Camperoo (YC W14) Helps Parents Find and Book Summer Camps, Activities for Kids | Hacker News Reader

Camperoo (YC W14) Helps Parents Find and Book Summer Camps, Activities for Kids

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69 pointsemmiechang30 comments

Just a friendly reminder for parents to not turn a blind eye to anything that goes on at camp. For example, bullying. Teach your child strategies for dealing with it and keep a close emotional attunement. This is a PSA for parents who actually care and don't just use camp as a glorified babysitting service.

Genius! I have 2 kids and spent the last 3 weeks fretting about camps and getting kids into camps. Its all word of mouth at the moment. Brilliant idea!

Thanks! Are you in the Bay Area by chance? I'm Emmie, the founder. New site design to push out this weekend, please take a look again soon. (we wanted to push it out before the TC article, but it was too unstable)

My wife and I (mainly her) just finished planning for my son's first summer of camps, and it was a pain. So much so that I remarked that I should build a webapp to manage it for us and his classmates.

Thanks for building this, I can't wait to look at it.

Unfortunately, it's probably a little late to launch to target this summer. Planning has already started and been done for most. For a lot of camps, you need to put down deposits pretty early to secure a spot. But, for the couple of weeks we might need to fill in, I'll certainly take a look. (Bay Area)

Please come to the UK - my wife and I spend a remarkable amount of time trying to organize stuff to keep our son constructively occupied!

[NB One thing I would love is some way to enter into a discussion with our son about what he wants to do and to rate different options - at the moment we do this through email and printing stuff out, which is dreadful.]

Hey! Actually, I just found out that there were camps in the UK. I met an ex pro-football player who used to run his own programs in the UK from 1999-2009. I'll definitely explore expansion to the UK! I love it there, and drive a Mini :). Good points on the discussion with your child--we'll have camper profiles soon to allow for kids to bookmark their own things

From what I understand, things are a bit different here - most camps/activities are for a week or less, so for a summer holiday of 7 weeks there is a lot of time to fill and a lot of organizing to do.

In the summer, things are somewhat similar on this side of the pond. There are lots of one week day camps over the summers.

I'd love to list on your site. I'm starting up a program to teach kids to code in Mill Valley (in Marin)

My summer program isn't quite ready but I'd love to put something there for people to contact me when it is.

Contact info for me is in my profile. Would love to connect.

looking forward to seeing the new site. i am the founder of a similar site in NY Kidklass.com. i look forward to watching you grow along with us, its important work we are both doing.

During early elementary school I learned more in camp than I did at school.

I was also first exposed to C++ in a summer program around 1998.

With the right vendors this is more than a marketplace for camps, it could radically change education. Kids can pick up technical skills VERY early (that schools won't give them), and they'll have years to master them.

"Expedia for..." sounds pretty weird. Think of something else. I can't remember what actual Expedia is for.

The whole title sounds a bit weird. What about "Kayak for childrens' camps and activities" or instead of Kayak, Hipmunk? Since they are in YC, they should totally mention that in the title as well.

We actually do the registrations, not just an affiliate thing like kayak or hipmunk....opentable for kids camps?

I like OpenTable for kids camps! I think more people probably get how OpenTable becomes a core part of the restaurant's infrastructure than Expedia does for travel.

we use the Open Table reference for our similar service I agree that is the closest comparison especially because I noticed you also have SaaS for vendors in addition to the marketplace.

...that said, I do like the idea - have a 3 year old, and trying to understand what is available out there is incredibly difficult and haphazard.

I literally had to think...what is Expedia?

I remember being pitched this idea at START pitch day - I really think it is a great idea.

I agree with the comments above: "OpenTable for camps" is a much better (or at least more recognizable) comparison than Expedia.

Congratulations on becoming part of YC 14!

Damn. I started down this path but had to give up -- it was too hard to scrape the data. Add to that building relations and the site itself (by myself).

Best of luck!

The resemblance to http://www.zappos.com/ is somewhat ethically questionable.

Love how you're the only Person ever to say that! We were definitely inspired by it. Switching in a few days to the new look and feel, designed specifically for us!

That's good, congrats on the launch!

Great work Emmie! This is totally needed, finding and registering for camps has been a mess for years.

I remember this being here as a SHOWHN a few months ago.

Now it's YC14? Congratulations.

Very happy to see another successful venture from Houston.

Great work folks! :)

Thanks! H-Town represent!! (wait that sounded really silly...probably less silly than if I really said that out loud)

It's encouraging to the rest of us Houston startups to see your progress!

Yes, all 4 of us! :P

Have you seen CampEasy? Looks pretty big and complete

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