Americans spent more than $144.8 billion on fishing and hunting in 2022 alone, survey finds US Fish and Wildlife Service. Guided hunting and fishing tours are a substantial part of that industry, but they have largely remained offline. Reservations are made by phone and paid with physical checks or cash. Mallard Bay is looking to change that.
The Houston-based startup is a marketplace for consumers who hunt and fish to find and book tours the same way they would book a hotel online. Mallard Bay is also a vertical SaaS platform for providers themselves to bring their back office online and provide additional services such as marketing.
The startup this week announced a $4.6 million Series A led by Soul Venture Partners with participation from existing investor Acadian Capital Ventures and other angel investors. Logan Meaux, co-founder and CEO of Mallard Bay, told TechCrunch that he came up with the idea for the company after a failed hunting trip with his father when he was in college. He thought he had booked a three-day guided duck hunt in Oklahoma. When they showed up, they discovered the hunt was double-booked and their only option was to hunt for a day with 13 other people. Meaux never fired a single shot.
At the time, Meaux was working for his father's startup Waitr, which raised $24 million in venture capital before exiting in 2018, and thought he might launch his own company. In 2019, he and two other co-founders got to work. The original idea was simply to create a marketplace like Airbnb for people to book these guided hunts. Once the company started asking outfitters and guides what they thought of the idea, they realized they were going to need to give more to get guides to sign up. That led them to begin developing Guidetech, Mallard Bay's back-office solution for service providers.
“(The service providers) were receptive to the idea, they knew that staying current was something they wanted to do, but inherently the providers are not business owners in the first place,” Meaux said. “They started as guides, do what they love and are building a business based on passion. (Since) we are passionate about not only the outdoors and going hunting and fishing, but also the software space, we brought that domain expertise to them to say, 'Hey, if you guys are going to make this transition “We're the guys for that.”
After the company added Toby Brohlin, a hunting influencer, to the platform, more suppliers began signing up. Brohlin has set aside more than $1 million in gross bookings, Meux said. The platform as a whole facilitated over $6 million in gross bookings in 2023 and is on track to reach between $30 and $35 million in 2024.
Despite the company's market size and traction, Meaux said it was difficult to get investors on board (the company spoke to more than 270 investors to raise this round) because investors didn't understand the category or its potential. The startup also had to navigate people's negative perceptions about hunting and assure potential sponsors that this was not a platform to book exotic hunting trips in Africa. Another key point the founders wanted to share with investors: When hunting and fishing is done ethically, it actually helps conservation, something the company is passionate about.
“The only thing that comes with hunting and fishing is being a conservationist,” Meaux said. “It just comes with the territory because, ultimately, when our parents taught us how to do things, we want our children to be able to do those same things. Without sustainable practices and sustainable wildlife management, overpopulation is detrimental to wildlife in general.”
Mallard Bay co-founders, from left: Wyatt Mallett, Logan Meaux, Joel Moreau and Tam Nguyen. Image credits: Mallard Bay
While I'm not a hunter and only fish occasionally, the Mallard Bay deal caught my attention because I can't say I hear about hunting or fishing often in the tech and startup ecosystem. SaaS hunting is an interesting concept! And it's not even the only hunting-related company to raise funding recently: HLRBO, an online platform to make it easier to find hunting land leases, raised a $1 million seed round in February.
It's also notable how much Mallard has been able to grow since its launch in 2021. Mallard Bay bookings have grown 600% year over year, which is impressive for any category, but notable in a category like hunting and fishing that seems relatively specific. As I said before, the riches are in the niches, probably because niche markets are never as small as they initially seem.
People in the US spent more $394 billion in outdoor activities, including hunting and fishing, but also hiking, bird watching and others, but many of those industries are still largely offline or rely on low-quality, difficult-to-navigate technology. I experienced this last month when trying to find parking to hike Sedona, Arizona's very popular Devil's Bridge Trail. I had to gather information from several blogs to see if I needed a parking pass.
There are also case studies beyond Mallard Bay that show these outdoor-focused applications are in customer demand. Strava, an app aimed at runners and cyclists, has more than 100 million users. Apps that connect people who share a common outdoor activity, such as fishing, also have broad appeal. Fishbrain, a social media app for anglers, has recorded more than 14 million fish caught in its 12-year history.
Meaux knows how big this could become, and despite the progress they've made so far, he believes there's still a lot of market to capture and more capabilities to bring to Guidetech.
“I like to say we've had some success, but we're not there yet,” Meaux said. “And that's something I learned from my father along the way. In his companies, even after leaving, they still had work to do.”
