This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, thanks for tuning in today. You are listening to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host. And this is our weekly segment called Failure Friday. It's built on the principle that we can learn as much from failure as we can from success.
Therefore, Failure Friday is a collection of short stories about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure. It's become one of our most popular formats. You get to hear directly from a side hustler who has struggled to get something off the ground. And today's short story features Rupert Hunt from the UK. And we told the successful story of his roommate finder business back on episode 836.
Music graduate makes spare change filling spare rooms. In fact, this business has been phenomenally successful. Every three minutes, someone finds a roommate on spare room. That's his platform. So obviously it's really taken off.
But in the beginning, there was no guarantee of success and Rupert had to make a big decision, both for himself and in consideration with two close friends. So he's gonna tell us how that unfolded as well as another lesson he learned along the way. So here's Rupert. I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
My name's Rupert and I'm the founder of Spare Room.
Spare Room is a roommate matching website and app and has so far helped over 11 million people across the US and UK to find a room or roommate. But that wasn't why I initially intended Spare Room to be at all, which brings me onto my first and most significant business failure, one that changed the entire direction of the company. I started the site originally with the help of two close school friends. And the idea was to let individual landlords and real estate agents advertise their properties for rent online. This was the early 2000s.
So at that point, the only alternative was local newspapers and ads and shop windows. So it felt like a no brainer business idea. The closer we got to launch, the more time consuming the business became. I was busy coding a whole load of what I thought were very clever features. One of my friends was working on the designs and the other was supposed to be trimming up interest from agents, but struggling to fit it in alongside his day job.
Especially when agents didn't tend to be available in the evenings and weekends to speak. In fact, we all had full-time jobs and other side hustles. So the pressure was really mounting. We pushed ahead anyway, finding time to work on the business whenever we could. In the days and weeks after we launched, people just weren't using the site like we thought they would.
In fact, it was totally dead. Naturally, I felt pretty panicked. I'd invested what little money I had and maxed out credit cards to start this business. Now the whole idea was coming apart and we didn't have the time to focus completely on turning things around. But luckily on the final afternoon before we'd launched, I've decided to add a roommate notice board to the site, very much as an afterthought, and it was starting to get some use.
This was both a relief, people using the site, and a worry because no one was using the features we'd spent so long pulling together and which our entire business model was based on. We had to make some tough choices and fast. To make it work, we'd have to go all in and give up our jobs. I was excited by the prospect of that and also fed up with my day job anyway, so I was keen. But it turned out my two friends were more excited by the fact our venture men, we met up regularly for drinks, something I obviously loved too.
But faced with an ultimatum, they realized they didn't want to take a risk when their careers were heading places, probably more than mine was. This left me with two big decisions. Was I ready to risk everything we'd built and pivot the business to focus on roommate matching? And was I up for doings on my own without my two friends on board? I decided to take the plunge.
I quit my job, moved back to my parents in the north of England to save money on rent, and pivoted the business to focus just on roommates. This failure taught me a crucial lesson early on. Listen to the market and let it guide you. Whatever it is you think people need or want, you'll probably be wrong to some degree. But get a product out there and people will tell you what they want.
That ultimately led to the success of Spare Room. And if I hadn't taken that risk, I don't think I'd be talking on this podcast today. Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. Thanks so much to Rupert for sharing this transparent and truthful story. I think it's pretty cool.
Over 11 million people in the US and the UK have used his site to find a roommate. So if you need a roommate, or if you know someone who does, or if you just want to check out his business, learn more about what he's done, check out spareroom.com in the US, or spareroom.co.uk for the UK. You can also follow Spare Room, just one word Spare Room on most social networks. If you've got a question or an update for us about your side hustle, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. I'm so glad you're out there.
Thank you for listening. You can subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you'll come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
