Advntur Sets Out to Build Online Sharing Community for Athletes

the weekend, the host earns $85 and Advntur collects $15. We use Stripe as our payment processor.

X: Are you initially targeting any particular sports?

MD: We have 12 sports listed on our site. We feel comfortable in our knowledge of these sports and can speak to the concerns of those athletes. We also have insurance for these sports (except people sharing skis) through Lloyd’s of London. Any sports beyond that would require new insurance terms and coverage. There will absolutely be more sports added in the future, but for now we are sticking with what we know and what we can support.

X: Can you give any examples of the kind of equipment sharing you have in mind?

MD: You’re a golfer, and you have a business trip coming up in Atlanta. You don’t want to bring your clubs because it’s only for three days and rentals are hit-or-miss. With Advntur, you can search for golfers in Atlanta, connect with someone who has a similar handicap, and they can play a round with you. The host might even be a member of a private club, giving you access to a course you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. If you only want to borrow the clubs and play by yourself, you can do that as well.

Advntur screengrab
Advntur screengrab

Or you’re a surfer, and you’re on vacation in Hawaii. It’s expensive to bring your board on the plane, and the rental boards aren’t in good condition. You don’t know the good local surf spots. You’re also traveling on a budget, and you want to get a more local Hawaiian experience and avoid the tourist traps. With Advntur, you can search for surfers in Hawaii, connect with someone who will lend you their board or has spare ones (which most surfers do) and can show you the local surf spots, vouch for you since surfers are territorial, and put you up for the night.

Or you’re a runner traveling to New York for the marathon. If you stay at a hotel, you’ll be staying in Manhattan and may very well not know how to get to Staten Island for the race start. You’ll have no idea where to go the night before for a good pre-race meal. With Advntur, you can connect with a New York runner who runs at the same mile time and might even be running in the race as well. You can get in a few days ahead of time, go for some runs with the host and get a sense of what it’s like to run in NYC.

Advntur is about connecting athletes, not people who have gear with people who need it. Yes, there will be occasions when I need fishing gear and you have it and that’s all there is to it, but we promote sharing the experience together and making friends.

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.