Today we’d like to introduce you to Drew Davis.
Drew, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
During my junior year at the University of Southern California, I decided to study abroad. While preparing for the venture, I faced the difficulties of finding someone to sublease my apartment for the six months I wasn’t there. I frantically posted on Facebook and asked friends if they knew of anyone who needed short-term housing, but found myself at multiple dead ends. After a stressful search that eventually leads to finding a tenant,
I found that I wasn’t alone in this stressful search process. Other students were facing the same problems I had – not being able to find someone to take over the lease on time, or not knowing whether the person taking over your rental would pay rent and leave your space damage free.
This problem really stuck with me and while I was abroad, I entered and won a start-up concept competition in Germany with a solution. After graduating from USC in 2017, I embarked on a mission to make this concept a reality. My goal was to create a platform that made it easy for students to connect with one another for subletting, while ensuring those who took over leases were trustworthy and would pay rent, leaving the space damage free. I called the company UniLease.
The company launched Spring 2019 and is currently at the University of Southern California with plans on expanding to other schools in California soon.
I want UniLease is to reach every University in the United States, so students are no longer throwing money away on unused space. UniLease’s features like its easy to use payment platform ensures your rent is paid while you are away. Our sublease agreements make sure your house is returned in the condition you left it, so don’t have to worry about managing your property from a distance.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I wish it has been smooth but there have been plenty of struggles. There were, and still are, many unexpected challenges. Since I just launched, the biggest and longest struggle so far has been the web development. I was a business major in college and knew very little about development. I had a vision for the site and initially it was a struggle to get that vision across to the developers. One “struggle,” or maybe more so a regret, was that I wish I could have gotten a more skeleton product out first to receive initial customer feedback. Then we could base future features from their feedback. Of course, it did all come together and am very happy with this first version of the site.
Throughout the development and from launch, I have had to learn a lot about myself especially as I have been working on this as well as having a full-time job. Time wise, it makes thing tough and really forced me to be productive with my time. This included finding out areas that I am good at, I can learn, or I need help with to ensure I was efficient as possible. This does bring up another tough part which is finding the right people to bring aboard that you can rely on.
There are just so many unexpected things thrown your way that no amount of advice from someone can fully prepare you. It can be overwhelming but the key is using those roadblocks as added fuel and drive you
So, as you know, we’re impressed with UniLease – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
UniLease is an online subletting platform just for students. It is an online marketplace that connects students who are looking for short-term housing with students who have a room to sublet. UniLease’s features like its auto-recurring payment platform to make rent payments stress-free for the parties.
Housing platforms are not a new thing, but we are unique as we are only targetting students who need to sublet. This is being achieved by requiring students to signup with a .edu email address. This makes it a lot easier for students as the timing of housing is a lot better match as students have a similar schedule and we found that students (and even landlords) felt safer when dealing with other students.
Currently, we are gathering market feedback on ways to expand and make our company more unique and appealing to its users. From here, we believe we can make more discoveries on ways to separate us from current and future competitors. So far we have had over 200 listings just at USC alone of students needing to sublet their room during the summer..
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
We are planning to expand in the near future to other schools. We also have begun talks with some companies about forming strategic partnerships.
For now, I am looking forward to tackling the school year and helping students who need to sublet during either Fall or Spring Semester.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.unileasehousing.com
- Email: drew@unileasehousing.com
- Instagram: @unileasehousing,com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/unileasehousing/
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