In this episode, we have the special honor of speaking with Jack Forbes. Jack is co-founder of Kopa.co, a direct booking site that allows guests to find short and medium-term furnished apartments and hosts with business professionals.
Jack talks about how Kopa started, how they find businesses that provide corporate clients, the challenges of scaling a direct booking site, and how they get hosts and renters to their platform.
Video Transcript
00:00:00
I will say, we’re trying to give those individual homeowners a fighting chance, right? Like fundamentally companies that can just optimize, you know, they do have that advantage, right? They can find these cleaners that they charge the least to and use technology to automate like the messaging and everything. But I think fundamentally individual homeowners and hosts can offer the best experience, right? Like you have that opportunity to personalize the experience.
00:00:29
This is episode number five, nine on short Rental success stories podcast. Are you an investor that’s looking to have your home professionally managed, go to cohost it.com for more information, welcome back to short term rental success stories. I’m your host, Julian Sage. This is a show where I talk to hosts about their journeys and starting and growing the short term rental business. My goal is that you’ll be able to walk away with practical information. That’ll help you become a better host and learn how to scale your business. Like any exceptional host. We all strive for five star reviews. So please go on over to iTunes and let us know what you enjoy as it really helps support the show. If you haven’t done so already going over to our Facebook group, the host nation to connect with the community.
00:01:08
Hey, what is going on? Host nation. I’m super excited to be back again with you this week. In this episode, we had the special honor of speaking with Jack Forbes. Jack is the co-founder of copa.co a direct booking site that allows guests to find short and medium term furnished departments and hosts with business professionals. There’s been a big pivot in the short term rental space where a lot of hosts are pivoting to be able to accommodate medium term guests or guests that will be staying for typically anywhere from a month onward. A medium term guest is typically going to be a type of corporate client where you are getting them from, let’s say a hospital or another business. There’s been a lot of interest in trying to find and accommodate these types of guests. A lot of hosts have been going to sites like furnish finders.com, also host putting their listings on sites like Zillow to try to be able to offer month to month rentals.
00:01:55
One of the things though is that a lot of hosts are also trying to separate themselves from these OTAs, like Airbnb booking.com, VRBO, and trying to diversify themselves onto different platforms. But it doesn’t really matter which platform you go to because you’re always going to be dependent on another platform for your guests as professionals. We’re always talking about direct booking sites and trying to capture that guest information and lead them back to our websites for a lot of hosts. It’s been one of those things where it’s been on the back burner saying, okay, I’m gonna do this eventually. But right now, since everything that has been especially happening with Airbnb, many hosts are trying to look for different ways to be able to diversify themselves. But still even if you are diversifying yourself, you’re still going to be dependent on that platform to be able to provide you guests.
00:02:39
Well, that’s why I’m super excited to talk with Jack Forbes because Jack is gonna be sharing with us information on how you’re able to take leads from the source. And this is where you’re gonna be working with businesses, hospitals, and different types of organizations and get them to directly stay with you. So this episode is really unique because Jack is talking about trying to get leads for a direct booking site that is basically connecting you to another renter. So you could imagine Jack is trying to create something similar to like a furnished finder, but as a host, the information that Jack’s gonna be sharing is invaluable because you can apply the same things that Jack is doing in his own business, into yours. Jack talks about how Copa started, how they find businesses that provide corporate clients, the challenges of scaling a direct booking site and how they get hosts and renters to their platform.
00:03:27
If you like my show notes for this episode, go to Short Term Sage dot com slash STR five nine. Or if you like my show notes, send directly to your inbox every week, then go to shorttermsage.com slash show notes with all that being said onto this week’s conversation. Hey, welcome back, host nation to another episode of short Rental success stories. In this episode, we have the special honor of speaking with Jack Forbes. Now, Jack is the, one of the co-founders of a direct booking site called Copa. And Copa allows you to be able to find furnished departments and compatible housemates. So it’s not exclusive to traveling nurses, but Jack actually reached out to me on LinkedIn, which is kind of interesting saying like, Hey, you know, I heard about the podcast and you know, this is what we’re doing. And I definitely wanted to, you know, share this resource with the, with the host nation community.
00:04:13
But, and then I got a phone call and a text message from this guy named Jack, who said he was working with cope on my phone. And I was just like, how, how did this guy find me? And he said that he found me through furnish finders. So Jack was going through furnish finder in my area, gave me a call. And I was like, are you trying to stock me? Or is this a, just an uncanny coincidence, but Jack is a real go-getter and I definitely wanted to get him on the show. So Jack, would you please introduce yourself? Let the host nation know who you are and what inspired you to get into the short term rental world?
00:04:45
Hello everybody. Thank you for hosting me. First of all, really appreciate it. Yeah. Happy to talk about Copa. That is my life. Yeah. And it was a pretty funny coincidence that, that I gave you a call after also connecting on LinkedIn, the double whammy there. Yeah. So briefly about Copa it’s first worth noting. I am one of three co-founders Zach and Courtney are my two other co-founders and we would not be where we are today without them. So shout to them. They’re phenomenal. Humans, like you touched is medium housing marketplace. Basically the, in a nutshell is that we moved 52 times in the span of seven years between the three of us co-founders and found it to be quite the struggle every time for those four to six months stay that we had, you know, we were interns 15 times over new grads, you know, moved around a lot and, you know, found that, you know, started to support the longer stays. But we just saw that the renting experience we wanted was pretty different from the Vacation experience. So with that, you know, we help renters form compatible groups of housemates amongst other things. And yeah, we started five years and have a long way since.
00:06:09
And bookings, are you getting through right now?
00:06:13
Yeah, we’re, we’ve approaching two 50 bookings per month now. So we just went full time on COA about two years ago. So just kind been ramping up new markets while we’ve been focused on product every year up, up until now.
00:06:34
Awesome. I, I definitely wanna hear about how you started Copa for, but for those of you, for the, for the listeners, can you kind of explain how Copa works, the model and you know, what, you know, how the direct booking integrates with like Airbnb or these different sites? Like what, what is Copa?
00:06:51
Yeah, for sure. So I’m sure a lot of you listening are on Airbnb. We work very similarly to Airbnb from your perspective, we’re kind of like Airbnb for these longer states. So again, we found renting to be a pretty different experience from vacationing where, you know, as a host, even you want more verification about these people, right? Like a six month stay is a much bigger deal than six days. So you typically want more of like a Rental application, a security deposit, a lease, and from a Rental perspective as well, you know, there’s other things that we needed it as well. You know, we needed to be able to find people to live with in many cases, cause with urbanization growing faster than ever, cities are more expensive than ever to live in. And whether you’re an intern, a travel nurse, maybe even in the military in many cases to afford rent in those places, you have to live with people.
00:07:49
So yeah, we kind of have a housemate search or housemate finder built into the housing search that we also have created. And, you know, other kinda renting things that differ from Airbnb too include, you know, needing to see a commute time because usually you’re moving for work or school and it really comes down to like, how close can I be to that, that destination, you know, our service fees are a lot lower. That’s another really big one where we tried using Airbnb ourselves, but found for, again, these four to six stays, you know, that service fee ended up being anywhere from like a thousand to 3000. And, you know, we couldn’t really afford that, especially as kinda younger renters. So yeah, we only charge 1% service fee host and 2% to renters and, you know, don’t plan on charging more since we’re hoping to not get caught in the fundraising hamster wheel that involves, you know, having to basically answer to investors and kind of optimize profits. But instead we hope to run, you know, more of like a long term business that doesn’t have to grow at hyper rates, but rather can, you know, serve a, a purpose that genuinely has a positive impact. So yeah, that’s kinda the in nutshell.
00:09:17
No. Awesome. Thank, thank you. Thank for the explanation. It’s, you know, I, I wanted to get you on here, Jack, you know, not only to share it with the community, but also of to, you know, highlight the different people that are in the space, cuz a lot of hosts that maybe just get into short renting. They’re just, maybe they’re just thinking of hosting, but you know, having there’s there’s different aspects of short-term rentals, you know, one of the terms that you said was a midterm Rental, there’s lots of other, you know, fields within the short term rental community. So prior to getting into this, did you know what hosting was? Did you know, you know, do you, do you, do you even know what hosts do now? Do you have a better understanding of kind of what the community is? Like, how has this been?
00:09:58
Yeah, so I honestly was not familiar with hosting before starting Copa, but I actually have since been a host on Copa. So I do rent out one place in San Francisco, honestly, to kind of dog food, our app, for those of you that dunno the term dog food, Google has made it popular, but I’m sure others use it as well. It basically means using your own product to make sure, you know, you’re creating something that you enjoy using. So yeah, having been a host for over two years now through Copa, I have definitely understood the host that a lot better and it’s worth noting too. One of the original reasons I started Copa with my co-founders is because we all had some, you know, not so great renting experiences, some not so great kinda landlords, but we also had really great landlords and hosts and you know, we thought why can’t the not as great hosts or experiences we had always be those great ones.
01:11:04
And that, that really was the main inspiration is like those great hosts I had were just phenomenal. Right? Like some of the things they would do, one of, one of those hosts who was actually one of our very first hosts on Copa would let you pay in Bitcoin if you wanted. No one really did that. But the fact that he offered it was really cool. He would put together a dinner for everyone staying at his five places. He rent, rents out every four months. So, you know, he would typically have new renters every four months and would have a big dinner with everyone. You know, he was obviously just your typical, very responsive, all that. But I just saw how down to earth he was and doing some things that I hadn’t really seen before as a renter. And I was like, okay, that’s, that’s really cool. I, I wanna to, you know, try and encourage all hosts to do the same.
01:11:59
And, and with, with this, because you know, a direct booking site or kinda what you’re creating is like an OTA would, would you consider Copa more like an OTA or direct booking site?
01:12:10
It’s a good question. I would say more of a direct booking site since all bookings are completed through COA. So it’s more like Airbnb, you know, we’re not just a lead generation, like, you know, Craigslist, for example, we have an end to end experience. And the reason we did this is because again, we built that experience we wanted as renters, right? So we were actually Canadian students from Ontario, Zach and I at least coming to the us for those internships. And in some cases, hosts, genuinely wanted us to mail a carrier check across the border for that initial deposit. And you know, some of those experiences that were just really inconvenient, kind of disjointed, we thought, well, why can’t we just always have that seamless experience of booking a place like you get on Airbnb. And that is definitely a major differentiator from the Craigslist and the binders and them.
01:13:10
And on top of that, you know, we also, at the same time saw this Ted talk, we really liked called what is home and it’s by a guy named Pico ire. And I just love the talk. And the, the gist of it is basically he makes the argument that home is a combination of the place you live, the people you live with and the experiences you have. And I couldn’t agree more, right? It’s not just about, you know, that physical apartment you’re in, but rather those housemates you’re living with the adventures you have outside of the house while you’re living there. And we kind of check off, you know, the place to live and the people to live with. We help renters find both of those, but we actually now also have started helping renters, you know, get outta the house and find things to do.
01:14:00
And not everyone would want that. Right. If we’re helping a family, you know, find a apartment to live in for three months while their new house is built, you know, they may not be interested in any kind of COA adventures of, of sorts, but the interns, the new grads, the travel nurses, a lot of other renters, you know, really are interested in getting help with yeah. Like what, what is there to do outside, like in this new city I’m in, who else can I do that with? You know, personally, it may not come across this way, but I’m an introvert and you know, I kind of gain manna so to speak by being alone. And that can definitely make it tough to convince myself, to get outta the house and, you know, try new things on those internships. And even now, and, you know, we wanna kinda help with that by lowering the Birtch to entry and, you know, ultimately helping people find a community, right. I used to think that was thet term, but in the last couple years I actually finally get what community really means. It’s kinda like feeling like you belong somewhere. And yeah, that’s the kind of third leg of the stool, the things to do when people to do it with that. We’re also trying to solve for now. And if we, you know, if the experience on Copa ended at message host, and then you just, you know, take a call and, you know, work directly, we wouldn’t be able to do Copa adventures either.
01:15:24
So, so you’re trying to include more, more aspects of Copa to turn it more from just connecting a traveler with a home to where you’re trying to create all of these other experiences, kind of converting into some type of online travel agency where you have experiences and, and all these other things to make it a more full experience.
01:15:45
Exactly. Yeah. You know, we found that the kind of cous experience of just message landlord and then it ends there, you know, didn’t feel very human. Like it, it wasn’t the most fulfilling experience and Airbnb Airbnb experience is, you know, a cool thing that they’ve run where, you know, hosts are essentially kind of tour guides, but, you know, we see an opportunity for something kind of at a higher level than that, you know, instead of turning hosts into the tour guides, we can literally recommend any activity. Doesn’t have to be hosted by a co host. It could literally just be, here’s a really awesome mini P place near you. Here’s a great hike to go on. You know, we don’t have to make money from this kind of COA adventures side of things, but genuinely we can have a positive impact on people’s lives, right?
01:16:39
Like we can help them feel less lonely staying indoors. And honestly, you know, I think that loneliness and, and feeling like, you know, the lack of motivation to get outside and meet other people really can contribute to a lot of the mental health issues we see nowadays. Right? So I think there’s honestly a huge opportunity to even help fight depression and, and other, you know, anxiety and, and kinda mental health issues that are prevalent right now. So personally that’s like, what really drives me is more than just like a housing platform, but the opportunity to have a truly net positive experience on people’s lives. And I touched on this previously, but instead of, you know, starting a, a company that we can just, oh, hyper grow, make as much money as possible pump as much money into the company as possible. Instead if we can measure our success by kind of that positive impact we have on people. I think that’s just a much cooler end, honestly, a goal. I hope more companies shoot for,
01:17:47
Yeah. With, with everything that’s been happening right now. Have, have you seen increase in growth on your, your site or because of the lack of bookings that are happening in the world? Have you seen a decrease in your traffic?
01:18:04
Definitely a huge increase in supply. So, you know, a lot of the kind of Airbnb short term, you know, one to 30 day hosts have been really flocking to the, you know, medium term housing that we do. So huge increase in supply demand has, has stayed steady and grown a bit, not as much as we had projected, but there are obviously people still moving around, renting the travel nurses. We help students that have been kicked out of on campus housing and we are helping them through an initiative we introduce called Copa for good. So Copa for good is essentially us taking all of the hosts and documents on Copa and saying, Hey, if you can kinda hold yourself to these standards of, you know, cleanliness, discounted rates, you know, some of the basic procedures of making sure, you know, someone doesn’t move out, move in within 48 hours, you know, making sure there’s basic cleaning supplies, toilet paper, et cetera. If you can all hold yourselves to this, you know, we’ll mark you your profile and all, all your listings as Copa for good spaces. And then, you know, the travel nurses, the students, people who just can’t go home to risk getting a family member sick, they can all then see these spaces that are a good fit for them. So through that initiative, we’ve seen quite a few more renters coming to us, but yeah, definitely not like the increase in demand we were seeing, but still an increase of some sort.
01:19:40
And can you explain that that term medium, medium stays that you, you threw around a couple times now?
01:19:46
Yeah. I, I wanna make this a thing. So I find the current terminology rather confusing. So you got short term, which if you Google, it is technically one to 30 days, you got long term, which personally I always considered a year or more. And then the in between currently is called extended stay flexible leaves month to month, month leave. There’s just some such a, you know, array of terminology there, but really the thing, the term that makes sense between short and long is medium. Again, if you Google medium, it literally is the in between of short and long. So I wanna make medium term housing a thing. You know, I want that to be the standard, no more extended stay or flexible or monthly. So that’s what, what we’re kind calling ourselves is the medium term furnish housing marketplace. So we do one month minimum stays tend to go up to a year, but you know, we do support longer if needed with an average of four to six month rentals right now.
02:20:49
So, so more in line with what the corporate housing world kinda already says is their standard.
02:20:54
Exactly. Yeah.
02:20:56
OK. And can you talk to us about, because there’s a lot of hosts that are listening to this and you know, we, we’ve seen all these, you know, crazy things happening with Airbnb and lots of hosts are very angry trying to get off the platform, you know, trying to do the, the hashtag book direct movement and finding alternatives too, you know, having all of your traffic come from a single source. So utilizing, you know, Copa, utilizing furnish finders, you know, maybe some people will use Craigslist. I’ve seen a lot of hosts go onto Zillow and all these different platforms, all just to kind of feed into their, their own listings. So what was that like when you first started Copa? Like for a host, that’s just starting to take on trying to get more direct bookings. How was it when Copa first started to be able to try to get those first people to, you know, find out about you guys?
02:21:49
Yeah. We actually started focused solely on interns. So the first of required a student emailer to could say I was very small minded in some regards because yeah, I just saw a problem. I personally faced trying to find housing during those internships and said, oh, well, let’s just solve that specific problem. Thankfully, my co-founder Courtney joined very early on and that she’s the designer and bigger thinker of the group and said, well, why are you restricting it to only students? I mean, there’s plenty of people in a similar boat. We’ve talked about already digital nomads, travel nurses, new hires, moving to a new city that, you know, need the same thing. So that’s the point where we opened it up. But since we started with interns, the hosts, getting them on board actually was a much better pitch because they had been hosting these interns for years and San Francisco was ground zero for us and saying, Hey, you know, you know how you’ve been trying to use Craigslist to rent specifically to this renter demographic. Our platform is exclusively built for that demographic. So we’re like the same thing and it was even free at the time. So it was, you know, actually a pretty easy argument initially, which led to, you know, a good kinda fundamental base of hosts and listings to really prove out Copa as a company and prove, you know, fine product market fit.
02:23:29
So when Copa first started, you know, you were trying to fill a need and for the hosts that are listening, you know, that need your property has, you know, hopefully you’ve, you’ve built a brand. You haven’t, you know, a target customer, your target customer at that time was, was interns. How were you getting in front of your target customers? Were you like cold calling school or cold calling different businesses and saying like, Hey, you know, we housed interns. Like what, what was that process for you?
02:23:57
Yeah. So getting the host initially involved, just asking the interns, we knew, Hey, or where did you stay for this internship? Did you like staying there? If so, can you introduce to the host? And that worked quite well. You know, some of those hosts then have six properties they manage. And before, you know, it, you listings to the concept renters initially came from yeah. Employer partnerships. So a lot of tech companies here in Silicon valley, that again, we would even have the interns introduce us to their university recruiter and say, Hey, like I started using this service to find housing that worked well, you should offer it to, you know, the other interns, we started working with some of the universities. So university of Waterloo, where Zach and I are from has 20,000 cooperative education students every year that work, you know, anywhere from locally in Ontario to us and beyond, and in the San Francisco bay area, for example, alone, Waterloo sends 500 interns every four months.
02:25:06
So that alone was a really big channel for us. And we’re honestly still like approaching kind of a hundred percent of those students coming to Copa to find place to live. So yeah, those were our initial renter growth channels. And since that has evolved into, you know, SEO, right. Search change optimization showing at the top of Google, we now manage 221 Facebook groups across the us for every major university. And even just some high level city ones. We have a lot of partnerships now. So over a hundred partnerships with, you know, medical staffing agencies, schools, relocation companies, and yeah, kinda a few other renter channels too, but that, that’s where it started initially.
02:25:55
That, that, that is so cool. I wanna dive more into that. You know, I think that this is, this is a real special episode for the, for those that, that are listening, that, that one channel that you found, it was kind of like, you know, in, in hosting we call it kind like the golden goose. Like you find that that investor client who just keeps on throwing more properties at you, and you’re just building up your management portfolio like that. But you found that golden goose coming from a, a single channel that was going to supply that was supplying interns for you, for the properties that you were connecting them with was, was that kind of like the game changer? Did everything change at that point?
02:26:31
Oh, it’s a good question. There. I feel like there, wasn’t a single point where everything changes. That’s really just where we got started since, you know, that was our use case as Waterloo interns, ourselves, to expand on that a little bit, the way cooperative education programs work is they’re a form of work, integrated learning. So in our case at Waterloo, we’re required to have five internships before we graduate, and those internships are built into the program. So you switch off four months of school, four months of work, four months of school, four months of work for five years, which is really great for hosts. Cause you get consistent interns all year round, you know, that can actually pay pretty well. Since in many cases, they’re at, you know, tech companies, financial institutions, what have you, they get stipends from their employer. So yeah, hosts have really just loved hosting these kinda interns. And that’s why I think it was a particularly good channel for us to start with. Yeah. In Waterloo case, they’re the biggest form of work integrated learning in the world, actually with the 20,000 annual co-op students or interns, you could say each year, you know, in the us schools that have co-op include Drexel university Northeastern and a few others, it’s not as prevalent, but honestly, in the rest of the world, co-ops actually a really big thing. Canada, almost every major university has some form of co-op now.
02:28:00
So, so you were using your existing, you know, knowledge base, just the things that you knew because you were, you were in that environment to be able to connect with that. I mean, that, that’s a really, you know, good opportunity, good chance, you know, very, very kind of lucky in that situation, but from growing from there though, how, you know, how do you, like, how would you even reach out to like, did you try to expand that intern network and keep on growing that? Or how do you grow from there?
02:28:29
Yeah, definitely growing the intern kind of renter demographic was our primary goal that happened for about, you know, three, three and years. And then last year and we’ve hires by partnering relocation companies, these, you know, even just students looking for off-campus housing. But initially that was our, our channel was growing the intern market, coming to us, including yeah. Other schools that, you know, would send us interns, summers are obviously especially big in the us since the colleges that don’t have a form of work learning, just have students coming for summer internships.
02:29:21
So how, how do you even, how do you even reach out to a school and, and try to offer that? Because like right now you’re, I mean, technically you’d be like competing against like a Saunder or lyric as far as trying to find, you know, those long term type of stays those corporate clients. But instead of you providing the housing, you come out pocket for, you’re just connecting it with the landlord or with the, with the host. So how are you, are you doing the same things that like these companies like SA and are doing, or are you doing something different to be able to find these types of, you know, corporate clients?
02:29:58
Yeah. So partnerships are huge for us. I would say that is our maybe secret sauce you could say. We just started reaching out to as many in this case, tech companies in Silicon valley, as possible to say, Hey, you should send all your year round interns our way. And I think the reason our argument was stronger than, you know, a Saunder or Zeus or someone going to them is because we could say, you know, we’re the one stop shop for all their furnish housing needs. We also help them find roommates. So, you know, the roommate matching, I think was a huge plus as well. But yeah, instead of that employer having to have, you know, 20 links to different operators, they could just have one COA link that, you know, their interns could then find housing at whatever operator was on there. So yeah, that was kind of our sauce. We honestly have never really approached too many schools. You know, schools have a much longer and slower sales cycle. So, you know, it can take a year to really become an official housing resource with the school. Whereas, you know, employers, especially tech are how to offer a new, innovative service like that.
03:31:22
So, so you’re, you’re, you were reaching out to all of these tech companies being in the Silicon valley area and just saying like, Hey, this is the site that you can go to. You don’t have to use all these other sites. You can just use ours. And that was kind of your, your pitch.
03:31:37
Yeah. You know, you don’t have to use the, the others, but also the, the kind of roommate housemate matching that we do was another huge plus because the employers would have to do that themselves previously. And we actually even, you know, took those conversations to the next level where some employers even said, and you know, so we actually even enabled employees to book the spaces directly through COA, or they could pay us for, you know, additional services for their interns that included guaranteed housing.
03:32:16
So, so what’s the difference from, let’s say Copa and like corporate housing by owners. So like corporate housing by owners is another, you know, kind of aggregate site where they just connect with different types of property owners that have fully furnished housing. What, what’s the difference between, between you two?
03:32:35
Yeah, I would say compared to corporate housing by owner, we are geared toward the, you know, younger demographics of corporate traveler, interns, you know, new hires, new grads, you know, we are very much focused on our technology. Right. Making sure we have a great user interface, user experience, which those younger demographics especially appreciate, you know, I think, yeah. Anyone, you know, using technology a lot nowadays, let’s say like in their twenties, I think will tend to go for, you know, that application that, you know, they find a lot easier to use versus, you know, one that maybe they see is a little clunkier. So yeah. We’re also not geared toward, you know, the general business traveler quite yet. So I think that’s the major difference.
03:33:30
OK. And you’re reaching out to these, these companies, these tech companies, as a host that is trying to get more direct bookings. Let’s say, you know, there’s, there’s a host that’s by like an airport, are you, you know, for Copa, are you trying to target, like, where would you be trying to target? Like if you had a property in a specific type of location and you, you were trying to fill direct clients with that property.
03:33:56
Yeah. So for the, you know, workers that we help, the interns, new grad hires, just new hires in general being near the businesses is huge. So in, you know, the case of the city being near downtown is pretty big. You know, Seattle is one of our other big cities now too, and we help a lot of Amazon new hires. So if hosts have a property near south lake union that is especially, you know, valuable there for the travel nurses, we help if they’re near a hospital that is particularly helpful. Sometimes, you know, there, those can coincide where the, you know, big buildings are and the employers, hospitals tend to be nearby. Now with the kind channel I’d say we’ve been approaching with schools, you know, if you are near a university to offer off campus housing, you know, that helps as well. But really commute is huge for our renters. You know, they all be as close to where they’re working, you know, at the employer where they’re be a nurse, let’s say at the hospital or where they’re going school,
03:35:08
What about for hosts that are in more like rural or Vacation destinations, like not necessarily a downtown, are, are those hosts able to still get those types of direct bookings? Like who would you even reach out to in order to try to get people to stay directly with you? If, if let’s say you in a rural location.
03:35:28
Yeah, absolutely. You know, we are more than happy to support like hosts in rural locations, you know, in those cases, it, it could be, let’s say, you know, off campus housing, cuz universities can kind of be in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes. You know, there still could be cases of those workers that say like construction workers there for a six month project. You maybe military, maybe even like an oil company that, you know, has moved a new project there. So there definitely are cases of, you know, renters need a place to live in those rural areas. We’re now approaching some of those potential partners like construction staffing agencies, you oil staffing agencies, like film studios, even if they’re gonna go, you know, film a movie for half a year somewhere we’re, we’re starting to approach them now too. But yeah, I think those are the first ones that come to mind in terms of rural, like where you could have construction. I would a big one.
03:36:31
That’s that’s super interesting. You know, just kind of thinking I want, I want the host sort listening to this to understand like, you know, if you have a property in a specific location, you’re trying to look and see like, okay, who are my target, my target guests, who would be my target client, but what you’re doing Jack is you have, you know, thousands of properties across the us. And then you’re trying to connect those thousands of people with the same, you know, with the people that they’re looking for. Essentially, it’s just, you’re going through the process of reaching out to these companies, reaching out to these construction companies and basically filling it for them. So, you know, they, they might be able to do it themselves, but you know, for the hosts that aren’t doing, that you’re basically just allowing these companies to be able to find them easier. Who are you contacting when you’re, when you’re pitching these or when you’re calling these companies and saying, Hey, I’ve got all of these properties that are available after these midterm stays. Who do you talk to? Do you just call the front desk and be like, you know, who’s, who’s the person in charge here? Or what, what who’s that a gatekeeper?
03:37:26
I would say. Yeah. So the, the question is kinda like who at the potential partners do we communicate with with,
03:37:32
Right.
03:37:34
So it, it really does depend, right? Like let’s say for a film studio, they tend not to have like a housing staff member. Right. That’s like dedicated to finding housing for the staff. It’s more just, you know, a general management kind member that has to deal with the logistics somewhere construction again, like, yeah, they, they don’t really have like a specific on housing. So it honestly varies. Like I haven’t found really like a pattern per se, where there’s like, oh, this title is what they tend to have. But you know, in other scenarios, there, there is a title, right? Like off campus housing, almost every university has a dedicated team for that, that we can contact medical staffing can be it hit and miss, right? Like sometimes you’ll have someone that a big part of what they do is ex explicitly finding, helping find housing for the nurses.
03:38:31
But in many cases they don’t have that person. So you’re just like trying to find who to talk to. And that’s really, you know, where we think we can add value to hosts as well, is like, we can do the dirty work of forming all these partnerships and sending their renters your way. So then hopefully that, you know, relatively small, 1% service fee we charge is, is worth, you know, that work we’re putting in. And one thing worth outing too, is it might go without saying, but it’s geography dependent. Right. So depending on the city you’re in, there are different industries that send people your way. You know? So Seattle obviously is big with tech, but Pittsburgh, for example, is maybe bigger on like medical and yeah. Like oil and, and actually film is like bigger than you’d think so. Yeah. Depending on the city, you know, those are different kinda partners we’re going too.
03:39:23
And you, you just call like, you know, let’s say there’s a host in, you know, nowhere, Missouri, and they’re trying to find people in their area to be able to help them stay direct. Cause CO’s not there or there’s just no other good sources, you know, they’re trying to find those direct clients, who would they be contacting? Like, what do you call like the front front desk of the business? Or you send them a, a letter, like how do you reach out to these people?
03:39:51
Yeah. You know, front desk doesn’t hurt to start. Yeah. And, and just telling your story, like, as a host, you could say, yeah, I, I have available spaces in this current state of affairs. They are clean discounted blah, blah, blah. And I’m just looking to help people that need housing. And you know, that first person you talk to will usually direct you point you in the right direction. Yeah. You know, it it’s there definitely, isn’t like a secret Formula to technically you could call it B2B sales, but yeah. You know, it’s just a grind of getting on the phone.
04:40:32
And what would you say is the biggest fear that you faced when starting Copa and trying to find, you know, hosts to be able to, you know, come onto the platform and then also these businesses to be able to work with.
04:40:46
Yeah. You know, we’re fortunate to have been supply constrained pretty much since day one, we had the renters coming to us, like they acknowledge the benefit. We provided over a Craigslist, a Facebook, even Airbnb with the, you know, savings that they, they see. But yeah. Getting the supply has always been the hardest part. So in terms of, you know, fear maybe is a bit much, I wouldn’t say I’m, I’m like too, too afraid of something. It’s I think I’m so driven by my own passion to solve the problem I had that, you know, I’m not really like scared of, you know, what, whatever it is that all faced, but yeah. Getting enough hosts for all the renters coming to us has definitely been the hardest part. You know, one thing I tend to say too is, you know, the average host is maybe an older audience that didn’t grow up with the technology younger generations have. Right? So while younger generations might view technology more as a tool, older generations might view it as a chore and convincing people who view technology as a chore that, Hey, you should try this new technology. It’s easier said than done. You know, it takes a lot of kind of direct sales, typically calling every host to say, Hey, I have this thing that can help you. Let me explain how so. Yeah. Getting enough supply for the renters we have has, has always been the hardest part.
04:42:17
I know Jack Jack, you left me, left me three minute. You left me a three minute voicemail or three, three calls with three separate voicemails. So I, I, the hustle is very real and, you know, getting people to take action and take moves, you know, is, is a lot more challenging than maybe people realize what were some of those obstacles that you saw that you faced getting hosts onto your platform. And then also obstacles that you faced with the businesses that you were trying to get acquire new supply or acquire new leads coming from.
04:42:46
Yeah, I guess, obstacles with getting new hosts first again, since it’s, you know, the average host, I think we cater to maybe doesn’t find technology as, as easy as, as others getting that experience down. So, you know, creating your account and listing your space is as seamless as possible took years. I mean, that took, we iterated on the listing edit process over a dozen times. You know, we just kept sitting down with our hosts and saying, okay, I’m gonna watch you make a listing. You know, don’t ask for help. But, but say when you’re confused about something and we would just watch them, see what parts were confusing, fix that, you know, do it again. And honestly how we iterate enough times that finally, you know, the host could easily make a listing and now actually even copy like 80% of the details over from Airbnb automatically.
04:43:48
So that, you know, from like coming to CO’s website to having your listing published could take less than 10 minutes. So that was a huge obstacle. Like that was one of the biggest obstacles we faced as a company. And then again, in terms of the businesses and former new partnerships, I wouldn’t say there’s like obstacles per se, but more just, it, it takes a lot of time and effort. There’s definitely some seasonality, you know, there’s better times to reach out to these companies throughout the year. So that part can be tough where you learn. Oh, okay. I really shouldn’t reach out to, I don’t know, maybe financial institutions as tax season is approaching or something like that, or right now, you know, you know, there’s certain companies that are busier than ever with the craziness going on and some that are, have more time than ever. So yeah. Finding which ones are the reach
04:44:47
It’s, it’s like, you really have to kinda understand the local market to be able to find the people, to be able to stay in, in your properties. Like I thought it was super interesting when you said, you know, like in Pittsburgh, it’s very oil driven and there’s a lot of filmmakers and as a host that has a property there, when you’re trying to find people to stay with you, it’s like being able to understand like, okay now is probably not the best time to be able to, to reach out to these companies or reach out to these people. And these are the types of people that are within my market. You know, when you’re creating a, a direct, you know, a online travel agency or a direct booking site really it’s like, you have to understand what every single market is and who are all the people there who are the hosts, who are the, who are the people that would be staying with you? It sounds like, like a lot of work.
04:45:33
Oh man. Yeah, no, it really is. I mean, any marketplace where it’s two-sided is more challenging than, you know, I guess some businesses could be, but then yeah, once you add even more players into the game and in our case partners it’s yeah. A lot to juggle and yeah. Figuring out how to nail down the renter experience, the host experience, and then also the kinda partner experiences. It’s a challenge.
04:45:58
What, what about for, because there, you know, there’s, there’s companies like Google I’m Google probably has their own like housing supplier or their own like corporate housing or something like that. Are, have you noticed like a lot of companies that already partnered with different types of companies to be able to provide them that housing?
04:46:17
Yeah. So in the case of those bigger companies, they typically work with a relocation company. So we approach those relocation companies to say, Hey, you know, those different clients you have, whether it’s Amazon, Google, whatever, you know, we are a great resource for, you know, those new hires, especially the interns, the, you know, maybe younger working professionals. And I would say in general, you know, the only time it’s maybe a dead end is if they provide corporate housing, right. Cause then they maybe just don’t even have any need for, you know, helping their employees actually find a place to live on their own. But in most cases, the companies are happy to offer more resources, right? Like it’s just more help that they get to offer their employees. So it doesn’t hurt to, you know, add a link to the list for example. And a lot of them tend to kinda filter through that list every, you know, year let’s say so they’ll ask their employees, okay, what did you use? What didn’t you use? And then, you know, remove the links that no one really did use and maybe bump up the links that people did use.
04:47:25
So, so tapping into a relocation company where they’re able to utilize your, your listings or your property is also another. So as a host, as an individual host, if we, if we knew like, you know, being in the DC area, I know Amazon’s coming in as a host, should we be reaching out to these companies like Amazon and saying, Hey, can you put me on your list or is that a little bit too, too much?
04:47:49
Yeah. In the case of being an individual host or property manager approaching them, I actually wouldn’t recommend that because it honestly will probably end up being a waste of time, especially with the bigger companies, if they have offloaded their housing help to relocation companies, first of all, they don’t even really well, they wouldn’t even be the ones to talk to. Right. They would have to point you to the relocation company, but then also as a relocation company, you know, they some do wanna work directly with an operator, you know, a host, but usually only if it’s like a big, you know, many, many, many units that that host would have. So, you know, that’s why, yeah. I, if relocation companies took those calls with every individual host, you know, that could become a crazy list of listings that they now have to manage. So that honestly, maybe isn’t the best direction to go. I would say, as an individual host, if you’re trying to, you know, get focus directly from the source, you know, instead of using a Copa and Airbnb, whatever, really maybe just trying to reach out to local organizations would be the most helpful, you know, something specific to your area. Like, again, those, those industries we mentioned where yeah. Maybe there are, yeah. I don’t know an oil company, let’s say that is nearby. That staffs people to your area who you could house
04:49:17
Are, are companies looking for a certain requirement or certain things to be able to stay with a host, you know, because hosts have different types of different standards. And right now, like, as we’re even seeing, like, you know, the episode’s probably gonna come out a little bit further when the news got released, but like Airbnb today said, Hey, we’re, we’re gonna have this like set cleaning standard, trying to make like a, you know, the universal for, you know, the share sharing economy for companies though that are utilizing midterm stays. Do they have like specific requirements in order to be able to accommodate those for, for their, their employees or whoever?
05:50:01
Yeah, definitely. Especially right now with the current craziness, you know, they do want to see a cleaning standard, a big one, even outside of the current state of affairs, flexible cancellation policies is something, a lot of companies like medical staffing agencies, especially. So if you’re trying to house travel nurses, those medical staff agencies wanna see a flexible cancellation policy, right. Because travel nurses, their gig at the hospital could get canceled or moved like at a moment’s notice. Right. And the nurse, you know, has no control over it. It’s not their fault. So if the host, you know, doesn’t have a flexible cancellation policy. Yeah. The medical staffing agencies are gonna be inclined to send them your way. Yeah. That’s a good question. So that, you know, flexible cancellation, definitely right now trying to hit cleaning standards overall, you know, what we tend to recommend to our hosts on Copa is, you know, have just great photos that tell the, the story right.
05:51:06
And paint a picture of where this renter’s gonna be leaving, living, you know, take them in the corner of the room, the brightest time of day, you know, basically look at some of those big companies like Saunder and try and make your listing work quick, theirs, you know, like they’ve hired a whole team to just analyze what really converts renters to booking our listings. So you don’t have to do the hard work of, you know, AB testing. Okay. What little details connect, tweak on my listing. You can just look at the company that have already done that word for you. And yeah. Just kind of take what they’ve done, you know, have a good description that shows your personality one little pro tip. I tend to give to, if we’re looking specifically at like your listing on a Copa or an Airbnb is yeah. Try and make it unique, you know, like make it, have some personality in there. If you just do your kind of generic three bedroom, two bath house in city, like that doesn’t really, you know, stand out at all. But if maybe there was a theme in there, like you, I don’t know, had star wars figurines throughout, you could be like, you know, some specific live with Darth Vader or something like that. You know, it to a certain extent obviously, but I think having some personality can really catch people’s eye too.
05:52:31
Yeah. It’s, it’s very, it’s very experiential. And, and do you see that the companies that you’re, that are a lot of the companies they’re looking for places that have an experience? Cuz usually when I think of like, you know, just a traditional corporate housing, I usually think of kind of something that’s traditional a little bit more old school catering, maybe towards an older demographic, like the business professional, but for a lot of more, you know, millennials or the, the, the newer hosts, you know, they’re, they’re looking for an experience. Have you found that companies are also looking for a certain type of listing as opposed to traditional listings?
05:53:07
That’s a good point with companies actually, you know, booking the spaces through Copa, you know, they may be are our, you know, just as inclined to book, the more traditional yeah. Three bedroom, two bath house city kind of listing. Cause you know, it’s, I guess professional is definitely something that they’re trying to check off the list, but yeah, with a lot of the renters we help where it’s, you know, not as much those kind older general business travelers. Yeah. The renters we help like millennials and whatnot are, are definitely looking for yeah. Some experience. Yeah.
05:53:46
Awesome. We’re gonna be wrapping up here. I know that we’ve taken a, quite a bit of your time, but I’m curious since you’re kind of in the same space as like, you know, Saunder Zeus, you know, you’re, you’re all kind of trying to find the same, you know, source trying to get the people to stay at your properties. You know, again, them, they, they, they are paying for the properties and they have a lot, probably more, they have a lot more at stake than, than you do since you’re just connecting the supply to the leads. But do you think that there still is a place for, or do you think that these companies, these mass release companies are gonna be able to thrive continuing on? Or is it gonna shift to where more individual hosts are going to be able to get more direct, direct stay? Like, are, is, is it that challenging to be able to, or would companies like that be able to really find the leads that will just be their sole supplier? Like they’re dependent, you know, like a Saunders, very dependent on, you know, let’s say that Waterloo and if Waterloo dries up, then it’s like, well, there goes all the business for, you know, their, their housing. I do think that that’s a sustainable model.
05:54:55
Yeah. It’s a good question. So one trend I think will happen is there will be a shift toward medium term stays that we do from short term. You know, I think people have realized it just is more reliable. So something does happen on the Vacation front, you know, you can have something more reliable. So I think we’ll see that shift in terms of a shift from the master lease companies to more individual homeowners. It it’s honestly tough to say, but you know, I will say we’re trying to give those individual homeowners a, a fighting chance, right? Like fundamentally, you know, companies that can just optimize and an can kinda operations standpoint, like the zoos and Saunders in them, you know, they do have that advantage, right. They can like find these cleaners that they charge the lease to and use technology to automate like the messaging and everything so that they can spend less time.
05:55:54
But I think fundamentally individual homeowners and hosts can offer the best experience. Right? Like you have that opportunity to personalize the experience. If you run just one house, let’s say that you rent out, you could do stuff that the sons and them could never do. Like you could pick up your renters from the airport, you could, you know, take them to Costco for the first trip that they need. Like you can do stuff, you have an advantage and yeah, we personally, you know, we’re trying to help those individuals kind of have a fighting chance. So yeah. In terms of where the market will shift, I don’t know, but I do hope yeah. The individual host will, will thrive.
05:56:38
Awesome. Well, thank, thank you so much, Jack, for, for taking the time. Do you have any, any last things that you wanna share, maybe a best way that someone can reach out to you if they have any more questions?
05:56:48
Yeah. Email me Jack Copa. If you know, I can be of any help it’s I guess, for those listening, J k.co and yeah. You know, if your space is a good fit for Copa for good, you know, we’d love to send the travel nurses, students and others your way right now. So yeah, just email us and we can opt you into Copa for good as well.
05:57:16
Awesome. Yeah. Thank, thank you so much, Orff you’re on furnish finder in the DC area. Expect a call from Jack with a, with, with a bit log voicemail about, about the cope. But no, I thought, I thought that was so, so funny. I was just like, how did this guy find me? Maybe I did. I didn’t respond quick enough, but no, I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Jack. I’ll include all the links down below in the description. I think it’s so cool. Thank you for taking the time to explain, explain your story and excited to see where, where Cope’s gonna go in the future as well.
05:57:45
I’m happy to thank you.
05:57:47
All right. And until next time, host nation, keep on hosting. Hope you host benefited from the show. If you found value please going over to iTunes, leave us a review and let us know what you enjoy about the show. If you’d like to talk to hosts that have been featured in these episodes, as well as the community, going over to our Facebook group, the host nation.
