Outdoor Compass
Simple compass and navigation tool for hikers, campers, and outdoor users.
A compass and bearing tool that works with no signal and no fuss: large, legible, calibrated, and honest about accuracy. Built for cold hands and bright sun rather than for a demo.
What a v1 does5 features
- A large compass readable in glare and at arm's length
- Bearings taken and held back to a saved point
- Works entirely offline
- Calibration prompt when the reading is unreliable
- True and magnetic north, with declination applied
The market
AllTrails charges $35.99 a year, recently added an $80 tier, and is estimated above $130M ARR. That is roughly 1.5% conversion on a free utility, and a one-time $5 unlock should be read against that rate.
Where these numbers come from
| Company | Earns | Reach | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| AllTrails | ARR estimated $130M+ · $35.99/yr, Peak tier $80/yr | 65M users · 1M+ paying subscribers | Independent estimates, 2024–25 |
| Gaia GPS | Paid tiers | Not published | Published pricing |
| onX Backcountry | Paid tiers | Not published | Published pricing |
Why this audience
These viewers have been taught not to depend on a phone that has signal and battery, which makes them the rare group who will actually use an offline compass. The scepticism the content builds is what makes the plain version of the tool desirable rather than quaint.
Before it can launch
No licence, certification or data agreement stands between this and a launch — app-store review and an ordinary privacy policy aside.
How the pricing works
A one-off unlock, not a subscription - nobody rents a compass. Spread here as a purchase every two and a half years, which is about how often a phone and its apps get replaced.
What it earns
Drag me Every figure recalculates as you go.
0.021% of 4.7M followers · capped at 50,000
Opens on the price this idea was costed at, $5.
A quarter is one purchase every four years; twelve is monthly.
1,000 paying — 0.021% of 4.7M followers — × $5 × 0.4 purchases a year = $2,000 a year
Fifty thousand paying users is the ceiling every one of these pages is drawn against, not a forecast. It opens at a thousand, the bottom of the range, so the first figures you see are the modest ones. What the cap buys is comparability: the same range on every app, and the percentage of the audience it takes as the number that moves.
Is this the one for your audience?
We fund it, build it, and run it. You bring the audience and take a share of the revenue. Nothing to pay and nothing to build.
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