A Retail Revolution Powered by Colby Curiosity
Kayla Voigt ’14
Dustin Satloff ’15
Theo Satloff ’19, Ian Patterson ’18, and Carl-Philip “CP” Majgaard ’18 went into business together in 2017, all they had was a sense of curiosity and computer science credits shared among them. But they had an idea, and a good one: Outdoorly, an online marketplace for outdoor professionals—ski patrollers, park rangers, or backcountry guides—to purchase discounted gear from brands like Mammut and Klean Kanteen.
In 2022, the team expanded from the outdoor industry to e-commerce as a whole. They launched Remark, an AI-powered e-commerce platform that helps shoppers find what they want by pairing them with one of 60,000 experts, who range from Olympians to personal stylists. Remark has been quickly successful, closing $16 million in Series A funding in 2025, bringing their total funding to $27 million.
By using machine learning to combine human expertise with digital commerce, the trio has moved beyond selling gear and closer to solving the so-called “paradox of choice” in the modern retail landscape, where too many choices result in decision paralysis.
They use AI as a digital matchmaker, bringing the custom-service experience of local retail to millions of users online.
A Shared Love of The Outdoors
They entered Outdoorly into Colby’s 2017 Business Pitch Competition, part of DavisConnects’ annual Entrepreneurship Expo. They came in first, winning $10,000 in seed money to get it off the ground. The company officially launched in September 2019.
They used that money to prospect in Munich at one of the largest outdoor trade shows in the world. It was the first time that they realized this idea could be more than that.
They went all-in on Outdoorly, going from their dorm rooms to downtown Manhattan immediately after graduation.
“I remember distinctly when we got our first real order,” said Patterson, who majored in environmental policy. “This guy named Nathan bought a two-person tent, and we thought it was a bug. I remember thinking, ‘Did someone actually buy something on our site?’ That was the first time it felt real to me.”
Satloff spent his senior year shuttling between Waterville and New York City as CEO, working on weekends and during Jan Plan. But he never doubted that this would become something real.
“We believed we could do this, and we actually did,” he said. “Because we had no idea what we were doing, we didn’t see any barriers for ourselves. The fact that we got here in spite of ourselves continues to surprise me. It’s always a balance between confidence and humility.”
Deep Colby Connections
The founders remain deeply ingrained in and committed to Colby. Satloff serves on the Halloran Lab for Entrepreneurship’s advisory board of alumni and parents who support the lab through mentorships, guidance, and networking across industries.
Majgaard, a computer science major, works with students through his position at DavisConnects as a career design advisor and technology and data analytics professions specialist.
Cofounder of Remark
“Graduating from Colby, the number one thing you leave with is the indisputable ability to teach yourself new things,” said Majgaard. “Our computer science education was designed to set us up for life, not just for the next three years of whatever technology cycle we’re in. We’ve found that with Colby students, we can set extraordinarily high expectations, let them go off and do it, and they will thrive here.”
Even when we haven’t got it all figured out, we’re always pushing to figure out what’s next.”
Said Satloff, “With AI, things are moving fast. Every week, we’re doing something that would have been revolutionary three years ago. I’m most excited to see how those changes will compound together to reinvent completely how e-commerce works. The same add-to-cart experience has been around since 1996. I want to know, what’s next? And we’re hoping to be a part of that.”
