Bring the life you want into reach
We’re building Ohana to make subletting simple, helping hosts cover rent and guests find housing wherever life takes them
Why are we building Ohana?
Freedom. Our mission is to give people the freedom to live where they want, when they want. For guests, Ohana provides the freedom to transition to the place you want to live with the people you want to be around. For hosts, Ohana provides the freedom to pursue your dream with peace of mind that your rent is covered by a trusted subtenant.
How we got here
Before Ohana
We felt this problem first as students. We were paying thousands in rent for a place we did not need at school while simultaneously struggling to find summer housing as interns. In 2021, Jacob moved to San Diego, a completely unfamiliar place, for his internship. He wanted to make the most of his time there and live with other young people in an affordable, furnished place. Finding the right living situation on Facebook was like reaching into a beehive. You pulled your hand out hoping for honey but you were left with the stinging pain of hours wasted messaging people either scamming you or not responding at all. At the time, Jacob and I had already built Keyper: a solution that helped over 300k college students avoid the hassle of losing their dorm keys. The lesson from Keyper was persistence is everything. We developed a simple solution to a real problem, and by simply refusing to give up on the belief that Keyper should be in every college bookstore, we brought it to every college bookstore. The feeling of seeing a stranger buy our product and tell their friends about it because it’s useful was incredibly meaningful. The tangible impact of Keyper, although small, provided a stark contrast to meaninglessness of our corporate jobs. Steve Jobs would not have stayed in this role at Apple. The people who inspired us found a way to use their creativity to leave a measurable impact on the world. We were itching to get back to the feeling of building something useful. Something we are proud of. If we spent the next decade in these roles, we would have nothing to point to and say this exists because of me. So we created Ohana to solve another problem we experienced and bring the life we want into reach.
The really early days
Two years out of college was the perfect time to create Ohana. We were young enough to be solving a problem for our peers and resourceful enough to build something useful. We started by connecting interns in need of summer housing to college students with a room they don't need over the summer. In early April, we were driving to a new school every day, fixing bugs in the car, and taking fundraising calls at rest stops on the side of the road. It was extremely stressful, but a ton of fun. We barely had a product, no funding, and no traction. All we had was a vision to make the chaos of subleasing as easy as booking an Airbnb. We applied to Neo in between college visits. Even though we had no progress to show, Ali saw our persistence from building Keyper and our conviction from leaving our jobs. A week later Neo accepted us, and everything changed. At the 4 week bootcamp in Sunriver, our focus was on how we can grow native listings on Ohana. Ali said “spend $100k on creative ideas… if you had a million I’d say spend a million.” More than anything else, Neo taught us to believe in ourselves and take big bets.
The first time we saw magic
We placed our biggest bet on the summer 2024 intern market. We spent months building teams of ambassadors on 10 different campuses. Over the course of three months, we gave out over 10,000 donuts and 2,000 slices of pizza across our visits to UW in Seattle; USF, Berkeley, and Santa Clara in San Francisco; UCLA in Los Angeles; NYU and Columbia in New York; Pitt and CMU in Pittsburgh; and GW in DC. At the same time, we partnered with employers like Duolingo, Wells Fargo, Oracle, and Snapchat to help their summer interns find housing. Most of what we tried did not work but one thing did. We found the people who really needed Ohana were international students returning home for the summer. Once they realized they could easily save $8,000 by subletting their apartment to an intern, they told all their friends about it. At the same time, interns discovered that they could save $3k by using Ohana instead of Airbnb and they started coming in droves. One student was nearly in tears telling us how Ohana allowed her to take an unpaid internship and live with her best friends. In this moment we realized Ohana is more than a place to stay. It’s a vehicle for our hosts and guests to bring the life they want into reach. Within the span of 2 weeks, we had over one thousand new listings in NYC and for the first time ever, Ohana was pulling us instead of us pushing it. We went from $75k in bookings in March, to $800k in April, to $1.2M in May. This was the first time we experienced a network effect. It was magical.
We quickly realized how many people Ohana could help
When I moved to NYC, I wanted to experience a neighborhood and tour apartments in person before making a huge financial decision. On Ohana, I booked a beautiful one bedroom from someone who was happy to offer a discount on an apartment they did not need after moving to London for a new job. I was just one of 882 people who have experienced this magic. In just 5 months, hosts have collectively saved $2.5M in rent. Ohana takes all the work out of subleasing which means more people are doing it. Interns, people moving to a new city, traveling for work, and visiting family have all booked on Ohana. Just last week Ben sublet his room in Chelsea so that he could bike across the country from New York to San Francisco. He saved $2,200 which allowed him to take this once in a life time trip. In July, Sid sublet his room in Hell’s Kitchen so that he could take a 6 week vacation to see his family in Nigeria and India for the first time in 2 years. Will, who sublet Sid’s room, met the girl he is now dating in the gym of Sid’s apartment building. In June, Noa, a student at Columbia University, sublet her room so that she could take an unpaid internship in Israel. Lauren, a travel nurse working at Mount Sinai Morningside, booked Noa’s room and was able to walk to work everyday. Lauren saved $3k compared to what she would have paid on Airbnb. As people started telling their friends about Ohana, we could hardly keep up with our growth so knew it was time to raise funds and build our team. In early May, closed our $4.2M seed round from the people built Airbnb and Zillow:
- Spencer Rascoff - Co-founder & CEO, Zillow
- Sara Adler - Head of Corporate Development, Airbnb
- Riley Newman - Head of Data Science, Airbnb
- Surabhi Gupta - Director of Engineering, Airbnb and Robinhood
- Lex Bayer - Head of Payments, Airbnb
What will be different about the world because Ohana exists
People will use Ohana to bring the life they want into reach. When a life changing opportunity presents itself – a new job, an incredible trip, the chance to move in with someone you love – Ohana will allow you to say “yes”. Hosts can say “yes” because it’s easy to find a trusted sub-tenant to cover their rent when they have better places to be. Guests can say “yes” because it’s easy to find flexible and safe housing in the place they want to be. In short, people will no longer be financially and geographically limited by their 12 month lease.
The next 6 months
After 18 months building Ohana, we have learned a lot about the different types of people who need our solution. One key insight is that when we have desirable listings—priced well and in great locations—we can find an ideal sub-tenant for hosts within 48 hours. The biggest limiting factor to our growth is the number of quality listings on Ohana. Our intern market took off because we had thousands of quality listings at or below market rate from international students who needed to sublet. In the next 6 months we are focused on two things:
- Helping new demographics of New Yorkers sublet their apartments in a way where they are so delighted that they tell all their friends within that community
- Preparing for the 2025 intern season by expanding our reach within NYC, and into Boston and San Francisco, so that we can serve 10x more interns and students.
Join our team
We’re looking for passionate and driven team members to lead the charge in growing our supply and marketing efforts and make our goal of saving $10M a reality.
Director of Marketing
- Intensely creative about how we can build trust with people who have never listed their place to sublet before
- Talented content creator with experience communicating a solution to large audiences on TikTok and Instagram
- Driven by the mission of give people the freedom to live where they want, when they want
Director of Matchmaking
- Driven by the mission of give people the freedom to live where they want, when they want
- Excited about becoming a trusted friend to Ohana’s guests and hosts by building a relationship, understanding what they need, and connecting them to each other on intro calls
- Excited to wear multiple hats within the business, mastering the full life cycle of a sublease to constantly improve the experience for our hosts and guests