Tribe Pilot

Tribe Pilot, the mobile tool specifically designed to enable group outdoor adventures by providing a single online location for tripmates to create, store, edit and share all the details of a group adventure, is perfectly positioned to capitalize on the post-reopening rush to the outdoors. With industry and financial experts betting that post-COVID travelers will focus on secluded outdoor activities, and with health experts finding that COVID-19 spreads far less easily outdoors, it’s almost as if Tribe Pilot was built for this exact moment.

As we seek financing to help us scale, Tribe Pilot represents a unique, exciting and immediate investment opportunity, particularly for those who are passionate about outdoor adventure and business being used as a force for good (in our case, we’re a Benefit Corporation committed to fighting climate change via carbon sequestration efforts).

Into the Great Wide Open - Predictions for Post-COVID Travel

The cabin fever created by the COVID-19 pandemic has generated a fierce global desire to reunite outside with friends and family. In the US, as states reopen and restrictions lift, the yearning to travel is palpable; according to a study cited in The New York Times, “one-third of Americans said they hope to travel within three months after restrictions are lifted.” But airline and international travel is not on their minds. Instead, experts predict “a boom in road trips,” which provide a “sense of freedom with personal controls [that] will be ideal for people who want security.”

Along with post COVID behavior changing to include traveling closer to home, “more than half of American travelers say they plan to avoid crowded destinations when they resume traveling.”

“Travelers will have a strong desire to get out to and explore the great outdoors, including less-populated destinations,” predicts executive director for the Wyoming Office of Tourism

Diana Shober, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal. Further influencing this trend is the discovery that, according to health experts, “people are significantly less likely to get the coronavirus while outside.”

Says financial writer Michael Brush in MarketWatch, “Even if the virus subsides, which is by no means a given, we will be reprogrammed to favor outdoor activities that don’t involve a lot of other people.”

Continues Brush, “Money manager Eric Marshall at Hodges Capital Management in Dallas predicts this trend will boost sales at companies in boating, golf, recreational vehicles and camping.”

Tribe Pilot - Built for This Moment

As a mobile tool specifically designed to enable group outdoor adventures by providing all tripmates mobile access to the same information at the same time, Tribe Pilot is perfectly positioned to capitalize on the post-COVID rush to the outdoors; it’s almost as if we were built for this exact moment.

In fact, we’re already seeing user behavior change in real time: The week of May 18, as Phase 1 opening announcements spread across the United States, we saw a shift in attitude and resultant activity in our uses. That week, Tribe Pilot saw a record number of upgrades, without any active marketing campaigns; one-in-ten new users upgraded their accounts to Pro status, a statistic that puts us in the upper tier of consumer-facing software companies (equivalent industry average conversion rates fall between 1 and 2 percent). We intend to ride this expert and analyst predicted trend of post-stay-at-home travel through summer, into next year and well into the post-COVID future.

One hundred forty-five million Americans participate in outdoor recreation every year. That's more people than the attendance of all yearly NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL games combined, making outdoor activities America's favorite pastime.   

When taken as a whole, the outdoor industry accounts for about $412 billion in annual economic activity; that’s over 2% of GDP. In terms of consumer spending, it's a bigger market than either Pharmaceuticals or Automobiles.  

Yet this powerful and popular consumer segment is still looking for a purpose-built tool to support their outdoor adventures. Our users are begging us to answer their call for an app that makes outdoor experience happen. 

Everything in one place, and everyone on the same page

Tribe Pilot is a social tool purpose-built to facilitate the discovery, organization, and execution of outdoor adventures. We're aiming to be the comprehensive in-pocket resource for all your outdoor needs. Regardless of your outdoor aptitude, if you've ever organized a group activity—from potlucks to family reunions—you've recognized our opportunity. ~Note: 20% of trips on Tribe Pilot are not outdoor related.

With Tribe Pilot, everything related to your trip lives in one shared location, so everyone has access to and can contribute to the trip, and communications are central yet separate from actual trip logistics. We’re talking dates, locations, activities, maps, gear, accommodations, to-dos, food lists, and more. 

Benefit Corporation – Business for good

We believe business can and should be used as a force for good, which is why we became a Benefit Corporation within our first year of operation. To us, “good” means we’re thoughtful and deliberate about how we build our business and our company culture, and we consider how our actions impact our investors, shareholders, employees, users, community and the environment.

Additionally, as an adventure-focused company, we passionately believe we need to protect the planet we love and all the places we play. That’s why we’re committed to taking action on carbon sequestration, actively participating in the removal of carbon dioxide from our atmosphere to slow—or even reverse—the process of climate change.

From our start to now

Upon our initial release, in May of 2019, Tribe Pilot quickly attracted more than 3,500 users who’ve used the app to plan 3,000 trips in 48 states and 50 countries. And that’s all without any active marketing efforts; so far, it’s all word of mouth.

We’re now on the third version of Tribe Pilot. As we move through 2020 the company is in a strong position to scale profitably.

And that’s where you come in.

How we make money

Tribe Pilot is functional upon initial download to all users at no cost. Enhanced features and functionality are purchased through a monthly pro-membership. In February and March the company realized a positive return on advertising spend and showed that the market can be reached and monetized in a profitable manner.  The metrics work as follows.

Every year 145 million Americans travel into the outdoors, of these 20 million participate in activities that put them in a category ripe for our product.  We target 10% of these or 2 million users as actively ready for a solution that we can sell to them.  For reference STRAVA, a company similar in product scope with a similar (but not overlapping) market, added 1 million users per month in 2019.

2 Million paying users is worth around $15 million in monthly recurring revenue. 

Our financials are built on a more conservative case and predict (though cannot be guaranteed) a year 4 MRR of around 1.5 million in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

Help Tribe Pilot share our adventure-planning tool with the world

To date, Tribe Pilot has been self-funded...with the help of a few good friends; we’ve bootstrapped the company to this point. Now, with the major risks retired, it is time to scale.

We need to spread the word and introduce our adventure-planning app to the 145 million Americans participating in outdoor adventure each year. We need to reach one-hundred million annual trips planned on Tribe Pilot. And we need to capitalize on our position of first-mover by building out new and important features in a timely fashion.

Slow adoption is one of our biggest risks. If we don’t grow our paying user base fast enough, we’ll burn our cash reserves on operations instead of growth and be susceptible to incoming competition.

To mitigate that risk, we are raising a minimum of $500,000 to accelerate product and feature development and capture our first 1-2 million trips in 2020.