The marketplace for every outdoor trip.

Two points.

a) When asked “Would you rather have a local recommendation from a human or an AI plan?”, 90% of our UX respondents (~50 answers) said they would prefer a local recommendation on what trails to ride. We expected this, because anyone can generate a list of trails using AI, but nobody can generate 15 years of experience riding them.

b) AI makes information free and trust scarce. Outdoor experiences require trusted information. Search and rescue organizations around the world are warning people of the dangers of using AI for trip planning. In contrast, Quest empowers local experts who know the terrain to provide recommendations and guidance.

• BC search-and-rescue groups warn against relying on AI and apps
• Hikers rescued from Mount Shasta after an AI trip plan
• Hikers call search and rescue after using ChatGPT and Google Maps for a trip
• Outdoor guide and SAR member calls AllTrails “All Fails” after it launched AI tools

We are not AI haters. We use it every day. It is why we have been able to build our geospatial engine, two mobile apps and our creator tools in under six months with just two people, part-time. It’s our cost structure, not our competitor.

Trailforks and AllTrails rely on sparse, inconsistent user-generated data to fill the gaps in trip planning when you’re relying on a map alone. If someone has shared information, you never know how complete it is or who wrote it. These apps favour quantity over quality, which, for activities with high consequences, cannot prepare a rider properly for a trip.

And even with 300,000+ trails on AllTrails, the important questions go unanswered. What’s right for me? How do I get there? What gear do I need? Which trail should I ride before attempting this one?

That’s where Quest comes in. Local experts who are out there every day know the terrain better than anyone, and they’re best placed to give recent, high-fidelity recommendations, so riders know exactly what they’re getting into before they set out.

Plus, our beta riders called Quest “a curated, trustworthy, better AllTrails”, and 25 of 28 said they’d pay $30 for it.

Because it pays and it lasts. A $2,000 advance, then 50–70% of net revenue per guidebook per year, rising with sales. A 2022 report by Linktree found that of 9,500 creators, only 12% of full-time ones earned more than $50,000 a year. Pinkbike surveyed 118 of the top-ranked pro mountain bikers in the world, and 40% take home less than $15,000 a year; 55% earn under $30,000, and 22% earn under $5,000.

Quest meets a real financial need for these riders, many of whom have large followings and still can’t make the sport pay. We’re another lever they can pull to build a sustainable career, and a guidebook keeps paying every season, unlike a video that pays once.

Squamish is the first of 30 BC networks, and BC is the first region. 53 million Americans plan a destination outdoor trip every year. Mountain biking is the wedge; hiking and bikepacking/touring follow the same model with bigger populations. Seasonality averages out across regions and sports, and the off-season is when we sign next year’s experts.

Nothing stops them trying, and it would validate the category. What they can’t copy quickly is the supply side: named local experts who chose Quest because it pays them 50–70% and funds their trails. Paying creators 70% breaks a subscription-and-ads model. The moat is the creator deal and the relationships behind it, not the map.

At the end of the day, people want the experience, and a map or tool is a means to an end. That’s why the human connection Quest provides matters. Local experts are the people best placed to get others outside.

Distribution comes with the supply. Each expert brings an audience (Ollie’s is ~200K), each network brings a trail association and a tourism body with a reason to promote it, and each trip brings the friend who sent the clip. We are allocating a small amount to ad experiments so that, once a guidebook’s unit economics are thoroughly understood, we are ready to open the funnel wide through our discovery engine. That budget exists to learn what a paid rider costs, not to carry growth.

Guidebooks alone sit in a $4.2B serviceable market, and the trip planning experience around them is far larger. Companies that own the trip decision get bought: Permira put $150M into AllTrails, Outside bought Pinkbike and Trailforks, Strava bought FATMAP — and the natural acquirers reach beyond outdoor media into travel, from Airbnb Experiences to Expedia. BC investors also get a 30% provincial tax credit (EBC registration is currently in progress).

For now, John and me. AI does the heavy lifting on the product side, which frees us to spend most of our effort on the creator and content engine — the part that genuinely strengthens the moat. In the long run we will build a team to match the growth we have created room for. In the short run we are hyper-focused on fine-tuning the model, and for that, the two of us plus AI is all we need.

Quest provides information, not guiding. A guidebook is a local expert’s recommendation on which trails to ride, in what order, with video of what they look like: the same kind of information riders already get from books, blogs and social media, from a named source who knows the terrain. We’re not in the business of coaching or in-person guiding.

We also reduce the surprises that cause accidents. Quest shows only sanctioned, maintained trails, difficulty is anchored to trails the rider already knows, and we give creators tools to communicate risk and preparation. Mountain biking carries inherent risk, and riders accept our terms of service, as they do with every trail app and guidebook publisher. We’re happy to bring our lawyers into the conversation if you’d like to go deeper.