September 22, 2024 • 28 mins
Ever struggled to find decent housing? Samir Aliyev and his friends did too - and they decided to do something about it. In this eye-opening chat, discover how a group of frustrated UBC Okanagan students transformed their rental woes into RentalHunt, a groundbreaking platform that's shaking up the rental housing market.
🎓 Discover how RentalHunt:
🎓 Discover how RentalHunt:
- Transforms the "First Come, First Served" model into "Best Come, Best Served"
- Connects top renters with quality landlords
- Evolved from hackathon victories to a successful Kelowna launch
- His upbringing in Azerbaijan
- Childhood influences and life principles
- Vision for RentalHunt's company culture
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Everyone, Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Where we are
joining us from. I'm excited today to be joined by
Samir Aliev from Rental Hunt. I've known Samir for probably
two three years now. Have we met at a hackaton,
we became friends, We've worked together, We've kept in touch,
and I thought Rental Hunt is a great story for
(00:32):
us to bring on startups, they'll say, And of course,
Anthony Prakashi your host again. My co host is not
here with me today, she's busy working. But Samir and
I thought we'll jump on this podcast today and bringing
guys the story of Rental Hunt. So Samir, first of all,
welcome to the show. And why don't you kick things
off by just telling everyone who you are, what are
(00:54):
you doing these days? Anything you want to share about
your background? Sure?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Sure, Thanks first of all Anthony for having me on
the podcast. It's a pleasure to be here. And yeah,
for the ones who see me for the first time,
my name is Samir. I'm from Azerbaijan. It's a small
country between Russia and Turkey, and I was born and
raised there. I graduated high school and everything from there,
and then I got admitted to UBC Okanagan University of
(01:21):
British Columbia that will full scholarship for four years since
I joined. I graduated with computer science major and data
science minor from there, and right now I work as
a software engineer and in my free time and majority
of my time from five to nine work as a
founder for rental Hunt with five six other of my
(01:42):
friends and we try to help people find housing and
help people find homes to rent.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Great. So, thanks Samir. So let's talk about that right away.
I mean when you say when you help people find homes,
if I understand the background correctly, I mean you went
through sort of an issue of finding good homes even
when you were a student in British Columbia. What are
some of those sort of issues that you ran into,
(02:09):
all your friends ran into that actually prompted you to say, hey,
I mean this is a real problem number one, and
this is an opportunity where we can actually solve for.
There's nothing out there that we should build the solve for.
Can you paint a picture? Maybe? Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I think when we first the very first place that
originated from when I was in university and I wanted
to find places to live with my friends, my close friends,
my other friends, my friends had a similar issue. It
was never really we would never get the place we
wanted to rent. We'd have to do it further ahead
(02:47):
and do a lot of planning. And the marketplace itself,
it would be everyone would use Facebook marketplace and it
would be like first come, first served market. And when
it's a first come, first served market, you know, Anthony,
you could be a great but just because I applied
before you, landlord will see ten twenty messages on top
of it and they will never have the chance to
(03:08):
review your profile and check you. So we wanted to
give people best combas serve type of marketplace and give
people the opportunity so that you know, landlord is able
to pick the highest quality tenants and the tenants get
to basically have the easier time applying and knowing where
to apply. And just like another idea, rental Hunt is
not the first idea we started. We started with a
(03:30):
couple ideas. But the very first things we do is
we validated and one of the best ways to validate
your startup idea is to put it on a hackaton.
Though that's that's like the that's like the easiest way.
So what we did is we basically attended the hackathon.
It was an online hakaton from University of Berkeley, and
that we presented it and we ended up winning around
(03:52):
four categories and there was like eight categories in total,
and it was the remote hackaton. We didn't we didn't
even go there, and they picked us us as when
and so we were like, well, maybe there is actually
something happening here, maybe there are a lot of people
are interested in this, and some people actually did reach
out to us and they were like, yeah, this is
an actually real issue and that we're facing. I can't
find a place I want. It's either too expensive, it's
(04:14):
either too far away, it's either doesn't have things the
right things that I want. And I'm a great tenant.
I pay my rent, I do everything on time, and
I've seen a lot of people who rent great places
and they messed them up. And as a landlord, you
know your property is worth a lot, so you're also
more inclined to pick a better tenant. We did a
bit of a market research and when we did the
(04:35):
market research, turns out it's not an issue, it's actually
a crisis. So like there's an entire carental crisis that's
going on there. And then we looked at the competitive
landscape and looked around, you know, companies that are offering
this and solutions that they have, and they didn't really match.
They all of them seemed like another Facebook marketplace duplicate.
So we wanted to create another much significantly better marketplace
(04:59):
for them, and that's what we did. And and another
cool thing that we would do is at the time
everyone participating, we were in college, we were in university,
so we weren't making any money, so we kept attending
more hackathons and building parts of the product in those hackathons.
So if you see like if you see like the
(05:19):
timeline history of all the features that were built it,
they're all coming from hakathons. We'd go to hakaton, build
part of the n DP and tune it for that
hackathons category and then win four or five categories in
that hakathon and then and then take the prize and
then you know, celebrate it and then onto the next one.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So that was kind of an habitual thing we did.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
And then after I and after I graduated, we basically
started to take it a lot more seriously and launch it.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
That is awesome idea. I think it's it's a template
for others listening in as well. Right, I mean, if you,
if you're in college, if you need money to fund
your startup or your idea, attend as many hakatons as
you can win them, and that that prize money kind
of feeds in as your seed or your bootstrapping money,
so to speak.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Right, I agree, I agree exactly. And especially hackathons give
a lot of sponsorships. There's gonna be mentors, there's gonna
be you know, whatever service you want to use, there
will always be a representative from there that you can
go chat with and get feedback from. And it's kind
of the easiest place to reach out to senior people,
developers especially and get feedback on it. And it's and
(06:28):
you get validated very easily because most of the hackathons
are like forty eight hours, so you're gonna know in
forty eight hours if your product, if your idea is
good or bad.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah. Yeah, like they say, you know in startups, start fast,
fail fast, move on to the next thing sort of thing.
In a certain hackaton, if you've got feedback saying I
don't like this, and that sort of thing, I mean,
you know for the fact that all I mean, you
know that's probably not something that So let's talk a
little bit about where you are right now, right, I mean,
(06:57):
you obviously graduated, you're working somewhere, and if I know
some here and you're working seven right, you're like, you're
obviously working a full time job and on top of
that taking this on. And I think, if I'm not wrong,
you told me you already have close to four hundred,
(07:19):
five hundred folks on your platform right now, a bunch
of landlords who have signed contracts with you guys, So
that seems like great progress since we last spoke some here.
I mean, can you tell a little bit about where
you are with the overall company in terms of your
growth and your plans and what do you plan to
do next?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah? Yeah, absolutely. I think the very first time we
started was in February. End of February early March is
when we did an open beta release. And when we
did a beta release, it was basically us getting landlords
and then us getting tenants, a lot of friends, a
lot of people.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
We know.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
This was this year February, and when when we brought
them in, they helped us fix a lot of bugs,
a lot of issues, and when you're in a startup
and when you're looking to satisfy a certain audience, you
kind of have your own hypothesis, right, this is what
they want, this is what they don't want. And that
was kind of our main goal to see are we right?
(08:18):
Are we in the right direction? And and we were
right in some aspects of wrong in other aspects. And
to this day we were still you know, we were
finding and tweting some of these things and as we
learn more from them and and we implement more of
these more of these features. But that was the main goal.
And then in May we did we did a full launch.
(08:39):
We basically launched in Kelowna, the city that we're currently living.
And in Kelowna we launched in about four months, three
and a half four months. We we just passed, like recently,
four hundred users. And when we when we passed these users,
we had a lot of hypothesis. The main hypothesis was
that landlords are the people who own the property, so
(09:02):
they're going to be much harder to convince and bring
them onto the platform compared to tenants. Where tenants where
tenants are are could be like yeah, you know it's
not a marketplace, I'll just go and apply. And our
entire sales strategy was around trying to convince landlords like
how hard can we try? And actually, one of my
(09:22):
friends like, within the first two weeks, we just realized
we have a lot more landlords on the platform than tenants.
Landlords are even more excited to, like more happy to
come join and check it out. Comes from maybe they're
not too satisfied with the marketplaces that they're using, places
that they're using to rend. But I would say all
(09:42):
it took for landlords was just cold messaging or cold emailing,
and we would we would have a thirty person success.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah, and thirty person success is.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Great for like just sending a random message and having
people sign up and saying goals for tenants. Tenants were
a lot more a lot more easier like how we
expected it to be, and we were able to do
a lot more things with tenants like get them to
add references, you know, get them to apply to multiple listings,
some of our future like auto apply, help them set
(10:11):
up their auto apply and just let it apply on
their sleep, and all of these things that they were
a lot more excited to do those, but for landlords,
they were for a specific reason and we were able
to get them.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
To do that very fast. Yeah, yeah, that was yeah,
go ahead. Sorry, how do you make money off of this?
I mean, you know, in the whole process, right, obviously
you're helping both sides. I mean, do you take a
commission off of a certain contract? I mean obviously as
an investor or? I mean you know, so rental Hunt
as a company needs to make money, right, So what
(10:44):
is your current commercial model? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Sure, that's great question. When we first thought of this,
we wanted to make a solution that helps aiding the
mental crisis. Right, so when we looked at the competitors,
were like, okay, what are they doing. They're charging per transaction.
When they're charging per transaction, they didn't grow as large
as we wanted to see them to be. So that's
(11:10):
why we were like, that's a great opportunity for ustigator.
And so rental Lunt actually doesn't charge for transactions. So
you can sign up for rental Hunt. You can sign
up for rental Hunt, you can apply for a listening,
you can schedule a viewing with your tenants, you can
sign contracts, and we will not charge anything for it.
And the main reason for that is a lot of
the things. If you're if you're a landlord with one
(11:31):
property and you want it rented, you're going to find
a tenant anyways. Right, The target audience is not just
one person who's renting a basement. Target audiences people with
multiple properties. And so the pricing model for tenants is
a feature called auto apply. Now, auto apply is a
feature that you give your preferences. I want one bed,
one bath, I want a listing for female only. We've
(11:53):
had this a lot, you know, a lot of female audience.
They were like, I want female roommates. So that's another perpends.
You know a lot of pet friendly units that there's
a lot of demand for them. You get to set
these preferences and you get to have certain amount of credits,
and those credits expire and you kind of have to
top it up as a monthly subscription that you can
do until you find a place to rent. Yeah, that's
(12:16):
one way to for example, we charge tenants. Another way
that we charge tenants is through a reference verification. So
when you pause a tenant add your references, we take
some amount of time to verify these references. Half of
them is automated, the other half is manual. So whenever
you want your reference to be prioritized or to be
(12:39):
verified quicker, that's another payment option that you get to
kind of add in and we get to verify your
reference much faster, like put you ahead of the others.
So those are two main and there's a couple more
that we're integrating to the platform right now, but those
two are are the ones for landlords. There's free for
all again, you get to do everything, all of these
things that you want to do for free.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
We have we have.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
We have a monthly subscription model where we kind of
get to enhance your listing, descriptions, images. A lot of
landlords they don't upload the highest quality photos. We get
to post your listenings on different marketplaces, and we also
get to run ads on your listing on different marketplaces.
And the benefit you get from having a rental Hunt
(13:24):
a run ad compared to you as a landlord is
the rental Hunt has a lot more audience and a
lot more reach. So a dollar is spent on your
Facebook ad versus our Facebook ad is got we're going
to have significantly more reach, So it's a lot more
satisfying for landlords to just you know, pay us, pay
us that, and then we get to run ads and
we get to run it on specific communities that we know.
(13:46):
Remember we know everyone's order apply as well, so all
these order applies, we get to get them, connect them
with you want to one directly and get that sort
of So that's another monthly subscription we have. And another
one is basically let us take over well basic you
record all the tenant interviews. If you're someone with a
lot of properties, you know, we could just take that
listing over from you and we'll just come deliver you
(14:07):
a tenant with like entire report of how we climb
to that conclusion. So that's the main pricing points.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
That is awesome. I mean I think you also touched
on a lot of cool features there. I mean, in
a way, you're doing a little bit of matchmaking as well, right,
based on what the tenant wants, what your landlords want,
and you're automating that process. And speaking of automating, I
mean a lot of ten I mean landlords prefer pen
(14:36):
and paper signatures, right, and once you sign that particular contract,
you don't know where that contract is. Yes, you have
the DOCU signs of the world and everything. But even
with DOCU sign, if I want to look at my contract,
unless I've saved it somewhere, right, You've got to go
check your email to see or when did I sign,
what did I sign for? And all that good stuff.
(14:56):
And I mean imagining in my head. I mean you're
automating all of this is making it a central repository
as well for both sides to come in and see
you know what has happened history wise, who's approved there,
or you know how many references have you proved, and
all that good stuff is all in one place, right
am I am I on the same page as to
(15:18):
what Rendal Hunt does for.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Me exactly exactly. And one of the things that now
that you've touched on signing contract is is my best
friend Aman and I we used to be your roommates.
We managed to be a roommates for three months and
we were signing contract with our landlord and we had
a I'm getting back to your point on signing contract
is a lot of scams happened in the marketplaces as well.
(15:43):
We had this happened personally to us, where PDF that
like the contract you signed, it's a PDF, and PDF
is editable, so you can basically turn off your Wi
Fi and move your clock back in time and use
certain tools to edit the PDF and change certain numbers.
And we had situation happened to us where our landlord
(16:03):
edited our PDF reduced to a security deposit and then
when the end of our summer tendancy happened, we were like, oh,
where's our security deposit? And the landload was like, no, actually,
this is your deposit, you know, and I'm going to
be using this for some fixes for the property. So
that was one thing that I was like, well, if
it's going to the rental one, I want to make
sure it never happens again.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah. Yeah, So in other words, I mean, it's kind
of fraud prevention as well, is kind of built into
the platform exactly exactly. That is great. I mean, so
I know you said you have a few hundred users
right now landlords, especially in your locality. I mean, what
are your expansion and growth plans with rental Hunt?
Speaker 2 (16:44):
That great question. So right now, we just finished our
testing on Kelowna. We basically just launched in one city,
and we want to we want to test and make
sure that we want to make this the best platform
in Kelowna ever. It's kind of a client device. Came
from y combinators, the biggest companies that started big. They
(17:04):
learned to do it really well in a small place
and that kind of a thing we're practicing and we
want to nail Kelowna really well. I mean compared to
other marketplaces and competitors. We reached smashed all our target
target goals in terms of reaching new audience users, sign ups, everything,
and what we want to do is for expand to
(17:25):
b C and we will be expanding to BC within
a year. And one of the things that we want
to fix is obviously feedback from landlords. We have great
feedback from landlords. Because it's a small community. We get
to work with a lot of landlords one on one
and get their feedback. Like like one huge feedback is
(17:46):
is like listing creation process. A lot of landlords are
senior citizens, right, they have hard time getting the user
interface getting it fixed. So we had to go through
them to make sure we know exactly which places to
change and that's crucial feedback that we had to learn
in Kelno so that if we were if we were
to have this issue in Canada, this would have been
a whole different story. The costs would be too much.
(18:08):
So we were learning these. We're fixing our plans to
expand to b see within a year and uh and
and right now, like immediate goals is to basically test
pricing strategies and see what pricing strategies landlords and tenants
are are are like the easiest, are like love the most.
And we're also trying to you know, have conversation with
(18:30):
property management companies and see how we can attract them
and how we can have a have beyond uh, make
some sort of deal with them, and and and see
where we can both benefit from this. So we're kind
of on track for this. But in terms of expansion,
I would say within a year we should be in
multiple cities, at least Vancouver beautiful.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
So let's pivot a little bit. To me, you've talked
enough about rental hunt them and and like I was
saying earlier, you've you've been an inspiration. I mean ever
since I I met you. You know, I mean how
you juggle things and you do things, I mean the
way you approach things. So for people who don't know you,
I mean you obviously mentioned Azerbaijant. I mean, how how
did your passion for technology and then maybe you know,
(19:14):
from technology going into being a founder saying oh, I
mean you know all of us have ideas, right, I
mean they obviously say ideas are cheap. Execution is hard.
I mean you need a load of will power to
say Okay, I'm rolling my sleeves and jump into this
and trying to tackle this institative, you know, just complaining
(19:34):
about it. You know, So did that is that? Is
that something that is you've seen in yourself to take
charge and lead since you were a kid, or a
spark came one one fine night of one fine day
saying I want to be a founder. So just tell
us a little bit about how you got that itch
rather to start a company.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah, that's that's a great question. I will say that
I have been into products and building things since I
was in high school. But the reason why I got
this scholarship was the reason why I got to scholarship
was in tenth grade, I built these mobile apps for
International back Laureate program. And I was in tenth grade
and I built these apps and I would post them
(20:18):
on play Store and I would ask people feedback and
just build you know, for biology, chemistry, physics, and I
would get peoples people to sign up and use it
basically and just run small ads on the make like
a couple of chaines on it. But they got to
around twenty to thirty thousand downloads in total, like past,
(20:40):
like since I from tenth grade till like thirty year
of college, they got around on downloads. So in terms
of building products, yes, I've always been kind of into
building products. Even in first year with my friends, two
of my friends that are working with me, with Aman
and Shabrage, we built another product called my Blossom. Basically
(21:03):
we wanted to build like a plant type of app
and and incentivize people to kind of build plants, and
that one we validated market really quickly and we moved on.
But like in terms of building product, I don't think
I would be able to do it alone. So I
don't really believe in like sole founder being able to
do I think having your inner circle being very supportive
(21:25):
and people who are as hard working as me doing
it together. I think it's what makes the miracles happen.
I wouldn't say like if I were to do this alone,
I wouldn't be able to get to where I am.
But in terms of why I'm doing it, I want
to live a life with no regrets. And it's one
of those things I was I've noticed when I was
(21:46):
a kid. When I was born, my my family was
really poor, so we didn't have so my mom and
my dad they gave me to my grandparents. It's kind
of like a habit thing. It is like your pass.
You give your kid to the grandfather and while you
maybe work and make some money. And when I was
a kid, when I used to hang around with my grandfather,
(22:09):
for like nine ten years, I was with them, you know,
on the weekly I would see a lot of senior people.
I would see a lot of like old people in
their seventies and eighties, and all they would talk about
is regrets, right because because their time is passed, they
don't have energy, they don't have ability to do what
(22:31):
they wished for.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
In their life.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
And I think from like a very young age, from
like the age of like one and two, I kind
of had that engraved in me, is that as long
as I have energy and as long as I have
life in me, I want to do things that I
want to do. And to me, it's more satisfying to
do something and fail it myself than to take someone
else's advice and fail it from them. So that's one
(22:56):
of the things that like things I live by, So
like why I do it. I do it because I can.
Building apps is like kind of a passion, you know.
I like building products that people love, and I have
the willpower to do it. And I'd rather pull miters
on this than to them to do it do things
based off of someone else's advice. So that's why I'm
(23:17):
able to push through. And I have the same people
with same mindset, like people that are working with Rental
Hunt right now. Like you know, we have a mon,
we have a Chabraj, we have PARTA, we have Maro
onan all of these people who basically work this hard
because we share the same goal and same vision And
it's about finding like minded people that can push you
forward because alone you will not be able to do it.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah, beautifully, said Samir. I'll remember this conversation. I mean,
and it goes with me as well. To your point
on you you're growing up at the early age with
your grandparents. It happened with me as well because my
parents were working so until three or four. It was
my grandparents who brought me up. I mean only when
I was ready to go to school, I moved back
(24:00):
the city with my parents, and my parents would come
and see me every week or whenever they could. So
I totally understand what you mean by that. But I
mean you've gone far and beyond there from learnings from
you know, your childhood to you know, put together some
ambition and put together a mindset that really works for you.
(24:20):
And to your point, I mean I totally agree. I mean,
you need to have the right set of people around you, right,
I mean, if you have people who are always pulling
you down, are going to critique you. I mean, that
just doesn't help, right, even if you have a brilliant idea.
So so I commend you for all of that. So
I know you like building products. You're also the founder
(24:42):
and CEO as well. I mean, which which do you
like better? Which had do you like better?
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Personally? Most of the time, I like coding, I like
and I like that.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
I would have said that, you know, I like I
like that most.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
And it's also specific because I'm I would say my
strength is managing people as well. So there's a lot
of people in the team that I am no some
of their strengths. Right, So if I were to, for example,
bringing an investor or talk to an investor, one person
in the team we have Aman, he's great with people,
(25:18):
Like even though I am the CEO, if I were
to if I were to have one person faith and
one person to convince someone to bring to the team,
I will straight up go and ask him on for example,
because he's just like it's about you know, like the
if we're all coming together and our goal is to
make the company bigger, you know, you kind of have
to get rid of the ego and pick the one
(25:40):
who's just who's like just hands down better, and I
will send him. And he has proved he's never proven
me wrong every single time. He's done some wonders. So
I'm happy with it. And if and if there were
to some a bug that's happening or like some issue
that's happening, you know, I'm the first person that people call,
like you know, there's there's a there's a huge we
had we had someone who just kept hitting our servers
(26:00):
one times and we're trying to figure out who it is,
Like that's the first person people call and then and
in terms of whether it's a founder, I like that title.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
CEO.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
I don't like that title because I haven't really acted
like a CEO. I've kind of gave in rental.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Hum.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
We give a lot of flexibility and space to people
who do what they want to do. So I will
tell people to do certain things, but majority of the
time it's a very group discussion that we come together,
and these people that have been through with me, through
thick and thin, I don't see myself necessarily giving orders
to them. But it's people that are that are fully
(26:39):
respect and I like to keep it this way because
a lot of these a lot of them, they bring
up valid points and good points, and it's part of
being a startup is being able to challenge each other
and being able to challenge each other and bring your
own raise, your own voice without necessarily feeling scared. So
(27:00):
if we were to if I were to pick one,
you know, I would code a lot most of the time.
But yeah, I would say not that CEO. But founder
founder sounds like a great title.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
I mean, and what you're saying goes back to the
culture you need to build as well, right, I mean,
you know, in one of the episodes, someone told me
about a founder being authentic, you know, Samir, being who
Samir is and not trying to be somebody else. You know,
if you believe in something, just just roll with it, right,
(27:31):
So I think you're you're echoing sort of the same
sentiment and love what you guys are doing, Samir, So
thanks so much for jumping on telling us about the
Rental Hunt story. I'll always be cheering for you guys,
So wishing you guys the best of luck this year,
and you know, wishing you guys a lot of growth
expand across BC and everywhere else. So all the best
(27:53):
to you and the team some here.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Thank you, Thank you so much, and it's a pleasure
having having you with me, and thank you so much
for thing us the opportunity to talk about Rental Hunt
and everyone on our progress. And hopefully maybe we'll have
one of these in a year later with much larger
audience and much larger your podcast having much larger audience
and my Rental Hunt having a much bigger use of it.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, that's a win win. Thanks so much for me.
Take care. It's a pleasure By
Everyone, Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Where we are
joining us from. I'm excited today to be joined by
Samir Aliev from Rental Hunt. I've known Samir for probably
two three years now. Have we met at a hackaton,
we became friends, We've worked together, We've kept in touch,
and I thought Rental Hunt is a great story for
(00:32):
us to bring on startups, they'll say, And of course,
Anthony Prakashi your host again. My co host is not
here with me today, she's busy working. But Samir and
I thought we'll jump on this podcast today and bringing
guys the story of Rental Hunt. So Samir, first of all,
welcome to the show. And why don't you kick things
off by just telling everyone who you are, what are
(00:54):
you doing these days? Anything you want to share about
your background? Sure?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Sure, Thanks first of all Anthony for having me on
the podcast. It's a pleasure to be here. And yeah,
for the ones who see me for the first time,
my name is Samir. I'm from Azerbaijan. It's a small
country between Russia and Turkey, and I was born and
raised there. I graduated high school and everything from there,
and then I got admitted to UBC Okanagan University of
(01:21):
British Columbia that will full scholarship for four years since
I joined. I graduated with computer science major and data
science minor from there, and right now I work as
a software engineer and in my free time and majority
of my time from five to nine work as a
founder for rental Hunt with five six other of my
(01:42):
friends and we try to help people find housing and
help people find homes to rent.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Great. So, thanks Samir. So let's talk about that right away.
I mean when you say when you help people find homes,
if I understand the background correctly, I mean you went
through sort of an issue of finding good homes even
when you were a student in British Columbia. What are
some of those sort of issues that you ran into,
(02:09):
all your friends ran into that actually prompted you to say, hey,
I mean this is a real problem number one, and
this is an opportunity where we can actually solve for.
There's nothing out there that we should build the solve for.
Can you paint a picture? Maybe? Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I think when we first the very first place that
originated from when I was in university and I wanted
to find places to live with my friends, my close friends,
my other friends, my friends had a similar issue. It
was never really we would never get the place we
wanted to rent. We'd have to do it further ahead
(02:47):
and do a lot of planning. And the marketplace itself,
it would be everyone would use Facebook marketplace and it
would be like first come, first served market. And when
it's a first come, first served market, you know, Anthony,
you could be a great but just because I applied
before you, landlord will see ten twenty messages on top
of it and they will never have the chance to
(03:08):
review your profile and check you. So we wanted to
give people best combas serve type of marketplace and give
people the opportunity so that you know, landlord is able
to pick the highest quality tenants and the tenants get
to basically have the easier time applying and knowing where
to apply. And just like another idea, rental Hunt is
not the first idea we started. We started with a
(03:30):
couple ideas. But the very first things we do is
we validated and one of the best ways to validate
your startup idea is to put it on a hackaton.
Though that's that's like the that's like the easiest way.
So what we did is we basically attended the hackathon.
It was an online hakaton from University of Berkeley, and
that we presented it and we ended up winning around
(03:52):
four categories and there was like eight categories in total,
and it was the remote hackaton. We didn't we didn't
even go there, and they picked us us as when
and so we were like, well, maybe there is actually
something happening here, maybe there are a lot of people
are interested in this, and some people actually did reach
out to us and they were like, yeah, this is
an actually real issue and that we're facing. I can't
find a place I want. It's either too expensive, it's
(04:14):
either too far away, it's either doesn't have things the
right things that I want. And I'm a great tenant.
I pay my rent, I do everything on time, and
I've seen a lot of people who rent great places
and they messed them up. And as a landlord, you
know your property is worth a lot, so you're also
more inclined to pick a better tenant. We did a
bit of a market research and when we did the
(04:35):
market research, turns out it's not an issue, it's actually
a crisis. So like there's an entire carental crisis that's
going on there. And then we looked at the competitive
landscape and looked around, you know, companies that are offering
this and solutions that they have, and they didn't really match.
They all of them seemed like another Facebook marketplace duplicate.
So we wanted to create another much significantly better marketplace
(04:59):
for them, and that's what we did. And and another
cool thing that we would do is at the time
everyone participating, we were in college, we were in university,
so we weren't making any money, so we kept attending
more hackathons and building parts of the product in those hackathons.
So if you see like if you see like the
(05:19):
timeline history of all the features that were built it,
they're all coming from hakathons. We'd go to hakaton, build
part of the n DP and tune it for that
hackathons category and then win four or five categories in
that hakathon and then and then take the prize and
then you know, celebrate it and then onto the next one.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So that was kind of an habitual thing we did.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
And then after I and after I graduated, we basically
started to take it a lot more seriously and launch it.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
That is awesome idea. I think it's it's a template
for others listening in as well. Right, I mean, if you,
if you're in college, if you need money to fund
your startup or your idea, attend as many hakatons as
you can win them, and that that prize money kind
of feeds in as your seed or your bootstrapping money,
so to speak.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Right, I agree, I agree exactly. And especially hackathons give
a lot of sponsorships. There's gonna be mentors, there's gonna
be you know, whatever service you want to use, there
will always be a representative from there that you can
go chat with and get feedback from. And it's kind
of the easiest place to reach out to senior people,
developers especially and get feedback on it. And it's and
(06:28):
you get validated very easily because most of the hackathons
are like forty eight hours, so you're gonna know in
forty eight hours if your product, if your idea is
good or bad.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah. Yeah, like they say, you know in startups, start fast,
fail fast, move on to the next thing sort of thing.
In a certain hackaton, if you've got feedback saying I
don't like this, and that sort of thing, I mean,
you know for the fact that all I mean, you
know that's probably not something that So let's talk a
little bit about where you are right now, right, I mean,
(06:57):
you obviously graduated, you're working somewhere, and if I know
some here and you're working seven right, you're like, you're
obviously working a full time job and on top of
that taking this on. And I think, if I'm not wrong,
you told me you already have close to four hundred,
(07:19):
five hundred folks on your platform right now, a bunch
of landlords who have signed contracts with you guys, So
that seems like great progress since we last spoke some here.
I mean, can you tell a little bit about where
you are with the overall company in terms of your
growth and your plans and what do you plan to
do next?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah? Yeah, absolutely. I think the very first time we
started was in February. End of February early March is
when we did an open beta release. And when we
did a beta release, it was basically us getting landlords
and then us getting tenants, a lot of friends, a
lot of people.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
We know.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
This was this year February, and when when we brought
them in, they helped us fix a lot of bugs,
a lot of issues, and when you're in a startup
and when you're looking to satisfy a certain audience, you
kind of have your own hypothesis, right, this is what
they want, this is what they don't want. And that
was kind of our main goal to see are we right?
(08:18):
Are we in the right direction? And and we were
right in some aspects of wrong in other aspects. And
to this day we were still you know, we were
finding and tweting some of these things and as we
learn more from them and and we implement more of
these more of these features. But that was the main goal.
And then in May we did we did a full launch.
(08:39):
We basically launched in Kelowna, the city that we're currently living.
And in Kelowna we launched in about four months, three
and a half four months. We we just passed, like recently,
four hundred users. And when we when we passed these users,
we had a lot of hypothesis. The main hypothesis was
that landlords are the people who own the property, so
(09:02):
they're going to be much harder to convince and bring
them onto the platform compared to tenants. Where tenants where
tenants are are could be like yeah, you know it's
not a marketplace, I'll just go and apply. And our
entire sales strategy was around trying to convince landlords like
how hard can we try? And actually, one of my
(09:22):
friends like, within the first two weeks, we just realized
we have a lot more landlords on the platform than tenants.
Landlords are even more excited to, like more happy to
come join and check it out. Comes from maybe they're
not too satisfied with the marketplaces that they're using, places
that they're using to rend. But I would say all
(09:42):
it took for landlords was just cold messaging or cold emailing,
and we would we would have a thirty person success.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah, and thirty person success is.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Great for like just sending a random message and having
people sign up and saying goals for tenants. Tenants were
a lot more a lot more easier like how we
expected it to be, and we were able to do
a lot more things with tenants like get them to
add references, you know, get them to apply to multiple listings,
some of our future like auto apply, help them set
(10:11):
up their auto apply and just let it apply on
their sleep, and all of these things that they were
a lot more excited to do those, but for landlords,
they were for a specific reason and we were able
to get them.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
To do that very fast. Yeah, yeah, that was yeah,
go ahead. Sorry, how do you make money off of this?
I mean, you know, in the whole process, right, obviously
you're helping both sides. I mean, do you take a
commission off of a certain contract? I mean obviously as
an investor or? I mean you know, so rental Hunt
as a company needs to make money, right, So what
(10:44):
is your current commercial model? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Sure, that's great question. When we first thought of this,
we wanted to make a solution that helps aiding the
mental crisis. Right, so when we looked at the competitors,
were like, okay, what are they doing. They're charging per transaction.
When they're charging per transaction, they didn't grow as large
as we wanted to see them to be. So that's
(11:10):
why we were like, that's a great opportunity for ustigator.
And so rental Lunt actually doesn't charge for transactions. So
you can sign up for rental Hunt. You can sign
up for rental Hunt, you can apply for a listening,
you can schedule a viewing with your tenants, you can
sign contracts, and we will not charge anything for it.
And the main reason for that is a lot of
the things. If you're if you're a landlord with one
(11:31):
property and you want it rented, you're going to find
a tenant anyways. Right, The target audience is not just
one person who's renting a basement. Target audiences people with
multiple properties. And so the pricing model for tenants is
a feature called auto apply. Now, auto apply is a
feature that you give your preferences. I want one bed,
one bath, I want a listing for female only. We've
(11:53):
had this a lot, you know, a lot of female audience.
They were like, I want female roommates. So that's another perpends.
You know a lot of pet friendly units that there's
a lot of demand for them. You get to set
these preferences and you get to have certain amount of credits,
and those credits expire and you kind of have to
top it up as a monthly subscription that you can
do until you find a place to rent. Yeah, that's
(12:16):
one way to for example, we charge tenants. Another way
that we charge tenants is through a reference verification. So
when you pause a tenant add your references, we take
some amount of time to verify these references. Half of
them is automated, the other half is manual. So whenever
you want your reference to be prioritized or to be
(12:39):
verified quicker, that's another payment option that you get to
kind of add in and we get to verify your
reference much faster, like put you ahead of the others.
So those are two main and there's a couple more
that we're integrating to the platform right now, but those
two are are the ones for landlords. There's free for
all again, you get to do everything, all of these
things that you want to do for free.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
We have we have.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
We have a monthly subscription model where we kind of
get to enhance your listing, descriptions, images. A lot of
landlords they don't upload the highest quality photos. We get
to post your listenings on different marketplaces, and we also
get to run ads on your listing on different marketplaces.
And the benefit you get from having a rental Hunt
(13:24):
a run ad compared to you as a landlord is
the rental Hunt has a lot more audience and a
lot more reach. So a dollar is spent on your
Facebook ad versus our Facebook ad is got we're going
to have significantly more reach, So it's a lot more
satisfying for landlords to just you know, pay us, pay
us that, and then we get to run ads and
we get to run it on specific communities that we know.
(13:46):
Remember we know everyone's order apply as well, so all
these order applies, we get to get them, connect them
with you want to one directly and get that sort
of So that's another monthly subscription we have. And another
one is basically let us take over well basic you
record all the tenant interviews. If you're someone with a
lot of properties, you know, we could just take that
listing over from you and we'll just come deliver you
(14:07):
a tenant with like entire report of how we climb
to that conclusion. So that's the main pricing points.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
That is awesome. I mean I think you also touched
on a lot of cool features there. I mean, in
a way, you're doing a little bit of matchmaking as well, right,
based on what the tenant wants, what your landlords want,
and you're automating that process. And speaking of automating, I
mean a lot of ten I mean landlords prefer pen
(14:36):
and paper signatures, right, and once you sign that particular contract,
you don't know where that contract is. Yes, you have
the DOCU signs of the world and everything. But even
with DOCU sign, if I want to look at my contract,
unless I've saved it somewhere, right, You've got to go
check your email to see or when did I sign,
what did I sign for? And all that good stuff.
(14:56):
And I mean imagining in my head. I mean you're
automating all of this is making it a central repository
as well for both sides to come in and see
you know what has happened history wise, who's approved there,
or you know how many references have you proved, and
all that good stuff is all in one place, right
am I am I on the same page as to
(15:18):
what Rendal Hunt does for.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Me exactly exactly. And one of the things that now
that you've touched on signing contract is is my best
friend Aman and I we used to be your roommates.
We managed to be a roommates for three months and
we were signing contract with our landlord and we had
a I'm getting back to your point on signing contract
is a lot of scams happened in the marketplaces as well.
(15:43):
We had this happened personally to us, where PDF that
like the contract you signed, it's a PDF, and PDF
is editable, so you can basically turn off your Wi
Fi and move your clock back in time and use
certain tools to edit the PDF and change certain numbers.
And we had situation happened to us where our landlord
(16:03):
edited our PDF reduced to a security deposit and then
when the end of our summer tendancy happened, we were like, oh,
where's our security deposit? And the landload was like, no, actually,
this is your deposit, you know, and I'm going to
be using this for some fixes for the property. So
that was one thing that I was like, well, if
it's going to the rental one, I want to make
sure it never happens again.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah. Yeah, So in other words, I mean, it's kind
of fraud prevention as well, is kind of built into
the platform exactly exactly. That is great. I mean, so
I know you said you have a few hundred users
right now landlords, especially in your locality. I mean, what
are your expansion and growth plans with rental Hunt?
Speaker 2 (16:44):
That great question. So right now, we just finished our
testing on Kelowna. We basically just launched in one city,
and we want to we want to test and make
sure that we want to make this the best platform
in Kelowna ever. It's kind of a client device. Came
from y combinators, the biggest companies that started big. They
(17:04):
learned to do it really well in a small place
and that kind of a thing we're practicing and we
want to nail Kelowna really well. I mean compared to
other marketplaces and competitors. We reached smashed all our target
target goals in terms of reaching new audience users, sign ups, everything,
and what we want to do is for expand to
(17:25):
b C and we will be expanding to BC within
a year. And one of the things that we want
to fix is obviously feedback from landlords. We have great
feedback from landlords. Because it's a small community. We get
to work with a lot of landlords one on one
and get their feedback. Like like one huge feedback is
(17:46):
is like listing creation process. A lot of landlords are
senior citizens, right, they have hard time getting the user
interface getting it fixed. So we had to go through
them to make sure we know exactly which places to
change and that's crucial feedback that we had to learn
in Kelno so that if we were if we were
to have this issue in Canada, this would have been
a whole different story. The costs would be too much.
(18:08):
So we were learning these. We're fixing our plans to
expand to b see within a year and uh and
and right now, like immediate goals is to basically test
pricing strategies and see what pricing strategies landlords and tenants
are are are like the easiest, are like love the most.
And we're also trying to you know, have conversation with
(18:30):
property management companies and see how we can attract them
and how we can have a have beyond uh, make
some sort of deal with them, and and and see
where we can both benefit from this. So we're kind
of on track for this. But in terms of expansion,
I would say within a year we should be in
multiple cities, at least Vancouver beautiful.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
So let's pivot a little bit. To me, you've talked
enough about rental hunt them and and like I was
saying earlier, you've you've been an inspiration. I mean ever
since I I met you. You know, I mean how
you juggle things and you do things, I mean the
way you approach things. So for people who don't know you,
I mean you obviously mentioned Azerbaijant. I mean, how how
did your passion for technology and then maybe you know,
(19:14):
from technology going into being a founder saying oh, I
mean you know all of us have ideas, right, I
mean they obviously say ideas are cheap. Execution is hard.
I mean you need a load of will power to
say Okay, I'm rolling my sleeves and jump into this
and trying to tackle this institative, you know, just complaining
(19:34):
about it. You know, So did that is that? Is
that something that is you've seen in yourself to take
charge and lead since you were a kid, or a
spark came one one fine night of one fine day
saying I want to be a founder. So just tell
us a little bit about how you got that itch
rather to start a company.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah, that's that's a great question. I will say that
I have been into products and building things since I
was in high school. But the reason why I got
this scholarship was the reason why I got to scholarship
was in tenth grade, I built these mobile apps for
International back Laureate program. And I was in tenth grade
and I built these apps and I would post them
(20:18):
on play Store and I would ask people feedback and
just build you know, for biology, chemistry, physics, and I
would get peoples people to sign up and use it
basically and just run small ads on the make like
a couple of chaines on it. But they got to
around twenty to thirty thousand downloads in total, like past,
(20:40):
like since I from tenth grade till like thirty year
of college, they got around on downloads. So in terms
of building products, yes, I've always been kind of into
building products. Even in first year with my friends, two
of my friends that are working with me, with Aman
and Shabrage, we built another product called my Blossom. Basically
(21:03):
we wanted to build like a plant type of app
and and incentivize people to kind of build plants, and
that one we validated market really quickly and we moved on.
But like in terms of building product, I don't think
I would be able to do it alone. So I
don't really believe in like sole founder being able to
do I think having your inner circle being very supportive
(21:25):
and people who are as hard working as me doing
it together. I think it's what makes the miracles happen.
I wouldn't say like if I were to do this alone,
I wouldn't be able to get to where I am.
But in terms of why I'm doing it, I want
to live a life with no regrets. And it's one
of those things I was I've noticed when I was
(21:46):
a kid. When I was born, my my family was
really poor, so we didn't have so my mom and
my dad they gave me to my grandparents. It's kind
of like a habit thing. It is like your pass.
You give your kid to the grandfather and while you
maybe work and make some money. And when I was
a kid, when I used to hang around with my grandfather,
(22:09):
for like nine ten years, I was with them, you know,
on the weekly I would see a lot of senior people.
I would see a lot of like old people in
their seventies and eighties, and all they would talk about
is regrets, right because because their time is passed, they
don't have energy, they don't have ability to do what
(22:31):
they wished for.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
In their life.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
And I think from like a very young age, from
like the age of like one and two, I kind
of had that engraved in me, is that as long
as I have energy and as long as I have
life in me, I want to do things that I
want to do. And to me, it's more satisfying to
do something and fail it myself than to take someone
else's advice and fail it from them. So that's one
(22:56):
of the things that like things I live by, So
like why I do it. I do it because I can.
Building apps is like kind of a passion, you know.
I like building products that people love, and I have
the willpower to do it. And I'd rather pull miters
on this than to them to do it do things
based off of someone else's advice. So that's why I'm
(23:17):
able to push through. And I have the same people
with same mindset, like people that are working with Rental
Hunt right now. Like you know, we have a mon,
we have a Chabraj, we have PARTA, we have Maro
onan all of these people who basically work this hard
because we share the same goal and same vision And
it's about finding like minded people that can push you
forward because alone you will not be able to do it.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah, beautifully, said Samir. I'll remember this conversation. I mean,
and it goes with me as well. To your point
on you you're growing up at the early age with
your grandparents. It happened with me as well because my
parents were working so until three or four. It was
my grandparents who brought me up. I mean only when
I was ready to go to school, I moved back
(24:00):
the city with my parents, and my parents would come
and see me every week or whenever they could. So
I totally understand what you mean by that. But I
mean you've gone far and beyond there from learnings from
you know, your childhood to you know, put together some
ambition and put together a mindset that really works for you.
(24:20):
And to your point, I mean I totally agree. I mean,
you need to have the right set of people around you, right,
I mean, if you have people who are always pulling
you down, are going to critique you. I mean, that
just doesn't help, right, even if you have a brilliant idea.
So so I commend you for all of that. So
I know you like building products. You're also the founder
(24:42):
and CEO as well. I mean, which which do you
like better? Which had do you like better?
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Personally? Most of the time, I like coding, I like
and I like that.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
I would have said that, you know, I like I
like that most.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
And it's also specific because I'm I would say my
strength is managing people as well. So there's a lot
of people in the team that I am no some
of their strengths. Right, So if I were to, for example,
bringing an investor or talk to an investor, one person
in the team we have Aman, he's great with people,
(25:18):
Like even though I am the CEO, if I were
to if I were to have one person faith and
one person to convince someone to bring to the team,
I will straight up go and ask him on for example,
because he's just like it's about you know, like the
if we're all coming together and our goal is to
make the company bigger, you know, you kind of have
to get rid of the ego and pick the one
(25:40):
who's just who's like just hands down better, and I
will send him. And he has proved he's never proven
me wrong every single time. He's done some wonders. So
I'm happy with it. And if and if there were
to some a bug that's happening or like some issue
that's happening, you know, I'm the first person that people call,
like you know, there's there's a there's a huge we
had we had someone who just kept hitting our servers
(26:00):
one times and we're trying to figure out who it is,
Like that's the first person people call and then and
in terms of whether it's a founder, I like that title.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
CEO.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
I don't like that title because I haven't really acted
like a CEO. I've kind of gave in rental.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Hum.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
We give a lot of flexibility and space to people
who do what they want to do. So I will
tell people to do certain things, but majority of the
time it's a very group discussion that we come together,
and these people that have been through with me, through
thick and thin, I don't see myself necessarily giving orders
to them. But it's people that are that are fully
(26:39):
respect and I like to keep it this way because
a lot of these a lot of them, they bring
up valid points and good points, and it's part of
being a startup is being able to challenge each other
and being able to challenge each other and bring your
own raise, your own voice without necessarily feeling scared. So
(27:00):
if we were to if I were to pick one,
you know, I would code a lot most of the time.
But yeah, I would say not that CEO. But founder
founder sounds like a great title.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
I mean, and what you're saying goes back to the
culture you need to build as well, right, I mean,
you know, in one of the episodes, someone told me
about a founder being authentic, you know, Samir, being who
Samir is and not trying to be somebody else. You know,
if you believe in something, just just roll with it, right,
(27:31):
So I think you're you're echoing sort of the same
sentiment and love what you guys are doing, Samir, So
thanks so much for jumping on telling us about the
Rental Hunt story. I'll always be cheering for you guys,
So wishing you guys the best of luck this year,
and you know, wishing you guys a lot of growth
expand across BC and everywhere else. So all the best
(27:53):
to you and the team some here.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Thank you, Thank you so much, and it's a pleasure
having having you with me, and thank you so much
for thing us the opportunity to talk about Rental Hunt
and everyone on our progress. And hopefully maybe we'll have
one of these in a year later with much larger
audience and much larger your podcast having much larger audience
and my Rental Hunt having a much bigger use of it.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, that's a win win. Thanks so much for me.
Take care. It's a pleasure By
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