Alyssa Ravasio is the founder and CEO of the online campsite booking platform, Hipcamp. Many people think of technology and the outdoors as complete opposites, but for Alyssa, the two have always gone together. With Hipcamp Alyssa's found a way to connect folks with campsites on public and private land. This creates more camping spots and makes it easier to find a place to hunker down under the stars.
Alyssa Ravasio is the founder and CEO of the online campsite booking platform, Hipcamp. Many people think of technology and the outdoors as complete opposites, but for Alyssa, the two have always gone together. With Hipcamp Alyssa's found a way to connect folks with campsites on public and private land. This creates more camping spots and makes it easier to find a place to hunker down under the stars.
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Alyssa Ravasio:
I don't really necessarily want to live in a world shaped by people just trying to make the most money, that's not like the most fun thing ever to me. So Hipcamp was really a way to take this really powerful technology, the internet, and combine it with this deep love and passion I have for the outdoors and for nature, and find a way to not only make nature more accessible to people and also protect a lot of land in the process.
Shelby Stanger:
We don't often hear about the intersection between technology and the outdoors. Many people think of the subjects as complete opposites, but for Alyssa Ravasio, the two have always gone together. Alyssa is the founder and CEO of an online platform called Hipcamp. Booking a campsite and booking a campsite online has always been kind of a pain. With Hipcamp Alyssa's found a way to connect folks with campsites on public and private land. This creates more camping spots and makes it easier to find a place to hunker down under the stars. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-Op Studio's Production.
Alyssa, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. I'm so excited to have you on.
Alyssa Ravasio:
So excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm curious, were you always outdoorsy growing up? Were you a camper?
Alyssa Ravasio:
I was a camper growing up for sure. I was very fortunate to have parents who prioritized time outside and especially time camping. So spent most of my summers growing up going to different campgrounds sometimes for up to two weeks, which is, as I know now in my position, a pretty rare thing for people to do. But yeah, we would sometimes book a campsite and just stay there for a week or two, which was incredible.
Shelby Stanger:
That is incredible. Where would you go? Do you have any memories of amazing camp stories growing up?
Alyssa Ravasio:
So many. We'd spend a lot of time in the High Sierra, so Tuolumne Meadows into the Yosemite Valley sometimes, but especially up there. Trinity River, pretty much anywhere within driving distance of the Bay Area that had good fly-fishing, we have probably camped there.
Shelby Stanger:
Are your parents fly fishermen? Okay.
Alyssa Ravasio:
Yeah. So my dad is really into it, and then we also got into it growing up. Spent a lot of time in rivers. My mom would stop at gas stations and buy those, the inner black tubes you can use to fill up truck tires, and we would take those down little rapids. Sometimes looking back on it, bigger rapids than we probably had business doing as children, but especially when you stay at the same campground for a week and you get really comfortable with the river, every day is like, all right, let's try the next level up. What's a slightly bigger waterfall? What's a slightly longer rapid? And we spent a lot of time doing that. It was great.
Shelby Stanger:
On truck inner tubes.
Alyssa Ravasio:
Yeah. It's a good hack.
Shelby Stanger:
That sounds so fun. I did once on a blowup paddle board. It was terrifying and fun.
Alyssa Ravasio:
Yeah, I like paddleboarding on rivers too. But the inner tube's good because you've got a lower center of gravity, and normal inner tubes will pop the second they hit a rock or a stick, but a truck inner tube, you can really get some mileage out of that.
Shelby Stanger:
Pro tip, but if get hurt, we're not liable. Amazing. I love that.
Alyssa Ravasio:
Correct.
Shelby Stanger:
So you found a way to use tech to promote the outdoors, which seems almost oxymoronic, and you're like, no tech can actually promote the outdoors.
Alyssa Ravasio:
Yeah, I think a lot of it is a bit of an accident of what time you are born. So I was born in 1988, and so, I got to use computers pretty early. I remember probably being seven or so and being obsessed with Kid Pix, which I maintain to this day is one of the coolest software applications ever created. So I always had this really super positive association with tech as a really creative way. I was using Kid Pix to make stop animation films mostly. I was using iMovie to make little films with my sisters all the time. And so, I had this really creative association with technology.
So at college I had intended to be a film major. I'd wanted to go to UCLA and major in film for most of my life. I think film is incredibly powerful when it comes to changing how people see the world and just moving culture forward. I didn't get into film school. I found out at the last minute possible, it was a terrible disaster. I was heading into my senior year with no major and therefore no ability to get a degree. And so, I literally went to ucla.edu/majors and started reading what major maybe could I take and finish. And down at the bottom of the page, I saw this asterisk of individual studies and I said, that's me. That's where I feel like I am in life right now. And ended up creating a major about the internet and how it was impacting our culture and our world, which was funny enough why I didn't get into the film program, or at least part of why I didn't get in, is I had pitched them on letting me study the internet and how it was going to change Hollywood. And that wasn't something at the time they were interested in or wanted to support a student studying. So I got to create my own.
And when I was at UCLA, obviously at the time, I think Facebook was starting to get a lot of concerning press and people were starting to ask the question of, hey, social media, is this really as good as we think it is? What's going on here? And what I really based a lot of my work on, and what I truly believe is that the technology itself, in this case, the internet, is neutral. The impact it has is going to determine almost entirely on who learns to use it and what they use it for. And knowing how powerful the internet is, knowing that I believe we are still in the earliest days of the transformation it's going to have on our society. I became pretty obsessed with, I'm going to learn how to use this tool and I want to use it for something that I think is good and important. And so, in this case, it was, let's use this cool tool, the internet, to protect nature and get more people outside.
Shelby Stanger:
It makes sense that Alyssa would want to combine her passions, technology and the outdoors. After graduating from college, she worked at a handful of digital startups and in her free time, she started surfing and doing yoga. Alyssa hadn't gone camping much since she was a kid, but on New Year's 2013, she decided to take a new boyfriend on a camping trip.
Alyssa Ravasio:
Camping was always a big part of my life, but it wasn't until after graduating from college actually that I started booking campsites for myself. And there was one trip in particular where I wanted to show my then boyfriend, now husband, how beautiful California was. He's from Australia. He was trying to talk about feeling homesick, and I was like, hold on, California's beautiful too. You don't need to go back to Sydney to see beautiful oceans. And so, even though camping so much growing up, I hadn't booked a site for myself. Embarrassing, but true perhaps.
Shelby Stanger:
I hadn't either. It's so hard.
Alyssa Ravasio:
It's so hard, but I didn't know. I guess that's really the point of the story. I didn't know how hard it was. And so, when I started looking for a campsite that I could take my husband, Owen, I was pretty shocked. I remember at one point actually crashing my computer because I had too many tabs open on my internet browser. And just being like, why is this so difficult? It's way too hard. And I luckily I don't give up, that's one of my personality traits. And so, I persevered, and eventually found a site in Big Sur, and it didn't take bookings, which was really convenient because I took one look at the government's bookings website and was like, nope, can't figure that out.
So we showed up at this campground. It was beautiful. We actually got the last site, it was Andrew Molera, it's a state park in Big Sur. And as we were walking up to the campground, I started looking around and everybody had wet suits drying on the oak trees next to their tents and surfboards leaning against their tents. And I was like, what's going on here? We walked out to the beach and there was a beautiful point break. Beautiful. And everybody at the campground, I would say over 80% of the people had their surf gear. They knew what was going on. I loved to surf. I was at that time keeping a surfboard in my car at all times just in case. And I'd actually taken it out of my car to come down for this camping trip. And so I had this just really kind of heartbreaking moment of, I did so much research, I tried so hard, and yet somehow I still didn't learn what for me would've been the most important thing to know about this campground, which was that it's home to this incredible wave and still had a good trip.
But driving back the next day as I pulled into San Francisco, it was a really a moment. It was a big aha of like, of like wait, that whole experience was way too broken. I feel so much better every time I go outside. I feel happier, I feel healthier. I know what matters. I stop thinking about all the stuff that doesn't matter. And I was like, I really want more people to get to feel the way that I feel now. Maybe the internet could help. Maybe we could use technology to make it simpler to go camping. And that was the original seed.
Shelby Stanger:
When Alyssa decided to pursue Hipcamp full-time, she had a basic vision in mind. She wanted to create a platform with photos, reviews, and easy booking opportunities. At the time, Alyssa wasn't concerned about whether a campground was public or private. She just wanted to make it easier to find campsites. She brought together her new business idea and her tech experience and hit the ground running. But pretty quickly, Alyssa hit a roadblock. She needed to learn how to code.
Alyssa Ravasio:
So I think the hardest part for me actually was very early on. Hipcamp was a solo venture. It was just me. It was me and my laptop. I was lucky to have a coding mentor who basically I would, she actually gave me free office space, Liz Howard, amazing woman. And she was teaching a programming class downstairs. And so, I would spend most of my days upstairs unable to, I don't know, move a button across the page one inch and wanting to throw my laptop at the wall. And then I would go downstairs and she'd fix it in two minutes. And that was pretty much our pattern for the two or three months when I first built the site. So that was a really challenging period. But I also loved, coding's actually amazing, and that you get to make a little bit of progress all the time. And so, as someone who really enjoys that feeling of like, I did it, I did it again, I moved the button and inch, yay! Celebrate the little things, right?
I think the darkest part was after launching the site, I worked so hard and I had this idea that if I launched the site by June for the start of summer, it was just going to take off, right? Because everybody knew it was too hard to find a campsite. Here I'd built this great solution, let's go. And for the first three months, there were so few people using the site that I would see on my Google Analytics there were two people on the site. And I'd be like, oh my gosh, who is that other person? Who's not me? And then I'd be like, oh, it's just me. I opened it in Cognito window. It's just two of me.
So I think that period of time was really hard when you feel like you've put so much work and love into a project, and then no one catches you on the other side. At least for me at first. That felt really terrifying, honestly. Really embarrassing. I had a lot of thoughts. I actually went back and reread a lot of my journals from that time period. And a lot of what I was thinking at the time was, this is so embarrassing. What do my parents think? What do my friends think? I should just go get a job. This is so dumb. So it was just a really, I think dark time in terms of judgment of myself. And then the upswing of that story is eventually after many months of just feeling like this isn't going anywhere, I should probably do something more responsible with my life.
Somebody booked a campsite. So we actually used to let you book public campsites on Hipcamp through a very Jerry-rigged system where you would book them, I would get a text message, and then go book it for you. And it's pretty cool, right? And so somebody booked a campsite and I looked her up and she was this cool artist in Oakland, and we didn't have a bunch of friends in common. It wasn't like a pity booking. And I wrote her an email and I was of course very calm. I didn't freak out at her, but I was just like, here's all your information and everything. And so, that first booking gave me all the energy I needed for many more months. I just needed one person to trust the site and kind of trust us with their next camping trip.
Shelby Stanger:
How did she hear about it?
Alyssa Ravasio:
She had heard about it through friends. So I was doing a lot of posting in Reddit and emailing people. So I was really trying to get the word out there. But yeah, she had heard about it from a friend. So I think when people hear about things from friends, they're more likely to trust them.
Shelby Stanger:
That reservation was the first of many. Hipcamp has now facilitated over 7 million bookings across the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. They have more than 600,000 campsites, tree houses, and cabins listed on their website. When we come back, Alyssa talks about the decision to work with private landowners, how Hipcamp prioritizes sustainability, and the moment Alyssa knew that her business idea would be a success.
Alyssa Ravasio is the founder and CEO of Hipcamp. If you haven't heard of it, Hipcamp is kind of like Airbnb for camping. The company is most known for the revolutionary way that it opened up private land, creating an opportunity for landowners to rent out sites on their farm, vineyard, or family property. There are some extraordinary listings on the platform, campsites with river views, glamping situations with soaking tubs, tiny houses, and so many more. Over the years, the company has changed and evolved a lot. It took a while for them to find their footing.
Do you have any memorable stories when things went wrong or things went really right and you're like, okay, yeah, this is what I'm meant to do? Maybe just some lessons you learned early on.
Alyssa Ravasio:
So I think one of my most important lessons has been how important it is to be, to really fall in love with a problem instead of the solution. So when you fall in love with the problem, which in my case was like it's way too hard to go camping and book a campsite and figure out what I'm actually getting into the.he solution is something that you get to then kind of co-create with your community, with the universe, with all the other external forces that are moving and changing in the world. And so, the original idea for Hipcamp was actually just putting all the public campgrounds on a single map, and then letting people add reviews and photos. And I thought that would kind of be enough and that would solve the problem. And through a lot of advocacy for open data, a lot of really hard fought and eventually won battles around open data, we learned over time that while public land is really important, it's often really overused as well. And so having all the public land wasn't enough. It wasn't actually going to solve the problem of it being too hard to find a campsite. We needed more places to send people.
And actually one of the kind of lowest points of the company was one night I remember walking around with my boyfriend Owen and really saying, gosh, what are we going to do? We don't have any way to make money as a business. We're not going to die. I'm not going to let that happen. We need a new business model. And it was so bad that we went to this little Italian restaurant in North Beach and a glass of wine in started drawing on the paper tablecloth business models for Hipcamp. This is like multiple years into starting the company and we're still just like, wow, how's this thing going to make money? And so that was how we came to the idea of partnering with people who have land, who are taking care of land, these private landowners. And it was really born from this just obsession with solving a problem versus being attached to, I want this product to look or work this a certain way. That's really what led us to figuring out this really, I think, wild idea, which is what if we open up tons of new land for outdoor recreation every day? Let's open up new places to camp on private land.
But it wasn't until looking at private land through this lens of if this is wildly successful in 10 years, what has changed? And when I looked at private land through that exercise, what I realized is we will have really changed the landscape for outdoor recreation, because if you really succeed, if you really knock it out of the park, you're looking at maybe, I don't know, twice as many places to go hike and camp and put your feet in the river and sit under the stars. And that would be really powerful.
And then the kicker, which really is what captured my heart, was what a powerful way to protect all this land. When we have people going and playing and surfing and swimming and hiking, there's a reason to keep that land natural and to not develop it, or log it, or mine it, or anything like that. And so, it was recognizing that this wouldn't only transform outdoor recreation, but also really we'd been focused a lot on protecting and defending our public lands, which is ridiculous that we still have to fight that battle today, but we do. And it was, let's do that and let's play offense. Let's go get more land and open it up for people to play and recreate in. And private land is really the way to do that. So that really started this next era of the company focused on unlocking access to new places to camp.
Shelby Stanger:
So how did you find these private lands? Did you start knocking on doors calling random people? Did you have a task force? What's that look like?
Alyssa Ravasio:
Yes, to all of the above. Finding private landowners is definitely the most challenging part of the company. It is absolutely the hardest part. Our very first host was actually someone who my dad had the good sense to reach out to through a program that offered fly-fishing on private land. So we just knew that if, hey, if you're open to having fly fishers, what's a couple campers? We then did have to offer them $15,000 to sign up. We had a very cool partnership with Mountain Hardware where we were giving away basically a summer's worth of camping on their land. So I was able to prepay them, which is I think what made the difference at the end of the day.
And then once you have a little bit of success and you can point to this host who made all this money and had a really good experience, then you use that to basically do a bunch of outreach and recruitment to other landowners. And then fast-forward to today, the vast majority of our hosts hear about us through the community. So it's about half-and-half, half the time they're hearing about us from other hosts who have had a really good experience and earned money and encouraged them to sign up. But half the time they're hearing about us from people who've camped with us. It's often someone goes camping with Hipcamp, has a great time, and then on the drive home's like this is the thing for Uncle Sally's blueberry farm. This is perfect for them. And then they give them a call. And so today, the vast majority of people are finding us.
Shelby Stanger:
Over the past decade, Hipcamp has unlocked access to four and a half million acres of land. One huge focus for Alyssa is to help preserve and nourish this land. Hipcamp partners with scientists and biodiversity specialists to teach landowners about plant and animal preservation. Everyone benefits from this system, campers, property owners, and mother nature.
Alyssa Ravasio:
Hipcamp's always been something that I view as we're building this in collaboration with the community. We got to go get feedback, we got to hear what's good, what's not so good. And so, I went out to meet one of these very first hosts, she's a rancher up in Sonoma, and I remember getting out of my car and I saw her and I was pretty nervous to be honest. And she was walking at me with this piece of paper and I was like, oh no, it's like a list of complaints and things that are broken on the website, and I was kind of freaking out. And she came up to me and she handed it to me and she said, hey, it was so great to meet you. First thing I wanted to show you is this letter. And this is a letter from a land development company. And this company is offering to buy our land to add either a housing development or a golf course resort. And we get these letters all the time, and I hate them because if I sell this land, I will have completely failed on my life's mission, which is to leave this land a little better than I found it.
At the same time, don't always know how I'm going to make my mortgage. And so she shared that sometimes she's worried she's going to have to call him, she's got to keep the letter there just in case, because maybe we'll have to carve off 40, 60 acres and figure something out. She said, I'm giving you this letter because Hipcamp makes it junk mail. I don't need it. I don't even have to open it. And I know now that I can earn the income I need through camping to take really good care of this land for forever. And that was a really powerful moment for me that I think kind of connected this original very simple desire just to, it really just started with wanting to feel good. When I go outside, I feel happier and healthier. I want more people to feel that too, to then understanding, wow, outdoor recreation is such a powerful engine.
It is a very powerful economic engine that can protect land, which we need now more than ever, right? Land use change is the leading cause of biodiversity loss. We've lost 70% of our wildlife since 1970. We have to protect the land we have left. We have to, this is the time. We got another decade maybe, tops. So figuring out these engines that can really protect land at scale and outdoor recreation is, as far as I can see, one of the most scalable, if not the most scalable, continues to be a huge source of inspiration and motivation for myself and the team.
Shelby Stanger:
I love that story. So when do you think you first realized we're onto something, this is going to be successful?
Alyssa Ravasio:
I remember very early on doing a review of some of our very first reviews of one of our very first Hipcamps. And I was just reading through what everyone had said about their time there. And skinny-dipping came up many times. We're talking in our first 10 or 20 reviews here, multiple people said, oh my gosh, this was the first time I went skinny-dipping in decades.
Shelby Stanger:
Heck yeah.
Alyssa Ravasio:
And I remember reading that and being like, oh, we are onto something. If we are creating a product that makes people feel comfortable getting naked in the outdoors, this is a good thing. Let's do more of this. And so I think one of the most unique aspects that brings a lot of the Hipcamp sites together is the privacy element. So finding places where you can feel kind of wild and free, get some breathing space is so important. Most of us live lives that are pretty fast-paced, pretty intense, and finding places where we can really just unwind and stretch out and take a deep breath is so important.
Shelby Stanger:
Listen, I promise I'm not being paid to tell you this, but I recently did an overnight with Hipcamp. Johnny and I stayed in this tiny house. It was shaped like a castle in Joshua Tree. You could order a s'mores kit and firewood that the host delivered to the campfire on his bike, and the stars above were just incredible. There was even a sauna and an outdoor shower. I know, it was glamping at its finest, but it was glorious.
I really admire the way that Alyssa has used her values, skills, and creativity to start a business that's making a huge impact on outdoor access. If you want to learn more about Hipcamp and the sites they offer, head to hipcamp.com. That's H-I-P-C-A-M-P.com.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Pierce Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. And our senior producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Motola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, when you rate it, and when you write a review, wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.