Building a marketplace from scratch, with Hipcamp founder Alyssa Ravasio

Hipcamp began with a fragmented-search problem: while planning a California coast camping trip, Alyssa Ravasio found information spread across roughly 15 websites. She built California Camping to consolidate public-campground details and let campers share useful information, but came to see that the deeper constraint was not just discovery. Popular campgrounds were often full, and making scarce public sites easier to find could frustrate campers who feared losing the chance to book without planning months ahead.

Ravasio started Hipcamp in 2013, wanting to build a company and use the internet to reconnect people with nature, though she did not initially know how it would make money. After learning to code at Dev Bootcamp, she built an early version with her sisters and friends. Signups grew from about four or five to hundreds, and she promoted the site in person, demonstrating it at meetups and outside REI while asking users what they needed. One customer’s request for a pet filter prompted a personal response from Ravasio; the customer shared it with a large Twitter following, generating Hipcamp’s first major traffic burst. Dave Moran invested $250,000 later that month.

The business evolved from a public-campground search engine into a marketplace for private land. After considering advertising and gear delivery, Ravasio offered users $500 for an introduction to a landowner willing to host campers; many people responded, and she visited properties the following week. At Mendocino Magic, landowner Mackenzie wanted to keep her property in the family and protect it from being sold and logged. Ravasio saw a fit between that goal and Hipcamp’s potential to support conservation. The company first used public-campground data to draw users, then added private-land listings while demand was already present.

Supply depended on solving problems that individual landowners could not easily address alone. Around 2017, a large farmers’ association invited members through its newsletter to host campers, prompting hundreds to sign up. Prospective hosts told Ravasio they had wanted to offer camping but lacked money for insurance and marketing, as well as access to customers. Infrastructure and regulation proved harder than she had expected. She cited California’s AB 518 as creating an optional county framework under which eligible landowners can have up to nine campsites without the more onerous permit required for an RV park. Obtaining insurance was another turning point: Hipcamp’s general policy covers both landowners and the company through multiple layers.

The marketplace’s impact, as described in the conversation, includes income that can help landowners keep their properties. At Slide Ranch, campsite revenue funds children’s nature scholarships; the host said the organization moved from a serious deficit to being in the black. At Salmon Creek Ranch, the owner said camping income changed the economics of retaining 600 acres rather than selling them for development. Ravasio said Hipcamp had close to 100 employees and described it as the largest search engine for public land and the largest search and booking engine for both commercial campgrounds and private land, a category the company created and scaled. The host estimated, with the qualification “I think,” that the platform had over half a million locations and millions of trips booked. Hipcamp’s company-wide north-star KPI is nights outside.

Ravasio said Hipcamp is mostly work-from-anywhere, with in-person onsites when problems are difficult to solve over Zoom; she works with colleagues in person nearly every week or every other week. Holding onsites at Hipcamp properties lets the team see the product in use. She also described managing her own health and energy as her hardest personal challenge: sacrificing sleep, exercise, and healthy meals accumulated over time, and she developed shingles. Her view is that caring for physical and mental health helps founders preserve the creativity and problem-solving ability their work requires.