Eric Dinger

About Eric Dinger

Eric Dinger is the founder of Landoption. His friends call him Dinger. Landoption is the culmination of lessons Dinger learned throughout his journey in business. The impact of his work has grown from cleaning pheasants for hunters as a kid in rural South Dakota, to later in life negotiating carbon investments with global companies. But his approach to business hasn’t changed much over the years: work hard, learn quickly, and take good care of people. Dinger started his first company while he attended college at the University of Nebraska, where he founded a marketing and sales strategy firm, called Thought District. After ten years of helping companies acquire customers and grow, Dinger sold the company to what is now called Agent. His true calling lives in conservation. After moving away from his childhood home, he experienced firsthand the access challenges facing people who love the outdoors. Dinger believes that if we want people to care about wild animals and wild places, we must find ways for them to have outdoor experiences. That calling led to the founding of Powderhook, a mission-driven tech company dedicated to solving the problem of declining participation in the outdoors.Powderhook quickly became a leader in the outdoor industry, working with major brands to develop and execute combined mobile and marketing strategies. Dinger’s success at Powderhook caught the attention of Sovereign Sportsman Solutions (S3), now Payit Outdoors, who acquired the company in 2019. Dinger remained with the company for two years, leading the combined company’s mobile, marketing, and customer engagement teams. In 2021, Dinger joined the Arbor Day Foundation to help create its first new venture, called Arbor Day Carbon. There, Dinger built a team that utilizes the carbon markets to advance the organization’s mission of inspiring people to plant, nurture, and celebrate trees.One of the ways Powderhook tried to help people get outdoors more often was by recruiting landowners who would allow people to hunt, fish, or camp on their property. While leading Arbor Day Carbon, Dinger’s team worked to build a forestry carbon project with private landowners in the Southeastern United States. Through these experiences, Dinger came to understand the challenges that come with building trust with landowners.And that’s the winding road that led to Landoption, a company formed to leverage Dinger’s proven track record of growing businesses and conservation programs.

Experience

1. Founder and CEO

   Landoption

   Jun 2024 — Present · NE, US

   Landoption aims to foster sustainable land management practices and contribute to the success of conservation, alternative energy, and regenerative agriculture programs, and the landowners with whom they work.

Education

• Harvard Business School Online

  Leading with Finance

• Concordia College

  Pre-Med (Chemistry and I didn't have... chemistry.)

  1999 — 2000

• University of Nebraska-Lincoln

  Bachelor of Science, Business Administration - Marketing

  1999 — 2003

Skills

• Marketing
• Entrepreneurship
• Business Strategy
• Strategy
• Social Media Marketing
• Consulting
• Brand Development
• Fishing
• New Business Development
• Advertising
• Hunting
• Hunting Land
• Start-Ups
• Public Speaking