Refined technology served us the world at our feet. With it, we can see worldly places we wouldn’t otherwise know. But, the truth is, no matter how much we want to see it all, some destinations still escape our reach.

Why? Well, because, we just don’t know they're there.

Simon Neal, a camper and a geologist, once struggled to find a convenient camping spot. Even with technology at hand, Simon still lacked maps to help him unlock Earth’s unseen beauty.

So, Simon and 5 others ended up developing CampMap. Essentially, the app takes you to the best camping places in the world and gives secret camping spots the chance to shine. Tourist destinations also benefit from the app - promoting their brands near camping areas has never been as easy as it is with CampMap!

Simon’s professional story is another example of create-what-you-don’t-have. From an eager camper to the camping ground master, here is how CampMap came to be under Simon’s visionary spell.

A Highlander Soul

Legend has it that the Scottish Highlands are mystic and beautiful because they hide nature’s deepest secrets. Simon Neal was lucky enough to be born and raised under the Scottish sun. As a millennial child, he was deeply interested in nature and all its perfect imperfections. Simon loved collecting stones and reading encyclopedias since his early days. Interestingly, this hobby lingered through Simon’s teenage years, though it wasn’t as intensified.

Simon was a regular millennial teen, addicted to technology - but in a good way. Besides enjoying the internet, Simon also wanted to inspect the development of technology and manage to, somehow, merge it with nature in perfect unison.

Off to College He Goes

Simon didn’t struggle when he had to pick a faculty he knew his path all along. As he loved nature and technology, in 1999, Simon enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to study geology. Since day one, Simon knew that he had made the right choice, and so it turned out to be.

In 2003, Simon became an official geologist with a diploma in his hands. However, Simon knew that this wasn’t the end of his studies, and he so wanted to widen the horizons further, especially in geology. Therefore, he enrolled at Heriot-Watt University's master program on Reservoir Evaluation and Management. During the master program, between 2003 and 2004, Simon participated in various side projects and left the impression of being a restless achiever.

Once he finished his Master’s program, Simon started a course at the Institute for Petroleum Engineering to research their entire technical department. Although it was an exhausting experience, it posed the best practice for obtaining knowledge that Simon could get his hands on. Essentially, Simon’s project demanded that he create a 3D geological mapping model on the Garder Province of Southern Greenland, which then urged Simon to put his geological expertise to good use.

Raising the Career Meter

Right after finishing his research in Edinburgh, Simon got a job at Geomodelling Services Limited. There, Simon practiced what he studied, and worked as a Consultant Geologist Specialist on the Petrel software. At Geomodeling Services Limited, Simon worked on both big and small projects, including Shell, a Jordan Oil Shale project.

He also had the chance of getting acquainted with structural and property modeling.

In two years’ time, Simon had sharpened all his professional swords and moved to work as a Lead Modeler at the Shell Oil Company. A remarkable career move in Simon’s career was also working for Knowledge Through Mapping, where Simon had the role of a Web –Platforms, Data Science, Mapping, and Geoscience specialist.

This is where Simon spent the biggest portion of his career, eight whole years.

And it was good he did because this experience led him to start working at Spacial CV. com. Lo and behold, it was here where Simon first sniffed upon his own entrepreneurial ambitions and decided to give them his best shot.

Locating the Middle of Nowhere

With Google Maps and GPS locations - the world can navigate through the most unremarkable areas worldwide. Even so, such maps are optimized for populated cities, but not for specific areas, like towns’ outskirts, woodlands, and secret nearby resorts. This, naturally, creates a significant IT travel deficit - since adventurers who want to enjoy nature’s realms cannot navigate as freely or take a direction - where there’s none to guide them.

Sick and tired of this problem, Simon and a couple of other campers rounded up to turn things around. After realizing that the camping industry was way underdeveloped, Simon and his team decided to execute detailed and accurate maps for other eager campers. And so it was - and so the beginnings of CampMap peered across the horizon.

Campers, Find Your Spot!

Initially, Simon and his team started developing CampMap to be able to locate all hidden and available camping areas, so that nature enthusiasts have a new adventure at their fingertips at all times.

Despite their vision, creating a GPS map was not enough in terms of competence, which made the team come up with more innovative solutions to boost its presence. The answer to that problem - build a designated community app. The team first installed a chat option as part of the app, so players could communicate and exchange experiences regarding a marked area. Next, the team took the extra step into making the app multifunctional, which worked incredibly well for both individual campers, camping businesses, and even non-camping tourist agencies.

The final CapMap product was delivered as a cloud-based app, intended for touring locals who wanted to discover a nice camping spot or a nearby restaurant located in nature, which then gave local tourist organizations the chance to promote their brands on a larger scale.

Fighting the Pandemic

The throne is a relative term in entrepreneurship, and one must always be prepared to put up a good fight. Once the pandemic broke, it immediately became a clear threat to all and any business. Tourist agencies were the ones hit the hardest by the lockdown and nobody dared even think about camping or leaving their home to explore.

Though many facilities and organizations suffered the consequences, it seemed as though CampMap was on a roll. Though the company initially struggled to appeal to a willing audience, it pushed through the obstacles and survived the 2020 dog days.

To save their business during the pandemic, the CampMap team compiled a detailed plan and agenda to help attract investors and thus overcome their financial shortcomings. It wasn’t an easy task to do, finding investors, but the CampMap team maintained a strong conviction that they needed to keep trying. And eventually, with trying hard enough also came the investments they were hoping for.

Funding and Other Legal Matters

CampMap’s backbone is Fil Rouge Capital, which started off the company. In fact, Fil Rouge Capital is the only investor of the brand. During the pre-seed round, during the notorious 2020, the company managed to raise €50,000. Only a year later, in February 2021, CampMap ended up raising €250,000.

The company headquarters remain in Rijeka, Croatia. Also, the company meets all European Union standards whilst still preserving a sense of tradition and nostalgia.

Predicting CampMap’s future in the business is not that hard of a task. Having survived the COVID-19 as a startup and has raised enough funds to grow in the meantime, CampMap is just getting warmed up in unifying nature vs technology in holy matrimony. With the sole aim to grow bigger - far bigger than its current $365,000 worth, the company is not only taking the speed train to success - it conducts the way there!