CLIP: Why Kindred's Justine Palefsky Refuses To Let Hosts Get Paid!

0:00It came from this personal need that I felt, how can I figure out a way to live like I have homes all over the world and actually do it in an affordable way? And I really wanted to create a lifestyle for myself where I could travel and feel at home when I did travel. So I was actually, back to Bain, had a Google sheet with a bunch of Bain alums who lived all over the world. And people were adding their homes and saying, hey, does anybody want to come to my place in Paris? Like, I just need to get out looking for a place in New York if anybody can host me. And so I saw this trusted subgroup kind of doing their own ad hoc home sharing and home swapping.

1:01And that created the spark of an idea that was like, what if we could coordinate among trusted communities? And instead of having to spend so much money to get a vacation rental or a hotel, we just solve each other's problems and stay in each other's homes. And by letting somebody who I approve of stay in my place while I'm out, I can earn nights to go stay somewhere else. And by working together as a community, we all can unlock unprecedented value. And so that was the idea. I got in contact with Open Doors CEO and said, you know, I'm thinking of starting a company and I don't know exactly what it's going to be, but here's the problem that I want to try and solve.

1:52And he said, you know, you've got to do it.

1:54Olly Fawcett:Why did you go to him out of interest? He'd become a, you know, a mentor and he knew what I could do. I also talked with Nikki about it, Homebound CEO. But also those are the most helpful first angel checks are the CEOs of companies that you worked at in the past, because that is a vote of confidence from somebody who knows you. And then investors in Homebound or investors in Opendoor who believe those CEOs see that that CEO believes in us and say, oh, can you introduce me? So it's a really helpful first supporter to have that can provide a signal to the rest of the kind of investing world. Yeah, definitely.

2:45Olly Fawcett:Did anyone in the early stages challenge the idea? Almost everybody. There's a surprise. the uh the the you know people who i knew said i believe in you if you see something here okay i don't see it you know but i'll support you um people who i didn't know were just like i don't think this will work you know hasn't home swapping home sharing hasn't been tried before why isn't this already big do people actually want to let somebody stay in their home and not get paid for rent. I don't think anyone will do that. You know, a lot of investors tend to make a lot of money. And they're like, why would you ever need more affordable travel?

3:36You know, they're like, I would never let somebody stay in my house. When I go to London, I stay at the Dorchester. So like a lot of people don't get it.

3:45Olly Fawcett:You know the audience, right? Yeah. So it felt crazy, I think, to a lot of people. And it, I think, felt overly optimistic, you know, to think that people would trust each other in this way. but this is like 2020 2020 2021 2021 but like this is a period where like uber kind of overcame the same challenge right of like why would you get in a stranger's car that was kind of like a piece that i felt like they were spoken about a little bit airbnb i know you must get compared to them all the time yeah in many ways many ways but like that did it was kind of forms of it existing right yeah um i don't know how many times it's been mentioned to you but like the holiday the film which obviously this is like huge part of it.

4:34Olly Fawcett:Yeah. As you said, like these platforms did exist before, right? Because that was based off something that did exist. So like the idea was there. Did it feel weird to you that people just couldn't see what you could see so clearly? Yeah. I think the huge difference between our model and something like an Uber or Airbnb is that people are not paying each other. And I think that was a part where people said, wait, hold on. This is never going to work. With Uber and with many marketplaces, over time you have the supply is professionalized. It's people who are doing it as a job. And the demand is consumers.

5:07The thesis behind Kindred was we can create a marketplace where everybody is both a host and a guest. And that people will let someone stay in their home, not for cash, but for the ability to stay in someone else's home later on. And that is a very different kind of marketplace.