Geocaching.com
👤 Jeremy Irish, Bryan Roth & Elias Alvord (When GPS went civilian in 2000, they grabbed geocaching.com and became the hobby's one canonical HQ. First movers, no VC.)🌐 site
Hiding boxes in the woods became a bootstrapped subscription business — because the players build the map for free.
Will it work? · our read
Unbeatable database. One global cache registry, built free by volunteers and 1.2B logs — a real moat, but it rides on volunteer goodwill and free apps that map the same coordinates.
01How the money moves
361K volunteers hide 3.4M caches, free
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Anyone plays free on the app and site
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Power users pay $39.99/yr for Premium
02The numbers
3.4M+Statedactive geocaches worldwide
the sentence on the page
Fast Facts Education Geocaching Premium Contact Fast facts Geocaching by the numbers There are more than 3.4 million active geocaches worldwide. Geocaches are hidden in 191 different countries on all…
Premium held at $30/yr for 21 years; the first-ever raise came in June 2023. pricing update
Private and bootstrapped — no revenue disclosed. Our EST of about $20-30M/yr comes from about 90 staff on a roughly $40/yr subscription.
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You have the verdict. Members get the work behind it.
- The CENTS scorecard — where it's strong, where it's soft
- The founder's key move, and the counter-move
- How it could die — the evidence, and how sure we are
- The case against our own call
- A 🚀 launchpad prompt — the case, as a plan for your business
We rate our own confidence — and argue against ourselves. Nobody else in this category does.
Sources always public on all 560 cases · cancel anytime · 14-day refund
See a full teardown, free → ImportYetiSourcesSources last checked 25 August 2026
Geocaching Newsroom — Fast Facts — 3.4M+ active caches, 191 countries, 1.2B+ logs, 361K+ cache owners; the first funds came from selling 144 t-shirts.Geocaching Newsroom — Premium — what a paid membership unlocks.Geocaching — Official Blog.GeekWire (2014) — "Bootstrapper of the Year ... Winner: Geocaching".Wikipedia — Geocaching.
Revenue is undisclosed — Groundspeak is private and bootstrapped (no VC; GeekWire named it Bootstrapper of the Year in 2014). The "about $20-30M" figure is our EST from roughly 90 employees running a roughly $40/yr subscription — it is NOT a reported number, and third-party revenue trackers for this company vary wildly, so treat it as a rough band. First-party and solid: 3.4M active caches, 1.2B logs, 191 countries, about 90 staff, and the $39.99/yr price (Geocaching Newsroom + blog). Premium member count is not public. No fabricated drama: the win was 25 years of patient, volunteer-fueled compounding, not one clever stroke. [our read] flags: the revenue estimate and the "volunteers walk" failure mode are our inference, not company statements. We never score you.