Solve Your Own Problem

Hip camp started very much as a problem I wanted to solve for myself. I was really lucky. I grew up spending lots of time camping.

I'm one of three girls, so I think for my parents it was one.

Of the only vacations that was affordable and manageable. It was just a huge part of.

How I grew up. I remember having moments like crossing rivers and having these realizations of, wow, I'm so strong.

I can't believe I was able to do that.

It just became this huge part of how I grew up and found confidence and, and really, you know, became, became an adult, which apparently I, I'm told that I am today.

So for me, you know, the outdoors.

Was always something that I did. I just normally went with other people, right?

My dad would book, my friends would.

Book, especially for overnight camping trips.

And when I started trying to plan.

My own trips, I moved to San Francisco.

After being in dc, after attending ucla, Go Bruins. I just had to get one in there. I'm done. I started looking for my own campsites.

And what I found was that it.

Was incredibly broken and the whole system.

Was really difficult to use and everything was either booked up six months ago or really difficult to find.

In particular, I spent many, many, many.

Hours researching for a trip on New Year's. I wanted to go be by the ocean. That's my favorite place to be.

And I just couldn't believe that I had to look at county parks and state parks and national parks and all the private campgrounds.

And these were.

There were so many different websites that.

At one point I crashed my Chrome browser because I had too many tabs open.

And eventually finally found this campsite.

This is in Andrew Melara State Park. It's in Big Sur. It's gorgeous.

There were no reservations, which was good.

News to me because I had not thought to book six months in advance.

And upon arriving I found out that.

Despite doing many hours of research, I.

Had failed to learn what for me.

Was arguably the best part about this.

Campground, which was that it had an incredible surf break.

It had a point break, so a.

Very well formed wave that was coming.

Off of a bluff that was out in the sea. And I hadn't brought my surfboard. I absolutely loved to surf. I'd actually had my board in my.

Car because I was surfing so much.

But I'd read all about the campground and so I figured if there was surfing, it would have been mentioned. So it seemed safe to take the board out of the car and give my friend in the backseat a bit more room.

It was still a great trip, but, you know, really highlighted for me that if you can spend that many hours.

Researching and still end up, you know.

Missing what's probably the most important part.

Of the outdoor experience, this is a really broken system. And so it was actually just the.

Next day, New Year's Day, driving back into San Francisco, that it kind of.

Hit me that this was a really broken experience, and the Internet was a really great way to fix it. And so I decided to start solving.

That and learned how to program and build the first version of the site later that year.