Cody

The filter for picking a business: fragmented, complex, meaningful

Josh and his partner reverse-engineered what business to start: a market large enough to matter, with high ownership fragmentation, operational complexity (so you can add value), and meaning so team and customers feel good. Campgrounds fit all four.

“We were looking for a business where two non-technical founders could hopefully have a winning situation, and we wanted a market that was large enough to participate in and interesting, one where there was an immense amount of fragmentation with ownership, one that was operationally complex, and one that was meaningful where the team members would feel good working there and where the customers would feel good about being part of it as well.”

Steal thisScreen new businesses for: big market, high fragmentation, operational complexity, and meaning.

You can't outsource culture, so we built the opco in-house

Josh planned to hire a third-party manager after learning ops firsthand, but realized you can't outsource culture — critical when replacing a beloved mom-and-pop — and no competent third party could scale with them. So they built the operating company in-house.

“And what we realized is A, you can't outsource culture. So that was going to be really important for our success. And B, if we wanted to scale, there weren't really, at least at that time, competent third parties that could scale with us. So we made the decision to build an opco in-house and have been managing our properties ever since.”