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Joshua Wilson

The Outbound on iOS - Discover the best local outdoor adventures

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The Outbound on iOS is the best way to find local adventures and activities, wherever you are. Featuring thousands of adventures, stories, and professional quality photos submitted by our community, The Outbound is your companion for adventure.

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Brian Heifferon
Maker
@makanikai Thanks for the hunt!
Joshua Wilson
Hunter
@bheiff Great work to you and team! Was super pumped to see the release of the iOS app!
Brian Heifferon
Maker
Hey PH community! I'm one of the founders of The Outbound and would love to answer any/all questions you might have. Stoked to be here.
Jim Jenkins
@bheiff plans for android release?
Brian Heifferon
Maker
@jim_jenkins thanks for your patience. we're a small team, but it's definitely on the roadmap
Brett Johnson
@bheiff -- Love the idea. Brainstormed a similar solution to the problem you're trying to solve a few months back but it looks like you guys have hit the nail on the head pretty well so far. Good work. Curious to hear what percentage of your users are submitting adventures and how you might increase engagement/incentivize sharing. It seems like ultimately, you'd like your catalogue of adventures to grow as large as possible, so how do you encourage users to help you in this process since your team can only do/know so much.
Brian Heifferon
Maker
@burtjohanson Thanks Brett, and great question - would love to compare notes at some point. Our community creates all of the adventures you'll find in the app, and % of contributions generally falls within the 80/20 rule. Our platform allows/encourages anyone to share their favorite adventures (they live on that user's profile), and our team promotes the best submissions to be featured in search results for the greater community. This allows us to maintain quality and accuracy, while allowing everyone to participate and create content. We're fortunate to have our Explorer program (www.theoutbound.com/explorers) - it's basically a team of the most influential outdoor photographers on Instagram, and they've set the bar high for the rest of the community. Instagram has a been a great driver of excitement and growth for us. Right now we're getting a lot of inbound requests to contribute and join the team, but we're also strategic about reaching out to folks in target markets. We'll be also adding more ways for the community to add their personal content to existing adventures very soon.
Ben Tossell
Would love to know how it is going since the Web launch earlier in the year @bheiff @tylerdrake727 What has happened since then ? What challenges have you had to face? And how is the community growing... is it happening as you envisaged?
Brian Heifferon
Maker
@bentossell Thanks for the question. It's been a fun year. We've been talking to our users as much as possible and we've really focused on building them a better experience - just make it as easy as possible for them to squeeze a bit more of the outdoors into their busy, everyday lives. Launching our new iOS app is another step in the right direction for us. It was the top request we received from our community. Since the beginning of the year we've seen our community grow more than 400%, and the amount of amazing content we have being contributed every day has been a little challenging for our team to keep up with. At the center of our community are our team of Explorers - our top local contributors and most engaged members. We receive close to 10 applications/day from around the world from folks applying to become one of our Explorers.
Dave Fontenot
Hit the nail on the head with Shark Valley in South Florida