5:03 - Going all in from the beginning
14:00 - The problems of marketplace entrepreneurs
20:22 - The Covid effect
26:22 - Höhle der Löwen appearance
33:37 - Canton-specific regulation
Oliver Huber is the founder and CEO of Nomady, a Swiss sustainable camping platform. Previously he worked for VP Bank and Schwyzer Kantonalbank, and has a background in Business Admin, Finance and Banking from Hochschule Luzern.
Oliver has always been an outdoors and camping enthusiast, so the Nomady idea — landowners becoming hosts and renting out their campsites — seemed only natural to him. Having successfully flipped a house in the past, he had enough capital to quit his day job and start going all in on Nomady from day one.
When answering whether Nomady is capitalizing on the sustainable tourism craze, Oliver replied that wanting to get away from crowded places and connect with nature has always been a human necessity, so the growth of this market comes as no surprise. He also feels a responsibility to play his part in answering the climate emergency.
He began in earnest by going around his hometown and pitching the idea to landowners — 5 or 6 of them said yes and this allowed him to test his MVP. His first customers had a very positive experience, and word of mouth really helped Nomady expand, as well as some Facebook posts from Oliver himself.
Covid had both a positive and negative effect on his business: on the one hand, when the pandemic crisis began in March 2020 Oliver was in the middle of negotiations with investors, after having spent 1 year and a half bootstrapped, and his investors immediately quit. But on the other hand, since during the pandemic people couldn't travel abroad and felt safer vacationing in remote places, Nomady came as a perfect solution for their tourism needs.
"It was important for me to have real entrepreneurs on the board and as investors, because in an early stage you need to call them up and ask them difficult questions."
If you would like to listen to more episodes on camping, check out our conversation with Michele Matt.
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