Congrats! I too look forward to seeing the success that comes from this, what a great concept. You seemed to have found a void in the marketplace, and you filled it!

Congrats! A very impressive accomplishment for someone so young. Look forward to following your success.

Thanks for the advice!

Glenn, this is great feedback! We are constantly trying to figure out better ways to tweak our business model and we have been playing around with different percentage markups and even one time fees. We dont like the subscription based model and after taking your view into account, we might look into different pricing models for domestics vs internationals. Currently, we are focusing on the international market and we believe that the security, safety, and network we offer will make the premium justifiable. We also thought of the 1st and last month up front in order to protect the lister. If there are any issues or the Renter decides to skip town after agreeing on the last month, we have some collateral for the Lister. Thank you so much for the input and please give us more comments and advice!

Thank you for the feedback Rachel! We are still working on the details of our model. So this is very helpful. We view the premium pricing model as a way to incentivize listers to not only share their space with internationals but also their experience and network. From the renters' end, we view it as a self selecting tool in terms of security and willingness to experience cultural immersion. Would love to hear any other thoughts/feedback.

Congrats to you too, Patrick. Job well done at Boothlaunch!

Hi Patrick,

This is a really cool idea. One potential problem I see on the renter end is that the 25% markup is non-trivial. If the baseline for rent in your neighborhood is $1000, then you're asking the renter to pay a significant amount above market price...every month. Maybe if there were a way to incentivize listers to use the service in a way that didn't come at such a charge to the renter, like with more of a one-time commission that you provide them with? In fact, it's surprising that the lister gets a regular kickback, since you're providing them with the service of roommate matching. One-time commissions seem like more of a traditional model, but I would worry that a greatly marked-up monthly cost is going to scare renters away (unless we assume that they won't know better what reasonable rent is, or don't care). It just seems like it would make more sense to pay once for what you're providing (better roommate matching) than tacking that cost onto the monthly rent.

Tom, thank you so much for your great insight and advice!

We are heading in that direction because we realized that there has been no evolution in roommate matching and it is such an intimate situation. I wanted to highlight with those one-liners, that everyone has had these crazy situations and that we want to avoid this through total transparency and safety of our listers. We will be implementing a "Roomie Match Score" or some type of scale that allows you to see who your initial best matches are through the optional questions in both parties' profiles.

It is really funny that you said the match.com or OKCupid.com for roommates because that is exactly how I explain it to people I meet! You are the man!!!! Thank you again.

A problem that I see is culture.

The office space is a similar example. At my office in Miami, somebody would always put a coke in the freezer. I assume to make it cold faster. Sometimes he would forget the coke was there and it will exploded overnight.

Who did it? Nobody wanted to say. I thought I was the only office with these kind of funky situations. But I hear all kind of crazy stories all over the place, big and small companies. Specially in Chicago.

Your idea is great but to pair up the right matches you would have to do some type of survey like match.com.

Maybe you can tag your startup as OKCupid for Roommates.

contact me at pat.yoon@americanroomies.com

Thanks guys, we are also hiring and you can check out our job post at
http://www.builtinchicago.org/job/wesome-lead-developer-cnet-contract-hire
If you know anyone interested or qualified please tell them about us.

Great layout and pricing structure, I really like the tier approach. Best of luck!

The site's design is gorgeous! Great stuff.