Meet the Startup Helping Farmers Make Money Off Their Land (but Not in the Way You Think)

 

After Joel Holland stepped down as CEO from his stock images company in 2016, you could say he was burned out. The Arlington, Virginia-based company, Storyblocks, which he founded in 2009, made Inc.'s list of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S. seven years in a row, and he was looking for a break. So, he skipped town. In 2018, he and his wife--along with their two cats and pet ferrets--hopped in an RV and spent several months traveling the lower 48 states, spending a night or two at a time packed amid farmland or other privately owned scenic lots offered up through an app called Harvest Hosts. 

On one of their first stays, the couple spent the night on a farm in Kansas run by three octogenarian nuns. "I completely fell in love with the concept," says Holland. "You get to stay at these really amazing locations like wineries and farms, meet the proprietors, taste the produce. It's such a unique experience." He was hooked.

In 2018, the Hollands snapped up the then nine-year-old business for an undisclosed sum from Don and Kim Greene, who founded the company in 2009 as a passion project. When Holland got involved, he staffed up, and spent money on advertising and promotion. Harvest Hosts started taking off. At the time of the sale, Harvest Hosts had 600 locations and about 6,000 members. Today there are roughly 2,286 locations available to stay at across the U.S., and more than 180,000 members. Membership bookings for Harvest Hosts in January and February 2021 were up 400 percent from the previous year and March was up 700 percent. 

The uptick makes sense. Holland had time on his hands after the sale of Storyblocks to a private equity firm in 2020. The pandemic helped spur the RV booking company's growth too. Several companies, including Hipcamp and Tentrr, which offer to connect travelers with Covid-safe vacations, have reported a continued surge in bookings--even as vaccination rates rise across the U.S. 

Whether that traction will last is not assured. But at least one moneyed investor is banking on the trend staying popular. In March of this year, Harvest Hosts raised $37 million from Stripes, a New York City-based growth equity firm. Holland plans to use the cash to help drive the company's continued expansion and keep up with a major surge in demand as domestic travel continues to increase because of the pandemic.

"It became clear as we spent more time in the space that Joel is building a really special product for RVers," Chris Carey, a partner at Stripes, said in a press release regarding the investment. "As part of our research, we surveyed thousands of RVers and dozens of hosts to learn about their firsthand experiences, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive from both members and hosts."