[00:00:57] John: Good afternoon, Mateo. How are you?

[00:01:00] Mateo: Still fantastic. How are you?

[00:01:03] John: I’m great. Recording our second episode today, but this is a very special episode, so I’m excited to jump in here. Episode 117. What? I see your

[00:01:15] Mateo: Cause every time you say that, nobody would know if we could be doing this in the middle of the night, like on New Year’s Eve and nobody would know what you would

[00:01:22] John: That’s all right. It’s okay.

[00:01:23] Mateo: That’s okay.

[00:01:24] John: It’s okay. It’s just who we are. It’s what we do. We have a great guest just happens to also be a new sponsor of the show. So we’re excited to introduce a listener of the show,

[00:01:35] John: Asaf Karmon of Terno. Thanks so much for joining us, Asaf.

[00:01:39] Mateo: Thanks for coming on.

[00:01:41] Assaf: Hey guys, really, thanks for having me. I’ve been listening to the show for a long time and we’ve enjoyed it. And it’s a great honor to be on the air.

[00:01:48] John: we’re excited to have you, and I’m sure those of you who are listening, you’ll hear our wonderful mid roll coming right up talking about how you can get involved and utilize Turno. We’re excited about this partnership moving forward.

[00:02:03] John: You’re a fan of the show, we like to talk about your journey and we like to talk about, where you came from it’s interesting to see, how, when people transition to hospitality can you just walk us through that?

[00:02:13] Assaf: My, my background is in, in software engineering which is, sounds. Outside of hospitality, but what it is about really is about solving problems with software. So I’d like to think that everything that I’ve done before led me to this moment. In a way, I’ve been working as a software engineer solving business problems and the most recent venture that I was working on before Turno, I was a part of this company called GoShare, which was a marketplace that connected truck drivers with people who needed kind of small moves.

[00:02:48] Assaf: That was really, great service. I was working on technology aspect of it. Ended up not working out for me. The company’s still going on, but it seeded in my brain this idea of building marketplaces as a way of enabling people to solve problems and also for the service providers to really build, small businesses that have a steady stream of customers that is almost guaranteed.

[00:03:16] Assaf: So I was hosting on Airbnb, kind of small time host. It was really struggling with the logistics. of, getting the places clean, finding cleaners, and staying on top of it. There was this promise of, almost passive income that is like so good, but it was nothing but passive, right?

[00:03:36] Assaf: It was very labor intensive, and being a problem solver with software I’ve oh, I can build an app that would solve it, little did I know how much effort it was going to go into it, but it seems very simple from the beginning.

[00:03:54] John: And that’s how they all start. Oh, this is so simple. I’m on the sales side of things. And anytime I talk to, obviously we’re in software as well. And anytime I talk to my devs, I’m like, Oh, that’s that’s super easy. Just copy paste, that’s our, my joke with them.

[00:04:06] John: Just copy and paste. It should be no problem.

[00:04:09] Assaf: Yeah. So it, that, that was basically it. I needed to solve my own problem. I need to scratch my own itch, having the knowledge and the tools of exactly how to solve it. Having solved it before in different verticals, I went to work. I was the kind of engineer for a good while. I was customer service, I was sales, I was dev.

[00:04:35] Assaf: I would be on the phone with a customer and be like, Hey, oh, you have a problem with this bug? Hold on a second. Let me commit a change. Do you see it? Okay, great. It was, the dev cycle was like two minutes. But obviously that’s not sustainable. And, as products mature, they get more complex and you really want to make sure that everything fits holistically and that there’s institutional knowledge.

[00:04:56] Assaf: And currently we have over 50 engineers working on the platform.

[00:05:02] John: That’s a lot.

[00:05:03] Assaf: yeah,

[00:05:04] John: You got a lot of moving pieces behind it.

[00:05:06] Mateo: dispatch issue at a lot too. There, there was a joint, there was a synergy in what you used to do with the dispatching of trucks and it’s a logistics play, right? Like at the end of the day, what you’re solving is a logistics problem, right? Like in terms of what you’re doing and bringing that technology, because I’ve seen it in different aspects, but when I learned what you did with your previous company, I was like, Oh,

[00:05:30] Assaf: wasn’t my company. I was. One of the early employees there, it wasn’t my company. But I’ve learned a lot on how you build a marketplace or, and also how you don’t build a marketplace. You learn the good things and the bad things and you apply the lessons that you learned but yeah, obviously it’s a logistic problem and it is a people’s problem that is.

[00:05:54] Assaf: A lot of software that you use is, screens that you interact with it is a one way exchange, but when it comes to a marketplace, it’s a, there’s multiple people involved and there’s things that are happening in the physical world that, that you are driving with the software and, it makes things more interesting and more complex.

[00:06:16] John: Let’s dive into that a little bit, your business model is, from us on the vendor side of the short term mental hospitality industry, we see a few brands that are operational management, right? They are, they’re going to go ahead and help with your backend and your cleans.

[00:06:34] John: And they’re, and everyone’s coming at it from a little different angles and you’re definitely coming at a different angle I think the main focus and please correct me if I’m wrong, but the main focus at the beginning was, we’re going to connect you with cleaners that know what the hell they’re doing,, that specifically their focus is on, Cleaning Airbnbs and essentially and we’re going to make sure that.

[00:06:55] John: that we’re backfilling or making sure that these cleaners are available for you when on turns. Is that correct? Is that how it started?

[00:07:03] Assaf: Yeah the way we went about it was, let’s build a really great scheduling maintenance, property care system that is standalone. You can bring your own team. Or you can use people from our marketplace because we know people need flexibility with everything they do. They work with some cleaners that they know, and then they need to go out and recruit people that they don’t already know, right?

[00:07:31] Assaf: So we want to be able to support. Both use cases and then also scale with you as you grow because, as a host, you, you get started, you usually don’t stop there, right? You want to grow your business, and once you’ve gotten to the rhythm of it, of okay, I add a property, I stage it, I make it beautiful, I got my operations, clicking, then it’s passive, right?

[00:07:56] Assaf: Let’s move on to the next one. Let’s grow this empire, right? So it’s very, so

[00:08:01] John: one or two ways they take it. You’re either like, hell no, or you’re like, all right, let’s go.

[00:08:06] Assaf: so we like to support the use case where you are building kind of an operations manual, you set it on autopilot and you move on to grow your business. That’s our mode, right? We want to make, go ahead.

[00:08:22] John: how do you feel that you compare there’s a lot of money in this space and there’s a lot of money that’s being thrown at these, and I’m saying competitors and you’re all, you all have different different, things that you specialize in, but at the same time, at the core the goal is you’re cleaning and maintenance operational, workflows and Bringing connectivity to that and connecting in with other property management softwares , for those that are larger than just say a host with, a few homes.

[00:08:51] John: The main difference is, you have a marketplace. And that’s the big difference, how do you feel that your and Turno compares to the, competition? Again, air quotes for those that aren’t, are watching us on YouTube. How do you feel you compare it to what they have to offer?

[00:09:05] Assaf: Right. So I think a lot of them, they do a great job building automation tools for property care, but I think that’s just one facet of the problem. I think of my users, my customers as people that have a problem to solve and only a part of it can be solved with software.

[00:09:27] Assaf: Another part of it needs to be solved with people, with relationships. So we try to think of it in a more holistic way of we want you to just be hands off as much as possible. Kind of management by exception, right? I have a menu, I have a repeatable process, let it run, and I’ll come in when there’s an exception, but otherwise it’s hands off and that applies to the software process, but it also applies to the labor getting the people where they need to be, also getting them paid.

[00:10:06] Assaf: Everything just happens automatically. Like a guest books a visit, it goes into our system through either our PMS integration or integration with Airbnb. We notify, the correct cleaners. When they need to be there, what they need to do, they go in, they do their work, they upload pictures, file checklists, inventory, track problems, everything that needs to happen, they check out, they get paid, it all happens automatically.

[00:10:37] Assaf: You As a property manager, as a host, if nothing out of the ordinary happened, don’t need to do anything.

[00:10:45] Mateo: truly passive

[00:10:46] John: That’s the way it should be, right? That’s, ultimately that’s why you build the software you build is to,

[00:10:51] Assaf: Out of sheer laziness, I didn’t want to do anything. This is supposed to be passive, right? And that’s what I wanted it to be.

[00:11:02] Mateo Bradford-Vazquez: hey, John. Let’s talk about one of the most frustrating challenges of hosting. Cleaning. Seriously. Hosting is hard enough. Why does cleaning have to be such a pain?

[00:11:11] John: SDR cleaning is not the same as residential, and you need someone who knows the difference. Plus cleaners have access to your property. You need to find people who are qualified and trustworthy.

[00:11:20] Mateo Bradford-Vazquez: Add to that, you need cleaners who don’t need to be micromanaged. Who has time to text schedules back and forth and try to confirm days and times? Especially when bookings change. And then, dealing with invoices, payments, and tax reporting.

[00:11:33] John: Turno has solved all of these challenges with this cleaning management software. Turno’s Cleaner Marketplace has over 55, 000 vetted short term rental cleaners, and they make finding a local cleaner super easy. You just enter some property and cleaning details, and cleaners start bidding.

[00:11:47] John: You can see things like competitive cleaner prices, business credentials, and reviews before you agree to work together. Plus, Marketplace cleaners are paid automatically once the job is completed. No more manual payment hassles.

[00:11:58] Mateo Bradford-Vazquez: When you sync Turno to your listing calendars, every turnover gets auto scheduled as bookings come in. And if anything changes, your cleaner is notified immediately. Plus, cleaners can see if it’s a same day turnover, so they know right away that time is critical.

[00:12:11] Mateo Bradford-Vazquez: And with tools like Photo Checklist, Inventory Management, Problem Reporting, and the Guest Checkout Review Prompt, Turno gives hosts real time eyes and ears on the ground, right from the cleaner to the host’s app.

[00:12:21] John: No bss. Listeners can get $150 Amazon gift card when they try Turno and its cleaner marketplace. New users can sign up at turno.com/noBS, search for a cleaner in your area, connect with one or more, and then complete a marketplace cleaning. Once you see how easy and simple cleaning management can be, you’ll love how much time and money you save, not to mention no more cleaning headaches. To learn more, go to turno.com/noBS and get started today.

[00:12:44] Assaf: User experience is something I’m very passionate about. And it’s, it’s not technical. It’s not think, oh, UX is, you hire someone, they help you. Great UX comes from empathy. Of putting yourself in the user’s, experience and trying to make it easier for them to make use of the platform in a way that, benefits them the most.

[00:13:12] Assaf: And I think with Airbnb, they have a lot of empathy for the guest. And for them to have a, a great stay and this is where it comes from. This is why they’re so good at what they do is because they just have a lot of empathy for the user. So we try to take that. And I’ve been in software basically my entire adult life.

[00:13:33] Assaf: And I remember what we used to build, 20 years ago. And what we build now. And it comes from an evolution of understanding that like. It needs to come from just really understanding who’s going to use this, what do they want to achieve and making it as easy and as seamless as possible and, always an iterative process, right?

[00:13:58] Assaf: If you think of Airbnb they’ve been doing the same thing, for a while now. It’s a very basic core concept and they’ve iterated probably like tens of thousands of versions of, their more basic flows just to make sure that it’s just right.

[00:14:16] John: Yeah, and everyone, when the new release comes out, they’re like, what the hell? And then oh, actually, this isn’t that bad. And they get used to it. And they’re, again, still always the gold standard.

[00:14:26] Assaf: Yeah. I’m a big fan of them.

[00:14:28] John: What, when did that a couple of things. When did that partnership go live? Cause I’m not looking at the dates right now. I had it pulled up earlier. So when did that go live and how did that partnership affect your business?

[00:14:41] Assaf: Yeah, so it went live early this year. It was in March. And it basically allows our users to have a much more seamless experience. Instead of logging into Turno, creating all your properties, configuring everything. You need, which is okay, it’s a small investment of time in order to save a lot of time down the road, but still it’s a lot to ask of someone to spend 10 minutes, 15 minutes, half an hour configuring things when they can just click a button and then we can read everything that’s on Airbnb and we can create.

[00:15:18] Assaf: All their configurations like in one second and then also allow for a more accurate sync so that we know when a guest books or cancels right away. We also have access to the reviews, which is, I think is very important because for the first time you can actually tie the cleaning feedback that the guest provides to a cleaner, and then you can have a good measure of who’s doing a good job and who’s not doing a good job, and then you can give those cleaners feedback hey, You seem to be underperforming.

[00:15:52] Assaf: Maybe you need to improve. Maybe you need to be, to do

[00:15:56] John: I love that. I want, let me interject here real quick. So I want to do a shout out to Chad Blankenship, actually of vTrips back in the day when he started doing this, he was with Southern and he came up with the use of Power BI. And reviews and through TRACK the software back in the day, he came up with a way to tie reviews to cleaners performance.

[00:16:18] John: And it was a game changer for him and for the company. And it’s so smart. And this is the first I’ve heard, and that was, this is probably two and a half years ago. That we were talking at a DARM actually, maybe three years ago now, and it’s interesting because I haven’t heard anyone really talk about that until right now.

[00:16:37] John: Weird shout out.

[00:16:38] Assaf: so this is actually a really great collaboration with Airbnb because now the guests can leave a specific cleaning review and let’s say they leave something that is like less than five stars, they can say what was the issue? What kind of cleaning issue? Dirty bathroom? Dirty shower, something smelly.

[00:16:54] Assaf: And we take those tags. that the guest leaves. And then we we show them to the host and we also propose solutions based on the tags. Oh, there’s a smell issue. Here is an article about, common remedies that you can apply to a specific situation. Some houses just smell bad, but it’s just a good thing.

[00:17:16] Assaf: And there are solutions. Right? There are solutions. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. People have, there’s millions of people who are doing this for a living and they’ve found all the solutions. You’re never the first one to experience a problem.

[00:17:30] John: No, it’s a great point.

[00:17:33] Mateo: for those. Cleaners and others. So I was looking, I want to talk about scaling because it looks like, so two things, I have two questions and two things I want to talk about, because I was super impressed when I went to your page and it was like, who do we work with? And I was like, oh, okay, couple, I have a couple of partnerships in the industry.

[00:17:52] Mateo: That list is long. That is a very long list. Two things. I want to know about your strategy of partnership, because it seems like you’ve been able to massage a lot of relationships with some pretty significant players within the space, right? And with the idea of the seamless integration and getting seamless access to information for the guest experience.

[00:18:15] Mateo: But how did you scale to this point, right? So you started this, you wanted to solve the problem, you said that it was a lazy issue for yourself. You’re global now. How does it go from a simple problem solving activity to a global entity that’s continuing to grow? And we know it’s hard to do in one country as opposed to doing multiple countries around the world.

[00:18:35] Mateo: Talk to us about your scaling process and your strategy for your company because that’s where a lot of, to be honest, people fail. And don’t get right.

[00:18:44] Assaf: Yeah. It’s, I’d like to say it’s, it’s a combination of There’s definitely a lot of luck into it. Just being, trying, solving a problem that happens to be growing, right? People are, our industry is growing, so it’s always important when you are launching a venture to launch it into a growing industry.

[00:19:05] Assaf: And then just a lot of persistence and just a thousand mile journey does begin with one step. So you just take the first step. And then. As the opportunities arise, take it, take advantage of them. At the same time, also important to have a vision.

[00:19:22] Assaf: And to take the journey in a way that, that leads to that longer vision, broader vision. So I didn’t launch the company, out of high school, right? Like I’ve been working in the software industry for a long time and I’ve seen businesses start and I’ve been taking mental notes from the very beginning.

[00:19:50] Assaf: I’ve had this kind of entrepreneurial seed that has been dormant for a little while, but I’ve always been taking notes and seeing what people do right and what people do wrong. But when it comes to scaling it’s important to have a vision, but it’s also important to take it one day at a time.

[00:20:09] Assaf: And not to overbuild, for example, and overcommit. And we, we couldn’t have realized that vision from the very first day. So we have started with kind of the most important features first iterated on them and iterated. And we could be, we’ve got user traction and then we, we hired more people and then we built more things, but we’ve always been disciplined about staying in our lane and focusing on one thing.

[00:20:41] Assaf: There’s a lot of people, Oh, you should build this. You should build that. You should, before, you were like an accounting software slash PMS slash, payment processor you can be one of those things that solve a million different problems, but none in an exceptional way.

[00:20:57] Assaf: So we’re trying to be exceptional at solving that. One key problem, which is making your vacation rental investment passive by automating your operations. Matching you up with the labor that you need and just making it as seamless and almost invisible.

[00:21:23] John: It makes so much sense. Why over engineer things, when you’re getting requests from property managers or hosts or whatever, oh, you should do this. It’s the hardest thing because then two things, you don’t want to over promise and under deliver. So just agreeing to everything is never the right, course of action.

[00:21:38] John: And then you have to stay true to your North Star. You have to stay true to The reason you got, here, you built Turno which used to be Turnover B& B. And that’s where I want to have a question I want to ask about the brand change. But you built it for a specific reason.

[00:21:54] John: And then when you start listening to everyone else, I find that, the fabric of the company ends up changing and the fabric of the initial direction you want to go changes just to meet, when we’re asking ourselves questions about Direct.

[00:22:07] John: Internally, from a leadership standpoint and saying, where do we want to take this? It’s always with the confines of, is it still Direct? Just because so and so wants this and they have it in this software, if we bring it into us, is it going to change who we are? Does it make sense? And if we do bring it into Direct, , can we change it in a way that makes it very much stay Direct?

[00:22:32] John: And so these are questions we’re constantly having, which are hard, it’s hard to say no to someone when you want to keep scaling and growing because everyone is here for the right, you’d hope everyone’s wanting to do the things for the right reasons, but then it’s you know what, no, we’re not going to do that.

[00:22:47] John: If you really love that, stick with what you have, or what we do is we partner with great companies like yourselves and say, Hey, that’s not our. We’re very focused and good at what we’re good with, and we have amazing partnerships with these companies, you being one of them, that excel at this.

[00:23:04] John: We can give you basic functionality, but we could partner with Turno and others to give you the tools that would really take it to the next level for you. And I think that’s an important lesson that not every startup, aka software or whatever, takes into consideration.

[00:23:20] Assaf: I really believe in focus. If you ever walk down the street and you saw a restaurant that was like, oh, pizza, seafood, Korean food. This is probably not the best pizza, less seafood, less Korean food, right? You can’t be so talented that you are selling everything at the same time.

[00:23:43] John: That’s

[00:23:43] Mateo: I agree. And I think that’s the part where, John should have stuck a pin in that, right? Like when you were talking about listening to what other people said, your response to that was head down and focus more on what you’re doing. Perfect what you’re doing. Focus harder on what you’re doing.

[00:23:57] Mateo: And that’s the part that I think. It’s where the competitive moats grow, right? That’s where, let the others be, the best multi tool out there when you want to focus on being the best at what you came out to, to do that, that the problem you came out to solve. So I think that’s a lesson in scaling a lesson in focus, right?

[00:24:16] Mateo: I think is really that lesson that sometimes companies get too enamored in other things to, and lose that focus on what they’re really

[00:24:27] Assaf: And sometimes your business is, like a platform business. It’s Airbnb. It’s, it’s Amazon. It’s eBay. And your business is to make other people successful. And that’s what you need to focus on. And your business is to offer tools.

[00:24:44] Assaf: It’s it’s a meta business in a way. And and I bet at the early days of Airbnb, they probably thought, Oh, we could just We become property managers ourselves. aNd luckily they resisted. thAt urge and, they became a platform to allow other people to excel, if people told us, Oh, you should become a cleaning company, but we, we don’t want to be that.

[00:25:10] Assaf: We want to be a platform that allows individuals and cleaning companies to build successful businesses. And, and if we’re good at that. And we’re happy.

[00:25:21] John: Stick with your guns and and push that way. Push along that way. Talk to us about the formerly turnover BNB. You were turnover BNB forever. That’s how you came out. Why the brand switch? I love the brand switch. I love the new identity. But talk to us about that decision from a marketing standpoint.

[00:25:41] Assaf: So when we just incorporated we couldn’t afford a five letter domain.

[00:25:47] John: I love it. That’s

[00:25:49] Mateo: talk about that.

[00:25:49] John: answer. Okay. Great. We couldn’t afford a five letter. I love this. Okay. Yeah.

[00:25:55] Assaf: right? Turnover BNB was, I think it was like 8 or something like that. But it was also a great name. I think it captures. Exactly what we do.

[00:26:04] Mateo: Yes.

[00:26:05] Assaf: Turno is built on top of Turnover BNB. And it’s built its own name recognition. I think it was easier to get started with Turnover BNB, because it’s a very descriptive name.

[00:26:16] John: I don’t think you could do it the other way around. I don’t think you’d just say, Hey, we’re Turno. And people would be like, Oh, okay.

[00:26:21] Assaf: That? Yes. it’s, this is where, as we were growing we were having a lot of people struggle with the longer name not being able to spell it, confuse it with other things and we felt Turna was like a, that captures more succinctly what we’re doing. We could also get that turna. com domain. I’ve always had this fascination with domains and was really excited to have my own five letter. com domain. A little bit of backstage lay there.

[00:26:56] John: We, under the previous episode we’re talking about I have a slight domain problem. I see domains that I just need to get them, and this is a new problem for me, but I have a friend he has hundreds and he’s, when they sit there and he has an idea, he gets, gobbles it up and then, if it sits there long enough, gets, unloads it and, but the turn, the five letter, I’m looking at one that has, for our, for a project we’re looking to do as, seven and I’m pretty impressed with it.

[00:27:25] John: It’s available at 18, 18, not eight.

[00:27:30] Assaf: Yeah. Turnover. com was a little more than 18, but it was, it’s no, we love it. I think it’s, I feel I, I felt like it was going to take me a long time to get over the Turnover B& B name and kind of get used to the Turno but It’s been a, a smooth transition and we love the new name and, name is destiny in a way

[00:27:51] John: the, I talk to us about you’re only as good as your team, right? And like you’re, you, the, you’re talking about you have 50 engineers and you got a bunch of other like amazing team members around you. Talk to us about the team that you’ve built, because I love a lot of your team members. Like you’re, you’ve built a solid team of people that are approachable, that are people that are, relationship people.

[00:28:14] John: Talk to us a little bit about that.

[00:28:16] Assaf: so it’s, thinking back it’s been, six or seven years and it’s, we haven’t hired everyone in kind of one fell swoop, right? So we, we started out with relatively junior engineers cause that’s. What we could afford but they were really lucky picks because they’ve grown to be like rock star engineers.

[00:28:41] Assaf: And we were able to hire a lot of people through a friend network. Hey, we’re hiring for this position. Do you know anyone? So we have a lot of people who know each other from before their time. We have like family members, we have married couples and it’s And that’s the kind of, approachable, friendly friend connection that has been driving a lot of the hiring.

[00:29:09] Assaf: And we’ve had a lot of good luck in terms of, retention really. compared to other companies that I worked for amazing retention. A lot of people stick around for a long time. Every now and then you have people who leave, but that, that’s natural, especially when have like over a hundred employees.

[00:29:29] Assaf: Some people are going to leave.

[00:29:31] Assaf: thAt’s the nature of the beast. But we try to be You know, our approach to management is set clear goals and be reasonable. And people usually like that, right? And they put themselves to the tasks. And we try to keep a, a culture that is, friendly and understanding and we’re approachable and the company is semi.

[00:30:01] Assaf: Remote, so we have an office in Hawaii, an office in Miami and then we have a lot of other people that are remote

[00:30:08] John: Miami? If you’re like you’re based in Hawaii and the parent company started in Hawaii, correct? And what was it, was Miami because it’s a thriving Airbnb market , and it made sense to go ahead or was it just serendipitous?

[00:30:22] John: Did it just happen to be like, Oh, this makes sense here.

[00:30:26] Assaf: we had an early employee that was based in Miami and he hired people around him in Miami. And then he left, but those people remain. So it’s a little bit of a legacy. Miami is also, a really great market. There’s a lot of great talent in Miami. There’s a lot of energy in that city.

[00:30:46] Assaf: I, when I visit, I always Oh, wow, I could live here. This is a great place.

[00:30:50] John: I enjoy visiting Miami.

[00:30:53] Mateo: Definitely worst places to go for

[00:30:55] John: yeah, and I think of Florida as a whole, and it’s ah, Miami just has got a, there’s some other great places, but Miami just has that nice that southeastern vibe of this, of the state just has a little bit different pull and allure to it.

[00:31:08] Assaf: And then most of our employees in Miami, they’re customer focused and, account management and sales and they, they just need to be in the time zone that most of our customers are at. I’m in Honolulu, but I don’t directly deal with customers, so it’s not impeding.

[00:31:27] John: So what’s next for you? You’ve got an amazing partnership with Airbnb, you’ve built out the software in a way that, you know that, meets your Northstar as a company that is focused on, , solving a problem that started with you, with screw it, I don’t want to do this anymore.

[00:31:43] John: This isn’t part of just actually passive income. And you found yourself meeting a lot of people’s needs. But you also talked about, once you start There’s other things you want to do. Just, as far as a host goes, I’m sure this is the same kind of scenario for you and, running this company, what’s next for Turno?

[00:32:04] Assaf: Yeah, so a lot of problems that the. The last couple of percentage of refinement is the most difficult to attain. If you think for Airbnb, for example, like they’ve been able to connect guests with hosts for a while, but every year they just make it incrementally easier. To do and we’re in a similar position, we need to perfect our offering to smooth out, rough edges where there are and that level of kind of a refinement actually takes the most amount of effort to achieve.

[00:32:38] Assaf: Think about Airbnb, their early days, they had a handful of engineers, they were able to connect people to get bookings, but now they have I don’t know, a thousand engineers?

[00:32:47] John: No idea. I’d love to know. Brian Chesky, if you’re listening, we’d love to have you on the podcast.

[00:32:54] Assaf: And they’re focusing on, getting that little bit of refinement that, that makes things flow a little smoother, solidifying their position.

[00:33:04] Assaf: And we’re doing the same thing. We want to, you never get there, but you strive for perfection improving user experience like we’ve talked earlier is about empathy. The longer you spend. time exploring a problem, the more you understand it, the more empathy you have for the user and the more you can apply that empathy to create a better user interface and a better business process.

[00:33:31] Assaf: And obviously, it’s, we have growth objectives for the company. Which you can manifest a lot of it through better user experience, which kind of leads to, better retention, better conversion and things like that. Yeah.

[00:33:47] John: Yeah. I think a lot of that comes to, relationships and partnerships, right? like like you’re only as strong as your partnerships and you obviously have a very strong partnership with Airbnb and you’ve seen that grow. How do you And you’re focusing on, refining, which is great.

[00:34:03] John: And every time like we refine, then it, it ends up opening up another can of worms. You’re like, Oh shit, we didn’t see that. I guess there’s more refining that needs to be done or it opens up like a new idea, right? Like you started refining something and you’re like. What if we did this?

[00:34:18] John: And then, and again, as long as you’re staying focused on the goal you’re trying to accomplish here, then there’s nothing wrong with that. But I, we’re big, Mateo’s huge on partnership, we’re big partnership guys. And, I think with, with all these partners that you have on, that you’re all the PMS partners and all these different things that you’re already working with.

[00:34:36] John: Strengthening that even more is just going to take, it’s going to help you take the next level.

[00:34:41] Assaf: absolutely.

[00:34:42] John: Make sure you guys are trying to, guys, people, companies are trying to reach to the same, get to the same level together, right? Everyone’s trying to scale. Fix problems.

[00:34:55] Mateo: I love the focus on building out the best product, like in, in continuing to refine it. You said something about the final stages or the end stages, being, of interest in a place to double down to continuously refine the experience, right? So it’s never really done, right? Like it’s

[00:35:12] Assaf: It’s never done.

[00:35:13] Mateo: in a continuous space, but we don’t see that.

[00:35:15] Mateo: How many other people, John, have we, we’ve interviewed numerous people on this platform that have wanted to sell their products, sell their companies, sell their platform, whatever it is. How many people have doubled down and been like, I want to make this the best product it can be? And that’s their focus.

[00:35:30] Mateo: And that, it’s not I’m gonna spin off and, and now I’m gonna go make, something, I don’t know, a new payment processing system and put it in here but actually refining their product.

[00:35:41] John: I think any, entrepreneur, any startup, any CEO, founder, at some point there’s an exit strategy, right? Because you don’t want to do this forever. Unless you do, but I still have not met one person that’s you know what, unless it’s like a family legacy and you’re going to pass it down to maintain generational wealth.

[00:36:00] John: I love with a focus being on, I just want to refine to make this, to continue to make a better solution and a better product. And then when that, that time comes. Then you sell, I think there’s a big difference between, I want to be the best of the best and offer the best user experience to our guests or our users, as opposed to, I want to make a product that I can go ahead and turn and they have a deadline.

[00:36:22] John: Like I see in a, my exit strategy is five years from now. And I think with, startups that have that focus end up with a different result. As opposed to startups that have a focus on the UX and UI.

[00:36:37] Assaf: I already live in Hawaii,

[00:36:39] John: just keep rubbing it in.

[00:36:41] Assaf: No, it’s I,

[00:36:42] Mateo: Yes.

[00:36:43] Assaf: I think building a good product and going for an exit aren’t mutually exclusive. And I think, if you focus on building a great business, then exit opportunities, will present themselves. I, for one, really enjoy The stage that we’re in where we have the resources to build the product that we want to build and we have enough traction to, to test things, right?

[00:37:12] Assaf: Like you, you can, at the very early stages, you can really go veer off on the wrong direction because you don’t have user feedback because you don’t have users at all. Once you have a lot of users, you can experiment with different things and get, get the pulse. Of the market.

[00:37:30] John: Right.

[00:37:31] Assaf: And we’re really excited to be able to like, test new things and build new things and have, the manpower and the resources to, to do that.

[00:37:40] Assaf: And it’s really a great privileged position. And I, I love where we are right now. I’m a big believer in sustainable effort. I don’t work 60 hours a week because, you can’t sustain that for forever.

[00:37:55] John: But you did.

[00:37:57] Assaf: yeah, sure.

[00:37:58] John: You had to. Like you’re not in the position you are today without putting that time in.

[00:38:04] Assaf: Yeah. I work, I constantly think about work, but I don’t necessarily have to sit at my desk and do that. A sustainable effort is one that you can do over a long period of time. It’s a sprint versus a marathon. You can’t sprint during a marathon because you can run out of stamina, right?

[00:38:25] John: Right.

[00:38:26] Assaf: So we’re in a good place where we can really just do the things that we love to do, which is, build a great product, watch people use it. And if some point there’s an exit opportunity, you will be there because you built a great business.

[00:38:42] John: Love it. We wish you the continued success and we’re excited about, I love the. The competition and just like this, these, the amazing tech products that are in our space and it’s not necessarily a competition. I don’t mean that in that way. I mean it as in, I just love the constant innovation that is, the envelope is being pushed and it keeps on, it makes everyone better.

[00:39:04] John: And our industry is pretty unique in how we go about it. And we. We are rooting for Turno and we’re excited about where you guys are going and we’re excited about this partnership too with the podcast. What’s, you got some cool things coming up and do you, any last thing you want to go ahead and leave with our listeners today?

[00:39:24] Assaf: right. So we have a special offer for the listeners.

[00:39:28] John: Okay.

[00:39:29] Assaf: So if you go to turno. com, that’s our five letter domain,

[00:39:34] John: There you go. Five letters. Terno. com.

[00:39:36] Assaf: com slash noBS. And this is by a no BS offer, you will get a 150 Amazon gift card after you complete your first Marketplace cleaning project, meaning if you go to Turno.Com and you find a cleaner that works for your short term rental after you complete your first project with them, then you would get a 150 Amazon gift card, which you can use to, to buy something for yourself or to, to decorate your your rental.

[00:40:14] Assaf: So yeah, just make sure to go to Turno.com/noBS.

[00:40:18] John: Love it. And this this will be, this will actually be offered throughout the, the whole time you’re sponsoring our podcast. So we’re really excited about that. And thanks again. This has been great. Thanks for joining

[00:40:27] Mateo: We’re definitely going to get you back, Asaf, because I’m going to talk about this attitude of doubling down and focus. I’m not going to let that go. We’re going to continue to talk about that.

[00:40:36] Mateo: I would love to come again.