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The concept of taking existing assets and reusing them is not new. After all, Airbnb is a high-profile example of people turning vacation homes, for example, into income generators when they’re not being used. The end result is that travelers today have far more options than ever before when choosing where to stay.
A San Francisco-based startup wants to not only give travelers more options, but also make travel more affordable, and has raised $15 million toward that goal. Opendoor alumni Justin Palefsky and Tasnim Amina teamed up to start a company in 2021. RelativeIt aims to give people a subscription option with a unique home exchange model.
Kindred is building a members-only network to allow people to essentially swap homes. The idea is that the network is “trusted”, so that members feel comfortable in exchanging homes. Interestingly, no money is exchanged between members who pay Kindred for the ability to let someone stay in their home, and vice versa.
If a member allows someone to stay in their home for a certain number of nights, they can bank those nights to stay at someone else’s place when they leave. It is a give and take policy. For each stay, a guest pays Kindred a service fee (variable by trip, but maximum $30 per night) to coordinate the stay and housekeeping. That service fee covers the company’s costs and provides margins, the founders say. Even though guests pay for cleaning the house where they stay, the company makes no profit from it, he said.
Members can use Kindred to arrange direct 1-to-1 exchanges or host other members to earn nights and use those nights to stay at another member’s home. The company recently introduced a pay-as-you-go model with no annual commitment required. Once approved, those members only cover the cost of cleaning and the service fee of the trip. Kindred frequent users have the option to purchase a Kindred Passport for $600, which allows them to book unlimited trips for a year with $0 service fees.
“We designed Kindred for people to share their real homes with each other, not property managers or vacation rentals. There are many ‘get’ options for travel. Palefsky, who serves as the CEO of the company. “Every guest is a host, so everyone has skin in the game. It creates an atmosphere of mutual trust and accountability.”
Since launching its private beta last spring, Kindred says it has seen a tenfold increase in monthly travel bookings and received 20,000 membership applications, mostly from primary residences and investment properties. To date, Kindred members have spent more than 5,000 nights in each other’s homes.
Kind co-founders Justine Palefsky and Tas Amina. Image Credits: Relative
One example of a use case involves a female founding member in her early 30s who lives in Mexico City with her dog. She needed to travel to San Francisco frequently for work, but found it expensive and difficult to find places that would take her dog. In the first eight months, Kindred booked more than 80 nights in San Francisco, New York and a few other destinations, Palefsky said. In return, she hosted more than 80 nights at her home in Mexico City.
“Stories like this really show us that Kindred’s potential is far greater than we initially realized,” Palefsky told TechCrunch. We have the opportunity not only to capture the current travel market share, but also to grow the travel market as a whole.
New Enterprise Associates (NEA) led the Series A, which included participation from existing backers Andreessen Horowitz, Caffeine Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Ossett Capital. New individual investors also invested in the round, including former Kosla investor Evan Moore and Figma CEO Dylan Field. To date, the startup has raised a total of $26.75 million. It has 20 employees, up from a year ago.
Kindred plans to use the new capital partly geographically – in North America, as well as in several European cities this year, such as London, Berlin and Amsterdam. Today, it operates in more than 20 markets in North America, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Seattle, Denver, Austin, Vancouver and Mexico City. The company plans to invest in its algorithms, including Matchmaker, which provides AI-based recommendations to members.
“Our goal is to eventually be everywhere, but we’re focusing on major cities where there’s a lot of overlap in supply and demand and where we can use our local photography and cleaning services,” Palefsky said.
NEA partner Vanessa Larco, who joined Kinder’s board, said that as short-term rental platforms become more professional, they have opened up a huge untapped opportunity for a true sharing economy, enabling peer-to-peer sharing of primary housing. Instead of renting investment properties.
He added: “The size of the market for primary residences is large compared to investment properties and Kindred has shown that they can bring net new furnishings to the vacation rental market by providing the confidence and convenience to open more primary residences.
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