TLabs Showcase on travel startups featuring US-based ShortTermHousing, a new vacation rental platform with zero payment and commission system.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
I’m Elia Wallen, and I’m an entrepreneur with a passion for real estate and property management.
After experiencing some success in the temporary housing industry, I aspired to offer a service that would be able to assist anyone in the world with an internet connection and a rental property.
In August of 2011, ShortTermHousing was launched. My core team includes a former Sony developer, a former GE marketer, and host of other amazing people who contribute daily to our success.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
We are self-funded. The business that I started in 2006 supports Short Term Housing.
This is a huge advantage for us. Instead of investors telling us what to do to turn a profit, we control the vision of our site.
What problem are you trying to solve?
Why are people paying to post properties online? That’s what we were wondering when we took a look at the top property listing websites, which charge a posting fee, or take a % on the backend.
- AirBnB takes a percentage of the rental rate
- HomeAway/VRBO charges a posting fee
- Craigslist offers free listings, but has no reservation system
We created Short Term Housing to offer a free place to post properties while also giving consumers an online reservation system to book instantly online.
Describe the business, core products and services?
ShortTermHousing offers a free place for property owners to post and rent their place. Potential renters can reserve a home or apartment as conveniently as they would a hotel room on Kayak or Expedia.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
We launched in August with zero properties, and zero users. Every day since launch, people have found our site and posted properties.
We are excited about the momentum and we hope the growth continues. We are focused on all property owners who want to rent their place, and all travelers who need a place to stay.
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
This site has been in my thoughts for a very long time.
Because of the nature of my other businesses (past and current) I’ve been fortunate enough to gather a lot of feedback from individual property owners from many different parts of the country. I’ve recognized the need for this for a while.
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
Build it and they will come… We started with a passion for putting people into properties, and never lost sight of our drive to build something that was simple, powerful, and painless.
We still refine the site daily trying to remove every possible rough edge.
We will never make people pay to list their property, and we don’t have plans to take a % off the transaction.
Our intent is for the site and the service to create a brand that’s valuable to strategic partners. Through these partnerships we’ll generate revenue and synergistic strength.
SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
- The site’s free site for landlords and tenants with many advanced features including, reservation management, Google maps, street views, payment controls, reviews, local feature listings, etc.
Weaknesses:
- Chicken or egg, we need properties to bring users, at the same time we need users to bring more listings.
Opportunities:
- Scalability, enormous audience, premium web features for free.
Threats:
- Just getting started in an established industry. David vs. Goliath
Who advised you your idea isn't going to be successful and why didn't you listen to them?When I started looking at the market research it was apparent this was not going to be easy.
Many of my "advisor" friends were skeptical because of the competitive landscape and other free services out there (craigslist), but I knew that if we built it correctly the market would respond.
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
We want to grow our property listings by 200% and generate more site awareness. Success for us will be achieved when we become one of the industry leaders for the vacation/short term housing industry.
NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.