Posted by Mike Platania at Richmond Biz Sense
After parting ways with the outdoors recreation startup he co-founded, Aaron Bumgarner is kicking off his next outdoors-focused venture with a 1,400-acre land deal in Powhatan County.
The former CEO of local startup Outdoor Access is leading a group that this week purchased the acreage, located between Old Buckingham Road and the Appomattox River in the southwestern part of the county, for $2 million.
The group is planning a three-pronged business model that will buy, manage and lease that land and other sites along the East Coast to outdoor enthusiasts for uses such as hunting, camping and river access. Leases would be managed through a land-leasing platform comparable to Outdoor Access, except that the new platform – called Outdoor Pursuits – will lease land owned by the group, not other private landowners.
Bumgarner was a founding member of Outdoor Access, which has an online platform through which private landowners can offer short-term rentals of their land. Bumgarner left Outdoor Access last year, and claims in a lawsuit that he was pushed out of the company due to a separate dispute with Robert Fischer, a local banker and landowner. Bumgarner’s suit against Fischer is ongoing in Richmond Circuit Court.