Early last summer, Erin Anderson dove headfirst into the world of youth camp registration when her daughter wrapped up kindergarten. Hopeful at first, she quickly realized that booking a camp for her daughter for every week of the summer was tedious, with easy-to-miss registration deadlines and a mountain of paperwork – “often accompanied by some crying and wine,” she added.

It wasn’t too long after when she connected with startup mentor and fellow mom Meredith Englund who was undergoing the same strife with her two children. That’s how Minneapolis tech startup Camperoni (a play on camp and macaroni) was born.

For parents, when a child turns five years old, there are at least 65 days a year where there’s no school but primary caregivers still have to work. This includes summer break, winter break, and other mandated school days off like Presidents Day.

“This has been a pain point for years,” Englund said. “Every parent I talked to has this problem and any time I told someone this idea, they go, ‘Wait, you’re going to fix this?’”

Her response? “Yes, we’re going to try.”

In June, Anderson and Englund formed a youth camp aggregator they called Camperoni, with a rough draft website established in August. Englund then enlisted tech entrepreneur Vasilis Geogitzikis to the team to get the website user-ready. After Thanksgiving, the site officially launched to users. The Camperoni team would go on to join the third cohort of the Minnesota Twins Accelerator by Techstars program.

As any parent knows, the process of signing up a child for a camp is complex. Parents have to meet registration deadlines which are often booked out 3–6 months in advance, make sure the camp is within their price range, establish pick up and drop off times, coordinate with other parents so friends can be together, keep child’s special interests in mind, and much more–and that’s if you even make it past the waitlist.

Anderson compares camp registration to a college application form with each camp requiring detailed information in a different format and structure. “It’s a shocking amount of time that parents are spending on this when it should be easy,” Englund added. “These are working parents who are used to the best in technology at their fingertips at work, and then they go home and don’t have any resources.”

Much of the communication about camp information also happens on a “peer-to-peer network,” since camps don’t do a lot of advertising.

The Camperoni website automates the search process and provides a centralized location for Twin Cities camps information. Where local camp information is spread out across numerous websites, Camperoni aggregates the process for parents through its search engine and filters.

“We think a small step in the right direction is just bringing awareness and transparency to the market, so that people know what options are available because there are a lot of great camps that aren’t selling out within minutes,” Englund said.

How does it work?

To access the Camperoni platform, parents need to make an account. From there, users have access to more than 260 providers (camps) and more than 2,000 camp offerings.

Users can also use filters to narrow down the search process, beginning with age, date of camp, cities, day length (including overnight), financial aid, and the camp’s registration status and registration link. It can also be broken down into dozens of niches, whether a kid’s interest is dance, fishing, magic, photography, fandom (think Harry Potter or Star Wars), and many more. Eventually, special needs, like heart disease, will be added to the filters.

The selections include the infamous Cardboard Camp, a local favorite for kids and quick to sell out, and under-the-radar camps like Swifties in Space (yes, it’s a legit camp).

Every day, a new camp is inputted into the Camperoni data system. “Every camp we’re aware of is either on the site or in our review to quickly be on the site. I’m sure there are more that we don’t know about because we learn about new ones every single day,” said Englund.

Camperoni founders say camps themselves are excited about a new resource for parents. “They’re not focused on the tech but they want parents to have an easy experience, so we try to stay out of the camps’ way. We gather the information that they’re already making publicly available and make it easier for parents to sift through,” Englund said.

Currently, the Camperoni platform is free for both parents and camps, but will eventually pivot to a premium subscription model that is still in the works. “It’s about making it easier for parents to find the right match,” said Anderson. The platform saves data based on parents’ clicks to pair users with the right camp, which is another element that might eventually tie into a premium subscription, she said.

Camps can also make sure their offerings get noticed, through posts on Camperoni’s social media, highlights in the newsletter, a blog feature, and sponsorship.

Keeping the momentum

For the last few months in the Twins accelerator, the three founders have been steadily preparing for Demo Day on Feb. 15, where they along with nine other startups will present their pitch to the community.

Camperoni data only encompasses the Twin Cities area, but it plans to go bigger by spreading its roots to every major U.S. metro along with smaller towns. Currently, there are 5,000 registered users, up from under 1,000 users in November.

The startup is still pre-revenue, but the founders are excited about the market potential, believing that up until now parents have been “under-teched.” “It’s a pain point that’s a lot broader than we even anticipated when we started,” Englund said.

In September, Camperoni raised $300,000 from an angel round and an investment from Techstars. The team is also working with several contractors that work behind the scenes on development.

Right now, the team is focused on keeping the momentum going once the accelerator program wraps up. “There’s always the next step. We want to grow beyond camps into after-school activities and also grow beyond the Twin Cities,” Geogitzikis added.

“I feel like one of the luckiest parents in the Twin Cities because since I’m immersed in this in my job, I know when all of the camps are happening. I am so much more on the ball than when I was trying to do a job outside of this,” Englund said. “It makes me feel a real urgency to help other parents feel that level of confidence about this entire process.”