Having grown up on a tree farm and becoming a junior ranger working on open space and land management at 13, Aaron Kennedy’s love for the outdoors runs deep. At a young age, he knew he wanted to work in land management or environmental good but didn't know where the journey would lead him.
Now, Kennedy's the founder, CEO and CTO of Outway, a Boulder-based startup that facilitates communication among and between land management organizations. It also allows that information to be shared with everyday people visiting parks, trails, campsites and other natural lands across the U.S.
Outway launched in October 2019, but the idea came about years prior.
When Kennedy was 16, he went on a hike he found on AllTrails but learned it was a boar hunting track, not really a hiking trail for public use. This problem stuck with him through college, where he majored in aerospace mechanical engineering and minored in machine learning. Through college, he also became an unofficial resource for friends and classmates about what parks, trails and forests to visit, how to get there and what to bring.
“I was like, this is ridiculous that we have these massive federal agencies — the park service, the forest service, etc. — that have so many resources, and no one can even figure out where to go, what to do [and] what’s allowed,” Kennedy said. “I knew that from my experience ... that’s an underlying data problem and a human systems problem.”
Kennedy knew technology could be the solution. He interviewed hundreds of land management organizations and found that they have no equipment and often rely on pen, paper and walkie-talkies to communicate.
So, Kennedy created Outway as a communication tool for these organizations. It allows land managers to communicate to the public when a trail is closed while also internally communicating and tracking why a trail is closed.
Pitkin County used Outway to track an aggressive moose coming down the valley, Kennedy said. The county used the platform to communicate where the moose was going and how it was behaving with the city of Aspen, while telling the public which trials and parking lots were closed.
Outway now in its seventh iteration, is currently being sold to land management entities, including counties, cities, national and state park services, nonprofits and private organizations. Outway’s focus is on city and county-run park systems with community-driven approaches to land management.
The startup currently works with three primary clients, including Pitkin County, with five others trialing the software and another 10 getting ready to test the product soon.
Outway has been bootstrapped since its founding but recently received an undisclosed amount of funding after winning a startup pitching competition put on by Wildwood Ventures.
Wildwood Ventures is a venture capital investment business and studio that spun out of VF's internal startup investing studio in May 2023. It invests between $200,000 and $500,000 in early-stage startups operating in the outdoor and wellness sectors and helps them grow.
Jesse Marble, co-founder and partner of Wildwood Ventures, said his business parsed through hundreds of applications to participate in the organization’s first pitch competition. About 40 were selected to participate in a live pitch competition.
Ultimately, Wildwood selected Outway as the winner, investing in the startup and having it join its studio.
“We saw a huge market opportunity, talented and driven team and some cool early traction,” Marble said about investing in Outway. “Ultimately, we saw the ability to work together on a big and meaningful problem. We think that the problem that Outway is tackling is one that can have big impacts on the world and society [and] how we interact with land and the outdoors.”
Wildwood and Outway declined to disclose the size of the pre-seed round, but Marble said it is a “meaningful investment” that will get Outway moving and onto a seed round. Wildwood led the pre-seed round but additional funding for it is still coming in.
The initial funds will help Outway test, implement and scale its sales strategy to get more organic leads. When the pre-seed round closes, additional capital will be used to hire one or two more people focused on sales and operations and development.
