TechNexus-backed Captain Experiences is changing the way you find and book outdoor sports
Jonathan Newar discovered how difficult it was to book a chartered fishing trip when attempting to find a guide who could take him and a group of friends out on the water in Galveston, TX. It wasn’t easy to search for fishing guides online, and those who did have an internet presence were difficult to track down and offered little transparency around price and experience.
So Newar and his co-founder Attison Barnes set out to launch Captain Experiences, an online platform for finding, booking and paying for quality fishing guides.
The problem: They duo launched the startup in March 2020.
“It was the worst time in human history to launch a consumer travel experiences platform,” Newar recalls. But as pandemic panic gave way to an increased eagerness for Americans to hit the outdoors, Newar found that Captain Experiences was in a prime position to help people leave their homes and enjoy nature.
“There was an acceleration in outdoor sports participation following the pandemic,” he said. “We were really well positioned for that.”
Captain Experiences has since grown its platform to hosting 1,600 guides who’ve led fishing excursions in hundreds of destinations across the U.S., from the Gulf of Mexico to the Rockies to the Great Lakes, all with the goal of simplifying the experience of getting on the water.
Since it launched, Captain Experiences has raised $4.6 million in funding from investors like TechNexus Venture Collaborative, Looking Glass Capital, Andrew Chen of A16Z, Goodwater Capital, Not Boring Capital, Correlation Ventures, Capital Factory, Psion, WSGR and actor Oliver Hudson.
Newar said the startup, which takes a cut of the transaction between the customer and guide, has grown its business 10X since raising its last funding round in early 2023.
Captain Experiences has plans to expand beyond boating. It added hunting trips to its platform last fall, and it expects to offer a suite of outdoor experiences in the future, from rock climbing to kayaking and beyond.
The outdoor recreation economy topped $1 trillion for the first time in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Boating and fishing accounted for $32.4 billion, a figure Newar hopes can grow even more as it becomes easier for people to book their trips.