Editor's Note: This news item was retrieved and first published through Texas Monthly's website.
Jeff Cavins will never forget a prospective investor’s words from six years ago: “It’ll be nothing but crickets chirping on your website.” Cavins and his partner in business and life, Jennifer Young, were rejected by no fewer than sixty investors when they first started pitching their idea of a peer-to-peer camper-van rental marketplace called Outdoorsy in 2015. Some shortsighted tech bros in Silicon Valley and New York even escorted the pair out of meeting rooms only fifteen minutes into the duo’s hour-long presentation. The doubt in investors’ voices was thick: Who would want to spend their vacation in a stranger’s motor home?