Portfolio News| October 2018
Spectrum Equity Leads New Investment and Majority Recapitalization of AllTrails
Boston and San Francisco – Spectrum Equity announced that it led a substantial new investment in AllTrails, the most trusted and used digital guide to the outdoors, to help accelerate product development, add more trail content around the world and grow the company’s user base. As part of the transaction, Spectrum acquired a majority stake in AllTrails, in partnership with the company’s CEO Jade Van Doren, and COO Ron Schneidermann.
AllTrails helps over 9 million registered users discover, record and share their outdoor experiences, including hiking, mountain biking and trail running. AllTrails has created the largest collection of trail information globally with over 55,000 hand-curated trails in 102 different countries. The company has grown rapidly over the past few years without significant outside funding.
In conjunction with the transaction, Ben Spero and Matt Neidlinger from Spectrum Equity will join the board of directors. “We are thrilled to partner with Jade, Ron and the entire AllTrails team to support the company in its next phase of growth,“ said Ben Spero, Managing Director of Spectrum Equity. “The company is helping millions of people discover great outdoor activities and lead healthier, active lifestyles.”
“Spectrum’s extensive experience with freemium, subscription-based businesses was particularly attractive to us in considering potential financial partners,” said Jade Van Doren, CEO of AllTrails. “We’re thrilled to have Spectrum as our new partner as we continue to innovate on our products, expand our trail coverage around the world and support our passionate community of users.”
Matt Neidlinger from Spectrum Equity added, “As we’ve gotten to know Jade, Ron and the team over the past few years, we’ve been impressed by their ability to scale the platform into the most-recognized, category-leading brand in the space.”
AllTrails was advised by Stubbs Alderton & Markiles with GP Bullhound serving as AllTrails’ exclusive financial advisor. Spectrum Equity was advised by Latham & Watkins. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
About AllTrails
AllTrails helps people explore the outdoors with the largest collection of detailed, hand-curated trail maps as well as trail reviews and photos crowdsourced from its community of over 9 million hikers, mountain bikers and trail runners. AllTrails has the #1 Outdoors app for iOS & Android with more than 12 million mobile downloads and reaches 44 million people each year through alltrails.com, the App Store and Google Play.
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