In this advisory video, Mundo Sanchez reviews a founder’s direct message about creating a marketplace for booking privately owned travel infrastructure, specifically campgrounds, and competing with the incumbent platform Campspot. He frames the challenge as taking on a "1,000‑pound gorilla" and stresses that any challenger must be roughly ten times better in price, quality, and features to lure users away. He identifies the classic chicken‑or‑egg problem of needing both operators (campground owners) and consumers, recommending that the founder initially focus on proving consumer demand by dominating a single local market—securing all nearby campground owners, building personal relationships, and driving traffic to that micro‑ecosystem. Sanchez highlights the importance of AI‑driven discovery agents that can instantly match travelers with available sites, positioning this capability as a future competitive edge. He also points out a critical operational gap: the lack of calendar synchronization across multiple booking platforms, proposing a middleware solution that aggregates reservations from Airbnb, VRBO, Campspot, etc., to prevent double‑bookings and protect owner reputation. Finally, he warns that distribution is the biggest hurdle, requiring full‑time dedication and a long runway of effort before any revenue materializes. The video concludes with a call for the founder to decide if they are willing to commit fully to this arduous path.
Chapters
Okay, so a founder DM'd me about his startup idea, and my first question back is, is this the hill that you wanna die on? He's going after Campspot and I'm going after QuickBooks, so I can't really blame him. I'm taking on the 1,000-pound gorilla and so is he. So let's dive in today on his message, and then let's evaluate and dissect his business model and see if he's got a fighting chance. All right, so let's check out this DM he sent. He's building a marketplace for travel infrastructure. The core thesis is, What privately owned infrastructure can be made bookable that isn't bookable today? So the site's functioning now and he's at the point where he needs real operators and real inventory to help him refine it. And he wants to hear my perspective from being an operator and also a software founder. And then if I have any transient campground inventory, which I do, that sits empty, he'd like to put it on there and see if we can turn that unused inventory into additional revenue. Okay, so let's dive into it. The thousand-pound gorilla. What is his gorilla that he's facing? So he is going up against Campspot. They are the biggest, what I would consider, marketplace for filling this exact need. So the first question I'm asking when I'm creating a product is, okay, does this product exist? And the answer to that question is yes, it does. The unfortunate part is Campspot is like the Zillow of real estate marketplaces, right? So if someone was going to go and say, hey, I want to rebuild a marketplace to list real estate? What already exists? That's what you have Zillow for. So when you think about taking on the 1,000-pound gorilla, you have to build something that is not only 1 or 2 times better, but like 10 times better. Because how are you going to get people away from the product? The benefit that platforms like Zillow has is they have distribution, they have brand, they have goodwill. They've been doing it for decade plus or however long they've been doing it. And so even what my product, when I look about what I'm building, Bankable, so I'm taking on QuickBooks. QuickBooks has been around. It's like the staple for every small business. So what I have to build is 10 times better than what they can offer, right? I have to beat them on price. I have to beat them on quality. I have to beat them on features, on things that I can do that they don't. So like what I'm doing to combat that is I'm focused on building a marketplace that helps small businesses get bankable, like actual bank funding. And QuickBooks doesn't care about that. All they're doing is being a record keeper. I'm actually going to be injecting all this and they don't wanna deal with bookkeeping. So the platform's gonna automate it. AI is just table stakes. It's not like the value add anymore. It was the, like, there's a whole list of things and I'm not getting into, you know, too much of my model. I wanna dive into his model, but you have to be thinking through what can I do to make this better and to actually attract the people. Okay, so diving into his model, he's got a chicken or the egg problem, right? Because he's creating a marketplace and in his message, if we look at that, it says, I need to get real operators and real inventory. So that's the chicken or the egg. And but as an owner, why am I even going to spend 1 minute, you know, even if it's a 1-minute setup to go on this platform and there's nobody on the platform, right? So he needs consumers Consumer demand, people coming to the site, and he also needs suppliers, which is the campground owner. So it's like, which one do you get first, right? And I think you probably have a better bet focusing on consumers. But then, you know, for consumers, it's like, okay, there's already Campspot. Why am I going to come to this platform? You have to find a way to attract them right now. Your idea about the marketplace, the value you're giving consumers, is is the operators, right? Well, the operators aren't going to come. if there's no demand. So you have to prove demand, and probably the easiest way to do that in a phase 1 approach is like pick one market and just dominate that market. Like pick one, literally pick one city that has maybe 10 campgrounds, a handful, at least 4 or 5, and get all those owners on board. You're gonna have to find a way to build a relationship with those owners Ideally, if you could do it in your backyard where you have a local presence, you can go break bread with them, build a relationship. They're willing to help you out. Well, the next thing you need to do is attract the people that are visiting in that local market. And if you can target the people in that one local market and like build as much density and traffic— obviously you're trying to bootstrap this, you know, on day one— but the, the bigger question is Why am I coming to you versus coming to Campspot? And I think the opening that you have is that Campspot lists marketplaces that, you know, are on Campspot, right? I know, I know they don't push campgrounds that are not on Campspot, but they may still have listings there. I just think that they're, you know, the results probably get suppressed. And so that's the challenge that you have to figure out. I think you really have to also be AI-focused in terms of like agents. You know, I think the future is AI agents doing all of these things for them. Someone talking into their Grok bot and saying, hey, I'm traveling through this, I'm going to be here in an hour, find me a campground that's open right now. And I think the person that can give that answer, that AI agent the answer the quickest, is probably going to win. And with the highest rankings and like all that kind of stuff. So focus on AI agents, focus on that connectivity. The other piece is, and this is one thing Campspot, you know, doesn't really do, a lot of these places don't want to play nice with each other, right? So if you have some sort of integration feature, me as a campground owner, I don't want to use another platform even if it creates more bookings if I don't have a way to manage the reservations. So if I go and list on Airbnb and I'm on this marketplace, let's say Campspot or Staylist or whatever, and I'm also taking reservations here, if I don't have a way for those 2 to talk to each other, I don't even— I don't even want it. I don't even want the Airbnb, right? I only want it if they can talk to each other, because having your campground or whatever you have out there for exposure is awesome, right? But what is not awesome is a double booking. That is the fastest way to kill your reputation because you are really gonna piss off your consumer. Them a safe place to be, right? And if you deny them that safe place, that's gonna kill your brand really, really quick. Guaranteed to get terrible reviews. So you have to manage the calendar. If you don't find a way to Synchronize the calendar, and not just for your platform, right? It doesn't matter. I don't care about your platform as a campground owner or owner of any venue. I care about, hey, I got this platform, I got that platform, I got this platform, this platform. We're all taking reservations. You need to be the guy that sits in the middle that can help integrate all of that from a calendar perspective. You need to provide— I think you need to provide that like middleware value of like sync all of these calendars together. It doesn't matter if they're on VRBO, Airbnb, Campspot, Staylist, whatever. Help that campground owner manage it all on one calendar, and you are just one extra piece and layer of that. And eventually, if you can bring volume, then they will start to trust your product more, right? The more volume you can drive in, the more that you're obviously going to make. And when you have a transactional relationship, it's more about what value are you bringing to me? Right? If you're bringing me bookings, I love you. If you're not bringing me bookings, I don't care about you. That's what that transactional relationship means. Is this the hill that you want to die on? Because let me tell you, it is going to be 10 times harder than you think, not only building the product and keeping up with the demand and the growing of AI, but also distribution. Distribution is going to be your biggest challenge, and it's going to take a long time to grow this thing. And the advantage that they have is they're a booking platform. Themselves. So they're taking in reservations. Campground owners don't want to be having software A, B, C, D, E. So that's their advantage, is that they're starting out as a booking platform and that's natively what they do. So you got to ask yourself, are you willing to go all in on this plan? Because if you're not, and if you're going to be, hey, let me just do this on the side, maybe I got a W-2, I'll dabble on it 5 or 10 hours a week, maybe on the weekend, you know, that's not going to cut it, man. If you're gonna go and on this kind of— you better be ready to go all in. I promise you it's gonna be way harder than you think, and you're gonna have to go way longer than you think without making any money. You're gonna be racking up hundreds if not thousands of hours with zero in your pocket. And so the question is, are you prepared to take that leap of faith? If you are, cheers to you, man. Go, go get it. I would love to see you be successful and As we wrap up, do me a favor in the comments down below. If you have anything else to add that you think would make this business model better, feel free to drop a comment down below, and I will see you guys next time.
