rwieruch

Yes, it’s very German. But I think it didn’t work, because I never heard back from someone mentioning the postcard :’)

Yes, the campground owner pays the processing fees. Stripe allows us to get 1% of the cake with their API.

Just good ol’ MUI :)

Ah interesting. They must have introduced this at some point, because it wasn't a thing back in 2015 (?).

Hey Jason, just saw your email and wanted to reply here.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the postcards really worked. We sent them to various regions across Germany, but my guess is they ended up in a pile at the campground reception and never reached the actual owners.

That said, we manually scraped around 500 campgrounds near us, designed postcards that highlighted CloudCamping’s key selling points, and sent them out using a different mailing service. Since we didn’t hear back from anyone specifically mentioning the postcards, I assume they didn’t convince anyone in the end.

Still, it was a fun experiment, and who knows, it might work better in a different context!

Didn't know this saying, but yeah, exactly this :)

Thanks for your feedback and for validating the pricing model! We see it the same way.

Most property management systems charge campground owners several thousand dollars upfront, before they can even try the software. That’s where our approach stands out: we offer a low barrier to entry paired with a modern user experience. Many competitors started over 15 years ago, and you can tell by how outdated their products feel.

Taking just a 1% cut can pay off if it helps capture more market share, this was my thinking too. We’re not quite there yet, as not all of the 250 campgrounds on our platform have adopted online payments. Still, it’s both exciting and a bit terrifying to see some of them already processing over $250,000 in annual bookings through our system.

I’ve had a few sleepless nights, so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend building a marketplace product to everyone. Once real money flows through your platform at that scale, things get intense fast.

Good for you that it was just a coding assignment! I naively jumped into building this SaaS without realizing how many features a modern property management system actually needs :)

I’d say it was mostly the general 2014 vibe. But yes, I listened to Klangkarussell and many other German producers. I was probably most influenced by Alle Farben, who was known for his mixtapes before he started producing his own tracks (which I wasn’t really a fan of). But I also showcased a darker side in some of my mixtapes (like "Der schwerste Gang einer Ente" where I used artists like Burial).

I saw myself more as a consumer than a producer. I mainly created mixtapes because I was constantly discovering and consuming new music. When I had the chance to play at a club or an open-air event (I tried it once), I quickly realized I wasn’t too comfortable performing in front of an audience :)

Around that time, I had just started learning to code and built my first little automations to help me discover even more music on SoundCloud. So I noticed this was another (more lucrative with the similar level of passion) career path where I didn't had to be in front of an audience.

Not ignorant at all.

I'm not sure if they’ve added any monetization features over the years. Back then, it was arguably the best platform for getting discovered as a producer or DJ. When I stopped making music, I was getting a lot of requests to play at clubs across Germany and Europe.

At the time, I preferred to stay anonymous, so I never made the leap into the professional or public scene. Still, I was in touch with some producers early in their careers on SoundCloud when they had 1000 followers, like Robin Schulz and Felix Jaehn, if those names ring a bell.

So yes, I’d say it was (is?) definitely a launchpad for artists. But as far as I know, there was never a real way to monetize on the platform.

Unfortunately, when I stopped paying for the Pro version, they removed almost all of my music. Only 5 mixes are still up :')