Ron is the CEO of AllTrails, the most used and trusted outdoors platform in the world. Before becoming the CEO of AllTrails, Ron was Head of Growth at Yelp Reservations, Co-Founder of Liftopia, and Head of Business Development at Hotwire. The mission of AllTrails is to help people explore the outdoors with hand-curated trail maps along with photos, reviews, and user recordings crowdsourced from an ever-growing community of millions. Initially, Ron was hesitant to accept the role of CEO that was offered to him, but after some soul searching he decided to accept - and ever since the growth of AllTrails has been undeniable.
Ron and I discussed:
- The origins of AllTrails
- Why he was reluctant to accept the role of CEO
- Understanding their end-user
- Why COVID was such a boom for their success
- Why UGC is a critical component
- Potential future features
- The importance of the outdoors for mental health
- Why inclusivity in the outdoors is their top priority
- Hitting the 1 million subscribers goal
- Why culture starts at the top
And much more...
Ron Schneidermann
My Take: Even though we are getting more technologically advanced by the hour, the outdoors are and always will be an integral part of us. Finding a way to marry the two is the type of innovation necessary for this day & age. As someone who uses this app regularly, I can attest to how much easier and safer it makes my hikes - while allowing me to find trails I may not know of otherwise.
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