Built by a team of climbers with vast tech experience on both sides of the Atlantic.
OUR STORY
Our founding team is a bunch of tech enthusiasts by day who hang out in the climbing gym at night. We noticed that these huge, state-of-the-art climbing facilities were hamstrung by outdated software which made things like booking a class or changing your membership a pain.
After interviewing over 50 gyms across the US, UK and EU, we realized the problem was even greater than we knew. Climbing gyms have unique legal compliance needs and a high volume of customers coming in and out of their facilities each day, so modern tools that worked for other types of gyms wouldn't work. Climbing facilities were stuck with archaic, clunky and confusing platforms that sometimes meant wasting 2-3 hours a day on data entry and losing customers.
Capitan was built side-by-side with real climbing gym owners and managers. It's the first modern platform that truly helps climbing gyms and centres grow their business and engage with their climbing community.
And as for the name and logo ... the name came from an obscure climbing wall few have heard of in California, to make us sound edgy, unique and startup-y while also making those less familiar with climbing consistently ask us if we misspelled "Captain."
We could create an elaborate story about the logo around how it's mountains symbolizing our constant goal of progressing the platform upward to make it better for users... The truth is neither cofounder was a graphic designer and could only draw a logo with straight lines and it somehow stuck.
A FOUNDING TEAM THAT ROCKS
(Pun very much intended)
MARY CORNFIELD | PRODUCT DESIGN & OPERATIONS
Mary has worked at a variety of early stage startups in product design, sales and operations roles and is currently based in Denver. Most recently she worked at TeamSnap where she worked across iOS, Android and web to enhance the UX for TeamSnap's 22M users to help sports organizations streamline operations and increase customer delight. Like everyone that moves to Colorado, she eventually started climbing and while never the best at crag, she does bring the best snacks.
WESLEY VERNE | PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Wesley is a Manchester, UK based software engineer and technology executive with experience in cybersecurity and electrical utility automation. In college, Wesley founded the Princeton Climbing Team, competed in the USAC Collegiate Climbing Series and worked as a guide at Acadia Mountain Guides Climbing School in Maine. Wes has been climbing for most of his life and always racks gates out.
