#StartupsEverywhere profile: Murielle Gaither, Founder and CEO, Venku
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Giving Outdoor Enthusiasts Access to Unique Experiences
St. Louis is developing a reputation as a hub for entrepreneurs, ranking as one of the top U.S. cities for startups. One of the startups that calls St. Louis home is Venku, an online platform that connects outdoor enthusiasts with exciting on-the-ground experiences. Whether it’s fishing, hiking, hunting or exploring, Venku improves access to outdoor experiences by allowing people across the country to connect with expert hosts eager to take them on their next adventure. To keep people engaged with the outdoors amidst the coronavirus pandemic, Venku has even partnered with several hosts to provide users with virtual experiences. We recently spoke with Murielle Gaither, the Founder and CEO of Venku, to learn more about the startup's platform, the types of activities that outdoor enthusiasts can experience, and how the St. Louis startup ecosystem has helped Venku grow.
What in your background made you interested in entrepreneurship?
I never thought I’d see myself in this role, but now realize how many experiences in my life prepared me for it. I grew up in an entrepreneurial family - my mom and dad were in the restaurant industry, and I spent most of my early years working alongside them as they built their portfolio of restaurants and commercial real estate.
After experiencing the rollercoaster of business ownership firsthand, I had no desire to start my own company. But, I studied business as my minor in college and was really attracted to the marketing side of things, especially how companies brand themselves and convey their message effectively. I always thought I’d pursue a career in marketing or communications, but after graduating college I accepted the position of Executive Director for a regional nonprofit organization in my hometown. Since we had a relatively small staff, I ended up wearing a lot of the same hats that an entrepreneur wears. We did marketing, event planning, built partnerships, and developed children’s and community programming. I also helped the organization purchase, renovate and move into a beautiful building downtown, its first permanent home in 50 years.
Tell us more about Venku and how the idea for this platform came about.
Our family has a farm property that’s been passed down for generations. Through the years, we personally have dealt with the many challenges of maintaining and monetizing the property. Around the time that Airbnb was really taking off, we wondered if there was a similar solution out there for private land. We discovered that there was not. If we wanted to monetize the recreational aspects of our property, we would have to create our own website and market those experiences. We assumed there were others out there in a similar situation.
We learned pretty quickly that there were many, many people like us who found it challenging to market their properties. Just 20 percent of these outdoor experiences were represented online, and the remaining 80 percent are hard to find. We’re talking about the kinds of experiences where someone would have to go to a local visitor’s bureau to track down a brochure, or a local bait shop to ask about who takes people out fishing. Those were the folks that represented the amazing potential of what we could do with a company like Venku.
For us, Venku is about increasing access to unique and amazing outdoor experiences for the average person to enjoy. But it’s also about empowering and helping outdoor service providers who have never had a platform or tool catered to their needs. We give them the ability to create a listing within minutes. Their business is no longer just reliant on answering the phone or responding to a person visiting their shop. Now, they’re online and they have access to millions of people looking for unique opportunities. So it’s really exciting to see the ways that we’re helping connect people outdoors through technology.
How does Venku work to connect outdoor enthusiasts with unique outdoor experiences?
We follow the marketplace model pretty closely. On the supply side of our marketplace we give outdoor service providers everything they need to put up listings -- both through our technology and high-touch customer support. Listings then go through a review process, so all of our hosts are vetted. We can confirm with a high level of accuracy that what is portrayed in the listing is legitimate.
On the user side, a sense of community is really big for the outdoor industry. We encourage user feedback and communication between the hosts and users, even prior to a booking being accepted. It’s important for the user to be able to ask questions about whether a trip is handicap accessible or if they can bring their dog along or if they need their own rod and reel.
Our users find a listing, check the availability, and send their booking request to the host. All of this is automated through our platform. Our partnership with global payment processor Stripe gives us the ability to accept hosts and payments from all over the world. That potential is exciting for us, because we want to be wherever our users are spending time outdoors and offer support for recreation economies across the globe.
We have hosts in more than 40 states, and we are growing by the day. It doesn’t matter if you’re an expert or beginner, most anyone can find something to do on our platform. It’s simple - just type in your location and interest to start planning your next adventure! We’ve found that many users might come on our platform looking for a fishing trip, but then they research a fall hunting trip with a buddy, or a spot to take their family on a camping trip next spring. It’s pretty powerful to bring people on through one “gateway” activity, and see them come back again and again to enjoy other types of offerings.
How has the coronavirus pandemic affected your business?
After the whole shock of the lockdown, everything got really quiet for a while. But I realized we had a great opportunity in front of us and we quickly changed our marketing message to focus on future trips and travel, and started to find ways that we could provide people with an escape wherever they were located. We launched virtual trips, partnering with a few of our hosts to provide Zoom experiences. Through these experiences, our hosts who were still spending lots of time outdoors, could take us along with them; answering questions in real-time and giving homebound guests the same thrill of being outside.
We also took advantage of the fact that a lot of advertisers pulled their ads. We’ve seen our user numbers double since February, and it’s pretty incredible to see the influence and reach of our online marketing during Covid. During the pandemic, our team also doubled the number of hosts on our platform. We found that our typically active hosts were stuck indoors due to the lockdown and had time to learn about us. We’re still trying to process hosts from the last couple of months because we’ve grown our supply so quickly.
The data we’re seeing on Covid and the outdoors shows that the outdoor industry has exploded in growth. Sales have increased exponentially, and there are more people than ever before interested in trying new activities outside. They also plan to maintain those habits post-COVID, which is great news for us.
What makes St. Louis’s startup ecosystem so unique?
In the last 10 to 15 years, Missouri has seen a real rise in support for local startups. This holds true for the St. Louis area. The number of resources here is unbelievable. Thankfully, there are a few organizations that really helped us navigate the complex startup ecosystem and find where we fit in at the various stages of our growth.
Shortly after we launched Venku, we joined T-Rex, an incubator in Downtown St. Louis that provides a co-working space, programming like 1 Million Cups as well as access to legal, marketing, and accounting mentors—really just a smorgasbord of resources for new startups. Getting involved in that community early on was pivotal for us. The other game-changer was having access to ITEN, the IT Entrepreneur Network. They’re a non-profit, located in the T-REX building, that exists solely to connect startups with all the things they need to succeed in the St. Louis region and beyond. There are also funding opportunities like Arch Grants, a competitive non-dilutive grant program that we were finalists for last year. In addition, Saint Louis is home to a number of accelerator programs, including internationally ranked Capital Innovators. We were fortunate to be selected for their Fall 2019 Cohort and learned so much from the program and our fellow entrepreneurs. In St. Louis, we have found that there are resources for every startup every step of the way.
What are some policy issues relevant to Venku that state and federal policymakers have or should pay attention to?
The Small Business Administration has done a great job at keeping us clued in about COVID and post-COVID programs for small businesses. Other organizations, like ITEN, have also made us aware of startup focused funding available through the St. Louis region. We’re bootstrapping and used to being pretty scrappy, so we try to take advantage of all the low-hanging opportunities out there.
In regards to the outdoor industry, we definitely see room for improvement in the way that wildlife regulations and conservation is handled at the state level. As we’ve scaled to 40 states across America, we’ve noticed that pretty much every state has different policies and rules when it comes to enjoying the outdoors. It can make some activities, such as hunting, fishing and camping, difficult for the average person to enjoy from state-to-state. Our platform actually helps hosts in states with really strict regulations, however there are definitely archaic systems in place that technology or standardization could improve to make the outdoors accessible to more people.
What is your goal for Venku moving forward?
Green time over screen time. Quite simply, our goal is to improve access to outdoor experiences for folks across this great country. Now, more than ever, people feel the need to get outside, away from their desks, lockdown and confinement. We empower our hosts and property owners with easy-to-use technology to make their opportunities available to everybody. Whether they’re a novice or expert, we want our users to be excited about their next adventure outdoors, not intimidated about having the right gear, expertise or access.
Since more than 70 percent of our listings are in rural areas, we are also tapping into economic initiatives to provide hosts with the support they need in reviving local economies through outdoor recreation. Work and play might never be the same after COVID, and we see Venku at the center of some monumental changes.
As we strive to keep up with the demand our platform is seeing, we are raising capital to continue expansion into all 50 states and beyond. We already have hosts from other countries knocking on our door and we look forward to a bright future helping millions of people connect outdoors.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
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