ReLease’s Pivotal Moment

Q: What’s the difference now in what you are doing?

A: Instead of comparing the two, which is hard to do, I’ll tell you where things are today with ReLease. Essentially, if you’ve ever had a cancelable hotel booking or a cancelable airline ticket, you know how valuable it is to have cancellation policies. We do that exact same thing for residential leases.

We partner with property management companies and owner-operators to offer residents flexible leasing programs. Residents can sign a lease and have the peace of mind of knowing they can cancel at any time. If they move, we cover the vacancy and the entire cost of the remaining lease, so everyone is made whole. In return, we charge a relatively small monthly fee, which we believe the vast majority of tenants are willing to pay. It usually works out pretty well for everyone involved.

Q: How many residents have used your service?

A: The vast majority of that growth has come in the last couple of months, so we’re still scaling up on the resident side. We initially launched with 200 residents back in March when we fully unveiled the new product section. That went well, and we scaled up to about 700. Then we recently onboarded just shy of 8,000 units. We’re still waiting to see the full revenue impact and resident engagement from that, but we expect to see the full breadth of it within the next 6 to 12 months.

Q: Was it hard to make that change?

A: I don’t think it’s hard mentally. I think it’s less about that and more about the type of founder you are. Some founders are really passionate about the problem they’re solving, and others are really passionate about the product itself. There are pros and cons to both. If I were really product-oriented—if I came into this with a very specific product I was incredibly passionate about—it would have been harder to pivot the product but easier to pivot who we were serving or the markets we were targeting. But that’s not us. We came into this knowing the problem we wanted to solve and the groups of people we wanted to work with. Ultimately, it became about ensuring we had the right product that truly solved the right problem for our customers.

Q: Did you almost expect to have to pivot at some point?

A: You always expect to pivot, but knowing you have to pivot is a different story. There are so many small pivots that happen. Every single month, there are little strategic shifts—like, ‘Hey, we’re doing things this way, but it didn’t quite work out, so we’re shifting things around a bit.’ Those are par for the course, and they’re always exciting. You expect those.

But the bigger pivots? You’re always aware that you need to be open to them, but when they actually happen, it’s difficult. There’s a ton of work involved, the team changes a lot, there’s a lot of turmoil, and it’s expensive. It’s also mentally difficult to grapple with.

Q: It sounds like you are in a pretty good spot with that pivot. Have you ever been part of a pivot like that before?

A: I’ve joined in a pivot before, but I’ve never had to make the actual call to say, ‘Hey, this is what we need to do to shift things around.’ I do have experience with what that process is like, though. Both of the companies I had a major role in before this went through huge pivots. One was in the middle of a pivot when I joined, and I helped get us through it. The other had pivoted a few years before I came on board. But similarly, they were massive, massive pivots.

Q: Is there any advice you’d give to other entrepreneurs out there who need to pivot?

A: Oh, 100%. I think how you handle it—and where you can go wrong—is very unique. But ultimately, most founders share two things in common: one, they’re usually pretty smart people, and two, they’re very good at fooling themselves. You don’t jump into something like this unless you’re stubborn and good at convincing yourself that it’s a great idea, right?

But when things aren’t working, you have to be able to pull yourself out, evaluate things honestly, and say, ‘Where are things not working? Where are things working really well? And how do I optimize for what’s working?’ That’s easier said than done. Sometimes it means changing the kind of customer you serve, adjusting pricing, or even ripping and replacing vast parts of what the company does. It could also mean zoning in on one specific element. It all depends.

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Q: Is there anything you wish you would have done differently with this particular pivot?

A: Not particularly. I think the only thing is that if we had started earlier, it would have been a lot easier. A lot of times, when you know something isn’t working, you’ve just got to make the call and change what you’re doing.

Q: How many employees did you have when you were about to make the pivot?

A: When we were about to make the pivot, I think we were a team of four. Then we actually cut that down to just myself and my co-founder. There’s been a ton of team turmoil through all of this. If I could change one thing, I would have approached how we dealt with the team differently. I think we should have cut more aggressively right at the beginning or hired more strategically in the middle of that pivot.

Coming out of it, we grew the team to about six people, plus one part-time person, but eventually scaled that back down again. I think the lesson there is you’ve got to have a really tight grip on where you absolutely need people and where you don’t.

Q: What does the next 12 months look like for you?

A: For us, we want to keep up this rate of growth. By this time next year, we’re aiming to be in 50,000 to 60,000 apartment doors. We want to maintain strong adoption and see the impact we’re creating for people, as well as the revenue impact we’re driving for operators.

We also want to continue seeing what we’re doing get picked up by the industry and, over time, gradually become part of the expectation renters have when they go to lease a new apartment.