Rebecca Tongsinoon feels like she’s living her adult life in reverse.
She bought a house in her early 20s and fixed it up while her friends explored the clubs on Sixth Street. She climbed the professional ladder and invested in real estate through her mid 30s when many urbanites start thinking about buying a first home. Now, at 39, she says she’s taking the risk of her life -- quitting her job to bootstrap a startup in a crowded real estate tech market.
She’s banking it all on the idea that there’s a large crowd of Austin renters who are tired of searching through questionable Craigslist ads and repeatedly filling out house rental applications with associated fees.
Tongisnoon’s startup, Rebtong (yes, a combination of her first and last name) promises to give renters and landlords a one-stop shop for finding choice rental properties, a free rental application that can be used to apply for multiple rentals, a platform for renters and landlords to see who each other are by linking social media accounts, and housing it all on a website that has slight resemblance to AirBNB, the short-term rental unicorn.
“It’s the most exciting and terrifying decision I’ve ever made in my life,” she said. “Every moment is kind of like ‘did I make the right decision?’ You feel a little bipolar. You really second guess it, but there’s validation every day with what we’re doing.”
Tongsinoon started Rebtong in March and quit her job as director of product at the mobile software company, Phunware, in June. Her all-woman team in Austin consists of a UX designer and two marketing interns. Other web development is being handled in India. In short, Rebtong is still in its infancy as it finalizes a standardized application and builds a base of interested applicants.
"We’re trying to change the model and protocol for how renters and owners interact.”
With an average of 110 people moving to Austin every day, there’s a lot of pie to go around. But with thousands of realtors and property finders, Rebtong will have to find ways to stand out in a growing crowd.
“We’re not just putting everything online,” she said. “It’s not moving existing processes to the cloud. We’re not property management in the cloud, which is being done. We’re trying to change the model and protocol for how renters and owners interact.”
For landlords, the incentive is having a crop of qualified renters who they can learn about by reading their profile and whatever else the future renters care to share to increase their chances of scoring the perfect place. For renters, Rebtong offers a free application that can be used for multiple properties, and it includes credit and background checks that renters typically pay through application fees.
Tongsinoon, who owns several rental properties and rents some via AirBNB, said her idea evolved from her experience in renting houses out. At first, she couldn’t afford to vet tenants and learned the hard way as they damaged her home.
Later, she moved on to taking out newspaper ads to find tenants and having credit and background checks conducted. But, still, she much preferred to rent her property to someone she had at least some connection to. Finally, she had a potential tenant send her a copy of a driver's license and social security card to an unsecured Dropbox account.
“I looked at it for 5 seconds and told them to take it down,” she said. “It’s horribly insecure.”
The same potential tenants, however, sent her a letter explaining their situation as a new couple and they shared financial information. Soon, Tongsinoon realized that both she and her potential tenants were checking each other’s social media accounts.
“I said ‘I can’t believe there isn't something out there like AirBNB or LinkedIn where I can see who potential renters are,'” she said -- “a place where tenants and landlords and rate each other. I said, ‘why isn’t that out there yet?’ and my boyfriend said to me, ‘why don’t you go build it?’ So I did.”
