INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Cookie-cutter corporate housing turns people into worker drones
When an employee needs to move to a new city for a few months, they’re either stuck in bland, giant apartment complexes or Airbnbs meant
But Zeus lets any homeowner get paid to host white-collar transient labor
Through its managed ownership model, Zeus takes on all the furnishing, upkeep, and risk of filling the home while its landlords sit back
earning cash.Zeus has quietly risen to a $45 million revenue run rate from renting out 900 homes in 23 cities
That’s up 5X in a year thanks to Zeus’ 150 employees
With a 90 percent occupancy rate, it’s proven employers and their talent want more unique, trustworthy, well-equipped multi-month
residences that actually make them feel at home.Now while Airbnb is distracted with its upcoming IPO, Zeus has raised $24 million to steal
the corporate housing market
That includes a previous $2.5 million seed round from Bowery, the new $11.5 million Series A led by Initialized Capital whose partner Garry
Tan has joined Zeus’ board, and $10 million in debt to pay fixed costs like furniture
The plan is to roll up more homes, build better landlord portal software, and hammer out partnerships or in-house divisions for cleaning and
furnishing.“In the first decade out of school people used to have two jobs
Now it’s four jobs and it’s trending to five” says Zeus co-founder and CEO Kulveer Taggar
“We think in 10 years, these people won’t be buying furniture.” He imagines they’ll pay a premium for hand-holding in housing, which
judging by the explosion in popularity of zero-friction on-demand services, seems like an accurate assessment of our lazy future
Meanwhile, Zeus aims to be “the quantum leap improvement in the experience of trying to rent out your home” where you just punch in your
address plus some details and you’re cashing checks 10 days later.Buying Mom A House Was Step 1“When I sold my first startup, I bought a
home for my mom in Vancouver” Taggar recalls
It was payback for when she let him remortgage her old house while he was in college to buy a condo in Mumbai he’d rent out to earn money
“Despite not having much growing up, my mom was a travel agent and we got to travel a lot” which Taggar says inspired his goal to live
nomadically in homes around the world
Zeus could let other live that dream.Zeus co-founder and CEO Kulveer TaggarAfter Oxford and working as an analyst at Deutsche Bank, Taggar
built student marketplace Boso before moving to the United States
There, he co-founded auction tool Auctomatic with his cousin Harjeet Taggar and future Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison, went through Y
Combinator, and sold it to Live Current Media for $5 million just 10 months later
That gave him the runway to gift a home to his mom and start tinkering on new ideas.With Y Combinator’s backing again, Taggar started
NFC-triggered task launcher Tagstand, which pivoted into app settings configurer Agent, which pivoted into automatic location sharing app
But when his co-founder Joe Wong had to move an hour south from San Francisco to Palo Alto, Taggar was dumbfounded by how distracting the
Listing and securing a new tenant was difficult, as was finding a medium-term rental without having to deal with exhorbitant prices or
Having seen his former co-founder go on to great success with Stripe’s dead-simple payments integration, Taggar wanted to combine that
vision with OpenDoor’s easy home sales to making renting or renting out a place instantaneous
That spawned Zeus.Stripe Meets OpenDoor To Beat AirbnbTo become a Zeus landlord, you just type in your address, how many bedrooms and
bathrooms, and some aesthetic specs, and you get a monthly price quote for what you’ll be paid
Zeus comes in and does a 250-point quality assessment, collects floor plans, furnishes the property, and handles cleaning and maintenance
It works with partners like Helix mattresses, Parachute sheets, and Simple Human trash cans to get bulk rates
“We raised debt because we had these fixed investments into furniture
It’s not as dilutive as selling pure equity” Taggar explains.Zeus quickly finds a tenant thanks to listings in Airbnb and relationships
with employers like Darktrace and ZS Associates with lots of employees moving around
After passing background checks, tenants get digital lock codes and access to 24/7 support in case something doesn’t look right
The goal is to get someone sleeping there in just 10 days. “Traditional corporate housing is $10,000 a month in SF in the summer or at
Airbnb isn’t well suited [for multi-month stays]
“We’re about half the price of traditional corporate housing for a better product and a better experience.”Zeus signs minimum two-year
leases with landlords and tries to extend them to five years when possible
It gets one free month of rent as is standard for property managers, but doesn’t charge an additional rate
For example, Zeus might lease your home for $4,000 per month but gets the first month free, and rent it out for $5,000 so it earns $60,000
That’s a tidy margin if Zeus can get homes filled fast and hold down its upkeep costs.“Zeus has been instrumental for my company to
start the process of re-location to the Bay Area and to host our visiting employees from abroad now that we are settled” writes Zeus
client Meitre’s Luis Caviglia
“I particularly like the ‘hard truths’ featured in every property, and the support we have received when issues arose during our
stays.”At Home, AnywhereThere’s no shortage of competitors chasing this $18 billion market in the US alone
There are the old-school corporations and chains like Oakwood and Barbary Coast that typically rent out apartments from vast, generic
Stays over 30 days made up 15 percent of Airbnb’s business last year, but the platform wasn’t designed for peace-of-mind around
There are pure marketplaces like UrbanDoor that don’t always take care of everything for the landlord or provide consistent tenant
And then there are direct competitors like $130 million-funded Sonder, $66 million-funded Domio, recently GV-backed 2nd Address, and
European entants like MagicStay, AtHomeHotel, and Homelike.Zeus’ property unit growthThere’s plenty of pie, though
With 330,000 housing units in SF alone, Zeus has plenty of room to grow
The rise of remote work means companies whose employee typically didn’t relocate may now need to bring in distant workers for a
A recession could make companies more expense-cautious, leading them to rethink putting up staffers in hotels for months on end
Regulatory red tape and taxes could scare landlords away from short-term rentals and towards coprorate housing
And the need to expand into new businesses could tempt the big vacation rental platforms like Airbnb to make acquisitions in the space —
or try to crush Zeus.Winners will be determined in part by who has the widest and cheapest selection of properties, but also by which makes
people most comfortable in a new city
That’s why Taggar is taking a cue from WeWork by trying to arrange more community events for its tenants
Often in need of friends, Zeus could become a favorite by helping people feel part of a neighborhood rather than a faceless inmate in a
massive apartment block or hotel
That gives Zeus network effect if it can develop density in top markets.Taggar says the biggest challenge is that “I feels like I’m
running five startups at once
Pricing, supply chain, customer service, B2B
We’ve decided to make everything custom — our own property manager software, our own internal CRM
We think these advantages compound, but I could be wrong and they could be wasted effort.”The benefits of Zeus‘ success would go beyond
the founder’s bank account
“I’ve had friends in New York get great opportuntiies in San Francisco but not take them because of the friction of moving” Taggar
Routing talent where it belongs could get more things built
And easy housing might make people more apt to live abroad temporarily
Taggar concludes, “I think it’s a great way to build empathy.”
