The idea for Camperoni, a Minneapolis startup that helps parents register their kids for summer camp, came partly from the founders' frustrations planning out summers for their own children. One likened the task to trying to get Taylor Swift tickets from Ticketmaster.
"We [once] spent three hours trying to register for camp," said co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer Erin Anderson. "It just really takes away peoples' productivity time and [adds] frustration."
Plenty of parents seem to agree. In less than half a year, Camperoni has built up a base of more than 1,500 registered users.
The Minneapolis-based startup aims to “automate the administrative gruntwork of parenting,” said CEO and co-founder Meredith Englund. Currently, the Camperoni platform helps parents filter and search through camps throughout the Twin Cities. Down the line, it will help parents connect with an array of sports and other extra-curriculars.
The platform is so far connected with more than 1,000 camps around the extended metro area from nearly 250 camp providers. “You wouldn’t believe” how many niche camps exist in the area, Englund said.
There’s slime camp, a camp where 10-year-olds can learn the programming language Python, robotics, Star Wars, unicorns, pottery, sailing camp for girls and a camp facilitated by the Children’s Theatre Co. where kids can run skits using Squishmallows (that one costs $400).
Signup on Camperoni is free for parents and camps.
Vasilis Georgitzikis, or Tzikis, is the team’s CTO who designed the website.
Both Englund and Anderson come from corporate backgrounds. Anderson worked at General Mills Inc. for about 13 years doing startup-like work. She’s currently a full-time employee at Andersen Windows as a digital marketing director.
Englund worked at Ecolab for about a decade and helped set up the Techstars Farm to Fork cohort. Now she is a part of Techstars’ Twins Accelerator as part of Camperoni.
She had been a mentor many times since 2018 for both local Techstars programs. She said the experience is much different from the other side of the table.
Mentoring is about taking what’s given and seeing if you can contribute. On the other side, it’s about figuring out how to get the most out of each mentor, knowing what your burning questions are and learning how to pivot based on feedback.
The Twins Accelerator’s Demo Day is coming up Feb. 15.
Englund said that while she’s presented in front of “a million different types of audiences,” startup pitching is a whole different thing.
“It's funny that it's with the Minnesota Twins because it's almost like psyching yourself up for a game,” she said. “It's a different level of confidence required to go out there and pitch a startup.”
The Camperoni team hopes to add after-school activities and sports leagues to its database in the spring, and it could expand to another market similar to the Twin Cities sometime in the new year.
