Anna Maste
About Our Guest
In 2012, Anna Maste and her mother Marianne Edwards co-founded Boondockers Welcome, a platform for RVers to connect and share camping on each other’s property.
With Anna’s background as a computer engineer and Marianne’s audience writing travel guides for budget-conscious Rivers experience, they were able to create a community that provides unique camping opportunities for RVers while creating connections that last a lifetime.
They grew the platform to over 2,800 hosts and 12,000 annual guest members before selling in 2021 to Harvest Hosts, another company in the alternative RV camping space.
Anna is now the Founder of Subscribe Sense, a marketing technology SaaS that helps marketers ensure more leads complete the signup for their email lists.
About this Episode
Starting up a SaaS Company and Selling for a 7-Figure Sum
A computer engineer by trade, Anna Maste was on maternity leave when her mother came to her with a grand business idea.
While her mum played with her son, Anna slowly but surely built a SaaS company dedicated to connecting hosts with North America’s friendly community of RVers.
Boondockers Welcome was completely bootstrapped and self-funded, propelled into existence by about 200 community members who were connected to Anna’s mother. Yet over nine years, the duo grew the platform to over 2,800 hosts and 12,000 annual guest members before selling for a mid-seven figure sum.
What you will learn in this episode
In this episode we’ll cover everything from:
- The core components of launching a membership model business
- Understanding who your strategic acquirers would be
- How to plan your exit to be at the top of the market
Connect with Anna Maste
Website: https://www.subscribesense.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-maste-9aab6315/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/skulegirl
Show Notes
(1:52) Anna and her mother teamed up to create a business equivalent to couch surfing for RVers and grew it to almost 3,000 hosts and over 12,000 guests before deciding to exit.
(5:40) The MVP took around two years to develop, considering the bulk of the work was done while Anna was on maternity leave with her first child. But after launching in 2012, they had over 200 hosts initially sign up.
(14:39) In early 2019, the business had around $100,000 in ARR when she was approached by a potential acquirer who offered 3.9 times ARR. Anna thought long and hard about it before turning down the offer to focus on growing the business.
(20:30) During COVID-19, the appeal of travelling in RVs went gangbusters and the growth of Boondockers Welcome drastically increased for the next year before selling in May 2021.
(30:07) Harvest Hosts acquired Anna’s company for a seven-figure sum, requiring her to stay on for six months as they integrated her system into theirs before she closed the door on RV’ing and moved onto MarTech.
