- Online campsite company Hipcamp announced it raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz
Hipcamp — an online campsite company — announced it raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and its Cultural Leadership Fund. New investor Yes VC and existing investors Benchmark, Slow Ventures, August Capital, and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures also joined the round. Including this round, Hipcamp has raised $41.8 million in total funding. This round of funding will be used for accelerating growth and potentially expand internationally.
Alyssa Ravasio — the founder and CEO Of Hipcamp — launched the company in 2013 after spending hours trying to find a campsite online. Upon realizing the lack of a central place to find campsites, Ravasio learned how to code and then set up a database that offered camping fans a way to find campsites. About a year later, she linked up with co-founder Eric Bach and raised $2 million in seed funding shortly after, according to Forbes.
As the service was being developed, Ravasio learned that many top national parks near cities book up weeks and months in advance. And upon the arrival, the campsites would end up getting crowded. So Hipcamp opened land owned by ranchers and farmers for exclusive outdoor experiences. Now Hipcamp offers over 300,000 campsites on private land through partnerships. Plus the service also lists real-time availability of federal campsites.
“We are proud to feature coconut farms in Hawaii, exclusive vineyards in California, country ranches in Montana, pristine forestry land in Maine, and so much more,” wrote Ravasio in a blog post. “We’re very motivated to contribute to expanding rural economic empowerment, protecting natural ecosystems and local food systems, and sparking widespread, profound connections to the outdoors.”
Andreessen Horowitz general partner Andrew Chen is joining Hipcamp’s board in conjunction with this funding round.
“Hipcamp is at the nexus of several cultural movements: the re-embracing of the outdoors, growth of travel and adventure-seeking industries and land conservation and improvement efforts,” added Andrew Chen, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “We’re thrilled to support Hipcamp on their mission to ‘get more people outside’ and do it in a way that supports consumer desires while simultaneously creating meaningful revenue opportunities for landowners.”
Yes VC is a venture capital firm managed by Caterina Fake (Flickr co-founder), Jyri Engeström (co-founder of Ditto.me — a mobile local recommendations company acquired by Groupon), and David Pickerell (former lead ops and logistics manager at Uber).
“Hipcamp has all the virtues of a well-lived life that Yes VC wants to fund and support: community, nature, sharing, beauty, prosperity, and campfires,” explained Fake.
