“I had another landowner who told me camping's changed this piece of land from a liability I was nervous to hand down to my son into an asset.”
Masters of Scale · Startups & Venture · October 2026
The Hipcamp founder had just told the story of visiting an early host, a 600-acre ranch in Northern California, whose owner handed her a letter from a buyer wanting to develop the land. The owner said camping income had turned such letters into junk mail. Ravasio is relaying what a second landowner told her.
Transcript
Yeah, I mean, there's actually a very specific moment I can remember where. That happened very concretely. It was super early on, probably our first few months of sending bookings to private landowners. And we were moving bookings. And I was, you know, really, it kind of felt like a scientist. I was like, is this going to work? It looks like it's going to work. And I reached out to one of our new hosts. It's a ranch up in Bodega, Northern California, and they were doing great. I was like, I'm going to go meet them. I want to go say hi, walk around the land. And I drive up to this ranch. It's called Salmon Creek Ranch. It's incredible. It's 600 acres of redwoods and a creek, just incredible, incredible stewards. And I pull up, and Leslie, the landowner, is waiting for me. And she's walking up to me and she has this piece of paper. And I'm like, oh no, it's a list of demands. It's a list of complaints. It's everything we've done wrong. It's all the problems with the software, all the features we haven't built. So I'm sitting there. I'm like, hi, great to meet you.
Feedback is a gift. I mean, it is.
Feedback's a PCR. Feedback's a gift. What's with the paper? And she goes, I want you to have this. And she hands it to me. She said, This is a letter from a financial buyer who sent us this letter trying to buy our land. And we get this letter all the time. They put it on nice paper. It's thick. And it essentially says, you know, we would love to buy your land. We're going to develop it. You'd get a lot of money. You know, why are you trying so hard? Selling duck eggs. Why don't you just sell to us now? She said, I hate these letters. I hate them. If I, you know, this would be destroying everything we've dedicated. Our goal here is to leave this land better than we found it. This would be a failure. She said, but you know, I've been having to hold on to them, put them in a drawer just in case, because some months we're not sure exactly how it's going to work out. And I'm giving you this letter because Hip Camp makes it junk mail now. Wow. I know I don't need to call them back. I know, I don't even need to save it. You can take it. Take it back with you. I don't need it because the income we're getting from camping has changed everything for us. And it's been amazing to hear that story again and again. I had another landowner who told me camping's changed this piece of land from a liability I was nervous to hand down to my son into an asset.
Where does that Salmon Creek Ranch letter sit right now?
Behind my desk. Oh, great. Yeah. I look at it every day. What
a beautiful reminder of the impact you're making.
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