{"id":125072,"date":"2021-08-18T16:59:18","date_gmt":"2021-08-18T16:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/news\/?id=2oyen0u4"},"modified":"2021-08-18T16:59:18","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T16:59:18","slug":"developer-spotlight-the-dyrt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2021\/08\/18\/developer-spotlight-the-dyrt\/","title":{"rendered":"Developer Spotlight: The Dyrt"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/div>\n

Sarah Smith, an avid camper and cofounder of The Dyrt<\/em>, was frustrated by how hard it was to find details on a campsite before you booked. She wanted to know that, say, site 2 was next to a busy road, while site 7 was along a river.<\/p>\n

She wondered why nobody seemed to be solving the problem. Then she had a thought that changed everything: \u201cWhy can\u2019t I do it?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Four years later she launched The Dyrt<\/em> to help nature lovers find and review campsites all over the country. Last year members planned more than 55 million miles of trips.<\/p>\n

We caught up with Smith to chat about transitioning from education to technology, the importance of starting slow, and why it pays to learn on the fly.<\/p>\n

\"*The<\/p>\n

*The Dyrt* can point you to the perfect campsite.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Before creating The Dyrt<\/em>, did you have any tech background?<\/strong> None whatsoever! I was in education. My cofounder and husband has a background in tech and apps, but he didn\u2019t come on board until I had already built something.<\/p>\n

Were any of your skills from your career in education transferable?<\/strong> I did have one skill from my 10 years of living abroad and helping students study abroad: adaptability. When I think of every job I\u2019ve done for The Dyrt<\/em> \u2014 from scribbling out wireframes to figuring out a payroll system to creating more strategic partnerships \u2014 it\u2019s always about being flexible while keeping the end goal in mind.<\/p>\n

How long did it take to bring The Dyrt<\/em> into the world?<\/strong> We did it pretty slowly at the beginning. I built a rudimentary beta version of the website in WordPress in 2014, and a better beta the next year. In 2015, we started raising money and hiring people. But our first app didn\u2019t come out until March 2017. It took years for something I thought would take not that long.<\/p>\n

What was the trickiest part?<\/strong> It\u2019s not hard to create a directory of campgrounds, but it is hard to create a platform that people want to contribute to. We did it by incentivizing people through contests: We choose the top reviewer from each region and work with brands to give prizes. But getting brands involved was challenging at first; we started talking to them before we had a website launched, so they had to believe in the dream.<\/p>\n

What advice would you give to other aspiring developers?<\/strong> Start small and iterate. I can\u2019t say I knew that when I started \u2014 I couldn\u2019t afford to do it any other way at the time. But I did have a hunch that I shouldn\u2019t put my life savings into this until I had an idea that other people wanted this problem solved too.<\/p>\n

\n

Download The Dyrt from the App Store<\/a><\/p>\n

Learn more about the App Store Small Business Program<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Smith, an avid camper and cofounder of The Dyrt, was frustrated by how hard it was to find details on a campsite before you booked. She wanted to know that, say, site 2 was next to a busy road, while site 7 was along a river. She wondered why nobody seemed to be solving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apple-developer-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}