Music Graduate Makes Spare Change Filling Spare Rooms

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Sometimes what you set out to make takes a turn for the better. And you never would have had the new idea if you hadn't begun to pursue your original one. Now, I discovered this myself. When I started the blog, "The Art of Nonconformity" a decade ago, I started by writing about my travels and this quest I was on to go to every country in the world. And that was fine.

I didn't have a lot of commercial goals for it. You know, I wanted to do a book at some point, but that was pretty much it. But then as people began to subscribe to the blog and especially when I started doing meetups, just a few months in, I remember in particular, one meetup I did in New York City with Jonathan Fields, who's another author and he's got a great podcast of his own called "Good Life Project." Been a friend of mine for a decade now and we did this meetup and all these people came out and it wasn't just that there were a lot of people, although that was impressive to me at the time. I'm like, wow, people actually read my blog and they want to come to a meetup. By the way, what's a meetup?

And how do you host a meetup? Like I didn't know any of that stuff at the time, but it wasn't just that there was a lot of people. It was that all the people who came out, as I talked to them about what they were working on, what they were up to, they all had these really interesting stories. And they were all kind of drawn to the blog, to what I was writing for different reasons. And I went away thinking, wow, like this is really cool.

Like this notion of community, this notion that all these like-minded people are coming together, not just because of my blog, but because I have the chance to meet other people, like I need to go away and think more about what this is all about, because clearly what people wanted was different than I expected at first. And ultimately it was better, but you can only get to that point by starting out with whatever idea you have. Now today's story, by the way, this is Side Hustle School. I am Chris Guillebeau, your host. So glad you're here.

Today's story is similar, but different, of course. It's all about a university graduate who makes more than spare change filling spare rooms. After moving to London, this self-taught coder builds a website to help housemates find each other. And 15 years later, this story has quite an arc, long timeline, it's an unlikely tech success story, earning millions of dollars of profit and serving hundreds of thousands of members. Really fun story, I enjoyed working on it, and I hope you enjoy it as well.

The whole story is coming up in just a moment after this quick message. [Music]

It was the year 1999, the year that Prince predicted would be a great party and right before Y2K. Rupert Hunt had graduated from university with a music degree and moved to London. His dream of starting a successful band hadn't quite worked out. So for a while, he stocked shelves at a local supermarket.

With a new millennium about to roll around, Rupert's aspirations moved from music to web development. He wanted to make more money, build a better life for himself, and stop stocking shelves. He had no programming experience, but wasn't afraid of hard work. He just knew he didn't wanna join the rat race and climb a corporate ladder. So instead of taking a low-level corporate job, he decided to intern for a local internet entrepreneur in his spare time.

This entrepreneur ran a website, and Rupert viewed it as a great opportunity to gain some new skills. He also thought it would be a good way to be exposed to new ideas. The plan worked. After a short time, Rupert landed a gig for a local web development agency. He continued in that role for a few years when the spare space in his mind began filling with a business idea.

He thought about his experience moving to London and the difficulty he had in finding a place to rent. With his new web development skills, he started building a website that listed properties for rent in London. After a few weeks of work, he launched intolondon.com for just that purpose. At the last minute, Rupert decided to add on a message board for people seeking housemates. Housemates, also known as roommates, American translation there.

And he did that just in case anyone browsing the site was looking to share an apartment instead of renting their own. Intolondon.com launched with little fanfare and didn't experience much growth or success. In fact, the rental classifieds area of the site, his planned business model, didn't take off at all. But something unexpected happened. The housemate message board that Rupert had tacked on at the last minute had proved quite popular.

In fact, it was the only area of the site that got any use at all. And this gave him an idea. Rather than slog away at building a rental property website, he should listen to what his users and the market was telling him. There was clearly a need for a website that made finding a housemate simple. With nothing more than 5,000 pounds on a credit card, Rupert launched spareroom.co.uk.

A flat sharing website for the whole of the UK. Through Google and word of mouth, the site slowly began to gain traction. But it wasn't until a marketing stunt in 2004 that things really took off. Rupert devised a real world event to promote his online destination. The event was speed flatmating, similar to speed dating.

But instead of looking for a love interest, attendees were looking for the ideal housemate. In an effort to drum up media interest for the event, Rupert sent out a press release. Unfortunately, only one local newspaper turned up, but the show went on and everyone had a great time. As luck would have it, the Times of London, one of the UK's largest newspapers, saw the local story and contacted Rupert directly, asking him when the next event would be. Now this is great, I love this part, my favorite part of the whole story.

Seeing the opportunity, Rupert decided to strike while the iron was hot. Although he had nothing planned, he told the Times there was another event happening on Thursday that week. That second event resulted in a highly positive write-up that went out across the nation, and that's when things exploded. Shortly after, he ran a third speed flatmating event. This time, it was attended by two TV crews, five radio stations, and nine journalists, as well as lots of customers.

From then on, the site continued to grow quickly over the next few years. When it came to monetization, Rupert kept things basic. At first, he would charge visitors to the site a five-pound lifetime membership fee. He was so happy and surprised when people signed up, he started telling his friends about his success, and one of those friends encouraged him to restrict the time limit on the membership to gain repeat transactions. What seemed so obvious after the fact had never occurred to Rupert before, and that was a huge turning point in bringing in more revenue.

If we fast forward several more years, by 2010, spareroom.co.uk was the largest flat-sharing site in the country. Being a first mover was a huge advantage, but there were several other sites now in the space, so maintaining the lead wasn't easy. Rupert puts the success down to having a true understanding and empathy with customers. He views spareroom as a modern-day family business that keeps the culture strong and also maintains a solid focus on providing real value to members. It seems a lot of others agree, because spareroom is now a serious business with over two million dollars in operating profit in 2018.

Rupert also decided to make the push from the UK into the US. Since launching in New York, the site has helped match three quarters of a million flatmates already. He never went back to building the property rental site. [Music]

So remember, your first side hustle idea very well may not be what you end up with, for the rest of your life, or even for the next few weeks or months or a year, but if you don't pursue one idea, you'll never get to whatever is waiting beyond that one, 'cause again, it's the process of implementation, execution, illumination as people discover the project or as your users come and begin to show you what they like and what they don't like. So it's not just about asking people.

You can ask people for their opinion, but more than just listening to what people tell you, you can pay attention to what they do, and that really gives you the information. So in this case, we paid attention and realized that people are really looking for this roommate/housemate matching service. And he could have just went with the slog of building his original idea, really trying to focus on that rental property situation, but he chose to just go with the flow. And here we are all these years later, his family business model, he's making a lot of money, and he's also helping so many people. He's helping people all over the world.

I think they're in the UK, the US, and several other countries now as well, I'm not mistaken, but they're doing a great job. So pursue an idea, you'll see what happens after that, but it all starts with pursuing an idea. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/836. That's episode 836. I'll be back again tomorrow.

Thanks so much for joining me. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the Onward Project.