The Exchanges

Q Makes perfect sense. Um, in terms of velocity, just so we can understand, let's go back to, and I imagine actually, are you pretty seasonal?

A Yeah, very much so. And that's, you know, one of the things, uh, so right now the answer would definitely be yes. Most of our bookings still come from college football. That's kind of where we started. That's been our bread and butter. But one thing that's really been a priority I'd say over the last six to 12 months has been widening out that niche. So I mentioned PGA were actually, you know, officially partnered with six PGA tournament events where we are their private home rental provider. So we're doing rentals for players, caddies, uh, sponsors. We're starting to, to do the same thing with NASCAR races where we're partnering with NASCAR teams. So when they're traveling, You know, each car that's in a race has 20 to 25 people who's on the team looking for a place to stay. Um, so, in short, we are still seasonal, but we're spreading into these kind of new verticals to try to level that season, the seasonality out a little bit.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, very much so. And that's, you know, one of the things”

Q Okay, so how do you, like, beat the hell out of Airbnb?

A Yeah, so, uh, we're really focusing on these kind of what we consider non-events destinations, you know, outside of football weekends and graduation, a town like South Bend, Indiana, or Tuscaloosa, Alabama, or Oxford, Mississippi, doesn't necessarily have a ton of tourism, so a lot of the, uh, I guess bigger players in the vacation rental space don't have a ton of inventory in those type of towns. So we're just being, you know, very specific and, and, you know, very targeted about what towns we're going after. And we're, you know, building up that inventory. We're oftentimes kind of actively creating the peer to peer home rental market in those specific towns. And then similarly on the, on the demand side, you know, we're able to be so targeted with our, uh, with our advertising, you know, towards sports fans. Did you graduate from this school? Do you like this school's Facebook page? You know, we're advertising on college football podcasts, college football blogs, uh, again, just getting really granular, getting in there where we know the super fans are going to be spending their time when they're online.

AI assessment note: “bigger players in the vacation rental space don't have a ton of inventory”

Q Yeah. Now let me ask you a question. Sokka is obviously one of your investors. Um, if he didn't miss out and, and regret missing out so much on the Airbnb deal, do you think he would have been as aggressive at getting into you guys on Shark Tank?

A Uh, that's a good question. I think there was maybe, I think there was definitely some FOMO from Airbnb. It was funny. Um, We got a call from the producers the night before we were going to film, letting us know who our panel of sharks was going to be. So up until, you know, 12 hours before we didn't know that Chris was going to be there. And my initial reaction, I knew there was a story about Chris and Airbnb. And for some reason I thought he had invested. So my initial thought was like, oh man, this, you know, this can be a conflict of interest. If he's invested in Airbnb, he can't invest in us. And I, you know, ran home, started doing as much research as I could found out that he had missed out on them. So we definitely tried to play on that a little bit.

AI assessment note: “I think there was definitely some FOMO from Airbnb.”

Q Yeah, no, I mean, obviously that's a smart, that's a smart thing to do. Um, is kind of Shark Tank exactly what we see on TV, and if so, if not, where's it different?

A So, uh, I'd say the difference is that, and I think everybody realizes this, it's, it's super condensed what you see on TV. You know, you see eight minutes. Uh, I think the average pitch is somewhere between 45 and 60 minutes. We were on the short end, I think, for a couple reasons. I think, you know, we went in with a really reasonable evaluation, and we, we had some traction. You know, we weren't just kind of brand new at that point. Uh, we were only about 25 minutes. So, you know, they, they cut out a lot, and kind of what I've explained to people is the stuff they cut out tends to be The stuff that maybe the average viewer wouldn't care a lot about. So, you know, kind of the, uh, you, you know, walking through the granular unit economics and, you know, what's your average rental, what percentage is your take, what's your repeat customer rate, you know, those sorts of things, um, that are obviously super important to a business, but first and foremost, they're making a television show. Right. So, um, they cut out a lot of that splice it together and make it dramatic, but it is very real in the sense that, um, you know, they say, go, you start your thing and the producers don't step in until it's done. So, um, They told us, you know, the schedule is very much subject to change because someone can go in there and they might be in the tank for 90, 90 minutes to two hours if it …

AI assessment note: “I'd say the difference is that... it's super condensed what you see on TV.”

Q So how do you, you have kind of, let's say you're dominating the space right now, right? This specific niche. How do you kind of now go into expanding your market share? You've mentioned like go to other sporting events, but after sporting events, how do you, how do you expand market share after that?

A Well, yeah, I think, you know, I'd say first and foremost, there's a ton of green space within college football. So we're, we've by no means tapped out college football. Uh, secondly, even within college towns, we are now working on, okay, how do we increase utilization of the inventory that we already have in college towns? So, you know, graduation is already big for us, but how do we push that more? Uh, reunion weekends. We're starting to do partnerships with wedding planners in these college towns. Cause a Um, we're starting to work with youth sports tournament organizers who put on tournaments on these college campuses. So I think, you know, number one is continuing this green space college football. Number two is the inventory we have. How do we further, further utilize it? And I think the third is kind of these new verticals, um, you know, PGA events, NASCAR races, et cetera. And, you know, we don't want to go too broad, too fast. We want to kind of stay true to being very specific. We're not everything for everyone, but if you're a sports fan, we want to be able to host you, you know, whatever event you're going to.

AI assessment note: “We're starting to do partnerships with wedding planners in these college towns.”

Q What's it like working with Chris soccer? Do you pick up the phone and call him every week and you went up? I mean, what's it like?

A Yeah. You know, coming out of Shark Tank, it was kind of a funny story. We, you know, we filmed, it was great. We're riding high. We fly home and then we don't hear anything from Chris or Mark for like a week and a half. And my partner, Drew and I were kind of joking. We're like, well, you know, we didn't get there. We didn't get their business cards. So, you know, what's kind of the next move here, but pretty shortly after we heard from them, and I think we had this question of, okay, is this going to be a check? And we never hear from these guys again. What's their involvement going to be? Clearly they're really busy. Uh, we've been very pleased to find that they've been, you know, incredibly involved. We're sending them updates every week. Um, you know, if we have specific asks for introductions or if we're looking for feedback, they're very quick to respond. It's, it's insane to me when you think of both Chris and Mark. How many portfolio companies they have, how much they have on their plate. Yet if we email them something, they're responding within 30 minutes. Um, you know, so it's, it's just crazy how on top of the stuff they are. And, you know, example about a month and a half ago, uh, we have been kind of talking to some of the producers at Shark Tank about, you know, we'd love to kind of be featured on the show again. We think we have a great story of how things went …

AI assessment note: “We're sending them updates every week... they're responding within 30 minutes.”