Hi, I'm Manreet.

Founder, builder, and consultant. Happiest outside — on water or on a trail.

I've spent the last several years building TripOutside — a marketplace that helps people find and book human-powered outdoor adventures, and helps independent outfitters grow their direct business. Here's the full story.

Along the way I became the kind of founder who builds the tooling too: data pipelines, curation systems, automated video editing, SEO infrastructure. These days most of it gets built with AI — a way of working I care enough about to have opinions on.

I care about the outdoors, animal welfare, sustainability, supporting small businesses — especially services and repair businesses — and reducing waste on the planet. That thread runs through every business idea I write up and the causes I support.

If you want to work together, I consult at a daily rate. And the best place to connect is LinkedIn — I actually read it.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Currently: Founder, TripOutside
Also: Daily-rate consulting · AI-first building
Focus: Marketplaces · Automation · Small business growth
Cares about: Outdoors · Animal welfare · Sustainability · Less waste
Stack I reach for: Postgres · Python · JS/Astro · WordPress · ffmpeg

Career themes

18 years across retail operations, rentals, merchandising, services, and marketplaces. Four threads tie it all together.

Marketplaces & the outdoors

2017 – present

TripOutside · Co-founder

Designed, launched, and grew a bespoke marketplace for finding, comparing, and booking human-powered outdoor adventures from local outfitters and guides.
Onboarded 1,200+ outdoor businesses across 350+ destinations in under four years through software collaborations with industry-leading booking platforms.
Drove B2C growth with a content- and SEO-led approach — organic traffic via blog and podcast — while owning vision, strategy, financial plans, and a team of 8.
The full TripOutside story →

Services

2015 – 2017 · 2023 – 2024

The Home Depot · Merchant (Director), Install Services — then Bluestock Advisors · Consultant

Ran Home Depot's window coverings & shutters installation business across in-store, online, and shop-at-home channels — beat the sales plan by 7%+ every period.
Led development of Home Depot's first online installation-purchase programs, letting customers buy installs without walking into a store.
As a consultant, optimized funnels for home services businesses: scheduling flows that lifted lead-to-appointment rates, review and chat systems that grew local SEO visibility, and lead-management SOPs — work that lives on in FNNL.

Merchandising

2014 – 2015

The Home Depot · Associate Merchant, Countertops

Owned a $300M+ annual category: sales, margin, and inventory P&L, assortment strategy, pricing, promotion, and product development.
Managed 140+ vendor relationships — Fortune 100 suppliers to local fabricators — negotiating costs, terms, and marketing rebates.
Built an interconnected store + online experience: stronger product pages and a dedicated online chat team that let customers buy a countertop without visiting a store.

Rentals & operations

2011 – 2014

The Home Depot · Tool Rental Operations, then Store Operations

Designed and rolled out a new web-based tool rental system across 2,000 stores: $7M annual expense reduction, 27% faster checkout, and 10.5% year-over-year sales growth.
Led operations teams that delivered $45M in annual cost reduction, a 34% increase in leads, and a 13% lift in conversion for home services pipelines.
Rentals never left my head — it's why Gear Rental OS is on the ideas list.

Also along the way: co-founded SevaStray, an ecommerce brand of handmade Indian products where every sale benefited organizations helping stray dogs in India — a preview of the causes I still support.