CoLife

CoLife connects homeowners to fantastic, vetted guests based on their common values and living styles. It's like Airbnb + Match.com for housing. Guests put in their information, values, and living styles, and press search. We show them their matches for free. If they want to move forward they do a background and credit check. If they meet and like each other, they pay a one time transaction fee. Guests receive rent that's 50-60% less than if they had to get their own place. They get a much more stable living situation and an automatic friend. Rooms are often times furnished and the lease can be much more flexible because they are working with a homeowner directly. Homeowners not only create extra income but a major part of CoLife is the human value proposition. In the USA the average home has doubled in size in the last 50 years while we are now building half as many homes as we were, driving prices up. Meanwhile, isolation is our greatest health risk. CoLife addresses both of these problems. We are bringing back the human pattern that was once in the USA and is around most of the world today of boarding houses, owner occupied home that rent out at least one room. In the 1800’s as many as 1/2 of residents in major US cities lived in them, and they filled an important role in affordability and social connection. Living in them would be several elderly people who stayed permanently, business men and students. People are willing to share housing if it's made easy and safe. But their best options now if they do not have a personal network are not easy or safe. CoLife makes it easy and safe through high level matching, human review of applications, background and credit checks, and having Home Guides help people find their perfect match. While we spent 2018 researching and 2019 manually prototyping, since launching the first iteration software 6-8 weeks ago we have hundreds of users sign up with very little marketing.