[00:00:00] John: Morning, Mateo. How are you, man?

[00:00:04] Mateo: I’m fantastic brother. How are you?

[00:00:06] John: I am great. Episode 111 of the No BS Podcast. We are back with the tech exec series. Excited for that. Things are just turning along. It’s this new every-other-week thing. I was worried about it at first, but, I feel that the focus is a little more where it should be.

[00:00:28] John: And I, I’m pretty excited about the product we’re putting out.

[00:00:31] Mateo: I agree. I love our focus for me. This is something that we love doing and I believe we are still able to engage in, in an authentic way. Now, I love our directed approach, but the reality is we’re not doing anything different.

[00:00:46] John: 100%.

[00:00:46] Mateo: Look at it and agree with things. We’re doing the same things that we’ve always done.

[00:00:50] Mateo: We’re focusing on people, culture, and the aspects. Not just, it’s not just the technology, it’s the people behind the technology. It’s not just the company and the leaders, it’s what made them those leaders. It’s what brought them into this space. And, with no BS, that’s what you get, we’re not about the tips and tricks, but Hey, we’re about the how and the why and the who and yeah.

[00:01:11] John: And to be fair, we do have some exciting things coming out that we’re going to be sprinkling in here in the next few weeks, next few months, that I’m excited for our guests to get engaged with and be involved with. With

[00:01:26] Mateo: Does it involve your facial hair?

[00:01:28] John: No, it doesn’t. 

[00:01:28] Mateo: Seriously, let’s get in. I, our guest today I’ve actually known for a while is an amazing guy. I love our conversations since I met him way back in the rented days. It

[00:01:41] John: back in the day,

[00:01:42] Mateo: yeah, he’s a, he’s definitely a vet been around the business. Ingrained in the business for a while. Yeah, let’s get into it.

[00:01:49] Mateo: Amir, welcome. Welcome to our show. Amir from Rabbu which I can’t wait to dig into cause it’s a journey from Rabbu, my friend. Thank you for joining us. First of all.

[00:01:59] Emir: Absolutely, Mateo. Thanks for having me, guys. Really excited to be here. I do want to say one thing to get started. Hopefully, this doesn’t turn into a facial hair conversation. We don’t go too deep on facial hair just because I can’t grow it. It’s just bad. It’s patchy. It just, it doesn’t work for me.

[00:02:14] Emir: So I got to stay clean-shaven. So let’s not go, that deep on the facial hair side, even

[00:02:19] Emir: But it’s just not me. I can’t do it.

[00:02:21] Mateo: I get it. John couldn’t either. Half of it was like, painted on. Don’t worry too much. No, seriously welcome to the show, my friend. Our history does go back to the days rented when we worked together when you were managing properties and when Rabbu was a management company.

[00:02:38] Mateo: And so we definitely want to dig into that and dig into your story and, let’s yeah, let’s start there, my friend. So I know

[00:02:47] John: Wait, let’s start earlier,

[00:02:49] Mateo: earlier.

[00:02:49] John: earlier than that, because I’ve been digging in some really interesting things. So we were talking before you jumped on and he was part of, a little sports startup that got acquired.

[00:03:01] John: Let’s talk about like, how do you get into property management, and then we can get, because, I’m looking at You’re doing some green consulting, you’re doing some LEED stuff, which I have some familiarity with because prior to hospitality and vacation rentals I did kiln dried hardwood lumber sales.

[00:03:17] John: We did a lot with LEED stuff. You have a very eclectic interesting, work history leading up to property management. Let’s go back a little bit further than property management.

[00:03:29] Emir: Yeah, absolutely. Happy to. Yeah, I think we all have our own unique journeys. Even within the short-term rental world, I think we’ve all had some unique journeys, even to get to where we are now. My journey I guess to take a step back before getting into the short-term rental world, I… Went to school and got a civil engineering degree.

[00:03:45] Emir: So the idea, when I was 18 years old before I knew much about the world was, Hey, let me become an engineer. It seems like a great career to have, something to be proud of. So went and got an engineering degree, civil engineering degree, and joined a couple of engineering firms after college.

[00:04:02] Emir: Including one that was sustainably designed and was all about like green buildings. And that’s where the lead aspect came in and transparently. I just didn’t like it. I I wasn’t happy with it. I’m actually an immigrant. I just had an itch to do something more than to be an engineer.

[00:04:16] Emir: Not that there’s anything wrong with being an engineer. My best friend’s an engineer. He does it. But to me, it just wasn’t the right thing for me. It just didn’t fulfill the nature. Just transparently, I got depressed at one point and then developed anxiety just because I wasn’t happy with the career path that I chose at that point.

[00:04:34] Emir: I think we’ve all been there, certain aspects, right? It’s hard.

[00:04:37] Mateo: a hundred percent. Yeah.

[00:04:38] Emir: It’s crazy to think about it that, like, when you’re 16, 17, junior, senior in high school, you’re deciding almost on your career path for the rest of your life, right? Because that’s when you’re picking your college, most people pick their majors.

[00:04:55] Emir: Like how can you trust your 17, 18 year-old self to make that kind of life decision for the rest, 70, 80 years of your life? So we all do it obviously. And I did, so I got the engineering degree and did that for a handful of years and just couldn’t do it. Just wasn’t happy. It was miserable.

[00:05:10] Emir: Right around that time, I heard about a tech startup. So I’m based in Charlotte, North Carolina. There are not a lot of tech startups here in Charlotte. I heard about a tech startup whose, initial idea for it was that it was a social media platform to talk about soccer and soccer only.

[00:05:27] Emir: I’m an immigrant, I’m originally from Bosnia or Europe and lived in Germany for six years. I’m a big soccer fan. So when I heard about this tech startup in Charlotte that was focused on soccer, I was like, oh, man, this is it. I need to figure out a way to join this company.

[00:05:40] Emir: I cold-emailed the CEO and basically offered to work for free just to get my foot into the door. Was eventually brought on there as an analyst, and business analyst and ended up working my way up. At one point I ran the development team ran support and was the VP of operations.

[00:05:57] Emir: When that company was acquired by a company called Sport Engine. However, we knew that SportEngine was being acquired by NBCUniversal a month later. We joined that startup. So we went from Kik, which was about, that was a soccer startup, Kik. That was about seven people when it was acquired to a company that was 300 people.

[00:06:18] Emir: To a month later, jumping to a company that was basically, I think, Universal NBC at that point was 30, 000 people. Joined in, that was the journey there. That’s how I

[00:06:28] John: not everyone gets to experience that. That’s really unique, we’ve had the opportunity to have some conversations with, founders and whatnot that were acquired and they’ve got to experience that journey. And there’s so many learnings in that and positive and negative, right?

[00:06:43] John: You’re going to, you’re going to get some really interesting insights being acquired. And shoving yourself into the midst of of something that’s already moving and going at a very fast rate of speed for the good and the bad of it. But that’s, it’s not everyone gets to experience it.

[00:06:58] John: And I, if you do get to experience it, take it for what it is and get some insights out of it because it’s crazy.

[00:07:05] Emir: It is crazy. And honestly, there are different worlds. Obviously, the headcount is completely different, but just the way they operate. Obviously, a lot of it is much more structured and much more professional. There are HR teams, there are, teams, there’s all that stuff. But it’s also, everything just moves at a different speed.

[00:07:21] Emir: And I wouldn’t say that it’s faster, it’s just different. Maybe it’s I guess you make a point that it’s even slower, coming from a scrappy startup, you as an individual are doing. 50 different jobs, right? One minute you’re doing HR, the next minute you’re doing customer success, the next minute you’re doing sales, and the next minute you’re doing product development.

[00:07:38] Emir: There was like, it was very much, you’re only doing one role. And I just remember this clearly, I would be in meetings at Universal NBC Sports and, It would be a 3-hour meeting to talk about product because I was brought into a product role there. And the first hour would be spent debating on what to order for lunch.

[00:07:55] Emir: And this was like a collective of probably… Easily, seven figures in salary sitting in a room debating for an hour what they’re going to get for lunch. It’s just a different

[00:08:05] John: it’s the perception of speed, right? It’s so many things are going on around you that it actually slows way down and it’s more of a distraction. I get what you’re saying.

[00:08:16] Emir: Yeah. No, it’s just interesting. It also allows you to learn what the right environment for you as an individual is as a professionalist, right? Like, to me, going to a company that big, it didn’t feel too different than when I was an engineer. It just felt like I was just. One lane, just doing one thing.

[00:08:35] Emir: It’s just not something that I enjoy doing, it’s definitely not something that I’m best at. Just doing one thing and doing that one thing consistently. It’s, It just doesn’t make me happy. Yeah, it was definitely an interesting experience to, to go into.

[00:08:49] Emir: Into that world, which is also why I actually got into the short-term rental world. I joined NBC Universal and my idea was, okay, let me understand what this transition is like, going from, a seven, eight person company into a. Many X multiple bigger company. But then I transparently use that opportunity while being an NBC and being, having a stable job to figure out what I wanted to do next.

[00:09:13] Emir: And, I started playing around with some ideas. One of the ideas was and this was early, potentially getting into a drone media business. So I started a drone media company. And then the other one, which is how we got involved in the short-term rental space, is my wife and I, right around that time period, purchased a house in Charlotte that had a detached garage and a room and a bathroom above that garage.

[00:09:32] Emir: And, ideal case, it would have been like a man cave or something, but I had little ones too. At that point, I had two little boys and, just didn’t make sense to have. Being a separate building for my wife and kids in my man cave just wasn’t going to be healthy for my relationship with my wife and my kids.

[00:09:48] John: Further along and the older your kids get, you want that.

[00:09:51] Emir: 100%, 100%, but, at that point, I think they were like 2 years and 2 months old. And there’s just, that would not have been, it would have been good for me to get away from it in the sense of like quiet, but not

[00:10:01] John: Yeah, not good for the relationship, yeah.

[00:10:03] Emir: Yeah, a hundred percent. So we decided to turn that, room above our garage into an Airbnb, hoping to make a few hundred bucks a month, maybe to cover child childcare expenses or like trip money or something like that.

[00:10:16] Emir: And then next thing we know it’s paying a mortgage on our house in a pretty nice part of Charlotte. Oh man, like this 200 square foot room above our garage is making us basically 2, 000 a month on Airbnb. Okay. There’s, this is,

[00:10:33] John: some lightbulb moments.

[00:10:34] Emir: Yeah that’s when I shoved the drone idea to the side and said, okay there’s more to this.

[00:10:39] Emir: Plus it’s real estate,, the world’s largest asset class, the best-performing asset class, there’s something here. But that’s how, that was the initial starting point, to get into the short-term rental space.

[00:10:50] John: Interesting, I love it.

[00:10:52] Mateo: So that’s, but you grew, right? So how did it go from your garage to the company that I’m at? And when we connected and as a management company, as a growth-minded company and the engineer thing makes sense, like you’ve always had the engineering mindset and I just even thinking about like how we’ve talked about problems and how you looked at situations and even looked at the industry back then Was always from that perspective.

[00:11:20] Mateo: Talk to us about that. Like how did this next phase of your journey this phase for Raboo like the creation of Raboo,

[00:11:26] Mateo: like talk to that and how,

[00:11:29] Emir: We saw this. Amazing performance of this room of our garage, right? Okay, how can we get more Airbnbs, right? And at this point, it was just my wife and I. So we went out and, again, we’re based in Charlotte. We started looking at opportunities in Charlotte to, get additional Airbnbs and we approached it in a couple of ways.

[00:11:46] Emir: One, we were looking at properties to buy, but two, we were looking at, and this was like very early on in the days of mass releasing or arbitrage. We were looking at, hey, could we arbitrage some units? In, in town. Basically, I created a process where every morning I would scar Zillow and I would reach out to properties that he could buy or,, or properties that had just gone for rent.

[00:12:06] Emir: And I would send them a message to see if they would be open to an arbitrage play. So did that for a handful of months and grew the portfolio to six properties throughout Charlotte. I think most of them were at that point were the arbitrage style. So we were arbitraging them, my wife and I would set up the furnishings, we would get everything going, and we’re seeing pretty good success.

[00:12:26] Emir: But the issue that we ran into at that point is that, I think it’s relatively easy to self-manage your first one or two properties, right? But once you start getting any kind of scale, it becomes harder, right? Once you get to five or six. That’s when you need really to start thinking about what you want to do, what you want to become, and how are you going to run this at more scale.

[00:12:47] Emir: And that’s when you would need a property management system like a Direct or, one of those property management systems to start implementing that. At that point, we realized, the returns are great. There’s a bigger opportunity here. I’m going to quit my job at NBC. Because now I’m making enough income off the arbitrage play to pay myself a fair living wage.

[00:13:10] Emir: And let me see how I can scale this further. I honestly kicked my wife out of the business in a good way because I wanted to separate, Home and professional. Didn’t want those lines to be blurred too much just because it’s tough, right? We all need an escape from work.

[00:13:24] Emir: It’s not great, in my opinion, at least to work with your significant other. And went to James. James was the head of development at Kik. So he was a developer, backend developer. I went to James. And I said, Hey, James, this is what I’m doing. This is the results that I’m seeing. Can you help me build out the kind of the backend infrastructure to automate most of the property management that we do?

[00:13:47] Emir: And he agreed. So the first thing we did is we talked to a bunch of property management systems and implemented one of them. And James was in charge of setting up the backend infrastructure. And I went out and looked for properties. To acquire, we raised some venture capital from a local set of angel investors, and then really started thinking about scaling.

[00:14:07] Emir: And I think that’s right around that time is when I, and I met you, Mateo, because I think Atlanta, which is where we partnered on, I think is Atlanta was the… Actually, the third market that we went to, we had some units in Savannah, but then went into Atlanta as our third market. So it was really one of those where we saw good success from my garage to a handful of units to realizing, hey, this is something that we can do at larger scale.

[00:14:33] Emir: So we went and started doing that. And it was at this point, it was still the arbitrage play.

[00:14:38] John: And how many units at that time approximately were you managing in an arbitrage or in today’s terms, for those listening today’s terms, co-host,

[00:14:46] Emir: co-host. Yeah, interesting. At that point, I think it was about 20 ish in the co-host arbitrage way is what we were doing. Yeah, I think that sounds right. It was right around 20 ish in that time frame, and initially built on a third-party property management system but we ended up building our own over time as well,

[00:15:08] Emir: background.

[00:15:10] Mateo: that’s bold. That’s not an easy task and I always, when people say that they, again, getting it from the engineering perspective, but I hear people all the time like, oh, I’m going to figure out this PMS thing and I’m going to create, I’m going to be the one to solve the property manager’s PMS technology issues, right?

[00:15:27] Mateo: And it’s just, from where I sit, it’s such a monumental task because I’m not an engineer, right? In the way that I work. I can definitely point out the parts that need to be fixed, but again, it’s such a daunting challenge and John can speak to it. Working for a PMS and, having watched how PMSs have, from a technology standpoint in my time in this industry grown.

[00:15:52] Mateo: new products continue to change and or not change. Has been something that is critical and at the center of what we really do as professionals within this space. But I never see it from the standpoint of, oh, I could change that. Oh, I could do that. So how did that help you transform Rabbu into what it is today? Like how did you had enough to make that change?

[00:16:16] Emir: Yeah. It’s a great question. And honestly, I think a lot of it has to do with the DNA of the company and what we excel at naturally, right? I think there’s many ways you can think about it. There’s a lot of operators, a lot of property managers that, and at the core of their DNA, they’re just really amazing operators.

[00:16:35] Emir: They think five to 10 steps ahead from an operational side, right? We know some operators that are just. about how they schedule their cleaners, right? They go, they make it a point that the cleaners going between job sites never have to take a left turn to make sure that they’re getting to the next job the fastest way possible, right?

[00:16:58] Emir: We at our core are technologists. We build product at heart. For us, once we realized, these are the problems we want to solve for, it was almost easier to build the solutions ourselves than to try to fit an existing set of technology into our use cases, into the solutions that we’re looking for.

[00:17:20] John: Yeah, cause you’re dealing with constraints, in, and I totally get where you’re coming from. And I would say that for 98 percent of the people, that’s not the best solution 

[00:17:30] Emir: 100% agree. 

[00:17:31] John: Find a solution that is canned and built, that is . As close as you can possibly get, and if it’s not there, then bolt on some add-ons with an open API to get exactly what you need.

[00:17:42] John: And I would argue for the 2%, that think it’s best to go ahead and build, that of that 2%, The amount of time and money and energy and resources that if you could find that other solution, you’re probably going to reach profitability quicker again, going with a prebuilt solution.

[00:17:59] John: But I get it coming from your standpoint and being, as a product-minded development, mindset. I get where you’re coming from.

[00:18:08] Emir: Yeah, absolutely. John and I agree wholeheartedly with you there. We definitely know a lot of other groups that have tried or attempted to build their own property management system or whatever system themselves internally, just because they may have been frustrated with a lack of functionality that exists somewhere of the current solution. I don’t know that I can think of any one of them have actually been able to do it. Successfully to the point where they were able to disconnect completely from their existing software set. Just because it’s hard and honestly, just a skill set, really a company DNA that you have. You can’t force yourself to be something that you’re not.

[00:18:45] Emir: It’s just, it’s what it is and there’s no shame in that. It’s just all about realizing kind of the things that you are good at. And building off of that and we transparently are better technologists than VR operators. And that’s the reason the company is where it is now, but it’s just, that’s just the core DNA of it.

[00:19:02] John: To sit on this is a little bit longer. Thinking about it and this kind of came to my mind. , the reason I feel that most property managers go, Oh, I just wish I could build this on my own. This is my gut and tell me if I’m wrong. It’s not that the tech sucks. It’s that the customer service and support isn’t there.

[00:19:23] John: And they’re constantly waiting for some or getting in some sort of queue and not getting responded to and not getting the answers they need. And they’re like, fuck it. I’m going to build it on my own. They’re like, we’re just going to do this because I can’t wait for this anymore. And you see this all day, every day with, I’d say again.

[00:19:44] John: The majority of the PMS is out there. The software itself is relatively solid, but the support behind it isn’t there. And so the frustration level gets to that, that boiling point, and they’re like, fuck it, I’m gonna do it on my own.

[00:19:58] Emir: Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I think it’s also just not understanding that the software is not built just for you, it’s built for a lot of other use cases as well. So the reason things are there is not… Because they want them to be theirs, because that’s what other people have a need for that might not fit your need.

[00:20:19] Emir: And it might seem frustrating at a time, but it’s not. And honestly, this industry is still so young that people just don’t know what best kind of SOPs and best protocols are. So a lot of times they don’t realize that, hey, The existing software has already solved for it. You’re just not utilizing it to the best of its ability.

[00:20:38] Emir: And that’s nobody’s fault really. It’s just

[00:20:42] John: Actually, it’s 100 percent the fault of the PMS for not going in and showing, and it’s on us, it’s on everyone. If my users at Direct aren’t using the software to the best of its ability, it’s my fault. It’s my team’s fault because, I’d say most of it because we didn’t go ahead and explain it correctly or sit down with them on a monthly cadence talking about, this is how, hey, best case scenario, this is how the majority of our team is using this software.

[00:21:09] John: How are, you’re using it to this, I don’t know. I want to take ownership for that as a software provider and say that overall that we need to do a better job. And giving the, the actual keys to the tools and opening up all those doors.

[00:21:23] Emir: yeah, I honestly, that’s a great mindset to have looking at it. As somebody who’s a perfectionist, as somebody who wants to make sure that users are happy, we share that sentiment a lot of times, even with our current software tools, we’re like, why aren’t people, people complain about, we have a data tool now that has revenue projections and the biggest complaint we get is oh, your revenue projection isn’t accurate.

[00:21:47] Emir: Compared to what I’m making and our points like, oh did you actually go through the tool and do a comp selection to really find your property? And oh, I didn’t know I could do that. And you’re like, you stop pulling your hair out. And of course. You’re at the point where you’re like, okay, what could I have done better?

[00:22:01] Emir: But honestly, yes, we always can do better. But it’s also where society is. It kind of zooms in on knowing one thing and understanding one thing. And it’s hard to penetrate that, especially in the world that we live in now. Good luck getting somebody to click on the. The the little eye that gives you a little bit more information on what to do and how to operate it or attend a webinar or watch a 10 minute video.

[00:22:21] Emir: It just is what it is. I think you just have to make do with what you have really.

[00:22:26] John: Yeah I agree. And it’s hoping that, the UI and UX is intuitive enough that it just makes sense and that they’re going to go down the correct path. Look at the majority of, not just in our space, in all tech the companies with like phenomenal UX, user adoption is a way higher rate than shitty UI 

[00:22:46] Emir: yeah. Yeah. It’s so interesting to hear to say that it’s a fine combination. We’ve definitely seen a lot of it. We’ve heard people say, I don’t care what it looks like, as long as it does what it needed to do, I don’t care. But then you have that side of the story too, that I want it to look good.

[00:23:00] Emir: I want it to be sexy. I don’t want to look at, boring screens the whole time. But, Excel spreadsheets still are the number one kind of used tool out there, right? And they’re not the sexiest from a UI perspective. It’s a really interesting balance to be in the product tech world to try to make sure you get it right.

[00:23:17] Emir: And honestly, the best thing you can do, because it’s never going to be perfect, you have to be directionally correct enough to continue to draw that attention and the users.

[00:23:26] John: Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. Talk to us about, okay, we’re here now, right? Like we’re you’ve, what is Rabbu today? 

[00:23:34] Emir: So where we are today. So maybe I can continue the story that I was saying from when we met Mateo and how the company has evolved since because I think that’ll get you to the point. And I think we’ve set some kind of good building blocks for the story.

[00:23:46] Emir: We got to about 20 units, mostly on arbitrage play. And as we started to continue looking into more arbitrage opportunities, we kept talking to more people. Real estate investors who said, Hey, I don’t want to arbitrage or co-host this with you in the sense that you’re taking all the upside.

[00:24:05] Emir: I’d much rather participate in the upside myself. So really more of a traditional management model, right? We’re like, Oh, interesting. It makes sense because, for us, it makes sense because there are a lot less upfront costs and a lot less liabilities from a contract perspective.

[00:24:19] Emir: Pretty early on to be more of a management company, true property management, taking a 20 to 25 percent revenue share on a property really mostly working with real estate investors who wanted to buy short-term rentals. And less so doing stuff in multifamily, like you would see a group like Vacasa do really more of helping groups find short-term rentals.

[00:24:42] Emir: And as part of that process, part of that shift, we started getting 2 questions. Question number 1 was, can you help me find a property to buy? That was the 1st question. The 2nd question was, how much money can a property that I currently have make as an Airbnb? Those are the two questions that we kept answering for people.

[00:25:03] Emir: And now there’s tools out there, great tools like AirDNA are out there that people can use, but we wanted to go broader than just, going to a specific market. And we want to have more flexibility in looking at the data ourselves, doing things ourselves. So we said, okay let’s build our own internal data tool.

[00:25:20] Emir: That we can use to help answer these two questions. What property should I buy? How much money can my property make? So we used that tool, we built that tool and used it mostly internally. When we would get an inquiry about, a management client, we would use that tool internally to come up with our revenue projections and to send them a PDF, basically of, here’s how much we believe your property can make before we’re managing it.

[00:25:43] Emir: We did that and it worked well but we got tired of doing it manually in the backend, sending these forms, so we decided to create a frontend version of the tool and put it on Raboo. com that basically allowed anybody to type in an address and get a revenue estimate result directly on, on Raboo.

[00:26:00] Emir: com. And again, the goal of that tool at that point was to be the top-of-the-funnel lead, lead generation platform for our property management services. Because now we can see what people are searching. We would ask them for email addresses, then we could contact them. And it worked out tremendously well.

[00:26:17] Emir: We saw a huge influx of people using the tool and we were able to really just get our property management services into hyper-growth, we went from 20 properties to 60 properties to 400 properties at the beginning of this year that we were managing and 95 percent of them were sourced from people utilizing our data tool. For the first time to interact with us. So this tool was like our unlock for property management growth which was really cool to

[00:26:52] John: freemium tool,

[00:26:54] Emir: Premium tool, correct.

[00:26:56] John: 100 percent is, it’s freemium at it’s at its best. It’s like it’s exactly, it did exactly what you intended it

[00:27:04] Emir: Yeah, it was basically the, it is the Zestimate for short-term rentals, right? Everybody uses Zestimate to see how much money their property is worth, right? On Zillow. This is, hey, how much money can my property make on Airbnb? It’s as simple as that and it’s, it was a, it is still a great lead generation platform.

[00:27:22] John: I logged in today, since we’ve been here, put my property in. I know exactly how much in Fort Wayne, Indiana, my property can go ahead and do it. I’ve done it during our conversation.

[00:27:32] Emir: And we made it very simple, we did focus on the UI, UX, as you were alluding to. It’s a search bar, you don’t need to log in, you don’t need to do much of anything to just get going, to get the results, and that’s what helped us generate the growth that we’ve seen.

[00:27:45] Emir: But most recently, it got to the point where and this is the case throughout this year is that we kept seeing more and more users use the data tool to the point that very few of them even knew that we did property management anymore. , as in as hard as we tried.

[00:27:59] Emir: As much marketing as we did, as many calls to action as we did to, sign up for a property management service, people were like, Oh, you guys do that? That’s right there on the screen. What are you missing? And, we got to the point of realizing, the best play for us, might be to be only a data company.

[00:28:18] Emir: And the reason for that is 1. That’s what we’re good at the core is being technologist to property management while we had grown to 400 doors is really hard. And, we had 400 doors that we’re managing across 35 different markets at its peak. Charlotte had a lot, but then we were all, we were down into Miami, Seattle, most of the West Coast Texas.

[00:28:39] Emir: We were all over the country with properties that we’re managing and we realized we got to the point. As a management company and as a data company we couldn’t do both well at the same time. We had to pick a focus. And, for where we believe the industry is going, which is that it’s becoming professionalized.

[00:28:59] Emir: We made the bet that making data available for free to the masses and educating the masses. Has more value, we can provide more value that way than by managing properties on behalf of, a few hundred real estate investors. We made the tough call in early May to transition out of the property management business, found a partner who wanted to take over the management business, and transitioned that to them in May.

[00:29:26] Emir: And now are 100 percent fully focused on, being the go to destination for users who are looking to educate themselves on short-term rentals via our data.

[00:29:36] John: So I guess my question here and then I’ll let Teo jump in ’cause it seems like I’m asking a lot of questions. A lot of the revenue you’re making is based on a 25, 20, 25, 30 percent cut on this property management, right? You had 400 units at your peak ish, when you decided in back in May of this year to go ahead and no longer be the property management asset part of it and just focus on tech.

[00:29:59] John: You’re offering a freemium service. how are you making money now?

[00:30:03] Emir: Yeah, it’s a great question. We did at one point experiment with making it a paid subscription product, but realized quickly that for the essence of the product that it is, meaning that, people use it for a month or two to find a property, and then they stop using it. That didn’t make long-term sense.

[00:30:20] Emir: Plus, really, AirDNA had is the dominant factor in that space. They’re doing a really good job there. We didn’t want to compete with them there. They’re, they know what they’re doing. That’s their domain. The way we are monetizing it is really by becoming a lead-generation platform for partners.

[00:30:37] Emir: So real estate agents, lenders, insurance companies, property management companies, anybody who wants to be who wants to serve short-term rental investors, short-term rental operators. We partnered with them and strategically and natively displayed them,, in our app where let’s see, Mateo is interested in the property in Georgia, right?

[00:30:59] Emir: He wants to get a mountain property in Georgia. He’s found something. It’s okay, this is really interesting. Now what? Now we can connect them to Jenny, who’s the local real estate agent. And the lender, who’s the lender that can provide him financing so he can actually close the transaction, then he can connect them to a property management company, a furnishing company, all that stuff, all those things that Mateo would need as part of his journey of, turning that property in Eljay into a short term rental that’s generating more revenue.

[00:31:27] Emir: So it’s really giving you the resources and tools and those lead partners pay as a referral commission on the lease that we generate for them. 

[00:31:35] Mateo: which 

[00:31:35] Emir: Again, very similar to Zillow.

[00:31:37] Mateo: Yeah. Again, and it makes sense too, right? Where else are you going to find a comprehensive resource, right? That will allow you to connect all those dots. And it’s interesting because when you’re talking about it, I can also see the value of, it’s not just education for people within our space.

[00:31:55] Mateo: It’s also educating the real estate agents and the others in connecting that whole pool and bringing them all together, which I think it’s fascinating. And I think that’s a glossed-over step, right? Like the importance of that. It’s not just, you’re a resource for all aspects of, this business to be able to come and find what they’re looking for.

[00:32:16] Mateo: And whether it’s the education, whether it’s, finding out the, what the economic impact of, adding a house would be right in finding it in form without having to guess that’s

[00:32:26] Emir: Yeah. Yeah. And my take or Rabbu’s take on kind of the industry where we are now, we have seen, the industry was going at a pretty kind of steady pace prior to COVID. COVID was first a shock to the system where people stopped traveling, supply dropped off considerably. And then once people, started traveling locally, demand for short-term rentals was the first thing to go up because, they were better, more COVID friendly than hotels, right? Demand jumped up, revenue as a result jumped up, and supply grew, right? So we saw an imbalance where supply disappeared, and demand grew. Now supply has caught up and is actually outpacing demand. And in our minds… This is now the time that the asset class is becoming professionalized.

[00:33:13] Emir: Not every property should be a short-term rental. Not everybody should be a short-term rental host. During COVID, it was sexy to go to a dinner party and talk to your neighbor who would say, Hey, I rent out my property on Airbnb. I make 10, 000 a month, right? The facts were, maybe they made 10, 000 because the Super Bowl was in town.

[00:33:32] Emir: And it was one month out of the year and they were lucky, right? It’s not, it wasn’t sustainable long term, 10, 000 a month, but it became sexy for a while. We believe a barrier to the asset class being professionalized is access to data for everyone. All the parties, right? The investor, the realtor, the neighborhood associations, the cities.

[00:33:55] Emir: And, again, you won’t hear me ever say anything negative about ARD& A because I think they’ve done a great job in providing data and being out there talking about the data. What we tried to be different from them is just to make it more widely available than they have. And if you want to go really deep on data points and even get a more enterprise package of data feed, they’re a great solution for you.

[00:34:16] Emir: We always recommend people to use Raboo and AirDNA when they’re exploring assets, but we just want to be the tool for for everybody else that just wants to educate themselves, understand it and be able to get a quick reference point and get to the resources they need to execute on the strategy.

[00:34:31] Emir: When they’re ready.

[00:34:32] John: You hit the nail on the head and I’m sure you say this all the time, Reboo is the Zillow of STR, right? And it makes so much sense because it’s everyone’s first go-to when you’re Going to look for a home, used to be, the other ones, the other big, real estate, online, but it, Zillow quickly came in and they, this is what we do and this is how we’re different.

[00:34:53] John: And I love that the tool you’ve built is, this is what we want to do. You had a great not predecessor, but a great, on the real estate side to emulate but more within, STR focus. You talked though about two separate subjects.

[00:35:08] John: Sorry. You talked about, the amount of inventory and the need for professionalization with so much inventory. And we talk about this quite often on the podcast. This tool will help bring these people together, but, it’s how do you diversify your inventory from all, the muddied when you go to whatever market, Atlanta, in a specific neighborhood and everything looks the same and everything feels the same, it’s using these tools that allow you to know, hey, I put in this extra amenity and it did this, And now we’re gonna see it rise like this, and based on, it’s, this is so smart, and there’s so much frustration by the part-time…

[00:35:50] John: Or the new to the industry, hey, just so you said, we’re at that dinner party, I rent and I get 10, 000 a month or whatever from, renting out this home I acquired. These people put themselves in bad places. Now they’re trying to unload it.

[00:36:05] John: There’s so much more inventory to acquire. Hey, STR ready, like you see it all the time but it’s still all just cookie-cutter.

[00:36:14] Emir: Yeah, no, I’ll 100 percent agree. We’re getting ready to release what we’re calling a kind of ROI grade. For every market in the United States, basically telling you in a market data tool, this is our score of how you think the property, this market is as an Airbnb, right? Now, you’ll see a lot of them, like Atlanta, I think it’s like a 30 out of 100 has a poor score and there’s a lot of factors that go into it.

[00:36:38] Emir: One. The local home values, how much the local home values cost, Atlanta. Mateo, I’m sure you know this better than most people. It’s getting more and more expensive to live in Atlanta, and harder to find properties, right? And then compared to what the revenue, average revenue in the market is, it’s…

[00:36:52] Emir: It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to buy a cookie-cutter property in Atlanta, because you’re not going to get a return. Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t go into Atlanta, find the right property with the right amenities, close enough to Mercedes Benz Stadium, have, whatever else, maybe having a hot tub, having an EV charger.

[00:37:10] Emir: And because of those two or three things, You could actually still make a really good, healthy return on the asset. And that’s what we want our tool to educate people on in our market data tool. We literally give you a breakdown by the amenity, how much more you can expect to generate. month. 

[00:37:28] Mateo: Yeah, again, Atlanta is a unique market, right? Keeping the Atlanta model together, right? You get the right house with the right space and the right use case and the numbers support it. Yeah you’re going to fight for multi family inventory, right?

[00:37:41] Mateo: In Atlanta, there’s a fight for that. There’s a glut of that. But it’s what are the outliers?

[00:37:46] Emir: right. Exactly right. I think during COVID, you could find a property, even a multifamily, 1 bedroom in a multifamily in Atlanta, throw some Ikea furniture in there, or some Facebook marketplace furniture in there, take some photos if you’re, if your iPhone, put an Airbnb and do really, not really well, do decently well, because the supply-demand was You know, It was off, right?

[00:38:09] Emir: That’s normalized now. So now those properties are the ones that are struggling, the ones that are just okay at best, right? So they don’t create an experience. They don’t stand out. And, again, what we’re looking to do is educate people and tell them, Hey, if you do X, Y, and Z in these markets, these are the type of returns that you can get.

[00:38:28] Emir: But you have to do the work. You have to, it has to be approached with a professional mindset, not just bought and furnished. And then hoping that it’s going to do its job. And then, how you operate it too is so key. Mateo and I could have identical Airbnbs next to each other and Mateo could generate 40, 50, maybe even 100 percent more than I do based on, his furnishings, his communication strategy, what software he uses, his

[00:38:56] John: Yeah. Maybe he’s using Rabbu, right? And you’re not.

[00:38:59] Mateo: right.

[00:38:59] Emir: Or, yeah. It’s it makes a big difference, right? It’s not, it’s definitely not the same as traditional long-term rentals where if Mateo and I would have the same properties next to each other, there’s a decent chance unless one of us is just an absolute fool that we would rent it out for a very similar amount per

[00:39:16] Mateo: And it also goes to speak about even within our own space. Not every operator is the same, right? Not everybody, again, like not all managers are the same and manage the same way. And it does matter in this space. Because, the operations aspect, which includes the guest interaction, guest communication, all of those things, the entire experience is on the manager.

[00:39:35] Mateo: And what we’ve seen in this business, and you can etch that in stone like I’ve heard you say it a couple of times, it’s those differentiators. And the ones who can understand that and build around that are the ones who will always do better than the people who are just here to hustle. This is hospitality at the end of the day.

[00:39:52] Mateo: Experience and all of these things matter and the tools that you have and the tools that you use matter You know to the businesses that are you know, providing these services. So yeah, I get it a hundred percent.

[00:40:06] Emir: One of my favorite quotes, and I’ve heard one of my co-founders say it all the time, and I don’t know if it’s his original quote or if it’s somebody else’s quote, but it’s. You don’t dabble in hospitality. You just don’t do that. Like you can’t do that. It’s a full-time commitment, doing hospitality part-time is not going to get you anywhere.

[00:40:23] Emir: And short-term rentals are hospitality. So you have to be really dedicated to it.

[00:40:28] John: At the core. Hey, Amir, we’re going to have to go ahead and wrap this up. Go ahead and let our, let our audience know that something new and exciting that’s happening is what’s that thing you’d like to go ahead and let them know.

[00:40:38] Emir: Yeah, so lots of exciting things coming down the pipeline, but we are, probably by the time this is live, we will have launched what we’re calling our ROI score, so in our market data tool, you basically type in any city in this tool, and we give you an ROI score, basically a score between 0 and 100. It tells you how good of an investment opportunity that market is.

[00:40:58] Emir: So you’ll find like a market like Atlanta, you might find on the lower end just because it’s harder right now based on the home values to get a good rental market like South Bend, Indiana. My score is significantly higher. So again, simple to use, free tool, type in any market in the United States.

[00:41:15] Emir: We’ll give you revenue projections and then our score based on the home values in the area. Really excited about that. I think it’s going to continue to shed some light to short-term rental investors on where to find their next investment property.

[00:41:27] Mateo: Awesome

[00:41:28] John: Thanks so much for joining us, man.

[00:41:30] Emir: I appreciate you guys having me on. 

[00:41:32] John: Absolutely.