought stickers.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  And so I would just ask people, do you like to camp? And if they made the mistake of saying yes, I was like, well, let me show you this and open the laptop. And, oh, you see that place to put your email in? Put that in there? Oh, good. It's working. Big shout out to REI on Brandon. They let me sit at a little card table I'd bring and set up in front of their front door.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  So I did a lot of that.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Really hand to hand marketing.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. Because it wasn't even, it was marketing. It was also feedback, right? It was also this idea of we're going to build this product in collaboration with community. I'm going to get input and understand what they're looking for, what I have that they love, what I don't have yet. And actually, kind of like our, one of our big break moments was a digital version of that where I got like a customer support email where someone was suggesting we had a filter for pets. And we were working on that. And I was like, great. I wrote back right away. I was like, great. Yes. Thank you for your feedback. We're working on that. I'll let you know when we ship it. And then suddenly I started getting traffic notifications from Google. It was like, your traffic spike. And I was like, what's going on? And it turned out, the person I had emailed back had a big Twitter following.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  And they liked my response. And they had tweeted out, you know, go check out Hip Camp. And we actually got in that first big, you know, traffic burst and I got a bunch of like emails. And one of them was from Dave Moran, who ended up investing a quarter million dollars later that month. But like, it was kind of crazy, right? That like a customer support email led to a tweet, led to, you know, our first funding round. And yeah, Dave's been a great champion and partner ever since.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  Well, I love that story about the, the customer feedback and your response, because one, it goes to clearly commitment to serving your community. But two, if you treat every customer, every community member like a VIP, you just never know.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Totally. Zeus's law, right?

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Right. Okay. So you're getting traction, you're going, you're building a, a real following, a real community. But you're at this point, really sort of a guide and a search engine. You're not a marketplace.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:08Speaker 00

  What happens?

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Crisis. So

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Never let a good one go to waste.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  No, I mean, and it was, it was existential at the time. So our mission from our origin has been get more people outside. And we really mean the more, right? We want people to connect with nature and get out there more often. And we had this great, you know, search engine and directory and we're getting lots of cool reviews. But what was happening was every time I would find a campground that wasn't fully booked, and I would put in an email or God forbid, put it on the homepage, I would get really angry letters from people.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Why?

• 10:41Speaker 02

  That's the last place that I could still go without six months notice.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  Oh, they were gatekeeping.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  They were gatekeeping, but it was also genuine scarcity. Like I remember one email I got where someone was explaining, you know, I need to be able to get outside on the weekend if I've had a hard week. This is the last place I can do that. Please don't ruin it.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  I was like, oh my gosh, how are we going to, how are we going to make our mission happen? If the existing infrastructure in most cases, many cases, is already at capacity. I'll always remember this, I went, it was an Italian restaurant in North Beach with paper tablecloths, which are amazing. If you're having a really hard time, go somewhere with paper tablecloths.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  Especially North Beach.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like a big whiteboard at your table. And I wrote, I started writing down potential business models. Now, keep in mind, we've raised money at this point. Bryce Roberts from O A T V had let a seed round. Dave Moran had invested, I had great investors and I did not have clarity on how we were going to make money. How are we going to build a company? What was that going to be? And especially when all these people were so upset if we were marketing anything that was, wasn't booked. And so we literally wrote down everything from advertising to like a cool geared delivery to private land. Private land was like a very niche idea. I'd gotten a couple of emails from landowners who had suggested it. I hadn't really been to much private land on my own, so it's kind of dismissive of it.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  And I, I ran an exercise where I said, if this business model was wildly successful, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, what impact have we had? And it was only through that lens that private land just jumped off the map because we would have created a whole new way to get outside, changed outdoor recreation, solved the root of the problem, right? The root of the problem was there's not enough great campsites. There's not enough supply. And in doing so, created this amazing model that could scale recreation for conservation. And so it was really through that lens that we, we chose private land. But it was a, I had a lot of question marks at the time. It wasn't a sure thing at all.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Well, I love this for so many reasons, not least which being you had real customer feedback, which I think for a lot of entrepreneurs have been exasperating. It's like, I'm, I'm trying to do good. I'm trying to do a service here. I'm sorry, it's like

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  harshing your situation, but like it's net good. And really what you realized was there was a supply, demand problem. There was a different way to attack it. Can we just go back to this North Beach Italian restaurant? Is it you alone? Are you there with your team? Like what?

• 13:09Speaker 02

  I was there with my husband.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  With your husband?

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  Was it intentionally, we're going to go here and we're going to work on this? Or was it, yes?

• 13:14Speaker 02

  We're going to solve the problem tonight.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  Okay, gotcha.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Lot of intention.

• 13:18Speaker 00

  With or without wine? Definitely with red sauce.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Definitely with wine too.

• 13:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so as you're using the, the, the, the paper on the table as your, as your whiteboard and you, and you list out private land, was that the aha moment? Or was that the start of the unlock?

• 13:34Speaker 02

  It was the start because a lot of business models, you ultimately end up helping people trade money for time.

• 13:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Right? They're models of convenience. That wasn't super compelling to me. The aha moment was realizing this would change the way the world works for the better. This would solve this problem I've been obsessed with. It would solve the root cause.

• 13:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  It could switch this system that's in so much scarcity into abundance. Okay, that's worth working on.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Oh, and by the way, if it works, multi-billion dollar company. Okay, I'll go that direction. And so it wasn't until I looked at it through the longer term lens that I saw the potential. But then I think the real aha was really the next morning, I, I, you know, email, I think I emailed our entire user base and I said, I will give you $500 if you introduce me to a private landowner who lets people camp on their land. And I got, I got a lot of responses. And so I spent the next week going and visiting places. And one of the first ones I visited, it's called Mendocino Magic. It's still on Hip Camp today. It's incredible spot. It has, I think, the largest private lake in the state of California.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  And I was walking around this lake with Mackenzie, the landowner, and I just, people would love to camp here. And she was, her parents were talking about maybe having to sell the land. She was looking for a way to keep it in the family, keep it protected. It's got a lot of redwoods. If she sold it, it was going to get logged. The owls were going to lose their home. The foxes were going to lose their home. So she was really on a really similar mission. And I, I looked around and said, this is going to work. We can do this together.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  How did you approach the scaling of the private land component of Hip Camp?

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we kind of used the public existing campgrounds, which were public data, as a way to bootstrap supply. We were like, oh, we have supply. And then the demand showed up, right? And so as we added private land, it was really just about more supply, better supply. This supply you can book.

• 15:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  This supply is beautiful and private. And so it was really, it was pretty seamless, actually. And I think one of my other big learnings is most people, they want to camp somewhere beautiful and somewhere private. And whether it's managed by the Forest Service or California State Parks or Mackenzie, it's all good. It started working pretty quickly. I think that's one of the benefits of having the demand ready to go.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  I am a lawyer by training and I, I still practice a little bit. This is not my area of expertise, but I will tell you that the lawyer in me is starting to think about all the liability issues on both sides here.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  How did you approach that?

• 15:55Speaker 02

  So getting insurance was one of the turning points for the company. We now have a really great general policy where all of our landowners are covered. We're covered. There's, you know, all sorts of different layers of that. Before we had a policy like that, we could share with our landowners. It was almost impossible to get anyone to sign up.

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• 19:12Speaker 00

  What happens if Airbnb wakes up tomorrow and says they're going to do the same thing?

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, every time we raise money, that is a big question. What I have said to that in the past is that when you want to get outside, that's such a different mindset than when you're looking for, you know, a good alternative to a hotel or a house to rent. It's just a different use case and a different brand. And I think while there's some overlap in customers, it really is just a different way for people to be thinking about what they're looking to, to make happen in the world. And so it, it, they, it could, of course, you know, not to, not to tempt anyone here. They could maybe, but I think it's a very, it would be very difficult and a very hard thing. That would require different branding, you know, different setup, different product, all of that.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  Well, and also you're at a scale now where the build by partner analysis for Airbnb would be very different than it was then.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, scale is the ultimate moat for a marketplace, right? Like network effects are amazing and it's just, it's so fun to build a business that, I, I couldn't imagine feeling this level of enthusiasm for the business we're building if I didn't understand and see every day how every unit of supply we add makes it better for every camper and every camper we add makes it better for every host. Like that, that to me, that scale, that network effect is what, you know, that's what's so exciting about the business model.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  When did you know it was working?

• 20:27Speaker 02

  We partnered with a really large, I think it was like a regenerative or organic farmers association and we had them email their, their newsletter and say, hey, if you want to host camping, sign up. We didn't know, do people want to do this? Do people not want to do this? I remember waking up that morning where they'd sent out the newsletter that morning and opening up our, you know, backend systems. I think we'd gotten like four or five people to sign up at that point and there were hundreds. And I got to just scroll through and I started crying.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  I bet.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Cause you're like, oh, people want this. And my inbox was full of notes from people who were like, we've been talking about doing this for years. We've got the perfect, I remember like a strawberry farm on an island. And they were like, but we couldn't afford the insurance, but we couldn't figure out how to market it. We couldn't figure out how to reach people. And I was like, oh, this is going to work. I knew we had demand. That's never been the problem. Now we have supply.

• 21:16Speaker 00

  What incredible signal. You situate us where in the journey you are.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  That's probably 2017 or so.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Okay. What are some of the biggest challenges you've had to tackle that you didn't foresee that night in your North Beach Italian restaurant?

• 21:27Speaker 02

  I think helping people think through infrastructure and the right thing is important. Probably regulations are another one. Are you familiar with AB 518?

• 21:36Speaker 00

  I mean, I am because I prepped for our conversation.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  So just last year, California passed a pretty amazing legislation that creates a new regulatory framework counties can opt into that allows people who have, you know, a bigger parcels, mostly targeting farmers, ranchers, land trust, things like that, to have up to nine campsites without needing to get the really onerous permit that is required for like an RV park before there wasn't like a separate lane for these lower impact type of campsites. That has totally changed the game. So it's been amazing to see the coalition around this, right? It's everyone from, you know, the farm bureau to the nature conservancy, right? Like when's the last time like all the farmers and all the conservationists and all the small rural businesses all agreed on something?

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Outdoor rec is such a powerful economic engine. Like outdoor recreation means trails. It means boat ramps. That's not just going to bring in visitors. That's great for the people who live there as well. And so that's really created, I think, a ground swell of support around, you know, regulations to better support more, more outdoor recreation.

• 22:38Speaker 00

  So what's been the biggest challenge since you incorporated private land and hip, and hip camp really took off?

• 22:45Speaker 02

  I think for me personally, the, the biggest challenge has been like managing my own health and energy.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  Oh, same work. Why is that?

• 22:52Speaker 02

  I'm a pretty obsessive person and very passionate. And I, and I believe so much in what we're doing that it can get really easy. And especially, you know, maybe a few years ago, to start talking yourself into making sacrifices that don't make sense. Sacrifice sleep, sacrifice a workout, sacrifice a healthy dinner, right? Like these kinds of little things that each one on their own feels like justified in the moment, but over the course of a few years really starts to pile up. I got shingles at one point. Feel very lucky. I went into the ER that day and the doctor took one look at me and said, this is shingles. You're way too young for shingles. Can we talk about our job? What's going on?

• 23:32Speaker 00

  Cause they knew this was stress related.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Absolutely. And so I think learning to build, you know, the right systems, the right habits. There's no glory in like becoming unhealthy in pursuit of this mission. So I would say the real unlock is more knowing that like your, your body and mind are worth taking care of. And that if you're really in solving a problem and building a scaled organization, that's going to help shape culture for decades. You got to take care of yourself and like you are worth taking care of. And so, so many times I'll talk to early stage founders who are just really struggling and they're exhausted. It's like, right, let's try to take care of that first. Cause the second you're tired, you lose your creativity. You lose your problem solving. You come up to a challenge and instead of getting curious about how to get around it,

• 24:17Speaker 02

  it feels like a, you know, a drama, stress, it's the end. And so I think, yeah, that's actually probably been the hardest, the hardest part of all of this for me.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  How big's the company now?

• 24:28Speaker 02

  Close to a hundred.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  Hundred people?

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. We're now the largest search engine for public land. We're the largest search engine and booking engine for commercial campgrounds, which we haven't gotten into yet. But one of the benefits of scaling this company through private land is now all the existing campgrounds also can benefit. They can join. And I think we're sending more bookings now to commercial campgrounds in the U.S. than any other platform by nearly an order of magnitude. And then of course, we're the largest search and booking engine for private land, which is a category we essentially created and have really been able to scale. And so it's really those three pillars together that have created the hip camp of today.

• 25:05Speaker 00

  Alyssa, is the company remote, hybrid or in person?

• 25:08Speaker 02

  So we're mostly work from home, but we do a lot of in-person work. So I'm happy to talk about that because that was a whole journey.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  How do you, how do you do in person?

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Lots of ways we do. We have a space in San Francisco. We, we go to sometimes, but then we do a lot of like onsite where we bring everyone together, not everyone, but like the right group of people. So I'm working with people in person, probably like almost every week, every other week. And then we do bigger company camping trips and campouts.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  So you do onsite, say campsites?

• 25:32Speaker 02

  Sometimes, yes.

• 25:32Speaker 00

  And what do those look like?

• 25:34Speaker 02

  Generally it's like, we've identified a really important problem. There's just certain problems I think are really hard to solve on Zoom. And when you feel that, you just like fly everybody in and you're like, we're solving this. We're not leaving until we do.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  It's one thing to bring everyone into an office. It's another thing to bring everyone to Mendocino Magic or another one of the, the campsites with which you work. What drives you to bring people out into nature to, to one of your, your partners and set up on the land and work there?

• 26:00Speaker 02

  I think for us being at a hip camp, it means you get to see the product in action. And it's just deeply inspiring. Like it's so much more meaningful if we're talking about how do we create more great campsites? Our number one objective has been for a long time. If we actually get to go walk the land. So recently we had an onsite out in Stinson. We got to go walk around Slide Ranch, which is a beautiful hip camp and nonprofit that has a mission to get more kids rooted in nature and they have great campsites and they use that revenue to fund scholarships. We got to walk around, hear from the host about those scholarships, about the direct impact our work is having on helping her organization go from being in a pretty serious deficit to being in the black. And then we got to walk through the campsite and see the people who were like setting up

• 26:43Speaker 02

  their tents and we're going to camp on the edge of the Pacific Ocean for the night. And seeing people having these moments of exhale and peace and being like, that's what all of our hard work is making possible. When we talk about having our core company North Star is nights outside. That's our core KPI we're always tracking and working towards. And when you get to the millions, it can start to feel abstract. And then, you know, getting to walk by a campsite and see, I, I did this just last night. I saw a mom with her son setting up and I was like, that's one. They're going to have a magical night. He's going to remember that forever. It was an eclipse. The sun was setting into the ocean. It was great. That's one.

• 27:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  That's one night outside. And, and I think kind of keeping that connection to the, the human reality of what we're doing is, is, is really motivating and part of why we like to, as often as we can meet at a hip camp and see that in real life.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  Alyssa, what's the insight for other business leaders who don't have campsites in the core of their business for how to make an onsite or an onsite? How to tie it directly to the mission of the company and make it more impactful?

• 27:46Speaker 02

  I think a couple of things. One, just never undervaluing in-person time. Our company is a work from anywhere company. So for the most part, people get to be wherever they want, but we're very quick to pull the lever and say, we need an onsite. We're going to all get together in person. Maybe it's in San Francisco, maybe it's out of hip camp, maybe it's somewhere else. But being really quick to just get everyone together. There are certain problems you, that are just hard to solve through Zoom. So that's one thing. And then from the, you know, specifically camping angle for us, that's our product. That's our mission. That's what we're building. I think anytime you can bring your team to see firsthand and ideally experience firsthand what you're building, how that impacts people in the real world, that's a source of motivation. That's a source of energy and also a lot of intelligence, right?

• 28:28Speaker 02

  When you get to see it and feel it, you can see how to make it better as well. And so I think anything you can do to bring your team close to your customer, that's probably the core insight that we're, we're tapping into there.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  Your passion just comes like right off of you. I mean, it just fills the room and it's just a great reminder of, of what happens when you take on something that you really care about, that where, where you are so deeply tied to the mission. It's, we don't always get to sit with founders who are this excited about what they're trying to solve.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  I'm really excited. I'm very excited. And there, and there's lots of layers to that too, right? Like I just love technology. I just, I find it endlessly fascinating.

• 29:07Speaker 00

  What do you love about it?

• 29:08Speaker 02

  I love that it's changing how culture works. I love that it's changing how people live their lives because that's an opportunity to improve things if it's harnessed properly. It's just such a force for change, you know, it's just fun. And then I love nature, right? I want people to get outside. The science around getting outside is completely clear now that it's so good for your health. I want rural communities and economies to be thriving and I want us to protect and conserve all of the open land we have left. And so this is a model that allows me to do all those things at the same time. You know, there's nothing I'd rather be doing. I think of sometimes like coyote trickster energy. Like, how can we use technology to get people off of technology? Like, that's what we're doing.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  You have these moments in the Evolution Hip Camp where they're inflection points, right? I have to imagine that much like for Mackenzie at Mendocino Magic, there have been moments along the way where you have seen really concretely the financial impact that you're having on the landowners who are opening up their homes, their properties, and the positive effect that that's had. Is that right?

• 30:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's actually a very specific moment I can remember where that happened very concretely. It was super early on, probably our first few months of sending bookings to private landowners. And we were moving bookings and I was, you know, really, it kind of felt like a scientist. I was like, is this going to work? It looks like it's going to work. And I reached out to one of our new hosts. It's a ranch up in Bodega, Northern California, and they were doing great. I was like, I'm going to go meet them. I want to go say hi, walk around the land. And I drive up to this ranch, it's called Salmon Creek Ranch. It's incredible. It's 600 acres of redwoods and a creek, just incredible, incredible stewards. And I pull up and Leslie, the landowner, is waiting for me. And she's walking up to me and she has this piece of paper. And I'm like, oh, no.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  It's a list of demands. It's a list of complaints. It's everything we've done wrong. It's all the problems with the software, all the features we haven't built. So I'm sitting there, I'm like, hi, great to meet you.

• 31:06Speaker 00

  Feedback is a gift.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  Feedback's a piece of, yeah, feedback's a gift. What's with the paper? And she goes, I want you to have this. And she hands it to me. She said, this is a letter from a, you know, financial buyer who sent us this letter trying to buy our land. And we get this letter all the time. They put it on nice paper, it's thick. And it essentially says, you know, we'd love to buy your land. We're going to develop it. You'd get a lot of money. You know, why are you trying so hard? Selling duck eggs. Why don't you just sell to us now? She said, I hate these letters. I hate them. If I, you know, this would be destroying everything we've dedicated. Our goal here is to leave this land better than we found it. This would be a failure. She said, but, you know, I've been having to hold on to them and put them in a drawer

• 31:52Speaker 02

  just in case, because some months we're not sure exactly how it's going to work out. And I'm giving you this letter because Hip Camp makes it junk mail now.

• 32:00Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  I know I don't need to call them back. I know, I don't even need to save it. You can take it. Take it back with you. I don't need it. Because the income we're getting from camping, that's changed everything for us. And it's been amazing to hear that story again and again. I had another landowner who told me camping's changed this piece of land from a liability I was nervous to hand down to my son into an asset.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  Where does that Salmon Creek Ranch letter sit right now?

• 32:24Speaker 02

  Behind my desk.

• 32:25Speaker 00

  Oh, great.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I look at it every day.

• 32:26Speaker 00

  What a beautiful reminder of the impact you're making.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and how important it is to keep scaling it out, too.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  Alyssa, I noticed that you have some tattoos on your fingers.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  I do.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  Can you tell us about them, please?

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I have, these are the final words from the absolute last Whole Earth Catalog. Are you familiar?

• 32:42Speaker 00

  I am familiar.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is, stay hungry, stay foolish. And the, I guess, that kind of spirit of these words and why I got them. I got them actually after leaving my first job. And even though there was so much about that job that was so hard for me, deciding to leave, seeing what else was out there in the world, feeling that like rush of potential and creativity again, starting to have ideas for companies I could start on my own. That was what these words were meant to remind me of. And so I put them on my hands. So whenever I'm typing, I have to see them. But it's kind of like never settle, you know?

• 33:16Speaker 00

  And when you see those tattoos right now, what do they make you feel or make you think?

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Proud, yeah, proud that I'm doing, you know, what I wanted to do. I'm taking the most powerful technologies and tools we have available to us and harnessing them for the impact I want to have. And with a lot of belief that with a great team, like, we can do that. We can have that impact.

• 33:36Speaker 00

  Well, I'm so proud that we get to have you on Masters of Scale, telling the story and using technology really to make people's lives better on both sides of your marketplace and give people the opportunity to use technology, to put technology away, connect with each other, connect with nature and build better lives and a better country. It's wonderful having you on Masters of Scale.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Thank you, thanks for having me.

• 33:59Speaker 00

  Thanks again to Alyssa Ravasio for joining us. Alyssa is a stunning example of what's possible when you are hell-bent on solving a real-world problem as an amazing entrepreneur. I love how she's been able to prioritize the big ideas. I mean, the really big ideas, such as conserving nature and supporting rural communities alongside her goal for every single camper, which is very simply and quite beautifully, more amazing nights outside. I'm Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening.

• 34:34Speaker 00

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• 34:41Speaker 04

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• 34:45Speaker 05

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• 34:50Speaker 06

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• 34:55Speaker 07

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• 35:24Speaker 08

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