How a Solo Founder Built a SaaS by Selling to Campgrounds

**Lucas** (0:01)
So, this episode is about a solo founder who built a SaaS product for an industry you probably don't think about when you hear the words, software company, campgrounds.

**Luna** (0:12)
Like RV parks and tent sites? That kind of campground?

**Lucas** (0:17)
Exactly. The founder's name is Mike, and he started a company called Campsite Software. He sells a booking and management platform to small family-owned campgrounds across the US.
The business does about $30,000 a month in recurring revenue, and he built it entirely by himself, no co-founders, no outside funding.

**Luna** (0:39)
30 grand a month solo is impressive. How did he even land on campgrounds as a market?

**Lucas** (0:45)
Mike was a software developer who loved camping. He would go to state parks and private campgrounds on weekends, and he kept noticing that the owners were using paper ledgers or maybe a basic spreadsheet to manage reservations. Some had a website, but it was just a contact form. No real-time availability, no online booking.

**Luna** (1:07)
That sounds like a pain if you're trying to book a site. You call, they say, hold on, let me check. And it's all manual.

**Lucas** (1:14)
Right. And Mike realized that the big players like Reserve America or Recreation.gov only serve government-run parks and huge commercial campgrounds.
The small mom and pop campgrounds, places with maybe 50 to 100 sites, they were completely underserved. So he built a simple web app that let campground owners manage reservations, take payments, and handle check-ins.

**Luna** (1:37)
But how do you sell software to campground owners? I imagine a lot of them are older, not super tech savvy, and skeptical of subscription fees.

**Lucas** (1:47)
That's exactly the challenge. Mike's first sales tactic was almost absurdly direct.
He went camping. He would book a weekend at a campground, set up his tent, and then walk over to the office and just chat with the owner. He'd ask how they handle reservations, show them his phone with a demo of the software, and offer to set it up for free for the first month.

**Luna** (2:10)
So he was literally doing outbound sales from a campsite. That's dedication.

**Lucas** (2:16)
He did that for about six months.
He would camp at a different park every weekend, talk to the owner, and if they agreed to try it, he'd set up their account right there on his laptop. By the end of that summer, he had 15 paying customers.

**Luna** (2:30)
And those 15 were probably all within driving distance of his home, right?

**Lucas** (2:35)
Yeah, he focused on campgrounds within a three-hour radius of where he lived in Colorado. But the interesting thing is, once those owners started using the software, they started telling other owners. Campground owners talked to each other. There are regional associations, trade shows, Facebook groups.
Word of Mouth became his main growth channel after the first year.

**Luna** (2:58)
So, he didn't need to camp forever. The product started selling itself.

**Lucas** (3:04)
Pretty much. By year two, he had a hundred customers, and he was still the only employee.
He handled support, development, billing, everything. The software was built on a standard web stack. Nothing fancy, but it solved a real pain point. Campgrounds that used his software saw a measurable increase in bookings because guests could book online any time of day.

**Luna** (3:28)
Did he ever consider raising money to grow faster?

**Lucas** (3:31)
He told an interviewer that he thought about it, but he didn't want the pressure.
His business was profitable from month one because his costs were just his laptop and hosting fees. He charged each campground $50 a month for the basic plan and $150 for the premium plan with more features. With 100 customers at an average of maybe $70 per month, that's $7,000 a month. Enough to live on in Colorado if you're frugal.

**Luna** (4:00)
And now he's at $30,000 a month. So he's scaled the customer base to around $400 or so, depending on the mix.

**Lucas** (4:09)
Roughly, he's added features over time, automated email reminders, integration with QuickBooks for accounting, a simple website builder for each campground. But the core product is still the same booking engine, and he's never run a single ad. All growth has been organic.

**Luna** (4:28)
That's the dream, right? Find a niche that's ignored by big software companies, build something simple, and let word of mouth do the work.

**Lucas** (4:37)
It really is. And I think the lesson here isn't just about camping. It's about looking for industries where the incumbents have overlooked the small operators.
Every industry has its campgrounds, businesses that are too small for Salesforce or Oracle to care about, but that still needs software to run efficiently.