Untrodden, Inc.

To shift travel from the mainstream and into the periphery by activating 'off-the-beaten-path lodging — near & far — thus catalyzing more sustainable & resilient communities relative to mass tourism.

1-15 employees
  • Hotels, Restaurants, Leisure, Travel, & Hospitality
  • Headquarters address
    San Francisco, CA

    Elevator Pitch:

    Untrodden connects intrepid travelers with a collection of high-quality, ‘off-the-beaten-path’ accommodations via a curated digital marketplace. In short, we're a curated Airbnb for the "National Geographic, experiential traveler".

    While we love all travel, journeying 'off-the-beaten-path' — to places out-of-the-way or overlooked by the masses — invariably leaves the most powerful impression on us by facilitating a deeper, more personal, and more experiential form of travel which we believe profoundly reshapes our relationship with the people and places we encounter along the way.

    Through our own travels, we've learned how daunting, time-consuming, and frustrating finding, researching, and booking an 'off-the-beaten-path' place to stay can be, and felt compelled to act. For likeminded travelers, we constantly and thoughtfully explore the world for inspiring and original places to stay — both near and far — and have designed a marketplace to vet, showcase, and activate dwellings that most appeal to the wanderlust in us all.

    While our properties serve to inspire, nurture, and energize, they're far from insulating. Fundamentally, they're bridges to that which beckons beyond their walls — basecamps that enable a guest to connect in a meaningful way with a landscape, a community, an individual, or oneself so as to experience richly and deeply.

    What Wakes Us Up:

    We’re seeking to activate exploration and discovery among ‘roads less traveled.’ The notion that discovery and exploration in the modern age is either 'dead' or rather something that happens in distant places, on mountaintops, by people who are braver, tougher and stronger than us, is fundamentally-flawed and simply untrue. It’s our wholehearted belief that the world is still very large, uncharted, & unknown, albeit in a more subtle and personalized way than centuries past. While discovery does indeed happen on mountains in faraway lands by professional explorers, it can just as well happen by more humble, everyday participants, in deeply transformative and meaningful ways, both near — around the corner, in our backyards, and underneath our noses —or far. There is still much to explore through a deeper, slower, and more experiential form of travel. Doing so has the potential to transform lives in deeply meaningful and positive ways.

    We concern ourselves with places that people feel wonder and awe and an enlivening sense of discovery. We’re energized by the map’s ‘blank spots.’ These places are perceived to be 'empty' not because of an actual lack of things to see or do, but simply because traditional travel infrastructure failed to manifest in these smaller markets, due to the need for economies of scale, and thus never facilitated mainstream recognition. The distributed and decentralizing power of the internet and the peer-to-peer economy, combined with an abundance of fragmented content and the surging desire for authentic, unique experiences now upends this paradigm, and we strive to be the world’s go-to resource for finding and booking a high-quality and trusted place to stay ‘off the beaten path’, both near and far.

    Read more about our Brand

    About Us:

    Untrodden’s Founder/CEO (Justin Randolph) is a Stanford MBA with previous experience in investing and venture capital with an exceptionally wide passport. It's Product Lead (Rhea Dookeran) is an ex-Googler and Stanford MBA with deep product expertise from years at Google Apps and YouTube.

    What We’re Looking for in You:

    A deep feeling of wanderlust and an irrational desire to explore are absolute musts. Only avid and passionate travelers, motivated to transform remote, independent travel, need apply. We aim to do for small-scale, rural accommodation providers what Etsy did for small-volume artisans.

    We’re seeking a senior, full-stack engineer to oversee and refine our MVP and to bring our tech stack in-house. As the first in-house engineering hire, you would be in a position to become Untrodden’s full-time technical lead with a competitive salary and meaningful equity. It’s the Silicon Valley dream — salary, upside, responsibility, meaning, passion, excitement, and fun. No shortage of fulfillment. A developer joining our team is expected to make critical architecture decisions that take our software, systems, and processes to the next level while leading the charge on feature testing and implementation.

    • 5+ years of professional, full-stack experience delivering best-in-class web and mobile apps (preferably in the context of a consumer products).
    • BS or MS in Computer Science / Engineering, Electrical Engineering or related field.
    • Ruby/Rails mastery required; solid familiarity with PostgreSQL.
    • Deep expertise with object-oriented, sematic code, design patterns and agile methodologies.
    • Solid skills with HTML and CSS to build beautiful and functional experiences that delight our users.
    • Stellar references to support your supernatural coding skills.
    • Fearlessness and flexibility required to thrive in a startup environment and a strong appreciation for being part of a collaborative team.
    • An irrational passion and love for authentic, transformative travel experiences, and a fundamental belief in the purpose and mission of Untrodden’s product to inspire and facilitate exploration. When you pass a dirt road leading beyond the horizon, a tiny violin within your heart begins to play.
    • A detail-oriented eye for perfection, combined with a bias to not let “perfection be the greatest enemy of the good.” We’re OCD pragmatists. Identify the important details...leave behind all the rest.
    • Desire to influence the products you are building, with an eye toward data analytics and usability best practices. Bonus points: the unique ability to align art and utility in the development context to deliver a storytelling product experience that brings to life the emotion, adventure, and romance of off-the-beaten-path travel.

    What You’ll Get from Us:

    • Competitive Compensation — A competitive salary, plus meaningful equity. Responsibility and ownership — This position is not for the meek at heart, with outsized opportunities for personal and professional growth and development.
    • Never be bored — If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it’s lethal. We assure you no day at Untrodden will ever look the same. Death to routine. Embrace always being stimulated, always challenged.
    • Passion and purpose — Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. We’re a values-based startup, subscribing to 1% for the Planet, and deeply believe Untrodden can be a catalyst towards rural economic development, conservation, and sustainability in some of the world's most underserved and overlooked locales
    • Autonomy and flexibility — As long as you get the work done, we don’t care if it’s at 11AM at the office, 2AM on Sunday from your bed, or while sitting on a beach. We’re results-oriented...you choose the rest.

    And if you're still reading...

    Untrodden is fuel for wanderlust. An antidote to soulless travel. A place to feel awake and alive.

    Our Mission To encourage and facilitate discovery and exploration among roads less traveled, and to seed immersive experiences that invoke a sense of curiosity, awe and wonder, elicit a heightened level of understanding and awareness, and enliven the soul.

    Our Purpose We celebrate and support the urge to explore the world’s overlooked and hidden wonders by empowering curious travelers to discover and book unique accommodations in “off-the-beaten-path” locales, near or far.

    By facilitating “untrodden travel”, we aspire to:

    1. incite a deep and meaningful sense of inspiration, enrichment and fulfillment in our travelers, and
    2. shift the flows of travel away from the mainstream core and into the periphery, thus catalyzing more sustainable and resilient host communities, relative to mass tourism.

    We endeavor to make the properties we profile more accessible and approachable, via the power of distributed technology, while respecting and sustaining the unspoiled resources and unique culture that fundamentally make them so appealing in the first place.

    Our Properties: Untrodden is embodied by unique dwellings among the world’s hidden wonders — places which represent much more than simply a roof and a bed, and which evoke an emotional response. While every one of our curated accommodations is individually-distinct, and ranges broadly across pricepoint, geography, and underlying experience, each is:

    (1) OFF-THE-BEATEN-PATH: feels “beyond” and “far away,” regardless of location;
    (2) LOCALLY-INSPIRED & HARMONIOUS: is influenced by and compliments its community and surroundings, from its local climate and topography to its culture and heritage;
    (3) EXPERIENTIAL: encourages guests to embrace and experience its surroundings;
    (4) INDEPENDENT: is independently-owned or operated;
    (5) SMALL-SCALE: “small-batch” and artisan in essence, thus retaining a personal, detail-oriented, and “handmade” feel;
    (6) CHARACTER-RICH: has a unique sense of personality, originality, and authenticity that reflects those behind the property;
    (7) UNASSUMING: conveys a general attitude that is lacking in pretense;

    While our properties serve to inspire, nurture, and energize our travelers, they are far from insulating in nature. Fundamentally, our dwellings act as bridges to that which beckons beyond their walls — basecamps that enable a visitor to connect in a meaningful way with a landscape, a community, or oneself.

    Our Travelers

    Untrodden is for independently-minded travelers who seek authentic and unique experiences and are averse to the mass-produced and homogenized. Inherently curious about the world around them, our travelers welcome the itch to discover and explore with open arms, and long for a heightened sense of connection and understanding. They dream of leaving behind their urban dwellings, disconnecting from the world (or dare we say “reconnecting with”) in exchange for a simpler environment where the soul is alive and awake.

    Because finding the world’s best, “off-the-beaten-path” accommodations is a daunting, time-consuming, and frustrating process, our hardworking team of passionate travelers, writers, and developers felt compelled to act. We constantly and obsessively scour the world for inspiring and original places to stay, and have designed our digital marketplace so as to showcase and celebrate those properties that appeal to the wanderlust in us all.

    We aim to inject the excitement and serendipity of exploration back into travel, while ensuring that the travel booking experience is delightful, and stress-free for our users.

    Tech stack

    Ruby on Rails, HTML, Heroku, CSS, Postgres, Javascript