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Revolutionizing Home Sharing: Trust, Community, and Scaling with Bo Abrams · Talk Commerce

• Brent Peterson (00:03.795) Welcome to this episode. Today I have Bo Abrams. He is the founder of Komu. Bo, go ahead, tell us your day -to -day role and one of your passions in life. Bo Abrams (00:14.158) Yeah, I am one of the co -founders and the CEO of Komu. So a lot of my day -to -day is setting the strategic vision, fundraising, hiring, and just making sure we're all in alignment towards scaling this product that we love. Sorry, the first question was just about your day -to -day and the second one was what? We're getting to actually what Komu is? yeah. Passion is really, I love connecting people. I've always cared about having... Brent Peterson (00:31.347) Yep. No, do you have any passions? Bo Abrams (00:44.014) great friends and great relationships in my life. And I've always felt like it'd be great to connect those great people together. So I always am going out of my way to bring different friend groups of mine together. And I did have a dating, I did try to set up couples at one point across friend groups. I wouldn't recommend that as much, but yeah, in the friendship category, it was great. Brent Peterson (01:04.115) Right in a past life, I was a developer and I did a dating website in like 1998. So think about what it was like then. And they were incredibly busy, not in business anymore, but it was very interesting to see sort of the behind the scenes pinnings of what happens in things like that where they're trying to put those together. Bo, before we get started though, you have been volunteered or voluntold. Bo Abrams (01:11.022) Wow. Brent Peterson (01:31.987) to participate in the free joke project. You actually don't have to participate, but it would be fun if we tried. I'm gonna tell you a joke. All you have to do is say, should this joke be free or do you think should we charge for it sometime? So here we go. And we have an easy one today. My wife and I laugh at how competitive we are, but I laugh more. Bo Abrams (01:54.382) It's good. It's free because it's definitely a dad joke and I'm a big fan of dad jokes myself but I feel like the dad joke category is almost like you can't patent that. You know, you can't. But it's a good one. Brent Peterson (02:03.795) Yeah, I agree. Yeah, if, and again, I'm kind of a techie, so there is a dad joke database that you can access with open API. So I do have, I was trying it for a while on my Mac here. I just have a little Python script I wrote that gives me a dad joke instantly, but yeah, it wasn't, yeah, I couldn't curate them as well. Bo Abrams (02:26.03) See, once you said database though, an API, now at this point, if you have an API call, I do think you can actually charge with the dad jokes. So I'm changing my tune. Brent Peterson (02:34.675) okay. Okay, there you go. It's too bad that now Twitter has gone to like just to get API access, you got to pay 100 bucks a month. Anyways, let's not get sidetracked. I'm so, I mean, you know, you have a like, well, let's just start with your category. What would you call your category? Bo Abrams (02:54.798) That's a great question. We would put ourselves in really a social network category, but obviously like we also really kind of play into hospitality and travel in the broader sectors. Brent Peterson (03:07.219) Yeah, so you wouldn't say necessarily Airbnb, but more of a connection point so people will find the places where they can be. Is that correct? Bo Abrams (03:16.494) Almost. I mean, the truth is, we love and admire Airbnb and Verbo, but that's the short -term rental category. And we're really trying to prove out that there's a whole different category that's emerging right now that we think we're leading in, which is it's a network for sharing primary homes. It's really the home sharing category and that the short -term rental category is really a professionalized separate space now. Brent Peterson (03:41.107) Yeah. And in the green room, we did talk about a little bit about trusted house sitters. We do or did trusted house sitters. and it was a great resource for us. we had a bigger dog, so we couldn't travel with it, but it was a great resource to have people come in and watch the dog and watch the house. And that's it. Tell us a bit, a little bit about how you align with that model. Bo Abrams (04:01.582) Yeah, I mean, I think that I'm a big fan of trusted house hitters. I've also been on the sitting side of trusted house hitters. And it speaks to sort of the same problem that we are trying to address, which is that when you are a home, a home renter, in my case, I was an apartment renter, a pet owner, even a homeowner that wants to just, you know, list their home in some way right now, or really the broad mass market is listing on platforms like Airbnb, but most of us don't want to do that or we can't do it. The reason we can't do it like somebody like me is because regulations and sort of ordinances and leases prevent me as a renter from listing on Airbnb. And that's mostly because they don't want me, you know, getting a home, signing a long -term lease, and then getting that short -term rental profit over that. And we totally agree with that. And most homeowners, In that case, they don't want to list on these platforms because they oftentimes don't want to list to strangers. There's this uncomfortable feeling with sharing your home in that way. In lieu of that being the situation in the market, we're saying, well, there's got to be other ways that we then can share our homes, our most intimate, expensive assets with trusted networks. Trusted Housetakers does a great job, obviously, of vetting both the home owners and pets and then the sitters. But that's a great use case of saying, hey, you know, it's not I don't want to list my home for profit. I really just have a dog that I care about that I don't want to put into a kennel and you know, not have it be home and watch for and then it's a great win for the sitters that are like, well, it's really expensive otherwise to go book another place. And this is a great win of like, I'm paying a small subscription to get two weeks in a in a pro an amazing home. And so we're in the same vein, really like we're trying to roll all of this up into one social based platform where anyone can share their homes with and through their trusted network. So people are sharing their homes for free on Como with their friends. They're oftentimes subletting to friends of friends or group members. There there's a group for home swappers. There's a group for trusted house and pet sitters. And the idea is almost like we're trying to become this one OTA that wraps that all together and shows an individual like yourself. Bo Abrams (06:18.446) all of the people that you're connected to and how you're connected to them. And to make it this one centralized place where whether you're looking for a pet sitter or you're looking for a place to stay, like as a sublease, the trust and the relationship is what really creates this opportunity to bring online these homes that are never going to be listed on short -term mental health. Brent Peterson (06:38.451) Yeah, so a couple of questions or a couple of follow ups on that. In order for this, there has to be some scale, right? And you're getting to that scale. There has to be some scale in getting the network set up, right? So what has the challenge been around that to get that scale? Bo Abrams (06:54.958) Yeah, so initially there was a lot of this kind of cold start problem and this idea that you do need a massive network effect and a really calculated go to market to just hit that inflection point and really watch things take over. Now we are starting to really scale. I'm really excited about that. We just crossed 520 hosts all over the world that are just popping up and we're trying to get all of these homes filled as quickly as humanly possible. So scaling the demands out of the market. But the beauty is that we sort of instead of making it, you know, the case where we were bottoms up or we would say, Hey, Brent, you need to have a friend on Como, you know, to be able to join. And then you do invite friends. We flipped it. And we said, you know what, what if we let these hosts, you know, list in different various ways, but the privacy controls and said, like, you know, let's see how many hosts actually would list publicly on Como. And then that allowed us to then once we had enough of a density there, that allowed us to say, okay, now when somebody downloads Como, they're going to see a hundred plus, you know, hosts that are listing publicly. And most of us, like myself included, like we have our Instagrams and our LinkedIn's tied to our accounts, you know, your phone number is verifying, initially like who you are. And the idea is that from there it's fee, it starts as fee free Airbnb, essentially with social proofing and where people are listening for a fifth of the price. And then we say, Hey, by the way, the more friends you add, the more groups you join, the more value you get as both a host and a guest. And so that kind of. took away a lot of the really difficult marketing challenges initially that most networks like ours would experience. And that were like, kind of like, hey, come for the tool. You're a host that's trying to find their, you know, fill their home and ideally monetize it with somebody you trust, but just to make back your rent. And you're a guest that's trying to find an affordable stay with ideally a host, somebody that you might know and trust. And then stay for the network. By the way, join the Trusted Pet Sitters group. Join the... House Swappers Group joined the Women in Travel Network run by investors and advisors of Comus that are women that ask for that network as a safe place to share homes amongst women joined the UCLA Anderson Alumni Network. That's really where we're starting to see momentum in the scaling of the marketplace. Brent Peterson (09:07.859) So my wife is big into, she does Airbnb and she does Turo. One of the things that we have in doing Airbnb is the charge for cleaning. And same with Turo, you have to make sure the car is clean before the next person picks it up. But how do you work that into the free part of it? Somebody's got to pay for cleaning, right? Bo Abrams (09:36.206) Yeah, so right now the product, you know, we're improving it every day. I'm so excited with like how much momentum we have there in terms of like the product iteration cycle. But right now, most people are, you can only list your place for whatever your cost per night is. So, you know, we encourage people to say like, in my case, your monthly rent divided by 30 is your nightly rates of 70 bucks a night for me. And then we have a cleaning fee on there too. So that's in my case, what I pay my cleaner to come. And we're trying to obviously like really soon turn that on a product as a mandate that that is at least like the cleaning fee no matter what is something that you are paying for even if you're sharing your home for free with friends. That being said, I still tell my friends when they're booking my home for free on Komu, I'm saying, Hey, like, you know, like some of my closest friends, like I will never charge you a nightly rate. Please go enjoy two free weeks in LA. But by having my cleaning fee on there and saying, you know, I still need you to pay this. It gets rid of the awkwardness that normally would come up if you were offering your home to somebody. Because we've talked to a lot of users that want to use Como in this way of just saying, Hey, I'm not actually trying to monetize my own. I'm just trying to share it with friends and use this as a tool to coordinate and share the link with whoever I connect with and say like, they're the only 10 people that I want to share this with. But to say, if I didn't have that cleaning fee on there, I would end up eating 150 bucks every time they. my friends came because I have to go get my sheets dry cleaned and I have to get my place cleaned. And so Como at least does make it not awkward to say, I don't want a bottle of wine or for you to like take me to dinner or whatever. I actually just would prefer that you just pay for the cleaning so that when I come back, it's as if nobody was there before. And like, that's all I care about. And so that's something that we're really, we really think is important no matter what, what kind of transaction you're doing on Como. Brent Peterson (11:24.915) Yeah, I like that model. And I guess I hadn't thought about, you know, just taking your expenses and dividing it by the number of days in the month. So in that model, and again, I'm sorry to keep going back to Airbnb, but that's what I know. You know, we have a rental like, so we're in Hawaii and the company that if you're not on island, you have to have a management company. So do you have a facility to work with a management company in this? Bo Abrams (11:36.526) No, please. Brent Peterson (11:53.555) Regard like we can block the time off so our friends and family can use it But it's also like you said it's awkward sometime like you just want to cover your costs, right? and like there's electricity especially in Hawaii so expensive and like How do you see that working? Bo Abrams (12:03.086) Yeah. Bo Abrams (12:09.678) So that is really the whole opportunity is to say like at the most expensive level that you could ever be listing your home on Komu, it has to be maximum. The maximum value should be covering costs. And like we are going to build more features into Komu to ensure that people are not trying to profit listing their homes on Komu. Like as you can imagine, what's great about the go -to -market and being public is that you're giving people this really broad, vibrant network to start. But if you don't have those rules in place, ultimately what ends up happening is like, you know, we believe that people will maybe inevitably get greedy if they realize that their place is in high demand. And that greed will then somehow eventually turn you into a short -term rental platform. That's really where, you know, if you look back where Airbnb started, it's kind of where Comu is now. It used to be about just sharing your vacant room or your vacant home to make a few extra bucks. And then it's professionalized. Like most Airbnbs and most short -term rentals are now managed by these professional management companies. And the focus of that is to make a profit. The focus is to like, you know, there's not like the Blackstone ETF tracking short -term rental plot properties as, you know, profit driving assets. So in our case, we're saying, actually, you don't need to register these homes with the city. You don't need to, we're not going to fall subject to these ordinances because we don't have that same effect, which is to say like, yeah, you're not having people come in here buying a homes that is, you know, reducing the housing supply and turning these communities into these, you know, rotating revolving doors of people that we don't know or the host doesn't know. And that's why these ordinances like even in Hawaii exist. That being said, that means we have to enforce that people are listing and, you know, for their costs at the maximum or might just be, you know, in your case, like a good example is. When you want to just find a pet sitter, it's not that you need to charge your expenses, it's that it's actually just more valuable for you to find somebody that you know and trust. It's going to take good care of your home and your dog while you're away. But it's giving you all of those options. And we basically say you can list on Comu for anything but a profit. Brent Peterson (14:16.467) Yeah, that's awesome. And I can say from sitting on the other side of the fence, we have done the trusted house sitting where we went and stayed at somebody's house and watched their dogs. And it was, it was a great experience and I would encourage. And it's some that that type of experience you can't get from a short term. Nobody's going to rent their Airbnb and say, by the way, you know, you got to watch my two dogs and my three cats. Bo Abrams (14:39.15) Yeah, and the flip side too is like, I think you're seeing a lot of the backlash where people are like, you're going to rent my Airbnb and you're going to take out the trash and you're going to clean the floors and you know, there's still a cleaning fee and there's still taxes and there's still all these things. And we're like, you know, that that's not a tenable model that we believe in. And that's why we're not building in that space. Brent Peterson (14:56.499) And what about, you know, I think one thing that's always interesting is stuff like, you know, what if you wanted to let you, I'm assuming you just say, hey, you can use our surfboards or you can use our snow skis if you're in the North or whatever. It's kind of open to the host to say what they can and can't use. I think even, I've heard that, you know, Trusted house sitters, sometimes they may even have access to the owner's car. Bo Abrams (15:27.662) Yeah, the car is one that is definitely top of mind, especially because we're very, we have a lot of concentration right now with our user base being between LA and New York and the New Yorkers when they're going to LA, like their first thought, especially for like a two week plus trip is like, how am I going to get around? I'm going to have to Uber and Lyft everywhere. It's pretty expensive. And so cars do come into play. And what's cool about cars is actually you can just call up your auto insurance company and add a guest onto the insurance for like a month for, you know, a $20 premium. And they're covered. And so if you're cool with sharing your car and this is somebody that you maybe know and trust, like that's awesome. That being said, for the most part, the relationship and the social component of Komu, you know, has people lessen that mindset of like, my valuable things, like my, you know, my setup, like I'm concerned, like who is this person coming into my home? Obviously most people have great protocols on how to put away and, or take with them their most valuable objects. But you know, in the meantime. That's essentially what Komu is working to underwrite. We're saying when you're doing these shares with anybody that's not your direct friend or with a friend that is also a verified Komu pro user, that is where we can come in with a protection plan and say, okay, if you were to accidentally break the snowmobile or the skis on a Komu stay, ultimately we've got you covered. And the beautiful thing is the risk is so low because... you know, we're a safer option than what's out there in the market when you talk about scaling this up and underwriting it. It's like when you add relationships and trust into this, a lot of things aren't going to go wrong. And a lot of people are going to settle this between themselves because they, you know, they have that relationship and mistakes happen. If I'm a big dude and I break your Peloton, like I will figure that out because I know I shouldn't have been riding your Peloton. Brent Peterson (17:12.019) Yeah, I mean, I suppose you just have a whole litany of some rules that they can and places they can with the things they can use within the house Kind of remind I'm also a spin lister User I think that you probably hit the right topic here for me anyways, but spin listers where you can list your bikes and The problem I saw in spin lister and this kind of goes back to the insurance part as they maxed out at I think $4 ,000 and If you're a biker, you know that you sometimes can't even get into a bike for $4 ,000. Your bike might be $8 ,000. So I was always a little apprehensive of putting all of my bikes on the spin list. And by the way, the formula for the number of bikes you need in your garage is N equals N plus one. Bo Abrams (18:01.166) Well, yeah, I mean, I've, I've, I've dabbled with like looking into cycling a little bit, but I'm definitely as a founder right now, not, not engaging in anything that isn't, Necessary at this moment for me. but I think that's exactly it. It's like traditional marketplaces when you're trying to be a marketplace where you're one of the key reasons why people stay on there is the insurance coverage. You have to make sure you're dealing with a product that makes sense to have a marketplace for right. And those bikes are a great example of. Like, you know, if you're really an avid cyclist, you're an evangelist in this, in this category, you probably have a bike that's worth more than $4 ,000 that you really care about. And if you're not covered on this behavior where people are riding your bike, like, like the reason they're even paying for it is to go ride it and like put risk onto it. Then, you know, is that really the place that you're going to keep turning to when you're trying to share your bike? Or you're going to try to share it with maybe friends or people that you trust. Brent Peterson (18:59.443) Yeah, I mean, that's a good point. And I didn't want to try not to derail us. But so the, the, the, there is a, some built in insurance is what I was trying to get into to make sure that if there is some loss or there's some, and I guess too, don't leave your Rolex on the table, right? If friends are not, if you leave your whatever very expensive piece of jewelry out. Bo Abrams (19:07.822) Yeah, yeah. Bo Abrams (19:14.318) Exactly and I think It's exactly it's that the connection and the social piece actually has already started as a naturally like, like it's already, we haven't had a single incident across over 250 stays on Como. Like people are incredibly respectful of each other's homes. People are currently paying peer to peer via Venmo or PayPal. Like everything's gone off smoothly as we're turning out preparing to turn on all of these membership services. But of course they want to know that they're covered because mistakes happen and things happen. and ultimately like we're there to say like we've got you covered, coma's got your back and you know, we're going to make this a safe and trusted as humanly possible and still scale to, you know, a massive network. Brent Peterson (19:59.539) So now coming back to how you guys make money. Your money is made through membership. Bo Abrams (20:05.646) Yeah, so on the consumer side, it's primarily through subscriptions to say if you want to get access to friends of friends, to groups, to people listening to all of Kobu, that's where you need to pay a small annual subscription fee, which is equal to, and it's similar to trusted house owners, like equal to like one night at a short -term rental. And the idea is you do one night or basically two nights on Kobu per year as a host or guest. You make that buck back that money and everything about that is just savings to you. and value to you that you can get elsewhere if you're a renter like me trying to list. And so that's also where we come in and say, okay, now that you're covered, you're verified, you've got the protection plan for your stays, you've got the idea that your home has been verified and so on and so forth. But like that's really where we're coming in as a marketplace on the consumer side. And then we also have another business model that we're really proud of where we sell directly to businesses. And so we go to really, you know, series A to series C startups that have traveling, oftentimes sales forces, but traveling employees and we say like, what if those employees when they're going to New York, what if they stayed with their friends in a spare room or a vacant home instead of a hotel? Would you gift their friends a hundred bucks a night flat for opting to choose to save the company money? And most of those companies are like, yeah, as long as you're handling liability and payment and you're that network that bridges that, we're super down for that. So in that model, we take a small fee of what we disperse to host as a success fee, but. It's awesome because it's like a cool thing to go to your friends and say, hey, my company will give you $1 ,000 of passive income for something that you probably would do anyways, which is like, let me stay at your home and ideally see you if it's a spare room. All we got to do is book it on Komu and check this box. Are you down? And they're like, yep. And so we're really excited about that model. Brent Peterson (21:48.627) Yeah, that's interesting. And I think we talked a little bit about, about furnished finder, we're, we're, you know, we get traveling nurses on furnished finder and, and I know that also furnished finder will do an entire house for a long -term, say if somebody's got a fellowship at a university or is that, does that model work the same for you? Bo Abrams (22:09.454) Yeah, and I think it speaks to just the idea that like you the fact you have to even turn to furnish finer versus like a trusted, you know, house hitters, this idea that like, it's all solving the same, the same core problem, which is like people are moving and traveling and trying to, you know, the travel nurses and beyond like, you know, professors at universities, like people are gone for months on end. And that's part of their now their jobs and what they in their dreams and what they want to do. And it is so expensive. to have a 12 month lease and have like a month of sunk rental costs, and then to try to afford something like a short term rental, because they're more expensive than hotels now for singles or couples that are traveling. And so they have, they're turning to platforms like a furnished finder or trusted house sitters or, you know, Facebook groups or WhatsApp or texting or Instagram posts to try to find something that is affordable and trusted. And in the worst case scenario on the trust side, they're often turning to like Craigslist or Facebook marketplace, where there's no mechanisms to kind of social proof or trust that person. Or even hostels, which like I'm a giant man and I wouldn't go stay in a hostel right now. No, it's not that I don't trust the people I'm staying with, but it's just that feeling of like, I don't have my own room or my privacy and like, what do I do with my thing? So it is, we do support the trusted, that's sort of the, the, the furnish finder model. But really, again, it's all trying to come onto the same brand platform. Brent Peterson (23:37.715) So what are you most excited about now as you're growing and scaling? What is it that as we go into these last couple of quarters in 2024 and the next year, what are you really excited about? Bo Abrams (23:51.694) First and foremost, I'm just so excited at the genuine community that we've built at Komu that is scaling. And it's this idea that Gus and I are two guys that saw a problem. We went to business school, my Gus and my co -founder, we met and we had no intention of starting a company. It's not like we worked at Airbnb and we saw an opportunity and we spun this out and we're like, we're gonna go do that. We're just like, man, this is our problem. It's kind of crazy that we met in business school and we were remote capable workers before the pandemic. And we both realized, wait a second, Even with decently, you know, well paying jobs, like we couldn't afford to travel. And so that's all to say, like, as we built Komu and like really started, you know, talking to our users, engaging them, like, you know, messaging them, like finding ways to solve that problem. That's our problem too. They have just gone to bat for us in ways that like, you know, ignite us every day to work even harder for them. And it's amazing how much feedback we get, how much engagement and activities occurring on the app, and how many bookings are happening and hosts that are coming on that we've never heard of before. And we're like, where did this person, like we just had somebody pop up in Malibu, yes, or sorry, in Maui, excuse me, yesterday. And it's like, where did this person come from? And you're reaching out to them and it's just, it's awesome. So that's all to say, I'm most excited about feeling like you have this massive team that's all connected to each other, like fighting for the same cause, which is. to be able to travel, to be able to connect with people. Beyond that, I'm just excited to really launch a lot of those features that people want, because I think it's gonna really be a catalyst to even more growth, because people feel more and more comfortable doing all of this when they know that Kobu's got everything ironed out on both sides of the marketplace. Brent Peterson (25:33.587) How about international expansion? Are you looking at Mexico, Canada? Do you already have Mexico and Canada? Bo Abrams (25:40.878) Yeah, we do. I mean, that's another thing that gets really exciting. It's that by being free and freemium, ultimately, but free to start for everybody right now, hosts are popping up all over the world. So we've got hosts in Mexico City and London and Paris and Lisbon. And, you know, a lot of these places, I will say, I've like, I've never been before myself and like to see a I've been to Paris once, but like to see a host pop up in Paris, that's like 70 bucks a night flat. I'm like, why not take that trip? But yeah, like the beautiful things to say, all we tell people is just invite your friends. Like the more of a network you build, the more likely we all find what we're looking for. And we can be a global company very quickly just by being social first. Brent Peterson (26:22.867) Yeah, that's awesome. So you mentioned moving into this space after the pandemic. How has that as an entrepreneur, have you found it? Is this the first time you're doing an entrepreneurial journey? Bo Abrams (26:38.766) Kind of, I mean, I will say before business school, I'd started a nonprofit for a friend of mine. She had cystic hyprosis and she needed a lung transplant. And that really is why I do what I do with Komu. It's a longer backstory, but I will say that was just my first foray into trying to start something and raise money for it and execute on a strategy there. I ended up working in venture capital while I was in business school. That's like definitely a career that I would still find really interesting. But a lot of what I found interesting about VCE was more the idea that this is the only way that I can get exposed to amazing founders, like in a high volume to be able to meet people that I would want to go work for. And it just happened to be that I saw, you know, especially being one of those founders when we really looked at the opportunity of Komu, I could look at all those boxes and be like, yeah, we check all of these boxes to be the team that goes out and scales and becomes, you know, a great massive company one day. So. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't planned, obviously, but like, yeah, this is my first real entrepreneurial experience running a true company. Brent Peterson (27:48.083) So if we could reach a listener in another country and there's no Komu host there yet, what would be your next country that you really need to get on board? Or next place, it doesn't have to be a country, it could be anywhere in the world. Bo Abrams (28:03.406) Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously we're very focused on the US to start initially just because like there is that ease of people, especially these overlapping social networks of our target user, you know, a 22 to 34 year old single or couple that's in LA, New York, South, like oftentimes their friends and their networks are in these cities of LA, New York, South, Miami, Chicago, Austin. And we're definitely have a good density of hosts in most of those cities. I think that London is really a big opportunity. Like I'm in Los Angeles, you know, born and raised, but as I've spent more and more time in New York, I've just realized how often there's, you know, New Yorkers and Londoners going back and forth and how that's definitely like a desired, you know, exchange. I would also say Paris is still like a really big untapped opportunity, like the Paris Olympics are coming up. And I do think that that's another opportunity for us to go and onboard quite a few hosts. So those would be two locations that I would really be excited for. But if that listener was in a city, that wasn't on Como, like we would really in the product and in the marketing and the experience, we would tell them like, hey, we're stoked to get your city on board. Like I had a friend that wants a Toronto group on Como, which we could do. And we said, I said, hey, if you can go invite your friends for free and get 10 hosts on board, we will gladly launch a group for that city. So like, there's a lot of things that we're willing to do to go make sure that everybody finds what they're looking for on Como. Brent Peterson (29:27.155) How about partnerships with other organizations? I'm thinking I'm in entrepreneurs organization and there's about 17 ,000 members. You know, they do partnerships with like HubSpot and American Express. It's already sort of a vetted group. You know, everybody's making, you know, everybody has a certain revenue threshold they have to meet, or is there a startup, they have a certain amount of funding that they've already secured. Do you have plans to kind of help to move into some of those? other peer groups that already are connected, that have a bunch of members connected. Bo Abrams (30:01.806) We do, I will say like EO is a great example. Like we EO and YPO are groups that we really did and do want to target. And also alumni groups, like we think for instance, like Gus and I went to UCLA Anderson, like building an alumni group for this allows for you to keep that community engaged and connected. And it's a pre -bedded community, right? Of people that went to those schools. And ultimately like you can eventually sell that back to the schools and say like, by the way, this is a way to, keep those alumni engaged for years to come to then ultimately likely donate back to the institution. That being said, if there's one thing we've learned through all of this, like we've tried to really, we've tried in launching groups initially, we did try to launch an EO group. And it was like, you learn from that and then you're like, okay, if we're gonna do it again, like how are we gonna do it better? But what we found was that you really wanna focus on where there's a need and it really to start. are these young people in these major cities that cannot afford the cost of living and cannot afford even while working incredibly hard jobs and like, you know, doing everything they can to get ahead. They cannot afford to leave their homes vacant. And they were turning and they are turning still to, you know, WhatsApp and Facebook and even Craigslist to try to get this problem solved. And if you focus on them to start, that's where you're going to get that kind of flywheel going where you're like, they're like telling their friends like this was the place I went to find. you know, a trusted home share and or list. It's really getting that group on and like winning them first. And then as we're growing, as we're, you know, obviously raising more and expanding more, being ruthless in our go to market with launching an onboarding groups like EO and knowing like exactly from all the learnings of what we've done before there or what the mistakes that we might have made, how we're going to launch an EO group, how we're going to partner with them to make sure that those members understand the value of what we're creating. And, you know, really give them the controls on how they want to manage and run their own EO Comma Group. Brent Peterson (31:58.099) That's awesome. So, Bo, we have a few minutes left. As I close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they'd like. Would you like to plug today? Bo Abrams (32:09.518) I am going to shamelessly plug Komu and I'm going to say it in this way. Marketing obviously is a tough challenge when you're so excited about a product that you have and you want to really scale it. But shamelessness and being just an out there cringy founder has been one of the greatest assets that I think I've brought to the table because all I want to do is tell everybody about Komu and what we've built because we have the confidence now to know that people come to Komu, they love it, they engage and they retain ideally for life. And so I would just tell your listeners, like, please feel free to go download Komu in the app store. We're working on getting Android out as soon as humanly possible. But the app is free. Invite your friends. Like the more the merrier, again, the more people you connect with and invite, the more homes you're likely to find, the more guests you're likely to find. And from there, like, we'll take care of the rest. You know, we just need you to go download and help us, you know, scale this thing to the next level. Brent Peterson (33:01.875) That's awesome. Bo Abrams, I'll make sure I get, tell us how they get a hold of you. Give us some contact information just for the people that are listening. Bo Abrams (33:12.174) Yeah, I mean, feel free to add me on LinkedIn or send me a message there. You can also send me a message or follow me on Twitter. but I'm always in the DMs. My Twitter handle is at Bo H Abrams. and then you can also follow our, our socials for commas. So at go, commas is most of the handles are tick tock is at commu. And then there is a bow and Gus, tick tock where we are just more like founders talking about our journey. so you can follow us there, but either way, like any of those. Any of those inboxes I check frequently, so I'm happy to connect there. You can also connect with me on Komu and message me directly there. Brent Peterson (33:41.875) That's us? Yeah. All right. Yeah, I'll make sure I get all those in the show notes. Bo Abrams, it's been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for being here. Bo Abrams (33:53.422) Brent, thanks for having me. Really enjoyed the conversation.