From MIT to Montana: Bryan Koontz on Building Guidefitter and the Future of Outdoor Tech

When Bryan Koontz launched Guidefitter, he wasn’t just building another e-commerce platform. He was laying the groundwork for a more authentic connection between outdoor brands and the professionals who live and breathe their gear. On a recent episode of the LandTrust Podcast, Bryan joined Nic to talk about his journey from a rural upbringing in Maryland to MIT, startups, and the founding of Guidefitter—the world’s largest verified network of pro guides and outfitters.

A Rural Start with a Conservation Ethos

Bryan’s roots trace back to a hunting and fishing family in rural Maryland. His early outdoor experiences were shaped by family tradition and reinforced at youth conservation camps that introduced him to land stewardship and habitat preservation. That exposure planted a seed: there’s more to outdoor pursuits than just the hunt. There’s a system—an ecosystem—that needs care and understanding.

Even as his career took him into engineering and tech, working on autonomous systems for the DOD and building venture-backed startups, Bryan never lost touch with his outdoor roots. In fact, it was a hunt in Montana in 2008 that sparked the idea for Guidefitter. After being bluntly informed by his guide that he'd brought “all the wrong stuff,” he realized just how hard it was for new or traveling hunters to know what gear they actually needed. And more importantly, who they should trust for advice.

Building the Guidefitter Marketplace

Guidefitter started as a search engine for guides. But Bryan quickly saw the opportunity to go much bigger. Outdoor gear brands were running their own pro purchase programs—but they were riddled with problems. Verification was laughable. Retailers resented them. “If you can fog a mirror, you can get a pro deal” had become the industry joke.

Guidefitter flipped that narrative by building real verification tools and processes for guides, outfitters, veterans, first responders, and others in the “insider” community. Today, over 300 brands—like Vortex, Swarovski, Crispi, and Kifaru—use Guidefitter to connect with the power users who truly influence the gear-buying decisions of their clients and communities.

But Bryan’s vision goes far beyond discounted gear. “Selling to a pro should just be the beginning,” he said. “The next step is activating them—turning them into proactive promoters.”

Closed-Loop Pro Programs and the Power of Real Influence

Bryan calls it the “closed-loop pro program.” It’s not about shipping a sweater to an influencer and asking for a post. It’s about equipping real professionals—those whose gear is mission-critical—with tools, incentives, and attribution to share meaningful content and feedback.

The potential here is massive. One of Guidefitter’s partners has over 80,000 verified pros opted in. If even a fraction of them became authentic brand advocates, that’s a marketing engine most companies only dream about.

But it's not easy. It takes three things, Bryan explained:

1. Easy-to-use tools for content creation
   
2. Reliable attribution models to credit influence
   
3. Clear incentives—whether it's deeper discounts, recognition, or access
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This approach not only builds stronger brand trust, it opens the door to a new kind of e-commerce: not just intent-driven search, but discovery-based shopping powered by community and credibility.

Running a Hunting-Focused Tech Business: Challenges and Grit

Bryan didn’t sugarcoat the hurdles. Guidefitter has been de-platformed, demonetized, and even delisted from the Google Play store—for “promoting violence.” All because their app and community are centered around hunting. Even processing payments or setting up corporate cards has required workarounds due to anti-2A policies in the financial sector.

But Guidefitter has pushed through—finding partners like Cordova and PublicSq who support the space, and continuing to build in spite of friction from major platforms.

These challenges are all too familiar for those operating in hunting, fishing, and shooting sports. And they make it clear why it’s crucial to build durable, independent infrastructure for the future of the outdoor industry.

The Future of the Digital Outdoors

As Bryan and Nic discussed, the biggest outdoor outcomes have traditionally come from gear rollups—Vista, GSM, American Outdoor Brands. But there’s a new wave emerging: digital-native companies building scalable infrastructure around trips, gear, maps, fitness, and more.

And the hunt-fish sector is uniquely complex: 50 states, 50 systems, fragmented tags, PDFs full of wildlife hieroglyphics, and walls between platforms. But this complexity also presents opportunity. As Bryan put it, “There’s a digital exhaust trail for every hunt”—from licensing to mapping, outfitter CRM, payments, trip planning, and gear.

Whoever can integrate those pieces, enable discovery, and power real participation could build the next generation of category-defining businesses. And Bryan believes Guidefitter is one piece of that evolving ecosystem.

Advice for Brands—and a Word on Soul

For gear manufacturers, Bryan offered a simple but powerful framework: ask what your pro program is really for. Is it just a sales channel? Or is it a strategic tool to build brand credibility, gather product feedback, and generate authentic content?

Too often, brands keep pro programs in sales departments, focused on quarterly numbers. But marketing, product, and customer service should all have a seat at the table. And with the right structure, a brand can become “the brand of choice for professionals”—a position that drives long-term loyalty.

Finally, Bryan sounded a note of caution about consolidation. The outdoor space is seeing more private equity and M&A activity, and while some rollups make sense, brands risk losing their soul if the focus shifts too far from product, community, and authenticity. As he put it, “If you’re just making the spreadsheets work, you miss what made people fall in love with your brand to begin with.”

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