Ohana's Human-First Approach To AI In Flexible Short-Term And Mid-Term Rentals

[00:00:04] - [Speaker 0]
Finding a place to live should be exciting. Far too often, people find it a stressful maze of overpriced short term rentals, rigid long term leases, and listings that don't feel trustworthy. Well, my guest today experienced this problem up close and personal. And instead of complaining about it, he leveraged technology to build a marketplace that is growing by five x year over year, and their transactions are 15 x larger than Airbnb. He's one of the cofounders of a company called Ohana, and the company was built to serve people caught in that awkward middle ground.

[00:00:46] - [Speaker 0]
Those who need a safe, flexible, furnished place to stay for just a few months, but they're overlooked by the market. And what makes this tech story particularly compelling is the scale that they've built. Because Ohana now facilitates some of the largest online transactions in the category, with the average host earning around $8,000, and they're processing over $37,000,000 in payments in the last twelve months. And none of this success would have been possible without AI and tools like Bubble, enabling large historically offline transactions to move online with both efficiency and that human touch. And in just fourteen months, Ohana reached profitability, expanded into multiple global cities, and created a platform that's helping reshape housing for a generation that lives, works, and moves so much differently from previous ones.

[00:01:45] - [Speaker 0]
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[00:02:24] - [Speaker 0]
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[00:02:54] - [Speaker 0]
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[00:03:18] - [Speaker 0]
Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?

[00:03:23] - [Speaker 1]
So I'm Ezra. I co founded Ohana. We are the world's middle term housing marketplace, which means more than thirty days in less than twelve months. And what's really exciting about what we're building is it came from our personal experience. So I was at McKinsey, my co founder was at Apple.

[00:03:40] - [Speaker 1]
And when we were interns relocating, there was really no good option. You know, you'd be either staying in an Airbnb or a hotel that you couldn't afford for that duration of time, a couple months, or you would be, you know, signing a longer term lease, which made no sense because they're only there for ninety days or so. And so what most people do is they'll go to Facebook or Craigslist, and they'll end up Venmoing or, you know, Zelling a couple thousand dollars to a stranger and hoping that they're gonna get their apartment that they paid for. And it creates a lot of uncertainty and stress and, you know, thousands of people every year get scammed. And so we evaluated this market, and over the past two or three years of building this business and then getting it to the point where we've helped people earn $26,000,000 through subletting, I've realized why this company hasn't existed already.

[00:04:33] - [Speaker 1]
And I I think it's because at the short term, the platforms like Airbnb or Vrbo are built to be a parallel to a hotel where you just book a place for a couple $100. And then in the long term, if you're leasing an apartment or buying a house, there's a whole category of people who are there to service you. There's real estate agents and brokers and, you know, leasing agents and all these people that help with that big transaction. But the middle ground is still a big transaction. The average transaction on the platform is about $8,000.

[00:05:05] - [Speaker 1]
But until today, it wasn't scalable to provide a degree of service, enough of a service, you know, to people to build trust between them and the guest and basically make sure that we could help them successfully find a place for that $8,000 price point. But we've been able to use AI and some other tools to provide a service for the middle ground. And I'm happy to get into more of those details, but I think it's rewarding to see my friends and other people in our peer group, you know, using the platform. And right now, we're focused on New York, and London is our second biggest market.

[00:05:39] - [Speaker 0]
Really? London is your second biggest market?

[00:05:41] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah.

[00:05:42] - [Speaker 0]
Both quite expensive places to live as well, New York and London. And I would imagine there's quite a big problem there on both sides of the Atlantic. Are are most of the problems, are they largely the same no matter where you are?

[00:05:54] - [Speaker 1]
Well, it's interesting. The reason we picked London like you said, it's very expensive, which means two things. One, that people moving to the city are open to an alternative. So when the housing prices are so high, they'll hunt for a long time to find a good deal. And sublets are historically a very good deal.

[00:06:13] - [Speaker 1]
And two, when you're leaving town, it's really expensive to pay for a place you're not in. So because New York and London are such international cities, there's tens of thousands of people that go home for extended periods of time to, you know, across the ocean. And they need to sublet their apartment while they're gone because otherwise it's unaffordable. And the specific group that we really took off with initially in New York City was Chinese international students. And so they all go home in the summer when there's peak demand for housing.

[00:06:42] - [Speaker 1]
And there's tens of thousands of interns that pour into the city, about 50,000 that pour into New York, and they all need housing for the same amount of time. And we were able to kind of build this bridge between Chinese students and Western students coming to the city, whereas historically, Chinese students were posting them on Chinese speaking platforms that Western students, you know, didn't interact with. And the reason we picked London was because London actually has 50,000 Chinese international students and New York only has 10,000. So we you know, we've already seen the same network effect kinda take place in in London.

[00:07:16] - [Speaker 0]
That's incredibly cool what you're doing here. I love that. And before you came on, I was doing a little research, and the average stay on Ohana is something like seventy six nights with booking values far exceeding traditional short term platforms. So what changes operationally and indeed culturally when you design a marketplace for two to three month stays instead of two to three night stays?

[00:07:40] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. No. That's that's exactly right. One thing that struck me this year is I was looking at Airbnb, which has provided a ton of inspiration for us. Our investors are early at Airbnb.

[00:07:51] - [Speaker 1]
The average stay on Airbnb is about three or four nights. And the average stay on Ohana, like you said, is close close to eighty nights. It depends on the time of year. Sometimes it's the average day in a month could be a hundred nights. So what that means is it's a much bigger decision.

[00:08:07] - [Speaker 1]
And the average booking size on Ohana is 15 times larger than the average booking size on Airbnb. And when you when you're making that big of a decision, I actually think I I haven't found a company where people are paying as much on average online at all. Because when you think about, like, buying a car or buying a house or renting an apartment, those transactions happen offline. The, you know, the closest one might be buying airline tickets. You know, Tesla sells their cars online, but you actually go to the dealership and you try out the car.

[00:08:38] - [Speaker 1]
So we are the largest purchase that I've come up come across that happens, you know, purely online. And the way we facilitate it is we introduce the hosting guests on a fifteen minute call, which we call, you know, match call. And people typically get a tour of the apartment. They understand who they'd be living with. They somebody from our team is on each of those calls to explain how AHANA works and how we keep both parties safe.

[00:09:05] - [Speaker 1]
And that has been a huge unlock for us. But it means that our team is doing over a 100 calls a day, you know, connecting people. And so we've specialized in this category and, like, it's not like a real estate agent because you're unbiased about where they live. You're just trying to help both parties be successful to the platform and find a place and find, you know, connecting real humans. And so what matters on the call is that we're able to build trust and connect with those with those folks.

[00:09:31] - [Speaker 1]
So that's that's one important way. And then the structure of our model is big shift in New York City due to a law called local law 18, which means that Airbnb hosts can no longer rent for less than thirty days if they don't have a short term rental license. And so that poses a risk because now they have to rent for thirty days or longer when tenants' rights kick in. And so if you have a tenant that moves in for thirty days, it's very hard to evict them. And what we've built is a model where people pay a security deposit upfront that Ohana holds for the duration of their stay, which makes sure that it can't be withheld from them, you know, for no good reason.

[00:10:05] - [Speaker 1]
And two, we collect the first month's rent before they move in. So by the time that people have moved in, they've paid two months of rent, and we don't release it until they move in and confirm everything's okay. So we're able to provide a lot more safety for these two strangers. And those two things, the intro call where we introduce them on a video call and, you know, facilitate the process and let them derisk it by having a tour of the place and understand what they're getting into, and then also not releasing the rent until they move in and holding a security deposit until seven days after they leave and the host has a chance to confirm its return in good condition. Those have structurally been how we can solve this middle term problem.

[00:10:43] - [Speaker 1]
And yeah, I feel like I'm letting you in on all the secrets. I hope you don't build a competing platform.

[00:10:48] - [Speaker 0]
Not at all, and hopefully, nobody listened well. And I think what's most impressive around everything that you've talked about is not even the technology. It's how you've positioned trust as the very foundation of the product through things like ID verification, intro calls, escrow deposits, and hands on support. But any other challenges around operationalizing trust in a in a category that has historically struggled with safety and transparency? It's incredibly forward thinking what you've done here and how you transform the model.

[00:11:19] - [Speaker 1]
I think I think trust is is really the the the keyword here. And I'll I'll share kind of two other things that drive and and provide a lot of trust. There's two categories of people that use our platform. One is called amateur supply and one is called professional supply. And we operate in these markets that are very supply constrained.

[00:11:43] - [Speaker 1]
So there's much more demand for housing in New York City and London than there is supply, which is why the prices are so high. And so we do our job well by focusing on supply. So if we have good options, you know, for people that are affordable, that are high quality, that are close to where they are gonna work, then we will deliver as a platform. So we spend a lot of time thinking about supply. And then there's those two categories of supply.

[00:12:06] - [Speaker 1]
So this this host here is, you know, she's a she's actually a professional host. She came from Airbnb, and we've had thousands of Airbnb hosts come to our platform in New York City since local I '18 when we've provided this longer term booking duration. And so what we offer her and the reason she uses Ohana is we partner with companies. So we'll partner with OpenAI, Oracle, Palantir, Plaid, Rivian, you know, a few others to help their interns in new hires when housing. So we basically provide a relocation support.

[00:12:40] - [Speaker 1]
We meet with each of them one on one. We provide them with a short list of the best options for where they live. And that high quality demand is what she's looking for. Because she can list on Airbnb, but then anybody with a credit card can book her place. And it's higher risk now.

[00:12:54] - [Speaker 1]
So when somebody's in your place for a few months, you wanna know who they are, you wanna make sure that they can cover the rent, and so that these partnerships drive a lot of trust for the professional side of the business. And then the other side of the business is this amateur side. So there's and that's why people use, you know, that's why people use Instagram and Facebook to try to find hosts. And so this is a good example. Grace's place, she's a student who's just subletting her apartment for the summer.

[00:13:26] - [Speaker 1]
And this is a what's great about this is it's very close to market rate. So if you could find a room for $2,300 in SoHo, it's actually a really good deal. On Airbnb, this could easily be $33,500 for for a private room in SoHo for a month, maybe even 4,000. And what what matters is, okay, so people can discover this this, you know, cost effective and affordable supply on our platform, but it's not recurring. So she might only need to sublet her apartment once a year or a couple times in her life.

[00:14:00] - [Speaker 1]
And how do we bring that supply onto our platform without you know, in a way where it's recurring, so without, like, having the cost of that acquisition be so high. And so one of the ways we do that is we'll create these communities of high trust. And so a really successful one is girls who sublet. And this is a community of all women that wanna sublet to each other. This is a community that we support where the bookings, you know, flow through our platform, but it's like a subset of the Ohana platform, and it's grown like crazy.

[00:14:29] - [Speaker 1]
So we just created this a few months ago. It already has 35,000 followers. And what I've learned is the best advertisements are people that tell people just naturally telling their friends, and second to that, things that don't seem like an advertisement. And so this is just a community. The name is very self explanatory, girls who sublet, and people that are interested in that can join this community.

[00:14:54] - [Speaker 1]
And those are kind of my answers. So the the way that we build trust for the amateur side is through these communities of high trust. And then the way that we build trust for the professional side is through partnerships with companies.

[00:15:07] - [Speaker 0]
And I think looking at what you've created here and listening to you today, what makes this even more impressive is ultimately, Ohana was built by two non engineers using no code tools like Bubble, and you've reached profitability in just fourteen months. So what did no code actually enable you to do in practical terms? And and where do discipline and operational rigor matter more than technical complexity, do you think?

[00:15:33] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. No. I I mean, it's a it's a it's a really good point. My cofounder is an engineer. So he's actually a mechanical engineer, but not a software engineer.

[00:15:42] - [Speaker 1]
And the reason that we chose Bubble was we knew we could build quickly. So we had a previous business together that was a physical product. It was like a phone wallet that solves the problem of lost dorm keys. And this all came about because when I was a, you know, freshman in college, was locked out of my dorm room door, and I was standing there in, like, a towel with Crocs on, and I had to walk to the commons desk to, like, borrow the universal key. And it was just a very embarrassing experience.

[00:16:11] - [Speaker 1]
And I was like, I had my phone with me. So if I if I had a phone wallet that held my key, then I wouldn't have lost it. And so that was our first product. It's like we built this this business with the key phone wallet, like a very simple product. My cofounder designed it.

[00:16:25] - [Speaker 1]
We had it made with the same manufacturer that still makes it today. And the challenge for that business was, like, how to get distribution. So how do we sell that through, you know, hundreds of college bookstores and get the official licensing on it? And long story short, basically through sheer persistence, we got it in the bookstores. We, you know, put like the knockoff logo so that the local store would pick it up, and then we had a local store tell us like, tell their distributor that has all the licensing rights, hey, this is a product that you should really carry, and then that helped us.

[00:16:54] - [Speaker 1]
And we were able to get into 800 bookstores, and then we started selling thousands of these and then a variety of other products. And the the problem was how do you manage all these orders? So we used Bubble to build a system, you know, like a no code, but order trackers, software system to facilitate that business. And so that experience gave us the confidence, you know, that Bubble would work well and gave us the experience of using it. And I I think you're exactly right.

[00:17:24] - [Speaker 1]
Like, the the business that we're in today is not a software product. It's a network business. So when you come to the site, it matters a little bit less sort of how how quickly the page loads than it matters finding the supply that matters to you. And it doesn't really matter, you know, if if if our website has all the bells and whistles, it matters much more if you finding what you're looking for. And the only way that you find what you're looking for is if we have the humans on the platform with the places that are available that that match what you need.

[00:17:53] - [Speaker 1]
So we spend a lot more time and even, like, the engineering resources focused on building systems around distribution. And I think what is great about Bubble is it allows us to, like, ship quickly, test things really quickly, understand everything that's been built, and, like, anybody can kinda go in and read it and understand it. And it's still flexible enough where, like, certain features like the map, you know, we'll build with code and we can plug that in, like, where we wanna have more control and more, you know, custom custom script. So I know it's a long winded answer, but we've we've been really happy with Bobo, and we've built two businesses off of it, and it's it's been incredible.

[00:18:31] - [Speaker 0]
So a special thank you to Denodo for supporting the Tech Talks Network and helping us keep these conversations going because moving beyond AI pilots all starts with connecting your models to trusted enterprise data. So if you're ready to move beyond AI pilots, Denodo can help you connect your AI models to trusted enterprise data in real time. So you can scale faster and reduce risk. So if you're interested in turning AI into business value, simply visit denodo.com. And as you mentioned earlier, your employer partnerships with companies like OpenAI and Palantir have all created predictable demand and lower churn.

[00:19:15] - [Speaker 0]
But how do you structure those relationships so that employers, hosts, and residents all feel aligned rather than merely transactional?

[00:19:24] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. I mean, they're experiencing a problem, and I I think that has actually been a part of the business that I've been surprised with how much reception we've had to solving that problem. Because these companies bring people to the city, they need them to show up, they need them to be ready to work, you know, on the day that they start, and the and they need them to stay. This is like their recruiting pipeline. Housing often gets in the way of that.

[00:19:52] - [Speaker 1]
So if they can't find, you know, affordable places, sometimes they just won't take they won't actually show up to the internship and they'll give up, Or they end up, you know, overpaying for a hotel and it affects, you know, their ability to afford to be at the internship, or they end up, you know, in a situation that's a scam and it kind of becomes the company's problem and the company has to put them up in a hotel. So this was a problem that they had been experiencing for a long time. And the alternative is so expensive. What you pay for corporate housing can be up to $10,000 a person a month. So when we came to them and we were offering them a $100 per person product where we'll meet with each intern, we'll make sure that they have affordable options, and we spend months, you know, before we kick off the program with them, adding the best options for them, doing research.

[00:20:34] - [Speaker 1]
We survey thousands of previous interns from those companies to understand where they lived and, you know, what they loved about the place. And honestly, there's there's even more demand that we can't keep up with. Like, there's interest from, you know, plenty of other companies that I'm kind of just trying to grow our team to be able to keep up with. So that has actually not been the hardest part of the business is is winning the the com the companies over. It is delivering and making sure that we have the right supply for them because of the company's experience the same problem that my cofounder and I experienced when we decided to build the the product.

[00:21:07] - [Speaker 0]
And before you came on the podcast, I was reading about the Palantir meritocracy fellows, example, and it showed studios placed at around 30% below typical midtown rates. So I've got to ask, I mean, how are you able to deliver that kind of value while still generating meaningful earnings for the hosts and maintaining marketplace economics as well? It sounds like quite a balancing act, but how do you get that right?

[00:21:32] - [Speaker 1]
So it's a great question. And the meritocracy, a couple of examples, actually really really important because these were high school students. So not even they had just graduated high school and Palantir had this ambitious program where they were gonna put them in the workforce and see how it went, you know, and I give them a full time role and see if they didn't even need to go to college. And so they they wanted a higher degree of service to these interns to make sure that they, you know, ended up in good housing and lived together. So they asked us, hey, can you find them all housing together in Midtown in studios for awkward dates?

[00:22:04] - [Speaker 1]
Their dates were, you know, like August 15 through November, which no landlord will do in New York because December is a really hard month to rent out your place. And so demand is very seasonal in New York. And so what we what we were able to find was a partner that we had worked with a little bit in the past, but basically through a bulk deal, we were able to like lower the rate and get them all into the same house together, you know, for the dates that they need. And it just takes I think anything in life, to be honest, just takes how much you care about it. I I think, in general the my co founder and I say this to each other all the time, but the line between success and failure is very thin.

[00:22:50] - [Speaker 1]
Mhmm. And there's a million excuses for why things won't work out, but there's always one reason why it does and it's because you just don't give up. See, we just kept trying. You know, we had some options that didn't work out. We kept trying, kept trying, kept trying.

[00:23:01] - [Speaker 1]
And I I try to instill that into our team because it's really a decision. What it comes down to is like, you know, are you gonna be able to figure this problem out in front of you? It's a yes or no decision. And if you decide yes, you will find a way to figure it out. And even when you don't succeed, you will learn so many things that still make it worth doing and therefore a success.

[00:23:20] - [Speaker 1]
So I think the truth is, yes, it's hard to find these options. Yes, it's hard to wrangle, you know, both parties and bring them together and and do the balancing act, but it's not impossible. And at the end of the day, like, people find housing with or without us. So we have a we have a choice. Are we gonna be the place where they find the best option first or are we not?

[00:23:39] - [Speaker 1]
And I think we've consistently found ourselves on the right side of that that line.

[00:23:43] - [Speaker 0]
And just to bring to life here that just how successful you've been, you've got nine x year over year revenue growth, over $16,000,000 in host earnings, and expansion into nine global cities. So what have you learned most about scaling a two sided marketplace without losing quality control, community standards, and everything that you you set out to avoid in And the

[00:24:08] - [Speaker 1]
with that, we have four full time employees here in New York. Wow. It's a very small team. Yeah. And we definitely have support.

[00:24:14] - [Speaker 1]
You know, we have like, you know, a variety of contractors and folks all over the world, but it's a very small team here in New York. I think, like I sort of said at the beginning, where if you're building a consumer business, people have to be telling their friends about the product. And if you're not if they're not telling their friends about the product, you're not solving a big enough problem. And I think we've focused well on are we solving a real problem? Are people telling their friends about the product?

[00:24:44] - [Speaker 1]
And so there's kind of the two sides of our business, but one of them is is the amateur use case where people just like are leaving town and they need to sublet their place, and then there's tens of thousands of people that move to a city, whether it's for short term or even long term, it makes a lot of sense to sign to stay in a sublet before you commit to a twelve month lease. So there's a lot of demand for the product that we bring to market. And the question is just how can we get people to tell their friends about this product? How can we over deliver for them? And I think that's really what we've done is like people come to our site and they they realize that there is real humans and then an infrastructure of AI around those humans that can actually make them earn $6,000.

[00:25:23] - [Speaker 1]
And when you put $6,000 in someone's pocket on average, the average transaction is about 8,000 because there's a $2,000 security deposit, but the average that people earn is about 6,000. When you put that in someone's pocket, they're gonna talk to their friends about it. Mhmm. Especially when we're you know, the demographic that we're working with is making like 80 to $120,000 a year, you know. So for them, it's a very significant amount of their annual earnings.

[00:25:46] - [Speaker 1]
And we just over deliver, and then they tell their friends, and then, you know, our job becomes gradually easier.

[00:25:54] - [Speaker 0]
And not only that, you've also attracted backing and advisory support from early Airbnb figures, Wave Capital, Lightbank, Spencer Raskoff, and others with so much deep marketplace experience. And I'm curious from those conversations you've been looking to have, what kind of strategic guidance, has most shaped how you think about building a defensible middle term housing platform for for the long term? Because it must be great having so many people like this that you can you can lean on and get advice from on where to take it from here.

[00:26:26] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. I think I think that is one of the most rewarding parts of building this is the, you know, the amount that we're able to learn by doing it, but also what we're able to learn from the people that have done, you know, some incredible things in the past. In terms of defensibility, I think what's true in in general, particularly in business, is execution is so hard. Like, there's there's so many ideas, and a lot of people have really good ideas. Almost everybody doesn't even start.

[00:26:58] - [Speaker 1]
They don't even get started. They don't even try. And then of the people that try, there's really few that are able to to execute well. And, you know, in our in our business, there's been tens of thousands of subleasing startups. Like, everybody and their brother that goes to college realizes this problem.

[00:27:13] - [Speaker 1]
They're like, oh, I'm paying for a place I don't need in the summer, and interns need housing in the summer. Let's bring those two parties together. So there's been so many people that have tried to solve this problem. And we've broken through, and I think it's just the ability to execute and the ability to to, you know, not basically not give up and to have good instincts around what problem are we solving, are people telling their friends about it. And, you know, even for our own investors, I think that that that is what resonated with them.

[00:27:42] - [Speaker 1]
So our first investor is Ali Partovi. He's an incredible guy, and he's invested in some, you know, Airbnb in the early days, Uber, like, you name it. And he he built and sold his own companies, you know, in in his life. And when we spoke to him, we had nothing. Like, it was very naive.

[00:27:59] - [Speaker 1]
We really had nothing. But he saw the keeper experience of us building this other product that we got distribution for and brought to, you know, over 800 campuses. And he's like, these guys can execute. And I think his that that early insight was exactly right. And then through through him, we were able to get connected to the to the other folks that have invested.

[00:28:19] - [Speaker 1]
And I think they noticed the same thing that, like, you know, the results kind of speak for themselves. So I'm not that worried about competitors, to be honest, because I know how hard this business is to solve. Yeah. And I know, you know, there's so many things that need to go right and and that require a lot of execution. Where my focus is now is how can I learn from these people that have built large companies to to get systems around what works so that it's not, you know, all of me and my co founder's input that, like, systems can run the business and that, you know, our early employees can run those systems?

[00:28:54] - [Speaker 1]
So I think we're kind of moving into that phase where the the business needs to be more durable than the the two of our ability to execute. And we've done well at that. My my cofounder Jacob is really, really good systems design and organized. I mean, he's the most organized person I know, extremely detail oriented, and just very high integrity. And, you know, I I certainly would not be able to do either of these businesses without him.

[00:29:18] - [Speaker 1]
And I think that that's also really needed. You know, you need to have a really, really strong partner.

[00:29:24] - [Speaker 0]
Well, we've covered so much about the story of Ohana today, but we will have people listening thinking, how do I find someone to sublet my place? And there'll also be people thinking, how do I find a place to sublet? So for anybody listening, they wanna get up to speed with all things Ohana, have and maybe get a little hands on with it and get used to using it or how it might be valuable to them. Where should everybody go to to find out more information and contact you or your team?

[00:29:51] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. So the website is liveohana.ai,liveohana.ai. And where we've seen a lot of growth recently is Airbnb hosts. So people, you know, from Airbnb that have a place that they've been renting that want longer term tenants at that are that basically we can guarantee the rent, that we know that they're getting paid by their company. We've collected two months right before they move in, so at a lower risk.

[00:30:18] - [Speaker 1]
And where we've been able to deliver for folks is people that have an Airbnb, and then they they get their unit booked on Ohana three times a year. The first time is between June and August for those three months, then the second one is September 1 through December 31, which is another cycle when, you know, employers bring people to a new city. And then the third one is January 1 through May 31. And so we've built this model where our employer partners bring us people. We're able to, you know, incentivize them to book for a longer duration and to help Airbnb hosts have instead of 20 tenants a year and 50% vacancy, have three tenants a year and a 100% occupancy.

[00:30:53] - [Speaker 1]
And yes, the nightly rate is lower, but the amount of cleaning and the amount of overhead and the work is a lot lower too. So it ends up being higher yield and less stress. So that's where we've where we've succeeded and where we're focused in the coming year and they can find us at liveohana.ai.

[00:31:11] - [Speaker 0]
Awesome. Well, I'm curious, when you very first set out there, you know, your goal was to become the central housing marketplace for I think it was America's 20,000,000 college students. From there, you've got employer partnerships. I would imagine with the rise of digital nomads and people increasingly working anywhere in the world and wanting those longer stays. Has your mission changed at all, or how do you see it evolving as you as you grow and this this monster that you created gets bigger?

[00:31:39] - [Speaker 1]
I know. It's a it's a it's a really good question. And we're kind of thinking about that now, you know, as we set out to do more ambitious things and grow in London and then grow through Europe too. The the honest answer is the initial problem still resonates in each city. So if you're moving to Boston, if you're moving to Seattle or any city, you still found yourself caught between two bad choices.

[00:32:04] - [Speaker 1]
You could either sign a twelve month lease and stay somewhere for long term and make a big decision, or you stay in a hotel or an Airbnb for a shorter period of time and it doesn't necessarily let you land on your feet. And what we're trying to build is a is a platform where anybody moving to a new city can land on their feet for a few months in a furnished sublet. We make sure that they got the product that they paid for. We make sure that, you know, it's affordable and that it meets their needs. And then that buys them time to then find a longer term option.

[00:32:34] - [Speaker 1]
And so I see us moving in that direction, and I think the employer partnerships really allow for that. And then from there, what I kind of realized is the reason this marketplace has never taken off is because it requires a higher degree of service. So to to deliver for both of these parties, you need to be able to provide a service. And nobody was willing to do that. You know, Zillow isn't willing to do that.

[00:32:55] - [Speaker 1]
They're focused on these big transactions with real estate agents that provide the service. And Airbnb doesn't wanna have employees that join calls between the host and the guest. You know, they can do the hotel bookings. And we're willing to provide a service to people that need it in this longer duration. And we've realized you can unlock these large transactions by being able to provide that service.

[00:33:16] - [Speaker 1]
And so we're now using a lot of technology to keep that service human forward so that when you interact on Ohana, you're interacting with a human. But outside of that interaction, there's a lot of AI that can support, you know, the communications and the concierge that we're able to provide to people. And I know that that's scalable. And I think what we can do is start to provide that service for middle term housing for the longer term. And I think we can even compete with Zillow and and these other platforms that do, you know, buying homes, renting apartments, some of these longer term decisions that people make currently in person, I think we can do a lot of that through our platform and provide a higher degree of convenience.

[00:33:55] - [Speaker 1]
So you could do virtual tours, you could, you know, connect directly with landlords. And and I I see that also coming up. But for now, we're very focused on the middle term use case because it's completely underserved.

[00:34:10] - [Speaker 0]
Congratulations on everything you've achieved here. I always say at the end of every episode, technology when it it works best when it brings people together. That's exactly what you're doing here. And I think we are in a time where AI is looking for a problem to solve, and there's so many bad examples of tech being used in the wrong way. But what I love about what here you've done here is you've gone for problem first.

[00:34:32] - [Speaker 0]
Solve a very clear failure in the housing market. People who need a furnishing house or somewhere to live for one to six months, they're typically poorly served by, two bad options there, Airbnb and traditional leases. And I think what you're doing here for interns, new grads, rotational hires, all stuck between that overpriced short term option and an inflexible twelve month contract? I'm just amazed nothing's been done about it before and how you've succeeded in making a huge success of this. So anybody listening, would urge them to pop over and check you guys out.

[00:35:05] - [Speaker 0]
I'll include links to everything that you mentioned, but thanks for joining me today. Really appreciate you taking the time to share your story.

[00:35:12] - [Speaker 1]
Thank you so much, Neil. And if I could just kind of piggyback on what you just said, I I completely agree with that. I think a lot of people are being fed AI slop and chatbots, and it's pulling them away from human interaction. And we're trying to take the exact opposite approach where we use AI to have more human interactions, where when you go to a platform, you talk to real people, you discover places that you can connect with real people. And I really appreciate that you realize that because that is very much in our ethos.

[00:35:39] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. Thank you.

[00:35:40] - [Speaker 0]
One of the things that stayed with me after the conversation that we enjoyed today is just how often the best tech stories begin with something very simple. Frustration, friction, and two founders willing to ask, why has nobody fixed this yet? And my guest and the team at Ohana did more than just build a marketplace. They looked at a broken experience that was impacting students, interns, and young professionals, and created something that feels more human, more trusted, and far more practical. How cool is that?

[00:36:18] - [Speaker 0]
And from no code beginnings to global expansion, this for me is a wonderful reminder that innovation doesn't start with complex technology. It starts with understanding people better than anyone else, and I and I think that is something that we're in danger of losing sometimes. So if this episode sparked a few ideas for you, whether about marketplaces, no code entrepreneurship, trust in digital platforms, or using technology to close real world gaps, then I hope that we've served you well today. And maybe the bigger question for all of us is what are those everyday problems that are around us that are still being treated as, well, this is just how it is. It's just normal.

[00:37:05] - [Speaker 0]
Simply because nobody has rebuilt it properly. I think there's a lot of opportunities here, not just about what my guest is going after, but I think everywhere in life. So maybe take a look around, see what problems you can fix. And hopefully, just hopefully, this episode has set off a few light bulb moments. Maybe it will inspire you to go out there and create a solution, and I will find you sitting next to me on this podcast one day.

[00:37:32] - [Speaker 0]
If that feels a possibility, consider this your call to action, my friends. But that is it for today. Please pop over to Tech Talks Network. There will be a blog post and all the links associated with this episode. Also, lots of ways that you can reach out and contact me too.

[00:37:49] - [Speaker 0]
But that is it for today. So thank you for listening as always, and please come back tomorrow. We'll do it all again. Speak to you then. Bye for now.