We sit with Madison Rifkin, founder and CEO of Mount. Madi’s introduction to the industry was a bit different from most, as she started out as Mount Locks, a bike lock company before realizing there was a huge opportunity in Vacation Rentals by making amenities accessible to guests.
Her story is equally amazing and empowering. As the oldest triplet in a family with entrepreneurship in their blood, Madi was born to be a leader and driving force in whatever she wanted to do, and her journey to today is fascinating!
Mount has been making moves in the conference space showcasing why they are here to stay in the industry. We tackle everything from liability insurance for amenities, to keeping the industry fresh with new tech solutions, as well as where she plans to take Mount in the future.
Mount plans to change the behavioral culture of travel by making it so guests bring less on vacation renting. You don’t want to miss this episode!
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Making Rentable Amenities Accessible With Madison Rifkin
This is Season 3 and Episode 14. We have an amazing guest. I’m super excited to dive into her story and what she’s bringing and the company is bringing to guest ex. We talk a lot about, UI, UX and guest experience a lot on the show and their importance. Without further ado, I want to go ahead and introduce Madison Rifkin, CEO and Founder of Mount. Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for having me. It is super cool.
I’d say I didn’t hear about Mount until 2022 because it was relatively new, and we’ll talk about that. I met you in person in Chicago. You had come over and chatted with us at the Hopper booth. We’re going to talk about Mount, but tell us about how you get into this space. I’m looking through some of your old LinkedIn, some of your stuff here and social posts. You have a cool story. I don’t know if everyone knows about your story so let’s chat about that a little bit.
It’s a great place to start. Mount is stuffy. We did not start in the short-term rental space. The original name for the company was Mount Locks because we were a bike lock company. That’s how we started. It takes me back all the way to when I was twelve years old. That’s where the whole bike lock came from. I grew up in Denver, Colorado. I got a patent for it when I was fifteen. That led me to the crazy entrepreneurship journey. I went to college at Northeastern University. I was told not to go there because everyone who does go there becomes CEO. I was like, “Perfect. That’s what I wanted.” Everything lines basically. During my time at Northeastern, I started Mount Locks officially and took the patent.
I had the idea I had when I was twelve and a few other students. We stood up a supply chain in China who are were producing bike locks. Right around probably my sophomore year, scooters started popping up in Santa Monica like birdlime. People were like, “What is this? What is a bird?” I can go hop on a scooter. I was like, “That’s fascinating.” It was nowhere on the East Coast. I literally had to fly to California to see what they were talking about. What I did was I flew with our lock and I was like, “I feel the scooters are going to need locks. If they’re leaving them on the streets, it makes sense. There’s no scooter lock ever on the dark ends.”
That took me down a year-and-a-half-long journey where we were working with the scooter companies, consulting unlocking infrastructure, working with the governments, and all the chaos that came with scooters, which was launching hundreds of thousands of scooters. Basically watching a startup from five people becoming a unicorn in less than a year or over. It’s fascinating. That’s the background of myself and Mount. How we ended up in the short-term rental industry is serendipitous.
Before we get into your serendipitous vacation rental story, twelve years old, you come up with a patent. Let’s call it what it is. You’re not a “normal” child at twelve because that’s amazing. I want all children to have an entrepreneurial spirit. That’s not a bad thing. I have a twelve-year-old daughter and she’s an amazing artist. She does this kind of thing. She’s creative, but she’s not creating patents. Let’s talk about that a little bit more. What was your family life like? My assumption is it was nurturing. It was fulfilling. It was allowing you to go down these paths. How does this happen?
I honestly attribute it to a very unique combination of things. First of all, I’m the oldest of the triplet. They’re straight daughters. I grew up on a mini-team. I was essentially born a leader because there were three of us and they were looking to be as what to do. That was also super helpful. In starting a company, I was ready for it.
Within my family, I had gone to an elementary middle school that had these innovation programs. It was called the Gates Innovation Program. They were like, “Go innovate to your heart’s desire. The teachers will help you build it if you need a tool or such,” because I think there was 10 or 12 years old. At the end of it, they did a Shark Tank-style competition. They threw you in. I presented the lock idea when I was 12 in front of 100 people. I did a whole business pitch, which is probably why I’m pretty good at pitching now because I started so young.
The other random thing that not a lot of people know is my family’s background is in entrepreneurship. My both grandpa started businesses. Some are very successful. I grew up hearing these stories that in the 1950s, my grandpa started a company. How he was able to do it because he had a Reuben sandwich. He was sitting in an office in New York and brought it to the guy who ran the company. That’s how things started off.
A little side note, I’m a Reuben connoisseur. If I see a Reuben on a menu that I haven’t tasted, I’m like, “I have to get it.” I know exactly what I want to do. I digress. You clearly grew up in a hustling environment. It’s in your DNA. The first question is, out of the triplets, did you get all the entrepreneurial genes? The second question on top of that is, how did that affect how you grew up? I know my friends that were hustlers and doing all kinds of businesses growing up were different. They moved and thought differently. It was who they were in the things that they did. It was natural because some people can learn it and some people it’s in them. How was that journey starting young? Talk to us a little bit about that.
I never looked at it as being different because it was everything I knew and I didn’t know any different. I was semi-different. When you look at the triplets together, me and my two sisters, they were very studious. I was not. They would be on the honor roll. I was never close to being on the honor roll. I was focused on building and they were like, “Let’s get good grades.” I was like, “Cool.”
In that sense, I’m a little different. I had some other crazy experiences happen to me too while in high school and such like that. All of these unique experiences combined create a hell of an entrepreneur. That’s pretty much what the investors should be looking for. It’s those crazy people. You got Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. I’m going to throw in Elizabeth Holmes even though she did crazy shit. All these people throw up in these entrepreneurial environments and you couldn’t have recreated it if you had wanted.
You said you had some crazy stuff happen and other experiences happen in high school. Can you allude to any of these?
In middle school, me and my sisters were in a band called Triple Threat, and I was the drummer. That led me to play the drums in high school in a band. We were in R&B bands. We played covers of like Michael Jackson and stuff like that. My first experience was as our band director for that band. He played at the Grammys. He grew up in Nashville or somewhere in the music world. He took us on a world tour throughout Europe. I was playing the drums in a band in front of 2,000 to 3,000 people, which is not something a normal high school student does. That would be the first.
This is an R&B cover band doing things like Michael Jackson?
Yes, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and Al Green. We threw it all the way back. It was good.
I want receipts. There’s got to be a video somewhere. I want to see it.
I’m going to Google the shit out of Triple Threat and then hope the right things pop up because you never know to Google.
That taught me some weird things about leadership that were super helpful because when you’re the drummer and if you mess up, everyone knows. If you sing the wrong lyrics, people are going to be like, “That sounded weird,” but they might not notice. If you mess up on the drums, the whole thing has gone down. It’s a lot of pressure at an early age. The second weirdest thing, which I can’t even replicate, was crazy. I just turned sixteen and I drove to school that day. It was snowing because it was Colorado. This kid cut tried to whip into the spot next to me. He whipped into me and I was hit by a car. I had my whole right leg side of my body shattered. I was in the hospital for few weeks in a wheelchair for a few months and had to relearn how to walk.
[bctt tweet=”When you’re the drummer, if you mess up, everyone knows.” via=”no”]
That’s a journey in and of itself, like rehab journeys, especially physically, not even to mention at that age and that level.
All these things shape you. Rehab at sixteen of a total accident. The kid felt terrible. No man does that shit on purpose. What did that do to your drive? What was that thing you think clicked?
The biggest thing that clicked is I was semi-shot before that happened and then I realized, “For what? There’s no point. You get one life, you might as well live it to the fullest.” I became a pretty positive person after that because the worst had happened. I was like, “It can’t get much worse than being in a hospital bed for a few weeks.” After that, I became a very positive person. I became very outgoing as well and I was like, “Let’s balls to the walls. Let’s go. I don’t care what happens, but I’m going to make the most of it.” When I go through rehab, I had to set goals for myself and they were small ones.
[bctt tweet=”You get one life; you might as well live it to the fullest.” via=”no”]
One was like, “Put enough weight on your right foot you could climb up the stairs.” That type of stuff and then, “Let go of the crutches. Let go of the wheelchair. All that stuff as well.” I think goal setting is what I learned during that time. I took that into this next entrepreneurship journey where I’m like, “By the time I hit 25, I want to be a millionaire. By the time I hit 27 or 28, I want to be able to sell Mount, exit it, have it go public, something crazy where I’m onto the next phase of my life.” Stuff like that has kept me driven as well. I learned it because I was hit by a car. I turned 25 now, 2022.
Did you make your goal?
I did.
Congratulations and happy birthday. When everyone read this, you’ll be a week and a half into your 26th trip around. I digress again. We’re back to a couple of years ago. You were a lock company. Now you’re looking and you’re coming into the vacation rental and/or the experiences. Let’s talk about where Mount is.
We’ve made 8 or 9 pivots at this point. We went from the scooter industry to the Airbnb short-term rental industry. We discovered a massive problem within the industry. There isn’t a great way to offer your guests an elevated experience when it comes to amenity rentals and extras at the property. It’s hard to operate like a hotel. A hotel can have electric bikes, they have a pool, they have a game room and all this fun stuff. You can’t do that at a short-term rental property as of now, especially if you want to upsell or insure it. There are a lot of barriers. We realized that because what we tried to do was we brought 30 scooters to the industry, put them at properties and tried to rent them out.
It was a massive disconnect because there was no software that allowed that to be possible. Nothing connected it to the PMS. A lot of things missing. That’s what we figured out and started to build. We built a software platform. In the future, it can take anything you own or buy and turn it into a rentable amenity for your guests. The best example is golf carts, kayaks and paddleboards. Some people take it far. They turn a podcast studio into a rentable amenity for nomadic travelers. They did firewood bundles, beach bundles, beach equipment, bundles, that type of stuff starting to elevate the experience.
I love the idea. I have questions around it because I still want to learn and some things scare me. If I was in your shoes, I’d be nervous about offering things like that. If I am a host that wants to go ahead and use Mount. They have some bikes that they want to make rentable. What happens as far as someone goes on that bike, didn’t wear a helmet and gets hurt? Who’s liable? How does this work? I know you’ve thought all this through. There’s liability insurance and all the different things that you are covering. How does that work to ease the minds of a property manager or anyone that want to go ahead and use your company and services?
The biggest barrier as to why people don’t do this themselves is liability insurance. That headache and nightmare of like, “What happens when someone gets hurt?” We essentially took a note of what Airbnb did back in the day when it was risky to list your own property for rent. You’re like, “What happens if it gets damaged?” We went out and created a custom policy for our software platform because it is set pretty much an Airbnb-type platform, but for everything else. Our insurance policy basically covers you as a Mount host for whatever you’re listing that carries liability. Electric bikes for example.
If you list it on our platform, you become additionally insured so that when your guests rent your bike, they take it off the property, and if they happen to hurt themselves, that general liability injury is covered. What we’re working towards now is more damage policies because that’s honestly a bigger one if you want to list a $20,000 golf cart, a boat or something like that. I haven’t cracked that piece yet. That’s what we’re attempting, but that’s where it started.
That’s super smart. From a consumer and/or putting myself in the shoes of a property manager, those are the things that I’m thinking about. I’m like, “I got this thing. I’m going to go ahead and rent a kayak and someone’s going to get hurt.” I don’t want to be the gloom and doom guy but these are the type of things I’m thinking of. You have other people that are in our space that are only talking gloom and doom, which negatively affects the overall vision of what we’re trying to build here as an industry. I love the fact that you and your team have thought these things through and you’re coming up with a solution.
With that said, I can see that sky is the limit with this. Is it? I love the idea, but what if someone is like, “I got this trap shooting set up right here.” Where my mind is going is like, “This guy got a great cabin out in Oregon and he’s got a trap shooting thing that he’s putting out there.” Are there limits to who and what? Also, in terms of that risk mitigation, are you partnering with people or are you guys building that into the model where you’re also building that as a part of the business if that makes sense?
Honestly, that is something we’ve had to think about because as you can imagine, people get creative and it is very dependent on your property and where it is located based on what you want to list. The way we manage it right, and people will be able to start seeing, we’re revamping the entire website. You can go online and click List An Amenity. It’ll walk you through a five-step process. Where the stop-gap is, is we have amenity buckets, basically electric bike scooters. You click where your amenity falls into what category. We also have another category.
[bctt tweet=”People get really creative, and it is very dependent on your property and where it is located.” via=”no”]
If you happen to be creative, the other category is for you. Those ones are not going to be going live because we’re not built for those yet, but if we get enough requests in the other category, we’ll start to open up category by category so that then you can list skit shooting or whatever you called it. We want to make sure liability-wise, the host is covered if they do list it. We might be taking a note from Hopper as well since we already took a note from Airbnb.
With the insurance aspect, we built it into the platform. If you work with Mount, you get it. Where I want to take it is if you do happen to be renting, let’s call it a $50,000 yacht and you’re renting it for 2 or 3 days, you as the guest could opt-in for further damage protection. You’d be paying extra for it, but then if anything were to happen, you’d be covered or stuff like that where Mount doesn’t have to take on the cost, but we can upsell it as a product on our platform.
We are jumping in with FinTech. If you can talk about that, let’s talk about that but I also want to talk about your upcoming happening in New York.
Let’s touch on both. What John is alluding to is Mount’s Superpower. I would call it mine as well as the ability to LinkedIn stock people until they come and work for me. I had the ability to do that with Luca, who works at Hopper. I met him at a conference. He at first very much scared me because he was serious about the business of Mount and grilling me with questions, but then I realized that was what we needed. We needed someone who was going to be grilling us and thinking about growth in the future, and his expertise came from the short-term rental space from Hopper, Plum Guide and all of the places he’s worked.
For those who are unaware, Luca Parducci is the director of supply at Hopper Homes.
He is our newest advisor at Mount. He will be joining us in an advising capacity to help us take Mount to the next level and get to that Series A. I’m excited to have him on the team.
He has been super positive in my personal growth and professional development. I’m excited to know that he’s coming on in an advisory role with Mount.
He’s coming on as an investor as well so he’s an advisor and investor.
Let’s talk about this thing coming up here in New York and what is this all about.
You read it here first. If you’ve been paying attention on LinkedIn at all, you might have heard about Mount because we’re coming out of the woodwork. We’re like, “We’re here to stay.” In the first event we ever threw happened in Portugal at the Vacation Rental Worldwide Summit. We tricked out one of our amenities. It was a big yacht. We invited some of the industry’s best on there for a six-hour cruise down the river. We have a private chef. The whole thing was catered and it was a phenomenal time.
LinkedIn was working, but ChannelBuzz was working too. I was supposed to be there. I was getting some pictures and other things. I was like, “This was pretty cool.”
It was our first-ever event. It was super fun to throw. We’re starting to disrupt the conference scene. We’re calling this the amenity experience sponsorship level as opposed to normally getting a booth and being boring. We’re pushing the boundaries there. What we’ve decided to do with our next event, because we are doing one, is essentially a hello to the world of, “This is Mount. Come experience what we have to offer.” We’re tricking out one of our Airbnb properties in the city of New York.
It’s a penthouse. It has a massive private roof outdoors. What we’re going to do is bring in a lot of Mount amenities. We’re bringing in other female founders from a PropTech space because there’s a big PropTech conference going on in New York. We’re going to have this industry gathering. A fringe event for the CRE Tech and New York Tech Week conference is happening as well. It’s a place to experience Mount and meet other amazing female founders, other PropTech founders, and investors. All while you’re experiencing Mount as it was supposed to be an experience.
I love that. I think that is the ingenuity there. It’s exactly the things. Keeping things fresh, new, people on their toes and doing something different in what better way to showcase who and what you are than by doing and bringing people into who and what you are live. I see that multi-vertical reach too. I see you’re going with it. It’s brilliant.
Are we going to see you at the Book Direct Show?
Mount is doing another event at Book Direct. We are partnering with Touch Stay and we are doing a tricked-out boat experience.
This will be a couple of weeks from the Book Direct Show. It’ll be a big announcement at the Book Direct Show about what we’re doing as well. We’re super excited about it. There are many amazing partners and people involved with this. Where’s next for you? We talked earlier about the sky’s the limit, but really is the sky’s the limit? You had a great answer for this, but we all know the disconnect with the guest experience.
You’re taking it to a different level. There are other companies that are doing some great things as well in our space that are bringing outside guest experiences and making them available. What you’re doing is you’re making guest experience amenities available for ease of access through software with the use of their phone and be able to go ahead and purchase this and add on. Five years from now, what do you see Mount doing that it’s not doing now?
The vision for Mount comes back to Brian’s original vision for Airbnb. It was to have all of these local experiences and authentic ways of communication when you travel. They’re not able to do all of that anymore because now they’re a public company. They’re way too big and they need to make money. He announced that they are putting a lot more effort back into the Airbnb experience. It’s great because Mount compliments that. We’re the middleman between the property and the experience. We have the vehicles and the amenities and then, “Let’s bring in someone to facilitate that authentic experience.” That’s what Mount wants to do moving forward. Fast forward five years from now, pretty much every traveler out there, you’re going to see with a backpack.
The airlines are probably going to be disrupted and mad at us, but what it means is that if you come with a backpack, you now get to figure out how to rent everything in destination from the golf clubs you might want, the fancy ball gown you might need for a wedding, all that type of stuff, and you get to rent it from the locals. Instead of feeling like a traveler who’s sticking out, you’re wearing Americanized clothes in Europe and you look like a fool, you get the chance to become that local for a week. Rent, learn from them, take them to dinner, and get all of the experiences you possibly can. That’ll all be facilitated through Mount.
I love the vision. As a family guy, father of four, and traveling, I see this adding up. It’s getting exponentially more expensive. The more things where I could like, “Screw it. I’ll pack like some insane suitcases to go ahead and take care of because I’ll bring it with me.” I’m okay with sticking out a sore thumb because I’m a dad looking like a dad. How do we keep that affordable? I love the vision, but how do we keep that so everyone can utilize it?
It’s kind of what Airbnb does. You have the luxury end of your scope where it’s like a ten-bedroom house in Greece. It’s a great villa of $20,000 a night, but then you have the 1-bedroom inside a 4-bed where it’s a hostel and it’s $60 a night. Because people that list on Mount get to choose their pricing, they can list nicer stuff and more economical stuff. That’ll take care of this economic gap where it’s like, “If you don’t want to spend a lot of money, you can even rent it for the Avor. You don’t even have to rent it for your entire stay.” If you do need something your entire stay, go ahead and do that. That’s where it comes into play.
It would be hard to make this for every single traveler out there because they all have different needs. For example, you’re a family of four. Your needs are a lot different than the Gen Z traveler who maybe yesterday decided to go to Greece, then they get to Greece and in five days decide they want to extend their trip and they’re going to go backpack to Norway. That’s the difference. Mount is catered to the Gen Z traveler where it’s more or last minute. It’s nomadic. You’re traveling. You’re forgetting things. You don’t want to go with everything. You don’t know your life is chaotic. That’s where we fit in right now down the line.
I get it too because the other thing is you’re not traveling Europe with big ass bags. To fly somewhere, that’s outrageously expensive as it is.
I’m being devil’s advocate for sure. I’m trying to dig in a little bit.
This also going to change culture and behavior because behavior and culture are changing too. I’m the guy that used to overpack and I still overpack, but now, I got a 72-hour backpack and I’m learning to use that thing. If you’re going to continue to use that thing, it’s going directly to the things that she’s saying because when I’m on the ground personally, I like supporting local economies where I can and where it’s feasible. The other part about it is the ease of travel of knowing that you can have what you need when you get there and you don’t have to bring it in. You don’t have to take it back.
I have a question for this, and I’ll be honest, I haven’t used Mount, but I’m going to. As a traveler, would I know ahead of time that this property has Mount and be able to see the things because that would obviously change some of my decision-making processes? If it’s something that I show up and then, “They got Mount. What is this?” That’s a little bit different. If it’s promoted correctly at the beginning and its part of the package, the campaign or the property managers or the hosts are pushing out, my assumption is early on, you’re going to be able to understand, “These are all available. Check it out.”
The ideal use case is the host has done what they’re supposed to. They’ve updated their listing. Their photo carousel is powered by Mount, “Here are the amenities available at this property?” If you’re a traveler that has used a Mount before, the way it’s designed to be used are you open up our app and it populates with a map. You can drag the map anywhere and zoom in on your property. It’ll populate little bubbles of all of the amenities that are in your area that you can rent because you don’t just have to rent the amenities from your property. Let’s say there’s an Airbnb two doors down, short-term rental, you can rent from them as well. It’s connecting everything together.
Are you working with hosts or you are partnering with property management companies that have 50, 100 or 200 units? Are you working towards that direction as well to go ahead and get an inventory grab as far as doors go?
For now, we have to because we need a lot of supply on the platform. We have two programs. For the individual host, it is super simple because they typically already have this stuff, either in the owner’s closet or whatever. They take what they already have and list it on the site and become their own Mount host. For property managers, the thing we realized is they have no time in their day for anything else. They’re already overworked. Their margins are already super thin and they want to use Mount because it increases their margins. If you’re the owner and manager of the amenities, you don’t have to give that revenue to the owner. You’re using their land essentially. You have to get permission.
What we’ve done is we’ve stood them up a co-host program, which is funny because they’re inherently co-host. What it does is it brings in a professional amenity fleet manager. If you have 200 properties saying in Florida and you want bikes, you can bring in that co-host who will come with the electric bikes, maybe 100 of them. They’ll service all of your properties with electric bikes. They’ll make sure they’re running. They’ll do the maintenance and go get them if they’re lost. You as the property manager are very hands-off. You’re granting access to the guests and the property and you’re getting anywhere from 30% to 40% of the rental revenue from the bikes.
You’ve already built these relationships out with bike and everything you have access to. I’m assuming kayaks and all these typed of things. Depending on the destination, you already have relationships you can plug and play.
The Mount hosts model, the one where you’re an individual owner, is live globally. The co-host model is only in the US right now, but hoping to get that global as well.
I love these cool products and SaaS that come in. It does this stuff that you’re like, “Why did I take it late?” It’s the same as when we were talking about trash pickup. We had a can monkey. I’m like, “I wish I thought about that.” That’s dumb. It makes much sense. It takes some outside-the-box thinking to go, “We could do this. It’s a little bit of it.” I’m not downplaying how hard it has been as an entrepreneur to build what you build. I’m excited for you and for your showcase in New York. What are the dates for the showcase in New York?
We are still finalizing dates. It’ll be the week of October 10, 2023 because that’s New York Tech Week and it’s also the week of the CRE Tech Bigs PropTech Conference.
We’ll be right around when this comes out. I’m excited to see all the photos and hear all the buzz around it. We’re going to go ahead and see you at the Book Direct Show. You’re part of this super awesome project that we are code name and story-time. The first time anyone public has a code name and story time, that is going to go out. I’m super excited for you and Mount. We’ll see you at the International as well. Any last thing you’d like to go ahead and share with our readers?
I don’t think so. Honestly, we covered pretty much my entire life. That’s perfect.
To be fair, it’s a shorter life than Mateo and I who are twice as old as you. Readers, if you haven’t gone ahead and liked our show on Apple or Spotify, please go ahead and do so. Leave a review. It helps us out tremendously. Thanks, Madi.
Thank you so much, guys.
Important Links
- Mount
- Hopper
- Book Direct Show
- Touch Stay
- Apple – No BS Short-term Rental Podcast
- Spotify– No BS Short-term Rental Podcast
- http://Megaphone.fm/AdChoices