Americans spent more than $144.8 billion on fishing and hunting in 2022 alone, according to a survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Guided hunting and fishing trips are a big part of this industry, but it has remained largely offline. Reservations are made over the phone and paid for by physical check 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 guided tours in the same way they would book a hotel online. Mallard Bay is also a vertical SaaS platform for clothing retailers themselves to bring their back offices online and provide additional services such as marketing.
This week, the startup announced a $4.6 million Series A led by Soul Venture Partners with participation from existing investor Acadian Capital Ventures and other angel investors. Mallard Bay co-founder and CEO Logan Moe told TechCrunch that he got the idea for the company after a failed fishing trip with his father when he was in college. He thought he had booked a three-day guided duck hunting trip in Oklahoma. When they showed up, they found out the hunt was double booked and their only option was to hunt for a day with 13 other people. Mo never fired a single shot.
At the time, Mo was working at his father's startup Waitr, which had raised $24 million in venture capital before exiting in 2018, and thought he could launch his own company. In 2019, he and two other co-founders started the business. The original idea was to create an Airbnb-like marketplace for people to book guided fishing trips. Once the company started asking outfitters and guides what they thought of the idea, they realized they would need to bring more to the table to get guides to sign on. This led them to start building Guidetech, a back-office solution for Mallard Bay outfitters.
“[Outfitters] “They were receptive to the idea, and they knew that keeping up with the times was something they wanted to do, but outfitters by nature are not primarily business owners,” Moe said. “They started out as mentors, doing what they love, and building a business based on passion. [With] “Being passionate about not only the outdoors and going hunting and fishing, but also the software space, we brought that industry expertise to them to let them know, 'Hey, if you're going to make this transition, we're the guys for this.'”
After the company got Toby Brohlen, a hunting influencer, on the platform, more outfitters started signing up. Brohlin has booked more than $1 million in total bookings, Meux said. The platform as a whole facilitated more than $6 million in total bookings in 2023 and is on track to reach $30 million to $35 million in 2024.
Despite the market size and appeal of the company, Mo said it was difficult to convince investors to sign on — 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 address people's negative perceptions about hunting and ensure potential backers that this is not a platform for booking exotic hunting trips in Africa. There's another key point the founders wanted to share with investors: when hunting and fishing are done ethically, it actually helps preserve the environment, which is something the company is passionate about.
“One thing that comes with hunting and fishing is environmental conservation,” Moe said. “It comes with the territory because in the end, just as our parents showed us how to do things, we want our children to be able to do the same things. If you don't have sustainable practices, sustainable wildlife management, overpopulation hurts wildlife in general.”
Mallard Bay founders, from left: Wyatt Mallett, Logan Mo, Joel Morrow, and Tam Nguyen. Image credits: Mallard Bay
Although I'm not a hunter, and only occasionally fish, the Mallard Bay deal caught my attention because I can't say I hear about hunting or fishing very often in the startup and tech ecosystem. Hunting SaaS is an interesting concept! And it's not even the only hunting-related company to have recently raised funding: HLRBO, an online platform for making hunting land rentals easier to find, raised a $1 million seed round in February.
It's also worth noting how much Mallard has been able to grow since its launch in 2021. Mallard Bay bookings have increased 600% year over year, which is impressive for any category but notable in a category like hunting and fishing that seems relatively niche. As I said before, the fortunes are in niche markets – likely because niche markets are never as small as they may initially seem.
People in the United States have spent more than $394 billion on outdoor activities — including hunting and fishing, but also hiking, bird watching and more — but many of these industries are still largely offline or rely on low-quality, hard-to-use technology. Navigate it. I ran into this last month when trying to find parking to hike Sedona, Arizona's very popular Devil's Bridge Trail. I had to piece together information from multiple blogs to find out if I needed a parking permit.
There are case studies outside of Mallard Bay as well, showing that these outdoor-focused applications have customer demand. Strava, an app aimed at runners and bikers, has more than 100 million users. Apps that connect people who engage in a common outdoor activity like fishing also have strong appeal. Fishbrain, a social networking app for anglers, has recorded more than 14 million fish caught during its 12-year history.
For Meaux, he knows how big this is, and despite the progress they've made so far, he believes there's still plenty of market to capture and more capabilities that can be integrated into Guidetech.
“I would like to say we've had some success, but we're not successful yet,” Moe said. “And that's something I learned from my father along the way. And in his companies, even after getting out, they still had work to do.
