Building a marketplace from scratch, with Hipcamp founder Alyssa Ravasio

Jeff Berman (0:01)

We've all spent money on something that seemed incredible, but didn't live up to the hype. A kitchen gadget, a car, when it doesn't deliver, the disappointment is real. Marketers suffer from this too. Chasing metrics that look great, but don't translate into revenue. LinkedIn calls that bull spend. Invest in what matters and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. You can target by company, industry, job title and more. LinkedIn ads also generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com/scale.

That's linkedin.com/scale.

Terms and conditions apply.

The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet, when it comes to their own wealth, most are running a disconnected stack. A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them. Creative Planning was built to fix exactly that. One integrated team of tax professionals, state planners, investment specialists, all coordinated by a dedicated wealth manager who sees your full financial picture and keeps every piece working together. Proactive tax efficiency, estate strategy, investments, all under one roof. Creative Planning, where wealth works together. Learn more at creativeplanning.com/masters of scale.

SPEAKER_2 (1:41)

AI is full of possibilities. Enterprises run on realities. That's why Pega combines the world's most powerful AI with the governance, transparency and control enterprises demand. So you can move faster, adapt faster and scale AI with confidence.

All the power of AI, none of the uncertainty. Learn more at pega.com/ai.

Alyssa Ravasio (2:06)

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

Jeff Berman (2:16)

When did you know it was working?

Alyssa Ravasio (2:17)

I remember waking up that morning and opening up our backend systems. I think we had 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.

Jeff Berman (2:29)

I bet.

Alyssa Ravasio (2:29)

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.

Jeff Berman (2:39)

Oh, they were gatekeeping.

Alyssa Ravasio (2:40)

They were gatekeeping, but it's also genuine scarcity. The biggest challenge has been like managing my own health and energy. I got shingles at one point.

I 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?

Jeff Berman (2:59)

Because they knew this was stress-related. Absolutely.

With us today is Alyssa Ravasio, who is the founder and CEO of Hipcamp, 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.

Alyssa Ravasio (3:26)

Thank you for having me.

Jeff Berman (3:27)

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

Alyssa Ravasio (3:35)

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 early little embers that were left over. 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. At a moment when you can order any food, a car, a hotel with the click of a phone, like 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.

Jeff Berman (4:15)

You started Hipcamp in 2013, is that right?

Alyssa Ravasio (4:17)

It's been a little over a decade.

Jeff Berman (4:18)

So it's post-launch of Airbnb, if my 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?

Alyssa Ravasio (4:27)

Yeah, 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 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.