Latest / STR Unpacked / Ice Hockey To Y Combinator - Sit down with Jan from Trellis

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Ice Hockey To Y Combinator - Sit down with Jan from Trellis · STR Unpacked

• Ben: Hi, and welcome to another episode of Short Term Rentals Unpacked. ⁓ my guest today is Jan Shagun, co-founder of Trellis, ⁓ a Y combinator bike startup building AI agents. They don't just answer guest messages, but they actually run the operations of short-term rental businesses. The whole thing: guests comms, cleaning, maintenance, owner reporting, everything. Incredible, right? So Jan spent years selling AI tools to property managers and built the short term mental tech report along the way. He's probably spoken to more operators about this stuff than a lot of people in the industry, dare I say anyone in the industry. ⁓ his co founder Lodo scaled his own property management company to 150 listings. and the claim behind Trellis is that it now runs that entire portfolio with one. person. So we're here to find out how all that works. ⁓ and about Trellis as well. So Jan, welcome. Thank you for joining me. No, thank you for having me, Ben. It's always a pleasure talking to you, man. Thanks. You too, you too. so I think your backstory is pretty interesting. So for those that kind of don't know you, let's just leave it as this. How do you go from being a professional ice hockey player to being in San Francisco In the short term rental space, backed by probably the world's most prestigious ⁓ startup incubator. Talk me through that. I mean I think in a few words. It's quite expensive. Yeah, yeah. I mean I I've lived multiple lives, so like there's a lot of stories to tell, but I think that ⁓ if I had to you know summarize it in maybe one word, I would say relationships. so like I I was playing high level hockey ⁓ all my life while studying, while also working on the side to make some money. ⁓ I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. I I loved hockey, so I wanted to pursue that, but ⁓ my family was not necessarily the most supportive when it comes to sports. My dad was very strict, ⁓ and and he was, you know, pushing us to to study more than playing sports basically. ⁓ and so I kind of like stopped, you know, pushing that hard in hockey and I was basically pushing a little bit harder on on studying and ⁓ I I didn't know what I wanted to do so I ended up doing three masters. Like I I first wanted to go into venture capital so I did finance and entrepreneurship and then I decided ⁓ I didn't want to go into finance anymore because after an internship in investment banking ⁓ it got me really bored and it got me to think a lot about what I wanted to really do with my life and I said, okay, no, I'm I'm not spending my whole life here. Even though if I can even though I can make a lot of money, it's it's definitely not for me. Like I I was really missing the the social aspect of of life. and so I went to I went to Australia just to to think about my life and ⁓ I almost stay there working at some mines. ⁓ but I I I then decided I I wouldn't I didn't wanna ruin my health. ⁓ and so I I went back to to France, to Paris, to Dauphin and I I did another master's, but less quantitative this time. ⁓ in international business something very you know general and I ended up working in procurement so I was buying software buying infra etc and that's where where I started you know ⁓ being in touch with tech sales people and I I said hmm this looks more stimulating and more interesting than what I'm doing because when you're a buyer it's extremely easy right like at the end of the day if you have multiple vendors that offer kind of the same services You're just gonna choose the one that's gonna kinda make it the cheapest, right? Yeah, you have a lot of margin ⁓ of of negotiation there. ⁓ or the the you know, the best fit. But you decide essentially, right? And when you're selling, you're basically chasing people and so it's way more challenging. And I never really found anything in the professional world as challenging as that that was close to what I I found in sports. And so I decided, okay, maybe you know, tech sales would be the closest things to sports in the professional world. So I'll try that. And it was just purely by by luck that I ended up working at an STR tech company ⁓ in the AI space. and so it was funny because I I didn't know about this world from the host perspective, meaning that my family is very humble, so I've I've always traveled like doing home stays and stuff like that, where I stayed at hosts' places. I remember in C City when I was a kid, etc. And I never stayed at hotels, right? And so when I did This, I was doing short-term rentals. I didn't really know there was a term behind it, but staying at hosts. And so I didn't know that there were some short term rentals that were not actually managed by hosts but by property managers, right? So I didn't really know this industry from the host perspective, more from the guest side. ⁓ and so I've always been passionate about traveling. I've always traveled ⁓ my whole life, and so I was you I it was just super cool to be able to be doing tech sales, which is the job I wanted to to invest ⁓ my life in, ⁓ at this at least at that point. And also travel and tech, which is definitely like one of the most interesting fields ⁓ in the world because it's where you learn the most and we're seeing it right now, like how fast it's ⁓ it's evolving. And so I started working there and then basically started doing a lot of conferences. ⁓ I did like when I started my first job, I was doing a hundred calls a day, ⁓ I was taking a lot of demos, onboarding calls, doing account management. I was doing the full cycle of sales and and speaking to a lot of property managers. And so it gave me some exposure, visibility. I started building like some credibility in the space. And then other tech companies started like reaching out and and and kind of selling me their product but to join them as an employee. And ⁓ so I I I switched three times. So I started at Bestie, I went to Guessway, and then I went to Boom. And in between all of this, I met Lodovico, my co-founder. Which as as you introduced him, you know, manages 150 listings and was also working for a tech company in the space. So he was working as founding AA engineer at Conduit, which was previously called Host AI. And so the the funny story is that we met because I was kind of like I was talking to Conduit, basically. I was talking to many companies that were reaching out to me. And ⁓ they introduced us. And so when I talked to Lodo, the the the the goal behind this conversation was me potentially, you know. Going further with the conversation with Conduit and eventually potentially joining them. ⁓ but ⁓ but Lodo was leaving the the company, so we started talking about something completely different and and we we felt like there was some sort of fit and he wanted to build his own thing, but not in the property management ⁓ industry. Like ⁓ he was basically as a property manager kind of fed up of of being, you know, a property manager because like He he he these are his own words, like everyone hates you. You know? Like the owners, the owners they think you're screwing them. The the guests, they're tired of the low quality of the stays and they prefer to go to hotels and they they complain all the time. The governments, as you know better than anyone, are constantly regulating you. So it's like everyone is just against you and the margins are extremely low. So he was like, man, like he of course he was going to keep doing that business, but he wanted to start something fresh some somewhere else. And because I've talked to so many property managers, I know these pain points and I know there's more, and I know we can do something about it and we can solve this, right? So I said like I I truly think like you hands down the most technical person in this industry. I know a lot of people, ⁓ I've been selling to these people, ⁓ I've been helping them, and there's a solution that doesn't exist yet that would solve a lot of the problems they have on their day to day. And I think we could build it together. And so that's how the conversation started and ⁓ we eventually kind of did and we went in we you know we applied to YC, we got in and then we we kind of started. it's funny because Lodo when he got convinced about building in the space, he he came back to me and at that point I I turned him down. ⁓ I turned him down because ⁓ yeah, I I was not in the best position in my life and I needed stability. And I was very bullish on another company that I that I just joined. And ⁓ And then, you know, out of the blue he just ⁓ he applied to YC and and put me as his co founder and ⁓ I was yeah, I was tired and I had to I had to go. So we we started this. and and that's kind of how we I went from you know being this ⁓ you know ⁓ student athlete to being a a YC founder essentially. I love that. Because like so many people's careers are not planned. Some people's are that some people's are are not. And I think your your career clearly is on the more extreme end of like not not planned at all. I mean pretty successful in everything that you've you set out to do, which you know is a is a good sign for the future. white combinator, what's that like? It's a very good question, man. I you know, I've always been interested about it. Like to be fair, like even if I didn't really plan this, I think it it just happened naturally. And part of me wanted to do it. Like I've always had this builder mindset and entrepreneur mindset. Like I I told I I studied entrepreneurship to be a VC, but then because that you know VC role would have given me exposure to many startups, eventually meeting you know great founders, having great ideas and starting my own thing. I I did it the other way around. Like now that I'm a founder, I know other founders, and I'm gonna start doing some you know VC Scout and you know some angel checks and stuff like that on the site. But I knew YC very well, but I had some expectations of it being like a a school, you know, and really like very, very hands-on and white glove where like they really help you a lot all the way. It's it's not like that. To be fair, like it's you get a check for you know ⁓ some equity on your company, you have access to a huge network of brilliant entrepreneurs, like the best entrepreneurs in the world, and also you get a lot of good deals with like a lot of you know tech companies to help you build the company. And and a lot of like speakers come and and and they give you a lot of you know very valuable insights, but at the end of the day, it's you and your company, and it's just pure grind. Like it's just pure grind. And I think that there's this sort of like environment of pure pressure because you are with other companies, and so we're all pushing each other to just build faster, sell more, and grow faster, you know, and so I I that environment really pushes you to I mean to do what we did, which was like scaling extremely fast during three months and like it was tough, but like we went from le we started the batch with zero, nothing, no revenue, no customers, right? No paying customers. And we ended the batch with like forty seven and over six hundred K in you know ⁓ projected ARR, which is pr pretty insane. Like we were the f the best company in the batch to have that growth starting from zero, essentially. So the highest ARR starting from zero, which is pretty Crazy when you think about it in in in YC. And so the experience, as I said, like, you know, they give you some advice. You go to to YC, you know, every week more or less to attend like you know, webinars and like people that come and speak. But then it's just up to you. And you have group office hours where you get to actually, you know, talk to other companies, see how they're doing and help each other out. And then one on one with the partners, same like, you know, just talk about The challenges that you have, set up objectives, set up goals and and work towards them. But at the end of the day, to be fair, like they're kind of like guiding you a little bit, but it's it's up to us. It's up to us. But I mean, like you said earlier, like a lot of your ⁓ where you've got to where you are is down to relationships and the the people that you get to be in front of is pretty incredible, right? I ⁓ on researching this I saw that ⁓ am I right in saying correct me if I'm wrong that Sam Altman offered to invest in your company. Admittedly with tokens, not with real money. But is it that's right, right? Yeah, that's right. It's not only my company to to be fully transparent. It was hit it's a new deal that he was offering for our batch and I think the one that is currently ⁓ go ongoing. So he offered any company. So he didn't, you know, creatively selected our company. So I I think that needs to be clarified. But yeah, he he actually He invested two million in our company, in in tokens, and in in others that accepted the deal as well. Fantastic. So in some way you can basically say that San Alman is an investor in your company, which is a pretty good name to drop, right? Particularly if you're building an AI company. Hundred percent. That's fantastic, man. so I mean to bring it back to to Trellis and kind of how that works, I think, you know, speaking of someone that used to operate I can't imagine how to go back to the claim of one person doing a hundred and fifty properties, where are AI coming? You know, I g I guess that you have it with agents and and that kind of thing, but you know, like to give you a situation where if you've got a property where the you know, the cleaner hasn't turned up or the key doesn't work, or something ⁓ it's two in the morning and all of this sort of stuff. You know that really like terrible kind of stuff that happens where you're like, I've just gotta get someone on site. Like there's there's no other option. Like, how does it work in these kind of situations, right? So I mean first of all, something that needs to be clarified, but I I think it's kind of obvious. It's basically like one person in the back office, right? So the people on the field, right? The the the the people doing inspections, doing cleanings, doing maintenance, etc, these people we cannot replace today. everything that requires human intervention today there's a human there to do it, of course. In the future, and we potentially we'll talk about the future later, there might be robots and humanoids, right? But like right now, no. So essentially it's all the back office operations that have been able to be, you know, s managed semi-autonomously through agents. And now there's one person basically just handling the escalations, right? So the 10% left, the nuances, the different use cases that the AI never spotted before. And that now ⁓ is escalating and that might learn from to potentially automate ⁓ later on, if if possible, of course. So, how does it work? ⁓ I think you you know, I I can give you like ⁓ a very basic use case, something that happened recently, that happens very often actually in in summer in any property management company ⁓ that is you know in in Spain, Italy, France, like ⁓ where it gets really hot in the summer. I imagine even in the UK it gets hot in the summer. So it can also happen there, but like basically. ⁓ something that happened recently is and that happens often is there's people that often have issues with the AC, right? And so in summer if you have someone complaining about the AC, you need to fix it right away because especially with like these like heat waves that came, like you need to be fast. ⁓ otherwise you you risk essentially to get like a very bad review, like instantly, right? Like if someone is like dying of heat and you need to solve it ⁓ or you're done you're not responsive, you're not gonna get out of it with a five-star review. So what ⁓ the the standard you know operating pro procedure that Xenia, for example, the company of Lodo has is that whenever there's like an AC issue, they're not gonna dispatch a maintenance guide to fix the AC because that might take some time. So they're just gonna bring someone from inspections. So they have some runners basically around the city and they're just gonna have them go into their inventory, get a fan and bring it or buy it, right? And just get a fan to that property instantly so that they can at least have that. Then they automatically create a task for the maintenance after the the checkout. And so what currently like property management companies do, and you'll tell me how you would ⁓ do it ⁓ in your past days or or with block, etc. But ⁓ you're basically you're running you know the properties on the PMS, right? Let's say guestie, for example. Then they have like bestie, conduit, host body, whatever for communications. So the message comes from the guest complaining about you know the AC not working. What usually happens is that these tools, these AI gas communication tools, will automate apologies. ⁓ I'm sorry the AC doesn't work. ⁓ we'll look into it, right? And then they escalate. Slack, WhatsApp, whatever. Then an actual team member is gonna see that, right? That team member, maybe it's a VA in the Philippines. Maybe they need to go into Notion or Google Drive and to figure out what to do in this use case because they don't know, right? ⁓ so that you can imagine a lot of time lost. Then they're gonna figure out, okay, so I need to actually go to Breezeway. Or any other task management s platform, create a task, look into who's working today that can actually complete this task and then assign it to them and follow up with them to make sure they do it. Once it's done, you know, we can follow up with the guests, or once we know someone is gonna be dispatched, we can inform the guest. Right? So there's an issue from the guest that comes from a message that is basically then being you know passed on through different tools and different ⁓ stakeholders. So how it's done now with Trell is essentially that. Charles is gonna be able to not only you know automate that apology but also give context, right? And say, okay, this is what we're gonna do, right? We're gonna be bringing a fan to you, okay, and we're just gonna let you know once we have someone that can come and let you know their ETA. And so Charles is gonna be autonomously creating that task internally. So first replying to the guest, creating the task, then going to a dispatch algorithm to find the best person possible to assign it to. Based on the runners that are working today, their live geolocation. And also the itineraries, the different tasks they have. So maybe you know, let's say Isabella is the closest one to the property right now, and she has already completed two tasks. She only has one left that is in the same route. So okay, let's assign it to Isabella. But maybe Isabella cannot do it, right? So the agent not only assigns the task to Isabella, it's also gonna call Isabella. Hey Isabella, can you actually go? Isabella says, No, I'm sorry, I'm too busy, I'm on my way there, like it's urgent, I cannot do it. Okay, what happens then? The agents, they can reason, right? So they're gonna replan essentially. And so he's gonna go through the dispatch algorithm again and he would have already ranked, like, okay, best candidate, second best candidate, third best candidate, etc. So it's gonna go to the second one. Second one is gonna be maybe okay, yeah, I can go, no worries. So the agent will ask, okay, what's your ETA and how much time you'll be there? Okay, cool. Then the agent goes back to the guest. Okay, we found this person, they'll be there in 15 minutes, and they'll bring the fun. Okay, perfect. Then the person goes, they complete their task, so the task is automatically completed. Right? And we know it. And then the agent sends another message to follow up. We heard that, you know, they already brought the fan. Let us know if you need anything else. Boom. Loop closed end to end without any human in the loop other than the one actually going to the property. Right? So that's that's one use case. Let me know if it makes sense like that. Yeah, it makes total sense. It makes total sense. I mean like I just find it incredible like the two factor of it, right? Like the way that not only you talk to the guests, like I think we're we're in the industry now we're quite used to kind of AI of course. Automating messages. It's the job of a property manager, right? Like the coordination of information across multiple stakeholders. Well if you can consolidate all that information in one place and give it to the agents as context, well they're able to do it. If you give them the right tools as well. Because they can communicate through the same tools as you, right? Slack, WhatsApp, SMS, calls, whatever. Yeah, yeah. I d and I think it's incredible that it calls them as well. Like I think that's a really neat feature. so to kind of lay it out then, what would you say the percentage split is in your in Trellis basically being able to handle basically everything and an actual person having to be involved? I think so, you know, guest communications and I think that it you know The the th the thing is that the automation rate is something I I don't really like at least for communication, I don't really like that ⁓ metric because you could automate a hundred percent of communications, right? Like you could say whenever the agent ⁓ doesn't have the information or or is not a hundred percent sure of the answer, it just answers this, right? And so every time there's a message, it's automate like the reply is automatically ⁓ sent. So then you have a hundred percent messages, but in reality you're not solving any ⁓ you know, it's it's it's it's bullshit. So I think that in terms of communications it can vary depending on how much we're teaching the agent and how involved we are in the learning and in the nurturing of the knowledge base, of course, and also the memory of the agent. And then so you know, what we're seeing right now with people that are, you know, using it constantly, etcetera, it would be from fifty to potentially eighty, ninety percent in guest communications. Okay? ⁓ and then, you know, the nuances and and all these things are escalated. And then for task creation and dispatching, it's ninety pr it's extremely high. It's extremely high because once you have those all those SOPs really mapped out, the agent just executes. It's not like a V a VA that you know I mean it's not like a person. I I I know I don't wanna discriminate VAs because I'm I I'm like a VA, right? I'm a person, I have limited memory, so ⁓ even though I have good memory, I I'm proud of my memory, I must say. But I I must say it for for for the audience. Now but ⁓ you know, like we forget things. We tend to forget things, you know, we're busy, ⁓ we get sick as well sometimes, right? ⁓ whereas like these AI agents, like when once you feed them something and you teach them how to do it, they remember forever. And so once they know how to do something, they'll do it every single time the same way. So it's just that process of like teaching them the right, you know, way of doing things, and then basically every time something happens they know what to do, they do it the right way. And so that way you can really automate like a very large chunk of of task creation and dispatching following your specific SOPs. For every single business, it there are different SOPs, as you know, Ben, like it's not the same managing, you know, villas in in Cyprus than Chales in in Courchevel, right? So everyone is gonna have like different, you know, use cases, et cetera, that you know we'll be teaching the the agents essentially to handle. Yeah, that's that's incredible. And there's have you got to a point where the messages were You know, your average guest or your even your average kind of maintenance person, do they know they're speaking to AI or is it is it got to a stage now where it's indiscriminate? So, I mean guests, to be fair, like I think at this point, like they don't even notice and they don't even care. Like guests just want to have like like a fast answer that solves their that basically answers their question, right? And solves their issue. That's it. They they don't care and of course like You don't put like M-dashes and like you really train the model to really talk like the team talks so it learns from the past conversation and the pad messages that you have actually sent. So it's gonna really talk this exactly the same way you want. So in that sense, nothing. And then internally people kinda know it, right? That it's an agent because but but now they're kind of accepting it. Like it's like another employee. They know like this is Aria. This is a Cosmo, like these are the names Augsenia. I know that other other ⁓ customers ⁓ that we have that have like Heavy. ⁓ they have like rev Revan, like they have different names like that of of the of the agents and they're like teammates now. Like, you know, they know it. They know they're talking to an agent, but like they don't care. It's normal. I mean it is like I think it's it's incredible how quickly we have as a population just accepted ch essentially chatbots. And I think that does a lot of heavy lifting, right? But I think I also remember when I first saw large language models, I was like, This is mate made for gas communication because Like you say, guess all guests care about is a quick answer with the details. You know, what's the code to get in? One, two, three, four, great. Like, it's actually built for that, it's perfect. So, I mean, on the AI side of things, I mean we live in a pretty incredible time now for those that have dabbled our toes into Clawed and Coding and all of that kind of thing. And I think A lot of people with absolutely zero coding expertise could build could build something like this. Like why why why should someone use Trellis over doing that? It's it's a very good question and as we said before ⁓ the podcast, ⁓ it's something that comes very often, right? ⁓ might be one of the like most recurrent ⁓ objections that I need to handle, essentially. look, like you're a builder, I'm a builder, ⁓ we're in a WhatsApp group with Mark and many other builders. ⁓ the technology is insane. Like no one's gonna deny it, right? And we can build things without being, you know, software developers, right? ⁓ like one good example is STR Tech Report. That's f all me. ⁓ it took me maybe a couple days to build the first MVP on AI Google Studio for free, right? And then now I'm I'm just you know maintaining it with with ⁓ Claud and Codex and whatever. And by the way I need to to invest more time on it because I've kind of like let it a little bit on the side, but that's a a really cool project. But yeah, but that that's really a cool project and and and super valuable for the industry as it's just giving free insight. So I I really need to to go back to that. But you know, I was able to build that very quickly, very easily. But it's a very simple project, right? What we're talking about right now, like building a whole tech stack. Is way more complicated. I'm not saying that maybe in one year like everyone ⁓ will have their own tech stack they will have built with cloud. Like actually, I'm pretty sure it will be the case, right? Like ⁓ anyone will be able to build their own PMS, right? At the end of the day, a PMS is doing the channel management. And then a couple other things on top. We really we rely on the PMS as the core of our you know tech stack because it owns the distribution through the channel management, right? So if I'm a PM and I manage to build a platform that integrates with the channel manager, at the end of the day I'm able to build a PMS, right? And then there's like all these little point solutions that emerge, like gas communications, operations, pricing, etc., that you know, ⁓ add more complexity. Today, the tech stack of a property manager is the PMS. And then they're using, you know, as we said, ⁓ communications operations, pricing, whatever. So like all these tech stacks today. They're very fragmented and also disconnected. Like the tools, they don't talk very well to each other. So what we build is essentially something that unifies, you know, the whole tech stack into one place. And basically creating some sort of digital copy of your business that then is given as context to agents that can manage it for you, but they can also build. So when you said like build versus buy, with us it's it's a bit weird because people they will be buying but also building, but on top of our infrastructure. And that's why it would make more sense because You know, building like integrations, maintaining them, etc., it's extremely time consuming. Property managers, you know it better than me, is a very time consuming job. It's a very time consuming job. So like if you start building, you kind of start like becoming a software company, and then you're like being less of a property management company, and so you're not able to scale that part of the business because now you're building an internal business inside your business that you need to maintain. We've all vibe coded. You you know it, you know, like I by code my own CRM, right? I I and and now I'm I'm kind of stuck with it. And you know, like I know that I every month I'm thinking like should I just like get a CRM and stop like because I'm spending a lot of time maintaining it, adding more things. It's so easy to build that you're just gonna keep adding, adding, adding, adding, and it's all noise, and then it breaks things that are actually useful, and so you need to fix them, and so you spend most of your time fixing bugs instead of maybe selling, right? And doing cold calling or whatever, executing, right? So I think that's the main reason why you would rather buy than build is that it's extremely time consuming. The technology is not at a point where it's perfect. So you're gonna build things, they're gonna break, you're gonna have to fix them. So you'll just spend you know endless, endless moments just working on that instead of your actual business, which is property management, not tech, right? And so to give you a perfect example, like out of like the forty five plus customers we have, like I think at least twenty are extremely tech savvy and they were building things. And they realized that it was not sustainable. And so why would I build something when these guys have already built it? Is way better, is connected to all my tools, so I don't need to build those integrations. And they're maintaining it for me. And on top of that, I can still build on top of them so that the solution that they're providing to me is extremely personalized and customized to my own business. So that that's that's the reason why it would make more sense. ⁓ now in the future, I mean seeing how things are evolving, maybe in one year, like, you know, AI is so perfect that I can just like talk to Whisper and say, build me a PMS and it's built, you know, and I don't know I don't have to do anything. But we're we're not there yet. So but surely for like guys like you it's it's it's a it's a case of staying slightly ahead of a curve, right? Like you you I think four years ago when chat GDP first came around, like a few nerds in the industry were using it, shall we say, but it was not in any way widespread. And I remember going to things like VRWS two years ago stands out where basically people were really dubious about AI. And then I went to the one last year in Rome and like everyone's using it. So like the change in that, but presumably for you, you just need to be like at the forefront of what is technically possible to just stay ahead of what your average person is able today, right? Exactly. It's always like being ahead in in terms of innovation, right? ⁓ and and and you know like it's crazy, but like in San Francisco, like I mean I don't know if you've been like for me it was shocking, but like half of the cars they drive autonomously. It's ridiculous. Like you jump on an Uber which is a Waymo and like it's self driving. And so like I mean there's definitely a world where like property management is gonna be self driving as well. And so we're building towards that. And so it's really cool because I I think someone in in Simon Lehman's podcast mentioned this, but like it's all about like increasing the hospitality output, right? And so if you're able to automate the operations, the heavy lifting that is not bringing any sort of like you know, hospit it's mostly like taking time. You can just go back from being like an operator to being a designer of experiences and operations, just have the agents run it and execute exactly what you want them to do. And so, you know optimizing for upsells and for guest experience and stuff like that, ⁓ without having to rely on on humans, you know, manually gluing different tools together, etc. I love that argument because I remember when AI first came in, there was this ⁓ shall we say optimistic thought ⁓ that AI would just do everything and it would allow us to be artists and scholars, which hasn't really turned out that way. But basically what you're saying is essentially in property management technology like this can allow people to actually use the use AI to do the ⁓ the more kind of mundane or boring or frustrating parts of their role and actually spend more time doing essentially probably the reason that most people came into it, right? Exactly. It's basically like a new sort of platform, like Airbnb, right? But where the property managers are the protagonists. So they don't depend on a brand, right? there's not this relationship of dependency to the OTAs anymore. And basically, because of the disintermediation of search to LLMs, etc., all these brands they're gonna be able to basically get visibility from the LLMs and get direct bookings. And so they would be basically reducing the dependency on OTAs and be able to be more independent, right? And grow their brands. And so they'll be listing their properties in a platform. That will allow them not only to get distribution directly, not through OTAs, but directly, and also manage their properties. Because today you list your properties on an Airbnb. What does Airbnb do for you other than taking 20%? Right? They they br they they they just bring the distribution, right? They own that. So they bring you the guest, of course, and then they take 20%. And then you have to use guestie and bestie and ⁓ you know Brisway and whatever. And so you end up with a tech stack like this. Right? Spending I don't know how much in software plus the commissions to Airbnb and then you're only getting twenty percent from the owners. So like at the end of the day, you know, like you just need to like add more properties, add more properties, add more properties so that it's sustainable. And so imagine just a world where like you list your properties, you get distribution, you get guests, and they also run autonomously. And then you're just like designing how you want them to run. I mean if that's not the future you know future. I'd love that. But get kind of touching on that, because obviously like the rate of change, ⁓ tech stacks and kind of you alluded to it a little bit earlier, but you could just, you know, ask something to to make you a PMS, right? I think it's really interesting 'cause I mean this is my prediction and you can confirm whether it's it's correct or not. We got a lot of PMSs that have basically been in the play for a long time, right? And they've been in coding for a long time and they've And you know, lots of historical code and everything like that. And then you got AI which is like almost like the butter on a toast. Or for you maybe to punk on tomate. You know, like just that little layer on top. And then then I think you've got companies like you guys, which are sort of starting at the top and going down. But surely there's a future in which Trellis just goes, Well, why don't we just own everything here? Why don't we become the PMS? And I I don't like that word like PMS because I I I I think that in the future where we're going, like there there won't be like a PMS, like there will be just like one tool essentially doing everything. And so it ⁓ yeah, but I mean that's the obviously PMS is reductive because you could argue that like Guestly for example is a software that I'm very familiar with. It's a lot more than a PMS now. To call it a PMS is reductive. But you know what I mean by using that phrase, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, hundred percent. I mean, yeah, I mean see seeing how things are going, like definitely I think that, you know, it as I said, like it's going beyond the PMS stage, is essentially owning the whole scope of of of the guest ⁓ you know, journey, essentially. So from the distribution that today is owned by the OTAs to the management, right? And so the the thing that is really cool about that is that If you own both the distribution and the operations, you can actually really, you know, like promise a quality standard of you know the property. Because like Airbnb today, like they don't manage the property. So as soon as a guest comes in, you are the one responsible for their stay, right? Not Airbnb. Airbnb doesn't care. Like you're the one managing. And then you just rely on on guest reviews. So like if we would be able to kind of like go more towards like what hotels do, right? And like be able to grade, you know, different like short term rentals based on quality standards of how they're being managed, like hotels essentially, you know, I think we'll be able to break that sort of like dependency on like guest reviews, etc. Because it's very toxic. Like it there's there's there's this weird like dynamic where like guests they come to your properties and like they trash it and they say it was dirty when it wasn't and so they kinda Play with that to get refunded because then Airbnb basically is like an insurance company, right? You book through Airbnb, you know that you know that anything can happen, you'll get your money back or whatever. So they're really like playing with that. And I I I don't think it's fair. And they're clearly against hosts. I mean, not hosts, but like property managers. And so the market wouldn't exist without property managers. They're the supply, right? So I think giving back, you know. ⁓ power to them and and control, first with the operations and then eventually with the whole scope is the future. And I I think that's a difficult thing to do though, because I mean I think part of the issue that to be a bit more expansive that the short term rental industry as a whole can find itself either in this position or can find itself, you know, being essentially the scapegoat, you know, Barcelona, obviously this the city that you're from, is a really good example of There's not been any new short term rental licenses since twenty fourteen and in that time rent has gone up sixty eight percent and short term rentals represent one point two five percent of the of the it's crazy, right? It's crazy. Like the numbers don't step, but because because we have we've we got a fragmented supply, there's not there's not like a an overarching brand like you get in the hotel groups to be that I know we have the associations and they're and they're doing everything they can with what they've got, but we don't have that same kind of ⁓ message that hotels are able to very ⁓ effectively portray to to essentially protect their industry, right? Yeah, and we need to go build it. We need to go find it. Yeah. 'Cause 'cause this industry is extremely valuable. and I think that, you know, me personally and I know other people Think the same thing, and so that's what we need to be building, and we need to build it together. Like we're basically David against Goliath, right? So, like if we if just a couple of us are building towards that and and partnering between each other, we're not gonna go anywhere. It needs to be the whole industry working together towards these goals. So hopefully we'll be able to, you know, s I mean, in reality, I was going to say stop competing and and and and more partnering, etc. I don't think everyone is competing. I know some are, but like I I truly believe in in in partnering first, so let's ⁓ let's see. Yeah, definitely. So I think like if one of the things I wonder with with companies like Trellis and I guess maybe kind of where the industry is going as a whole in terms of our ⁓ short term mental industries. There's obviously a lot more but is is becoming more reliant on AI. Like if you're quite an old school operator, ⁓ and by that I mean like, you know, maybe you have a a PMS and it does the th and you put it on Airbnb inbooking dot com and you sort of have that and then you implement a a a system like Trellis. Say you've got thirty people working for you. Realistically something like Trellis is going to result in quite a lot of people being being let go from that. Pacific industry, right? It it's I I love I love to to talk about this because I was thinking about it before before the call because I was kind of anticipating this sort of question. Because when we take the example of of Xenia, for example, like going from four people in the back office to one, you could say, Okay, this is this is bad. Like this is gonna basically remove ⁓ jobs and and and get people, you know, let go. But like it really depends on like what you're looking for as a property manager, right? Like if you're really just looking to optimize for margins and reduce costs and so you'd rather get rid of people to replace them with AAA agents, etc., then so be it. Do you, right? Like that's your it's your business. You do whatever you want. Now, if you're more like people focused, right? And you have a team, let's say it's like a family business, right? And it's the whole family working on it. We're the retend, like the cousins, the whatever. ⁓ it's their whole life, right? They all rely on this. If they bring AI to the business, it's not gonna be to replace them. It's gonna be to enhance them. And so essentially like it's just gonna be taking over all the parts of their job that they're currently doing manually that they couldn't be not doing at all. Right. And so AI will take that and essentially will be able to have these people work on different things that are more value added, right? So for example, if they stop you know spending all their time like you know on gas communications and operations, on you know talking to to vendors, ⁓ talking to the owners, whatever. Maybe they'll have more time to actually go look for more owners and expand their portfolio, right? So ⁓ for these type of businesses, I think that it's a great opportunity to actually finally be able to scale if they want to, of course. ⁓ because they'll be able to basically regain some time to invest it in, you know, more value added tasks for the business, essentially. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting point. I mean, like, this might be a bit of a segue, but like, are you worried at kind of where the future of that what the future of that looks like? Because I think I hear what you're saying, but the reality is like ⁓ Trellis and products like Trellis are going to result in, shall we say, staffing efficiencies across the industry. And the reality is that those jobs are just not gonna be available ⁓ for people coming in. And it's how technology moves, you know, like people were worried when the printing press came in, when the computer came in, when the internet happened and now it's AI and things keep turning, the wheel keeps turning, but it's probably a quite a definite shift in industry. Are you are you worried about kind of the wider repercussions of that? You know, we are an industry that is already pretty regulated and usually a lot of people's first jobs are within hospitality, that maybe that the knock on effect of products like this could actually change the regulation or or anything is this is this a general concern of what you're building or it's ⁓ yeah, it's ⁓ actually a very good question. I think we're never going to like ⁓ avoid regulation. I think that's you know, we we're seeing it it's just like it's there and th like fighting regulation ⁓ takes more than just like a company, you know, ⁓ a tech company or whatever. Like ⁓ it's literally like as we said before, like it's the whole industry standing up and and fighting against it and we really need to to to held together to hold together. But like Of course I'm concerned. Like I feel like there's two sides of the of of the story and of the of the coin, right? You can see it as something bad, or you can see it as an opportunity as well. Like ⁓ I think that even if AI might take some jobs, I think it will create opportunities for new ones that we potentially don't even have have ever thought about, right? so that that's that's how I see it. Like I think that imagine like If all this like ⁓ you know spend that you are removing from tech because the costs are just going down as well, right? Like the token spend is gonna reduce. ⁓ if you go from five tools to manage your properties to one, ⁓ again you're saving. So you have that money that you can still invest in people and we might be able to find other usage ⁓ of of of those people for the business, right? So I I don't know exactly what, but maybe even more more hospitality, right? Like Being more there, more present for the guests. Of course, you you we could argue that maybe some guests don't want people to be there, right? but I think ⁓ you know with innovation comes more innovation and more opportunities. ⁓ it's just up to us to actually, you know, think outside the box and find those and and and invest in them, ⁓ basically. Yeah, which makes sense. It's kind of the the way that time evolves and Interesting. It's always been like that. You know? Exactly. Exactly. ⁓ so what's what's for the future? I mean, obviously you're still a very young company. ⁓ like you say, what the start of this year, zero income, zero clients, you know was it forty five? Yeah, we have Yeah, we have like I think like forty seven and over four thousand listings and we also are right now working with a couple enterprise customers. ⁓ 3,000 listings, 6,500, like a couple of big companies ⁓ piloting, so ⁓ working on on on that part of of the market as well. And I mean the goal is literally just like educate ⁓ the the the industry about this new technology because all the other tools that are in the market right now are are a legacy. They're software, they're static software that you need to adapt to and not the other way around. Whereas this is something that basically is fully customized to your specific needs and that builds itself around your needs and then also uses what it builds to run your business for you. So it's completely different. So just you know keep educating the industry, ⁓ keep helping property managers grow their businesses, make them flourish ⁓ with this new tech. And ⁓ and yeah, so I'm gonna be I'm gonna be traveling a lot, going to conferences, talking about ⁓ these this new tech ⁓ as much as I can and And and that's it. That's that's kind of what we're thinking. And on the other side, my my product team is gonna be working extremely hard to just make the product better, better, better and better. And ⁓ you know, ⁓ make sure that it's ⁓ it's the most reliable and the best product in the industry essentially. Fantastic. And if someone wants to come and have a chat with you, what conferences are you ⁓ attending this year? Very good question. I'm I'm gonna be kind of Yeah. I can send you the list afterwards, but I'm going to to Indonesia. So I'm I'm going to Gestival. ⁓ I'm gonna be going to VRMA to Scale Dubai. I'm going to all the scales. But not the not the Milano one. That one will be Lodovico because il mio italiano non è molto buono. You know, I my Italian is a bit limited. So I I'll let Lodovico and Marco take that one. But ⁓ the other scales I'm also going to Mexico. I love I love Manuel and so I'll be going back to Expo R V. This time in Puerto Vallarta, I think. I'm gonna go for the first time to VRM Days in ⁓ Croatia. I don't know if you've been, but I'm I'm excited about that one because I've I've never been. So Sasha has been has been really nice. So ⁓ I'm looking forward to that one. ⁓ Lyon as well, like VRWS, of course. ⁓ I've also been invited to expo host in Colombia, so I'll be stopping by in between. It's gonna be it's gonna be very busy for me, but I'm going to VRMA. ⁓ so I'm going to like I I think yeah, Indonesia, Gastival, then VRMA. And then from VRMA to VRWS, I'm doing a little stop at Expo Host to to go there and speak about this. And then back to Lyon. It it's gonna be very tiring, but but I'm super excited. Just that's it. Like that. ⁓ but yeah man, no, ⁓ super excited. I'm I'm gonna meet a lot of new, you know, property managers, a lot of new people. I I love this industry, man. Like it's it's just extremely beautiful. And a part of what I do it why I I'm building this and I'm working in this industry is because you know, I I I know how much people invest in this street in traveling, you know. Like people work their whole lives to save money to then spend it in traveling, most of the time, right? The ones that can afford it. And so for me it's crazy to think that the quality of, you know, Airbnb's and like I d I must not say sh Airbnb's short term rentals ⁓ has just you know gone gone down ⁓ like crazy. It has been professionalized out of existence, essentially, right? And and I feel super bad. I've been going and I said Airbnb's because I've I've stayed at Airbnbs recently, ⁓ and I shouldn't be doing this, I should be booking direct, but again, you know, I've had I had some points or whatever, so it was it didn't cost me much. ⁓ but like I've I've I've been to some Airbnbs recently and man, horrible. Like you get there, ⁓ it's not clean, the Wi-Fi is not working, you say like, you know, y you clean yourself, it's fine, you know how it is, they might have missed a cleaning, whatever. You ask for the Wi-Fi, and then the host goes like you go buy a SIM card. I'm like, man, like this is like what is this? This is not hospitable like this is not hospitality. Like ⁓ and so that's why I want to I I feel there's an opportunity with this technology to actually solve that. Like I would rather have an AI tell me try this, try that. with a friendly tone and eventually potentially escalate and have someone that you know maybe fixes it or dispatches someone than a host just telling me like to go buy something when you know it's supposed to to work. You know what I mean? So so yeah that that that's that's why ⁓ I'm I'm really bullish on what we're building because I truly think we we can really help this this industry. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well thank you so much for coming on Jan. ⁓ it's been a pleasure. ⁓ and I'll probably see you at at least two of the conferences. Cool. Well let's let's talk let's talk on on WhatsApp and and see when when we can meet. Where are you right now? You're not in Barcelona anymore, right? No, I'm in the UK. Okay. Okay. UK. Yeah, cool. But I'll be I'll be back in Barcelona soon. Okay. Well man, thank you so much for inviting me. Like ⁓ I've always enjoyed talking to you and I'm I'm very supportive of of what you're building. ⁓ the podcast and you know, all the little bulletins that that you have on LinkedIn is super cool. Thanks. And so like Keep up the good work and ⁓ yeah, see you around man. See you around.