Behind every digital phenomenon, like the billion-dollar website Pinterest, there was first an entrepreneur gambling on an idea. A recent fabled example is Ben Silbermann, the 29-year-old Iowa native who co-developed a simple bookmarking site with custom “pinboards” into the third-largest social network.
Like Mark Zuckerberg and Shawn Fanning before him, Silbermann has become one of the latest tech-savvy poster boys for entrepreneurism in the 21st Century. Countless start-ups surface every day in the frontier of the Internet hoping to achieve similar success. Yet less than 1 percent get off the ground, according to a national study.
At 33 years old, Kalispell native Jerry R. Reynolds is a veteran of the hustle. The Flathead High School graduate has been a serial entrepreneur for almost 10 years, building seven start-up sites or programs in that time. Some have succeeded and been bought out while others have quietly evaporated.
“Every day it falls back on what you make happen. The process is really difficult and really stressful,” he said. “There’s a lot of luck that’s involved, and a lot of continuing to hustle and putting yourself in the right position to make things happen.”
Reynolds is in the midst of his latest project and it’s his most ambitious one yet. Not only could it reimagine the way people plan vacations, it could stake his claim in the middle of the online travel industry.
Reynolds’ new site Plandree is expected to launch soon. It’s essentially a social network vacation planner. Plandree offers a growing database of destinations across the world and includes information about places to stay and local activities. The free site allows users to build an online itinerary and collaborate with family or friends using an interactive page that can be customized in real time from a desktop, smartphone or tablet. Similar to Pinterest, users can drag and drop vacation ideas on their page for everyone to see and comment on. The site will help users become familiar with a destination before visiting and also recommend options based on their interests and goals.
For example, a family preparing to visit the Flathead Valley will be able to survey the entire gamut of opportunities — like hiking through Glacier National Park, rafting the North Fork or zip-lining at Whitefish Mountain Resort — and organize daily activities.
“The whole idea of what we’re trying to do is get people to reconnect with each other and the world around them away from the digital space,” Reynolds said.
“This provides a tool centered around travelers themselves.”
Reynolds has been developing the idea behind Plandree for years, plugging away in his apartment in Kalispell and using the Flathead Valley’s tourism environment as a focal point. He expanded the idea’s scope to ski resort and beach destinations across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
Reynolds sought necessary funding and last year he applied for a start-up accelerator program internship with Betaspring, a company that chooses a select few and provides funding and workspace to help jumpstart a technology start-up.
Hundreds applied and Betaspring accepted only 13 entrepreneurs. Reynolds was one of them. He moved to the offices in Providence, R.I., and since August he has been ironing out every detail of Plandree.
Reynolds is confident the site will separate itself from the pack of start-ups that fall flat. One reason is the site’s innovation in design and workability. There’s also a ripe opportunity in the travel industry, in his mind. When people plan their vacations they have to sift through countless websites and travel literature. Reynolds estimates that only 40 percent of what’s actually available is discovered.
“That’s what interested me — how to take a local area and help people find things to do when they come to visit,” he said.
“We’re building a technology that will be really disruptive in the travel industry, but because we’re doing it differently, hopefully it makes it really exciting and useful for people.”
For more information, visit Plandree.com.