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 fits into 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 whole system. The other has been from being focused on short-term rentals. To now we also do rental rentals, also do for deed for sale, hard for sale, 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, everyone. Hey everyone, this is Anurag, 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 and 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 take. A lot of startups, it's 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, by doing what we are doing, 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, we actually ran Five Slabs, but 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 were like, fine, total 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 like 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 part-time session and yeah, over time, you know, 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 6 months of rolling out something. You can 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, you know?

I'm 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 at United. 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 they'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, if there's somebody who wants to use it. Within about a year, we had about 1,000 customers. So That was the big, the basic thing is when he said, okay, see if people will actually pay for this thing. We rolled out pricing plans and everything. And then a lot of the customers actually stuck on, actually went in and added the third job search. Wow. Okay. I just did it. Okay. It was just that the all three of us, two of the three of us had families. Back then, had families back then, which meant like, even if we had a thousand customers who 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 ways. And then After that, like 2019, we were 6 of us. By then, comfort time and hired some of these. So for me, we became 14 of us. 2021, like 30, and then 2022 at about 100 people. It's been like, our product has been a lot stronger. Although if you think of like percentage, it's been similar, like When you go from 6 to 14 people, you're like, you have 2x in size. It seems crazy, but yeah.

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 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 in 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 real estate buying and selling. Okay. It is, sorry, the data. One, it is dynamic and two, the number of decisions that you're making As a seller, one, in most cases you're selling, right, of short-term rentals. And these things exist, and the reason the automation algorithms exist most for airlines or— is because making— even if you have one home, each night has a different demand for it. So your price for a Tuesday is different from the price for Saturday. So you now have two, two decision points. In a week you have seven decision points, right? A Saturday is different from a Sunday, right? So in fact, you have 360 decision points in, in a year. They're all important. The holidays are well known and people do know they should increase prices, but sometimes Some unknown, like unknown to you singer might announce the concert. You have no idea that they're very, but they are, and the price is potentially, and it's that there is revenue to be made in short-term rental space. If you're in long-term rentals, like you annually lease, nobody cares if a singer, if there's a big concert happening, right? Nobody was thinking of long lease. Economics does that come in into long-term lease thing, but you made another 30 million existing factories, right? Most like the APH, the Army, like most of the large long-term lease programs also happened. I see. Of course, it was by the end of '21. Shutdown are different. There's like, again, like the concept doesn't matter to midterm, midterm, but seasonality still matters. Like during, for example, summer in inner city, demand for midterm 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 concept stigma. Having a contractor or something that come in, but then there is a particular season in which some incremental demand comes through. And if you know that supply is tight at that time, you can make a decision.

Yeah, I, it's interesting because I think when I first got into midterms, to your point, I didn't realize how it is seasonal. I just assumed people are, they're always traveling for work. There's always nurses and it's summer is where it's at. When do I have to adjust my price points? I'm not a computer, like I'm just using my little— so I think the power of a software is not— it's really valuable in maximizing.

That piece of it, right? So I talked about 365. There's also the fact that how far a date is important. So now when I'm thinking of the life for next year, I probably be a little optimistic about how about is going. So we have, for example, data that for next summer, a lot of bookings will start showing up in Zyro. So right now, don't miss out on the opportunity. It definitely depends on the market. Markets are very last minute. There are markets that very early. Typically you see a lot of summer demand shows up and starts booking like right after you come back from Christmas vacation and say, okay, what are my summer plans now? Happens 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 we adjust rates, get the right bookings. It's a big March. April comes and you're trying to book, then you might want to say, 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 don't really matter, what can matter is, for example, biggest problems I feel is when you get gaps between two, two states. Like, because if you're in a market that's regulated, or people don't have the right license to do automated If you get 3 weeks between 2 stays, not somebody doing stay for a week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, that might be legal. 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, 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 or discounted rate, it'll help move again, you know, those kind of things. Mm-hmm. But one of the things we do, for example, is like, how can you reduce the possibility of a 21-day gap even getting created? Mm-hmm. So if easiest example I have for this is if you have two halls, if 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 12th of October. If somebody's listening to this and sees this, right? Another home that's currently sitting empty, like somebody finished their lease on 30th of September and it's currently sitting empty. Now, if I have a guest who wants to book a place starting November 1st. Stay at 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. Okay. Want is to make sure that the guest who wants to start on November 1st picks the home that booking ends just before. And so we have some strategy that can help automate this stuff. And so you can say if a booking is 10-day, 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 the 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 $500 from the entire—

right.

This can help you. It, it looks like you lost $100 here. Maybe it isn't for either one. But then the next guest shows up, you have something for them ready. And in the long run, you'll need more.

Yeah. Because that inventory, it's all about inventory. And if you have those vacancy rate, not that cuts into your profit. 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 because for me, 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 also by picking data from other third-party providers called key data. So we get all of this data for everyone who lists on one of these platforms, right? And although they tend to be very short-term rentals, 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 towards mid-term rentals, Airbnb themselves announced it, but about 20-25% of the stays that happen, of the nights that are booked, are actually through midterm bookings. Airbnb for a month, my home.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

As long as these cross-listed, like it's on Airbnb, it's also on, on some midterm platform, Airbnb itself has become a midterm platform. We get the data, right? So we are able to see what price are intermediaries getting for what season are they getting more paying. 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 look at the midterm meetings, that is the prime time. But if you look at how much supply is available, everything is— nobody's going there for vacation. So everybody's like, every vacation rental is available, every vacation rental will 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 July, that market is fully booked. 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 is seeing a downturn in that time.

Okay.

So, uh, something very— demand is higher in February compared to 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 any 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.

Mm-hmm.

So even in our platform, for example, you would come and 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 plan it around $3,500 a month. We will give you a set of values. How, how much would you pay in March? How much would you pay in July? 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 premium 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, get eventful algorithm inside. We let the algorithm set the price and they were buying homes and it, 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 really hard. The fact that it's so small, might not pick up. I'll give a couple of examples, right? Start right next to each each other. One of them is decorated with this in-tank, 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 interesting. From what I'm hearing, I've never actually played it.

Yeah.

But it's very hard for an algorithm to know, but pickleball is more involved these days compared to tennis. So even if you upload those, there is no, there are very few platforms that can set off pickleball code or tennis code as an amenity. I believe they won't at this point. Yeah. But this is an example.

Yeah. Yeah.

It might be like. Whether it's a jacuzzi, hot tub, or some small nuances matter a lot. And the human being, if you're in that market, you know what people like, what they don't like. We get that guidance. We show data. You can actually go to PriceLance now, create, even if you don't have a property on Airbnb, you can get a 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? Okay. So you give that kind of data, but ultimately when you set your pricing, you are tapping into it 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. Ask you something. I'm an investor and 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 go-to, I think, price labs for STR, but is, do you, are you guys offering that now, like an analysis tool for that?

So short-term rentals, our analysis tools work as is, 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 Price Labs, we basically show you all the properties in the small place. You can then go create comp sets, as many comp sets as you want. And you can create a comp set of all the properties with a hot tub, all the 2-bedrooms that are a hot tub, or 2-bedrooms with 4.5-star or more in ratings with a hot tub. That's certainly, you can create a lot of this, but similarly you can also create a comp set, let's say. I want only properties that are, take 39 minutes, for example.

Okay.

So once you create a concept like that, then when you see data for that concept, it'll essentially be what's happening with the model.

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— that happened on Airbnb, right? Like, they share. What Airbnb, Booking.com is, we constantly look at everybody's titles to see what sites are they listing on, what is— what minimum state setting, and things like that. The minimum state setting helps us figure out what's the return on investment. So I'll shut up on that for Then every, like when we see that, hey, these October 31st to November 30th used to be available at $100 a night. Today, yesterday it was available. Today it's— it tells us like somebody must have booked it. We then also say, okay, it's $100 a night, but they have a monthly discount of 30%. So it's not like. Biggest, biggest, so the 100 times 30, which is 30, 3,000, 3,000. Because there's a 20% discount, they must have paid $2,400, right? So, okay. Then we get to know that, okay, booking happened here, so it was $3,400, right? Now, is this data perfect? No, because what could have happened? Is instead of booking Airbnb, this person reached out to you directly, maybe they were an old guest and said, hey, I need something for a month. Can I book your place? And you said, either you said $2,000 or you said $2,300. In either of those two prices, we think the one that was listed on Airbnb is not what you booked.

Mm-hmm.

So, so we think you might book that. Be, but you actually something else. But in most cases, you're not going to be that far off. Directionally, we still get, get this right. It's also possible that you actually didn't take up a game. Basically, I want to stay in that place maybe, right?

Yeah.

For a month. And that then decreases our chance of getting properly trained there. But we also get sourced 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 direct bookings 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 statistically good enough is what we think.

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, 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 off more direct?

There are a couple of ways to go if you want to use myself. One forms what they're called property management systems. It is 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 website. There are some platforms that are of course free that they also give you the full fee or part fee as well. Where if somebody wants to directly book, you say, hey, go book on this and it'll have a few users have the rates that you published.

Okay.

And don't want to have a website, no online presence of Midterm Rental or calendars. Like you could create a page and say, hey, I have a midterm rental, call me. But it will show calendars of this property, what dates are available, what dates are not available, and things like that. In that case, But it's part of the US, but if you have some online products or you use a direct booking website or one of these channels, then of course we'd be worldwide 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? Ooh.

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

Okay. Okay.

And for that, I think how free your book might be or whatever platform to do that. But once you do that, we have an API. We have, I think, at least one or two WordPress plugins which do work with us. So they can ingest, uh, except short dash.

Okay. Cause I, cause I don't, I want to have a listing, but I don't want to say the price cause it's so seasonal. So I don't put the price and everyone's like, what does it cost?

I'm like, so one thing, one thing you can do is you can list on one of the OTAs, like, you can, they markup Airbnb's commission, you mark up your prices to add 15% so that if somebody does books on there, you still make what you wanted to make in some sense.

Yeah.

But if somebody comes to book directly, you tell them the price. So, I will check my, or her biography. I think WordPress Weekly worked with one of them at least.

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

Yeah.

I love that.

Come on. Let me, I'm doing it. Yeah. Let's go ahead and part on how to do this. Okay. 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 a big topic. City had a regulation, 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 short-term 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. Both things exist. Don't show up at all, or with them, cheaper. I think with them 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, very passive in some way. They're not like selling every month. Uh, but your rents are getting cheaper. Mid-term rentals, there is some work involved, some coordination. Somebody's looking to book 2 months from now, 1 month from now. It's, it's long-term rentals, you worry about it like once a year. Correct. Yeah. Okay. You worry about it like every couple of months, you might say that. Short-term rentals on, on that extreme, they're like sometimes state or city, you can make in one weekend the same amount you would have made in a month. That also means you're busy. By that I don't mean you're busy, but you probably have a kidney group, but you are having some schedules, something or the other, some messages, some guests every day. So there is that, how passive do you want it to be versus how much do you want to stay on top of that spectrum? A lot of people end up in the middle also because midterm booking, we have slowed down a little bit compared to COVID. COVID was going on and everybody was remote, very easy for like folks to just work from somewhere else, book a month and go work from there. but even now the number of Red Dumble Kings is still up from what it used to be 4 or 5 years ago. It's just, it's become a little bit more acceptable to be there. Other— if I think— there's a lot of short-term rental— no, that's not necessarily the thing. Supply has increased a lot, but demand also has increased. So it's not anything this type of thing. What we have seen is, and not necessarily well managed, only needs You might have a 2-bedroom, but if you like, like, it does— you will get 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, that was hidden. That was, yeah, that was just, the reviews were good, the pizza was nice. Like, we, we would have ideally stayed in our neighborhood itself, but the next place didn't have the price. So we ended up going, like, hopping on a 1-minute Ubers down. It's not like there are white supply available that I could pick whatever I wanted and everything.

Mm-hmm. It's not, uh, 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 cuz it doesn't just do itself. Are you, are you an investor on the side or is you have your hands full with Pricelabs? I'm curious.

I have my hands full with Pricelabs. No, absolutely. I do not go anywhere near the industry. Like you said, it's not pretty passive. There is working hard and at least right now I want to need to focus everything on energy and Pricelabs.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. No, I told— so Edwene, 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 academic pricing system. To management system. So difference is when we pricing, the first thing we did for the first 3 years was update people's prices. Then we were like, hey, like there's one part of the story. Can you also update registrations? So now we do things like this. If you have a midterm, we can say somebody's the book, they have 10 days long shift, 30 nights. But if somebody's going to leave a 29th, you can keep the automation that says it needs to do once based.

Okay.

So it has nothing to do with that, but it will still help you give a little more. And then for folks who, hey, look, I want the data to dynamically size. How about I want to store in a new model? Best seller, again, a part of the system to say, okay, or like, how can I evaluate how my property to the market? So then we created this tool, Portfolio Analytics, 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 wholesome system. The other has been from being focused on short-term rentals to now we also do midterm rentals, also do boutique hotels, apartment hotels, subpar hotels, a little more than other sectors 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 like a year into my job at United Airlines. I was texting my sister like, this is just amazing. Well, I stay here for a very long time. I was pretty happy. Like in my head, it was like in my mind, having a very good co-workers to work with, very good Like work-life balance is 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 true. You can argue my likes and my don'ts.

Yeah.

Don't let somebody else define what life is in your own terms. Yes, essentially that. It doesn't mean starting a business, it 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. Okay. Like what's the biggest harm if you do this? Okay. Not much. Let's try this. Let's see what happens. But when you do, then you have to give it as much as you can. You can't like half-heartedly try it. You have to like generally see how far can you take something.

I think that, no, I think that's a really good point because I think we have often, we have all these influences of we should have all the freedom and passive income and be sitting on a beach. 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, I 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?

How I have misinterpreted how an algorithm should work versus can work. A lot of nuances here and you have to be very technical and very savvy. And I think the superpower I think is like the intuition. But actually, question to that, I, I don't, I won't call it my superpower, my luck in some ways is the two perform like amazing in the, the trio, in not just what kind of skills, also the personalities. So yeah, I say you're starting off by one and I said gift to a lot of people who've asked to find a partner or co-founders, but going alone on something new and stuff.

Yeah. And I think the complement, 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, self-serve.store, 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'll show you our recommendations, show you how you can create rules around those recommendations. It'll 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-of-sale 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, last parties in Nashville. Like in terms of realizing English.

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 they love it because nobody else serves small market like Price Labs does, which we love, right? So they can find data about, okay, when is demand high, when is it low, is there demand for long rentals or not, when is there demand for mostly short-term rentals. So that's one. And then third, if you use, if you're on Airbnb Abo, even if you don't want to use comparison, 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 might tell you like, what could it be? Is it you? 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 that I'm going to fire up PriceLabs right now. 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.