Sharing Economy Pioneer 'Outdoorsy' Raises $25M in Series B Funding
Millennial-Driven Company Building World's Largest Outdoor Recreational Vehicle Marketplace
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 12, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Outdoorsy, the world's fastest-growing outdoor recreation marketplace, powering road trips and recreational vehicle (RV) adventures, today announced it has raised $25M USD in Series B funding led by Aviva Ventures and Altos Ventures. Aviva and Altos are joined by existing investors Tandem Capital and Autotech Ventures. The Series B funding will be used to expand the company's sales and marketing efforts, broaden its geographic footprint and grow its engineering and product teams.
Founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, Outdoorsy is turning the travel industry on its head, having booked over 263,000 days in the last year alone and generated nearly a hundred million dollars through the platform. The company hosts the largest bookable inventory of RVs worldwide online and is rapidly expanding its global fleet towards its goal of mobilizing the more than 17M idle RVs around the world.
"More than 12 percent of American households own a recreational vehicle, yet rarely use it," said Jeff Cavins, co-founder and CEO of Outdoorsy. "At the same time, more than 35Mconsumers try to rent a recreational vehicle in America each year with no luck. With Outdoorsy, we leveraged this global, cross-cultural phenomenon of RV travel, especially among Millennials, and brought this multi-billion dollar RV industry online and into the sharing economy."
Millennials now make up 38 percent of all recreational vehicle usage in North America as part of the larger trend of experiential travel and the desire to have unique experiences. With 40 percent of its user base being under the age of 40, 17 years younger than the industry average, Outdoorsy is tapping into this new consumer travel trend and building a third lodging category with mobile rooms. Users are able to go where home-sharing sites and hotels cannot go, reaching more places than ever before.
"RVs are the perfect gateway experiences for consumers, and the rising demand for campervan and RV travel was a growing trend in which we wanted to invest. Moving this market to an on-demand, online sharing economy was a logical way for us to participate in this new travel market," said Anthony Lee, Managing Director at Altos Ventures.
"Every on-demand agency in the recreational vehicle market needs to be using Outdoorsy and its pro tools across their operations," continued Lee. "Outdoorsy built the first solution that definitively shows the world's largest enterprises down to the at home operator, that they can list and rent safely, while enjoying peace of mind and economic benefits that were never before possible."
To create this on-demand marketplace, Outdoorsy utilizes state-of-the-art technology. In its first year in market, it introduced Wheelbase, a free, cloud-based and fully-insured RV fleet and rental management application for any business operating from three to 3,000 units. It also built, distributed and parallelized computation and real-time analytics engines to monitor and report on useful real time data, which promises users privacy and security.
"Our marketplace didn't exist just a few years ago," says Ryan Quinn, co-founder and head of software development. "The platform is a game-changer in this industry and ensures that our users can enjoy ease of use and peace of mind with every interaction."
Outdoorsy offers a wide range of services, including on-demand roadside assistance, powerful features such as INSTAmatch and INSTAbook that reduce the time required for searching/booking an RV, automated and integrated DMV verification and the first-ever commercial insurance for peer-to-peer rentals in North America. The insurance offering has now grown to $2M in coverage per rental and is live in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Further, the company recently announced a strategic partnership with Kampgrounds of America to bring camping assets and locations into the Outdoorsy marketplace and introduced an Active Duty Service and Military Veteran Program that waives listing and rental fees for service members.
"Outdoorsy's commitment to user safety, insurability and trust, along with the deep expertise in the management team, was very attractive for Aviva," said Ben Luckett, Managing Director of Aviva Ventures "We are pleased to partner with Outdoorsy – their lead in the market, excellent customer service and digital innovation are a great fit with Aviva's culture and the vision we have for our customers."
This investment follows a successful partnership between Aviva and Outdoorsy to provide an insurance solution to Outdoorsy users in Canada, helping to bring RV sharing to the country. The company's customer base includes professional agencies and dealerships across the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand and a rapidly growing community of tens of thousands of private vehicle owners, who are enjoying life changing economic benefits.
For more information on Outdoorsy, visit www.Outdoorsy.com.
About Outdoorsy
Headquartered in San Francisco with offices in the US and Canada, Outdoorsy is the world's largest and most trusted, on-demand marketplace for recreational vehicles, with hundreds of thousands of rental days, 2+ million message exchanges between RV owners and renters and the fastest growing global fleet of unique outdoor vehicles. Outdoorsy is mobilizing the 17+ million idle RVs around the world, ensuring everyone has the access, choice and opportunity to safely enjoy outdoor recreational vehicle travel and empowering RV owners to realize life-changing financial benefits. You can find us at www.outdoorsy.com and come along for the ride on Outdoorsy's unique RV-loving Never Idle Travel Journal.
About Aviva Ventures
Aviva is the leading insurer in the UK, serving one in every four households and has strong businesses in selected markets in Europe, Asia and Canada. Aviva Ventures is Aviva's corporate venture capital fund aiming to invest £100m by 2020 in early stage businesses. It targets investments in digital and technology companies operating in four areas: 'the internet of things', for example in connected homes, health and cars; data and analytics; innovative customer experiences; and distribution, for example new 'sharing economy' platforms. For more information about Aviva Ventures, please visit https://www.aviva.com/about-us/aviva-worldwide/aviva-ventures/.
About Altos
Altos Ventures is a global venture growth investor dedicated to backing exceptional founder-led companies. Altos takes a different approach to building companies, focusing on pragmatic growth and patient partnership. Based in Silicon Valley, Altos manages a portfolio of fast-growing companies that together generate billions in revenue and employ over 10,000 people around the world. www.altos.vc.
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