[swalkergibson]

This is assuming that someone will buy their stake in the business. It seems to me that there are some holes in the business model, and the traction might be overblown. For instance, the website suggests that the most expensive advertising package is $1,200/year and there are about 75 properties listed on the site. While it is a gorgeous product, it seems to me that they are going to have trouble raising funding in such a competitive industry without much higher numbers.

[sthielen]

The rental housing market moves incredibly fast, and properties go on and off the market daily. The most desirable houses we list sometimes only stay on the site for a few days before they go off-market, and some of the less desirable ones will stay on for weeks. Of course, this is not a metric we can, in any way, attribute to our success--most of these properties are posted all around the web and there's no way for us to know if it was rented by someone using our service--however we've had local property management firms reach out and tell us they've had a lot of good leads come from our service.

Our database is the sum of all properties currently on the market that are willing to rent to college students, and that number is small. It is a very competitive, fast-paced market, and that's the reason there is a problem in this space in the first place.

From our experience cold-calling properties, 3 out of 5 rental properties are completely unwilling to rent to college students. Many will just hang up the phone. From the already small number of desirable (i.e. close to campus, not absurdly expensive, etc.) rental properties on the market at any given time, only about 40% are willing to rent to students. But we add new properties to the site daily, so our inventory is constantly cycling.

With regard to our pricing, it's something we came up with last week, and we fully expect it to be increased if our current successes in sales justify it. We have additional monetization strategies in development as well--a $1000 ad is not the be-all end-all of our revenue stream. But hell, at this point we're just excited that someone is willing to pay for this thing we've invested our lives into over the past few months.

[ghiculescu]

Yep. Agreed on that. Without a decent model, no amount of credit (however well managed) will do the job.