Dan Pierson

About

An accomplished entrepreneur and marketing strategist, I hold a BA in History from Tulane University. I founded Pierson Expeditions in 2021, offering immersive travel experiences worldwide. Previously, I served as Head of Marketing at Outpost Trade, where I elevated brands tackling significant global issues. As Chief Marketing Officer at Unsettled, I spearheaded the Team Journeys B2B product, achieving $600k+ in revenue and collaborating with major corporations like Amazon and Nestle. Before Unsettled, I founded Bolt Travel, a pioneering membership travel community, which was later acquired. My consultancy work with Airbnb involved launching their Experiences product in NYC. My career is marked by a passion for creating unique travel experiences and innovative marketing solutions.

Experience

• Founder · Pierson Expeditions06-01-2021

  Our week to ten-day long trips are designed for deeper, slower, more immersive travel. From sailing Greece, to overlanding the Baja Peninsula, to a rooftop tent camping safari experience in Botswana, we go beyond the tourist track to reach uncommon, less tracked destinations around the world.

• Head of Marketing · Outpost Trade10-01-2021 – 04-01-2023

  Outpost seeks to elevate the leading people, brands, organizations, and corporations tackling our times' biggest, most important problems. We publish Outpost Magazine to keep you informed, and create in-person events to keep you connected. Our community is a network of experts, advocates, athletes, entertainers, and more than a few wild cards. These people come together to connect, discover, and collaborate, and we've seen their baby ideas born at Outpost turn into frontier projects. Our sister experiential marketing agency brings this network to our clients, so we can share the good work they're doing in the world. From upstarts to the F500, we help these companies activate epic IRL experiences, develop engaging content, and build both internal and external culture. Some examples - Outpost helped Harley Davidson launch their first electric motorcycle, teamed up with Nissan to kick off Formula E in Brooklyn, and lent a hand to Niman Ranch's sustainable agriculture initiatives.

• Chief Marketing Officer · Unsettled05-01-2020 – 06-01-2021

  In June 2020, Bolt Travel was acquired by Unsettled, where I became CMO and a minority partner in the business. Over the last five years, Unsettled ran 100+ 30 day coworking retreats and other adventures around the world, exploring a fundamental question: how can each of us intentionally design to create our very own individual Future of Work? When I joined as CMO, I was mandated with figuring out how to bring our expertise to create a business to business product. After taking in feedback from HR professionals representing startups to Fortune 50 global orgs, our team developed a new product called Team Journeys to help these companies and their employees successfully transition from the office to remote work. Key outcomes: I led GTM (sales and marketing) for this new Team Journeys B2B Learning and Development offering, selling into startups, mid-market companies, and Fortune 500 organizations including Johnson & Johnson, Amazon, Nestle, and Accenture. $600k+ in booked revenue in less than 6 months. Other accomplishments: Led the creation of a Board of Advisors, including the former Chief Human Resources Officer of Disney. Simultaneously led marketing for our travel products upon relaunch in Q1 2021. Conducted customer discovery and met with dozens of HR leaders to investigate how companies large and small will adapt to the Future of Work.

• Founder · Bolt Travel08-01-2017 – 06-01-2020

  Bolt was the first online to offline membership travel community. Experiences included sailing yachts through Greece, the Caribbean, and the fjords of Norway, rooftop tent camping safaris in Africa, overlanding down Baja, and more. We focused on bringing our members together before and after each trip, to extend the experience beyond travel and into community. Bolt was featured in The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Canada's Globe and Mail. In February 2020, Bolt had a signed term sheet for a $500k seed round valuing the company at $3mm. In March 2020, the investors pulled out, citing the impending Coronavirus Pandemic. I later sold Bolt to Unsettled and became CMO and a minority business partner.

• Consultant · Airbnb07-01-2017 – 03-01-2018

  I was hired as a consultant to help Airbnb go to market with their new Experiences product, focused specifically on standing up Airbnb Experiences in NYC. Working directly with the head of North American Experiences, we developed and executed a strategy for a successful launch which was followed by other markets around the world.

Education

• Tulane UniversityBA, History
• Horace Greeley High SchoolHigh School

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