Exploring Price Labs: The Power of Dynamic Pricing in Mid-Term Rentals

a part of the system to say, okay, or like, how can I evaluate how my property compares to the market? So then we created this tool called Portfolio Analytics, see your performance, the market's performance against it and things like that. So one transition has been from being a dynamic pricing system to a wholesome system. The other has been from being focused on short-term rentals. Now we also do rental rentals, also do for these hotels, hard hotels, stuff like that.

Welcome to the She's Got Assets Real Estate Investing Podcast. I'm the host, Shona Leppis. Follow along as we unpack and demystify real estate investment strategies through expert interviews and personal experience. From how to find off-market deals to creative financing to long-term and midterm rentals, we aim to educate and inspire others to gain financial freedom and generational wealth through real estate. and as always, please subscribe so you never miss an episode. We really appreciate reviews. It helps others find us and just helps us get found. I'm so excited to have a really special guest, Anurag Verma. Sorry, he's the co-founder of PriceLabs. It's the industry standard for price management. So I'd love to have you introduce yourself. Thank you for being here and just how you got started, a little bit about the company, and I think everyone knows, has heard of it, but just your backstory.

Thank you so much. Hey everyone. Hey everyone, this is Aditya, one of the co-founders. I started in the short-term rental industry about 10 years back now. So it's pretty long time. And I used to work at United Airlines before this, doing dynamic pricing, revenue management algorithms. And, uh, yeah, one of my good friends from college, uh, started in grad school in Chicago and he was hosting on Airbnb when he was in grad school because his roommate went for internship. So he had an empty room in Kenmore. So he and I got talking and then that's where this whole thought came that, hey, if my friends are doing it, like, why shouldn't I? Short story.

Okay.

But yeah, that was my entry into this industry. Loving it so far. It's something new happening all the time.

I love that you saw that need and you took that kind of corporate experience into, and I know startup life is a whole thing, right? How was it in the beginning? I'm curious.

It was something. So like we, we took a very different approach than what a lot of startups startups take. A lot of startups, very— you get an idea, you go raise funding, then you hire a big team and start working on the problems. We basically, unnecessarily, as a conscious decision— it happened that way— we basically said, hey, why doing what we are doing in the evenings, nights, weekends. We, okay, can we create something that will be useful for, for us and for other people? And because it was software, we could do that. Plenty of businesses you can't really do anything, right? Software you could, right? And for the first 3 years, as you mentioned, my son's part, We're still doing our full-time job. Uh, I did was gracious enough to even let me take 50% at one point because I said I need more time to focus on this. And they're like, fine, that looks strange. So we did that, which, which meant we took a very bottom-up approach. We basically stayed 3 co-founders for 3 and a half, 4 years, just building incrementally. We weren't really running out of money or anything to say we need to hit these customers by the end of the year, otherwise there was none of that. We were just doing this for passion. And yeah, over time, now we have about 140 people, which is a lot more than 3. It has been quite, quite interesting, quite fun, but you've had a long time to learn everything. That we have learned so far. It's just one thing, like, if anybody looking to start some incremental progress is a great thing. Like, you don't have to do everything in the 6 months of rolling out something. Keep building on, on top of other blocks that you put.

I love that. I think as entrepreneurs, we forget that, or we want it to be perfect and we just don't, we don't start the thing because we're so caught up in I don't have all the pieces or whatnot. Were you, did you ever see yourself as an entrepreneur? I'm just curious.

No, I was very comfortable doing what I was doing. I loved it. Partly that might have been the reason I dragged on doing this part-time, but this, it was a lot of good work I did, you know. My co-founder was a little more inclined to start something. He was the one who's like, hey, here's the story. Let's talk about like, why not do it? And then I actually came up with plenty of reasons to not do it. And then we would talk about it and then eventually it reached a point where it's like, okay, even if it doesn't make sense to do it, it's a 50-50 chance, right? If you are not dropping everything you're doing, if you're giving us input, like, what's the harm in trying? Like, okay, let's try, like, let's see what happens, right? And then, yeah, from then on it has been like, okay, once you start building something, you just get so into it that it's hard to stop.

Yeah, no, it's that thing. So was there like a light bulb or like the tipping point of, okay, this is clearly, there's a need in the market and this Did you get, I'm assuming you got some clients. I'm just so curious. Sorry if this is, I don't know. Yeah.

So we started in 2014. We rolled out product worldwide in, in fall of 2014. It was a free product. We wanted to see how, even if it's free, is there somebody who wants to use it?

Mm-hmm.

Within about a year, we had about 1,000 customers. So that was the big, uh, interesting is when we said, okay, see if people will actually pay for this thing. We don't know pricing plans and everything. And then a lot of the customers actually stuck on, actually went in and added the third job. So it's wow. Okay. It was just the 3 of us. 2 of the 3 of us had families back then, had families back then, which meant like even if we had a thousand customers, we were paying us something, we couldn't really sustain ourselves totally on it. So you're like, okay, let's keep building. And it, it reached a point where like we can actually like hire ourselves at this point to do that. So that was the tipping point in some And then after that, like 2019, we were 6 of us. By then, comfort time and hired some of these, some for me, we became 14 of us. 2021, like 30, and then 2022 at about 100 people. It was being like, apparently it was being a lot of stuff. Although if you think of like percentage, it's being similar. Like when you go from 6 to 14 people, you're like, you have 2x in size. It seems crazy, but yeah.

It's, I love that story. Just the way you, and you saw a need. So I really, this might be like, I'm going to ask like the dumb questions. I mean, I think we don't think about how airlines are adjusting prices and we need to do that with real estate and our assets. So that on a basic level, what insights did you take from that industry into this and how did you change it for real estate or short-term rentals? I'm super curious.

So not, so I will separate down the risk by finding the cons. That is one, it is dynamic and two, the number of decisions that you're making as a seller, one, sorry, video games, in most cases you're selling something online, right? Mm-hmm. Of short-term rentals. And these things exist, and the reason the automation algorithms exist more for airlines or their side is because making, even if you have one home, each night is, has a different demand, sorry. So your price for a Tuesday is different from the price for Saturday. So you now have 2 decision points. In a week you have 7 decision points, right? A Saturday is different from a Sunday, right? So in fact, you have 360 decision points in a year. There are important events. The holidays are very known and people do know they should increase prices, but sometimes Some unknown, like unknown to you, singer might announce a concert. You have no idea that they're buying this, but they are, and opposite the property prices potentially can be different. So that there is revenue to be made in short-term rental space. If you are in long-term rentals, like you have annual leases, nobody cares if a singer, if there's a big concert happening, right? Nobody is, they will be there. Economics does come into long-term lease thing, but you need another 30 management systems actually, right? Most like real estate, ERP, like most of the large long-term lease also have pricing for either side of the table. Short-term are a little different. They have like, again, like the concept doesn't matter to midterm, midterm, But seasonality still matters, like during, for example, summer in, in a city, demand for interns increases because a lot of students come for internships, things like that, right? There are other markets where the midterm demand might be very flat all year long because there's a constant stream of, I don't know, contractors or things that come in. But then there is a particular season in which some incremental demand comes through. And if you know that supply and demand at that time, you can make a decision.

Yeah. I, it's interesting cause I think when I first got into midterms, to your point, I didn't realize how it is seasonal. I just assume people are, they're always traveling for work. There's always nurses and, and summer is where it's at. And winter I have to adjust my price points. I'm on a computer, like I'm just using my little So I, I think the power of a software is not, it's really valuable in, in maximizing that piece of it.

So I talked about 365, the videos about it. There's also the fact that how a day is important. So now when I'm thinking the life for next year, I would probably be a little optimistic about how about is going to be. So we have, for example, data that for next summer, a lot of bookings will start showing up in July. So right now, don't necessarily see— it depends on market, which are very last minute. There are markets which are very early. Typically, you see a lot of summer demand shows up and starts booking in like right after you Come back from Christmas vacation and say, okay, what are my summer plans now? What happens is like right now, we, not many people are booking. We don't need to sell for a low price. We'll keep the price higher. In January, we want to make sure that just right, you can get the right bookings. It's a big March. April comes and your price is booked, then you might want to sell. Okay. A lot of people who were going to book might have already booked. Now, should I lower my rate a little bit so that I can, if somebody hasn't booked, for those people, I am the one that gets sold. So those kinds of things add to the complexity. Now, for Midas, although events are pretty mighty, what can matter is, for example, biggest problems I feel is when you get gaps between two, two stays. Because if you're in a market that's regulated, or you don't have the right license to do, if you get 3 weeks between two stays, not somebody doing stay for a week, 2 weeks, might be illegal, It's like, how do you then, how do you then, because those 21 days are lost. You are not making anything out of it. There are things you can do. You can ask previous guests to say, do you want to stay a little longer for the same price? Or the next one to say, hey, do you want to book a little earlier for a discounted rate? It'll help move again, you know, those kind of things.

Mm-hmm.

But. So one of the things we can do, for example, is like, how can you reduce the possibility of a 21-day gap to even get things created? So if easiest example I have for this is if you have two homes, they're right next to each other, everything else is the same. There's a midterm lease that's ending end of October. It is the 30th of October. If somebody's listening to this and sees this, right? Another home that's sitting empty, like somebody finished their lease on 30th of September and it's sitting empty. Now, if I have a guest who wants to book a place starting November 1st, they can choose between my two homes. They can book the one where the lease is going on at the end of October, and they can book the one that is empty right away. Empty right away. But they're going to leave like a 18-day gap.

Great. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

And if I get another guest first in a week who says, hey, I need something now, like, sorry, I don't have anything. What is to make sure that the guest who wants to start on November 1st picks the home, the booking, just before.

Mm-hmm.

And so we need some strategy that can help. Automate this stuff. And so you can say if a booking is ending, give a discount for next 3, 4, 5, 7 days after a booking ends. So that even if the rates are exactly the same for the two homes, the one where a booking is ending in October, the first week is a little discounted. So they can see this one is $4,000, this one $3,900, and then take one thing from the entire, right? It's, it can help you. It, it looks like you lost a hundred bucks here. Maybe it isn't for either one, but then the next request shows up, you have something for them ready. And in the long run, you'll make more.

Yeah. Cuz that inventory, it's all about inventory and if you have those vacancy rate and that, that cuts into your— that is really interesting. A couple things. Yeah. So I think unpacking a little bit STR, Airbnb, right? When you guys saw that need and now I think midterm is— I just saw an announcement that Airbnb is going all in on longer term. So the data, is there the data with midterm versus short-term? I'm just super curious cuz for me, I, it's hard to sometimes price midterm because that's usually monthly versus nightly, or I'd love to hear your opinion.

So the way we gather data is we essentially scan property on Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com. And we also buy booking data from a third-party providers called Keydata. So we get all of this data. For everyone who list on one of these platforms, right? And although they tend to be short-term lenders, there is nothing that stops midterm bookings from happening on those. And so what we see is although these platforms advertise they're moving more to one, having— we've announced it, but about 20-25% of the stays that happen, of the nights that are booked, are actually through midterm bookings. Then Airbnb for a month, take my home away.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

As long as property is cross-listed, like it's on Airbnb, it's also on, on some midterm platform. Airbnb itself has become a platform. We get the data, right? So we are able to see what price are terminals getting for what season are they getting more than what kind of supply exists. So there are markets like in those parts where they see very seasonal midterm bookings, right? January and February is when a lot of people from the Northeast book stay there. Because of the weather, right?

Yeah.

They're called the snowbird bookings, right? And they stay for a month, two months. And if you purely look at the midterm bookings, that is the prime time. But if you look at how much supply is available, everything is— nobody is going there for vacation. So like every vacation that is available, every vacationer in the world try to get those few months. Just because midterm demand is high doesn't mean you can bump up the price because there is so much supply. But in LA, that market is so liberal. If you want to find a 30-day rental during July in that market, although not many people are trying, if you want, very few options. If you're in midterm rentals in those markets, you should be bumping up your rates then, even though you rarely— the market pricing is a double team at that time. Okay. So something that's very— demand is higher in February compared to the supply. Demand is actually higher than supply.

That's so interesting. And so the power of the technology and the data is that you're— so for me, when I'm looking at real estate, to me, I'm like, I love midterm because I'm maximizing my income versus I'm not doing like turnovers every 2 nights. And to me, but I, I don't. I'm going on, I think it should be this. And I think the power of this PriceLabs is that you're maximizing what your revenue did. It's very, it's more scientific than just, I think I should charge this. Right.

So that's like that you don't have an input. So no software anywhere is at the point where you can say, I will let them decide the price without any input from me. So even in our platform, for example, you would come in, you would give your inputs to say, hey, look, my comps are priced at about $3,000 per month. I'm a little more property. I want to price it around $3,500 a month. We will give you a set of, okay, values. How much should you increase in marks or how much should you increase in price? What did you do last month? Should you discount this much or automate some strategy around like how long certain stay can be? But you still have that control. We'll give you feedback. You'll be able to see, hey, look, compared to the market, you're not being booked, even though you feel like you're a clean property. You might have priced yourself out of it. So we'll provide you that data and guidance, but you still have control. And that is important because I think Zillow tried it, they went full algorithm. They said, we let the algorithm set the price and they were buying homes and it took them a year or two years. Didn't turn out well. That's because each home is so unique, tends to be so unique. It's hard. The tangible factors to call might not be to pick up. I'll give a couple of examples, like, stuff right next to each other. One of them is decorated with festive-institute. Like, both of them are very decorated.

Yeah.

But one of them is decorated with A pickleball court has a pickleball court, and the other one has tennis. Sounds like the pickleball court would be more entertaining. I've never actually played it.

Yeah.

But it's very hard for an algorithm to know pickleball is more involved these days compared to tennis. So it's, since even if you upload the, there's no There are very few platforms that can check off pickleball court or tennis court as an amenity. I don't know any big homes at this point that use it.

Yes.

But this is an example.

Yeah. Yeah.

It might be like whether it's a jacuzzi or hot tub or some small nuances that matter a lot. And the human being, if you're in that market, you know what people like, what The top flight, we get that guidance. We show data, like you can actually go to the SMS now, create, even if you don't have a property on Airbnb, you can hit up market dashboard and say on all the properties in this market and then say, okay, if I have a hot tub, how much are these properties worth? Don't have a hot tub, how much are these properties worth? So you give that kind of data, but Ultimately, when you set your prices, you are tapping into what to say. I want to be able to dictate.

I think that's sort of, I think we get a little, it's like a little caught up in the algorithms are smarter than me, but there is that human piece that how you design it, what your photos look like, what your description is like, is a little bit intangible. So that's, that's a really good point. Can I ask you something? I, I'm an investor, right? We're looking to, oftentimes when we're purchasing a property, we're like, okay, I could long-term rental, I could short-term it, I could midterm it. And we want to know like what each exit strategy is. And I think what people struggle with is how to price a midterm, because there hasn't been a go-to, I think PriceLabs for STR, but is, do you, are you guys offering that now? Like an analysis tool for that?

So, I don't think it's our analysis towards both assets, like the market dashboards is what you get when it's midterm rentals. There is one extra step and then you get to do that. So when you create a market dashboard in Bifrost, we basically show you all the properties in the small— you can then go create comp sets, as many comp sets as you want. And can create a comp set of all the properties with a hot tub, all the 2-bedrooms that are a hot tub, or all 2-bedrooms with 4.5-star or more in ratings with a hot tub, pet-friendly. You can create a lot of this, but similarly, you can also create a comp set that say, I want only properties that are on the Tate 39 minutes, for example.

Okay.

So once you create a comp set like that, and when you see data for that subset, it'll essentially be some, what's happening with some random—

and that's real.

So you can get, not guarantee, but it's, so it's, it's, call it, engineering data. I'll explain what that means. Airbnb is not, find that happened on Airbnb, right? Like they, they share. What we do at VivaBooking.com is we constantly look at everybody's titles to see what sites are they listed on, what minimum states they take, and things like that. The minimum states they take helps us figure out what's a midterm rental property, what's a short-term rental property.

Mm-hmm.

Then every, like, when we see that, hey, these, after 31st to November 30th used to be available at $100 a month. Today, yesterday it was available, today it's— it's princess, like somebody must have booked it. We then also said, okay, it's $100 a month, but they have a monthly discount of 30%. So it's not like the guest, the guest, 30, 100 times 30, which is 30, 3,000, like 3,000. Because there's a 20% discount, they must have paid $2,400, right? So then we get to know that, okay, booking happened here, $2,400, right? Now, is this data perfect? No, because what could have happened is instead of booking Airbnb, this person reached out to you directly and did their own booking. And said, hey, I need something for a month. Captain, I booked your place and he said, I already said 2,000 or he said 2,700. In either of those cases, the price we think, the one that was listed on Airbnb is not what you booked.

Mm-hmm.

So, so we think you might book that Airbnb for, but you actually booked something else. But in most cases, you're not letting that sign off. Directionally, we still get, get this right. It's also possible that you actually didn't take up a gig. Basically, I want to stay in that place, maybe.

Right. Yeah.

For a month. And that then decreases our chances of getting proper clean data. But we also get source data, like for everybody who uses PriceLabs, we get their direct booking revenue. So we're able to see How close are we? Like when we say occupancy in this market is 80%, is that what we are seeing on our reports as well? So plenty of ways for us to clean up the data, but it doesn't guarantee that it's 100% right all the time. It's directionally good enough is what we say.

So that brings up the question. Thank you for that. That's really insightful. If I'm I've got a couple midterms and I like booking direct because there's a lot of landlord-tenant law that I'm navigating. So as an agent, if I'm booking off of those sites, do I use a channel manager to use PriceLabs or what is the strategy if you're booking more direct?

There are a couple of ways to do it if you want to use PriceLabs. One, platforms, what they're called property management systems, which is channel managers. Like today, that boundary has blurred. Most property management systems are also channel managers. Mm-hmm. Where they don't just do the job of listing a PLS on Airbnb, Booking.com, the channels that they are managing.

Mm-hmm.

They can also give you a direct booking site. Like a URL where people go and do this directly.

Okay.

So that's one way. If you use one of those, you can get direct booking. So there's some platforms that are, of course, free, that we also integrate with, whoopie or howfree is one of them, where if somebody wants to directly book, you say, hey, go book on this URL, and it'll have a few users. Have the right setting for this.

Okay.

And don't want to have a website with no online presence of the middle or calendars. Like you could create a page and say, hey, I have a middleman call me, but it's no calendars of this property, what dates are available, what dates are not available and things like that. In that case, it's part of the business, but if you have some online presence, or to use a direct booking website or one of these channels. And of course, we'll be available and you can use us.

Okay. So this is going to, like, really dumb question, but if I build a WordPress website, right? Like, just, is there any way I can plug in PriceLabs and say the price is this, or do I have to use a manager?

So funnily enough, there are a couple. So we have listed somewhere. To be imported into our platform.

Okay. Okay.

And for that, I think Howfee or Woocommerce might be your platform to do that. But once you do that, we have an API where I think at least one or two WordPress plugins which do work with us. So they can ingest updates and show it there.

Okay. Cause I. Because I don't, I want to have a listing, but I don't want to say the price because it's so seasonal. So I don't put the price. Everyone's like, what does it cost? I'm like, it depends.

One thing, one thing you can do is you can list on one of the OTAs, like, they mark up, Airbnb starts with a 15% commission. You mark up your prices to add 15% so that If somebody does books on that, you still make what you wanted to make in some ways. Yeah. But if somebody comes to book directly, you better then give the price. It's possible. I will check my, uh, HubSpot. I think WordPress, we work with one of them at least.

Okay. I love that because I had just, I And I wanna have my own, I'm gonna build my own brand of properties. Yeah. And I, for direct bookings, but that pricing thing has been a bit sticky.

Yeah.

I love that.

Hold on. Let me, I'm doing it. Yeah. Let me go ahead and find out how to do this. Okay. Uh, WP Booking System does it.

Okay. Okay. That's, I just learned something. I'm, I, I, so back in the day I used to build websites, like hand code HTML. And so I like to dabble. But, um, so I'm curious on a stepping back big picture, like what trends are you seeing or what can, do you think people could take advantage in, in this industry and pricing and managing your asset?

Oh, it's sort of the big picture. They severely restricted short-term rentals. So a lot of the property gets converted to long-term rentals, right?

Mm-hmm.

That doesn't mean all of a sudden more midterms start showing up to book. I mean, the fact that there's more midterm rental supply means that either some of them will convert to long-term rentals if bookings just don't show up at all, or midterm rentals cheaper, which I think by a good chance that might happen. So one is just on the regulation. The regulations is what puts a lot of people to go with them. The other reason is, of course, like there is a sentiment like long-term rentals are very passive in some ways. They're not taking care of anything, anything much. Yeah. Uh, but the ambients are getting cheaper. Midterm rentals, there is some work involved, some coordination. Somebody's looking to book 2 months from now, 1 month from now. With long-term rentals, you worry about it like once a year.

Right.

Yeah. You worry about it like every couple of months. Short-term rentals, on another extreme where like sometimes it was good for university, you can meet in one weekend the same amount you would've made in a month. That also means you have to make— by that I don't mean you're making, but you probably have a cleaning crew, but you are having some schedules, something or the other, some, some guests every, every day.

Mm-hmm.

So there is that. How Bassem wanted to give us this, how How much do you want to spend? Because of that sector, a lot of people end up in the middle. Also because with the booking, we have slowed down a little bit compared to COVID. COVID was going on and everybody was very easy for like folks to just work from somewhere else, book something and then go work from there. Not that we are ignoring the persons festive. But even now, the number of red tumble cakes is still up from what it used to be 4 or 5 years ago. It's just, it's become a little more acceptable to do that. Other important thing is a lot of short-term rental brands know the terms, then that you have to see other brands. That's not necessarily the thing. Supply has increased a lot, but demand also has increased. So it's not anything this striking. What we have seen is, uh, and not necessarily well paid, managed properties. You might have a 2-bedroom, but if you like, like it does doing a good job. When you host, they still are like, there is almost— the well-managed market is doing pretty well. I saw, again, when I was trying to buy a couple of months, there was hardly any like that Turtles did it. That was, yeah, Turtles. The reviews were good, the pizza was nice. Like, we, we would have ideally stayed in our neighborhood itself, but the neighborhood was steeply priced. So we ended up going, like, hopping on a Bombay Rail Down. It's not like there was, like, wide supply available that I could pick whatever I wanted and Good things about it. Yeah.

I, I, people, they get into real estate and they think it's this passive thing, but it's a business and you have to position yourself and you have to treat it like a business and that's how you're gonna, that's gonna set you apart. So I, and that's a really good point. Cause it doesn't just do it. So, I mean, are you, are you an investor on the side or is it have your hands full with Price Labs? I'm curious.

I have my hands full with Price Labs. No, absolutely. I do not go anywhere near Linux. Like you said, it's not pretty passive. There is work involved and at least right now I want to need to focus everything on energy and price.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. No, I told— so Edween, is there anything that you think that people don't know about PriceLabs or any like hot tips or anything that maybe I didn't ask you about?

As a short-term rental revenue management system or pricing system. Now we are actually a lot more than that. One, traditional dynamic pricing system. Two, revenue management system. So difference is dynamic pricing. The first thing we did for the first 3 years was update keto prices. Then we were like, hey, this is one part of the story. Can you also update these restrictions? So now we do things like this. If you have a midterm, we can say somebody's to book a gap that's 10 days long, sure, 30 nights. But if somebody's going to leave a 29-guest You can create automation that says it needs to do once based.

Yeah.

So it has nothing to do with that, but it is still helping you improve a little more. And then there are folks who say, look, I want the data to dynamically size. How about I want to scale in a new market? Let's say, have a solution. Again, a part of the system to say, okay, or like, how can I evaluate how my property compares to the market? So then we created this tool called Portfolio Analytics. You can see your performance, the market's performance against it and things like that. So one transition has been from being a pricing system to a whole system. The other has been from being focused on short-term rentals. To now we also do rental rentals, also do boutique hotels, apart hotels, stuff like that. So a little more broader set of properties that we, that we sell essentially.

That's so investor putting that hat on our whole, it is asset management and it's revenue. That's ultimately why we do this. So that's a really good lens. On, gosh, I, I could ask you more questions, but I know we are wrapping. I have a couple kind of wrap-up questions, if you don't mind. Yeah. But this has been really, I'm gonna go fire up WordPress. That's what you give someone to live life on their own terms. Ooh.

Uh, I think one need to define terms. Mm-hmm. So for example, it was I, a year into my job at United Airlines, I was texting my sister like, this is just amazing. Well, I stay here for very long. I was pretty happy. Like in my head, it was like in my mind, having very good coworkers to work with, very good like work-life balance and something. Outside of that, if you distract from work, at least after 6 PM, I think 6 PM, don't have to. You're not getting calls about 30 minutes about that you need to answer right away. No, that's not okay. You can argue, my life and my terms.

Yeah.

Don't let somebody else define. What lies in your own terms. Yes. Essentially that. It doesn't mean starting a business, means being happy doing what makes you happy. If I might be the wrong person giving this advice, like I said, I did not come out thinking I'll start a company. Oh, okay. Like what's the biggest harm if you do this? Okay. Not much. Let's try this. Let's see what happens. So But when you do, then you have to give it as much as you can. Like, you can't like half be inspired. Mm-hmm. You have to like generally see how far can you take something. Yeah.

I think, no, I think that's a really good point because I think we have option, we, we have all these influences of we should have all the freedom and passive income and be sitting on a beach drinking a margarita. But is that what really, does that fulfill you?

I have met people who after reaching the point sit on the beach and drink a margarita for 2 months and then they're like, it's not working out. Yeah.

There's the idea, don't have to work, but if that's fulfilling, right? So I think that's a really, I love that point. Okay. So next question is a little bit sillier. What is your superpower and how have you like used that to grow your business and your company?

Um, oh, Oof, I have misinterpreted how an algorithm should work versus can work. A lot of nuances here, and we have, um, be very technical and very savvy, and I think the superpower I think is like the intuition, but it's the intuition that I, I don't, I won't call it my superpower, my luck in some ways, is the two perform like amazing, and we get really well in not just what kind of skills, also the personalities. So yeah, I said, you're starting off with one advice that I give to a lot of people who find a partner or co-founders, but going alone on something new and stuff.

Yeah. And I think the compliment, because it, that's a, it's like a puzzle piece. And if you have that, that, yeah, I love that. Okay. Last question. Clearly you have Price Labs. If you know, how do, how do people try it out? How does that work? Um, you know, how to— clearly.

Yeah. So you go to website. Start, and once you see a little bit about us, like what kind of products— like I said, 3 products. If you already list on Airbnb or Vrbo, you can actually use us for pricing. We show you our recommendations, show you how you can create rules around those recommendations. It show you market data for properties around you and There's a 30-day trial. Do not have to add the credit card to start the— so like no risk involved. If you don't have a property, the short-term rental channels, we have a product called Market Dashboards. If you are looking to add something, okay, where you can pick an address. I want to see what kind of demand, what kind of seasonal patterns, what kind of let's say patterns. You can go today and see if you have a property in San Francisco and if you are considering midterming, what kind of demand is this versus in San Francisco, there's plenty of midterm demand, very strong versus in, in Nashville, what kind of midterm demand exists? Not as much. It's very weekend heavy. It's first party in Nashville. Like in terms of the life.

I know it's Yeah.

So for any market, like I'm talking about, since you can, we have a customer in somewhere, I know they call themselves the little Sweden. It's a small town. They use us and we love it because nobody else serves small end market like Price Labs does, which we love, right? So we can find data about, okay, when is demand high, when is demand low. Low, if there is a demand for long-term rentals or not, mostly short-term. So that's one. And then third, if you use, if you're on Airbnb or Vrbo, even if you don't want to use pricing, you can still add your property to see your year-over-year metrics. So this does see how you're doing against the market, right? So maybe if you're not getting bookings go see how bookings on Airbnb slowed down compared to last year. And that's my intent here, like, is it you or is it the market?

That is, that's amazing. Cause I think it's so important to that data and those metrics. On that note, I'm going to fire up PriceLadder. Thank you so much. This has been really, really fun. And I, yeah, I just appreciate your time and it's an honor to have you. So thank you.

Thank you so much. Cheers.