Young Entrepreneur Finalist: Coonhound Camping

Kelly Rosenblatt
Former Senior Manager, Small Business Policy, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Published

October 10, 2019

Jeremy Piper, Co-Founder of Coonhound Camping

To better highlight the impressive members of the small business community, we sat down with the 2019 Dream Big Award finalists to learn more about their startup stories, the challenges they have faced, and what the future of business looks like to them. We chatted with Jeremy Piper, co-founder of Tennessee-based, Coonhound Camping, a campsite set up and take down service. Here is what Jeremy had to say (what follows has been lightly edited for length and clarity):

Q: What inspired the creation of your business? What problem does it help to solve?

We found that one of the main reasons why people don’t camp is that they lack either the experience or equipment to camp comfortably. We at Coonhound Campingprovide full-service camp set-ups, our customers provide us a location and we will construct a camping site to their specifications. As we like to say, we set-up while you set-out!

Q: What gets you up in the morning?

The fact that each day of owning and operating a business brings new challenges that we have to solve and overcome. The joy of entrepreneurship comes from the fact that your success is based solely on utilizing your resources and talents efficiently and nothing else. Most of all though, what really gets us up is that every day we get the chance to enjoy the nature that we love and spread that love to others as well.

Q: When it comes to your business, what has been your proudest moment to date?

Our proudest moment would have to be after we had completed our first major group site set-up. Seeing the happy faces of our clients as they arrived at the campsite reassured all of us that we had a viable service that we could muster into a veritable company.

Q: What does American entrepreneurship mean to you?

American entrepreneurship means freedom to impact our community in a positive way. It means that we are allowed to grow and provide unrivaled service to all of those who work with us. We feel as though through entrepreneurship we can do what we love, in a place we love, with the people we love.

Q: If selected as the winner of the Dream Big Small Business of the Year Award, how will you invest the $25,000 grand prize?

If we were to be selected to be the winner of Dream Big Small Business of the Year Award and the prize money, we would work to expand our brand to other parts of the nation. Our business model and processes can be used in many different areas around the United States and even the world!

To learn more about the 2019 Dream Big Award finalists, click here.