Startup Idea: ReHome

by Your Future Cofounder

Airbnb. Amazing. Airbnb “believes that people can and should feel like they belong anywhere in the world.” Strongly agree. Hundreds of thousands of hosts. Tens of millions of users. 500,000 stays a night. A re-imagination of the notion of property. Incredible.

However, Airbnb investor Sam Altman says:

Unfortunately, a lot of other people have problems paying their rent or mortgage.

That’s bad. But:

75% of Airbnb hosts in San Francisco say that their income from Airbnb helps them stay in their homes, and 60% of the Airbnb income goes to rent/mortgage and other housing expenses.

That’s good! So why not let Airbnb help them even more. That’s where ReHome comes in.

Startup idea: ReHome will let renters and homeowners spend as little time in their homes as is necessary to keep them. By providing affordable sleep-work-live arrangements in extremely space-optimized towers located at or near public transit termini, ReHomes allow sharing economy rentrepreneurs to lease a bed in a beautifully efficient open-plan space. (The spaces could be inside of used shipping containers or former public housing, or even former disrupted office and residential buildings — ReHousing isn’t about the specific space, right, it’s an IRL API for the opportunities inside of it.)

Right, so your stay will be all-inclusive: A mattress (Casper Lite Coil Spring), collaborative bathrooms, and Wi-Fi in cases where cellular service is not available in this part of town. Since these towers may be outside affordable delivery zones, so ReHome, in partnership with Soylent and Beyond Food (formerly Beyond Meat), will offer consumption plans.

This is just a pitch. First things first, right, so we’ll use existing home-havers to scale ReHome. But this idea has real potential. At scale, ReHome could offer financing to partners in order to lease or purchase properties. These deals would be revolutionary: priced not only in dollars but in time. Right so ReHome could finance your home on a set monthly payment plan. $4000 a month with zero days shared could be reduced to $3000 a month with five days shared. ReHome could take care of the rental — either through future partners Airbnb or a future rental service of our own. ReHome would not own these properties it rents or finances, right. So that would be handled by an unbundled partner company called ReBank.*

ReHome will provide an app to help you determine your best home/ReHome living balance. Whether you need to stay in a ReHome for one day a week to make rent, or six days a week to make your mortgage, ReHome’s on-demand real-time pricing model has an option for you. Not yet broken into the personal shelter market? A ReHome is a great way to incubate your dream of renting a home near a population center, where you can enjoy the fruits of the Logistics and Leisure Revolution, such as solid food, and then renting that home to inspiring influencers from other cities.**

ReHomes are ultimately about community. Right? So you can Network with fellow free-working rentrepreneurs to get an edge over fellow Taskrabbit, Uber and Amazon Flex partners via sharing learnings.***

ReHome would also offer to its partners a rewards program. Helping to clean the ReHome space, or shuttling ReHome parters from their homes to their ReHomes, can earn you extra free nights. Save up enough free nights and you can redeem them for an extra night in your own home, credited as a client night. Right. So.

Anyway. Let me know. I’m searching for investors and a co-founder. I’m more of an ideas guy so I need someone good with computers.

*Not an FDIC bank

**ReHome Partners are not “guests” and their co-sleeping are not spaces “rooms.” Each cubicle area gate is compatible with industry-leading padlocks.

***Formal labor organization is counter to the spirit of ReHome and is not allowed on ReHome-licensed premises