Have you ever wanted to go for a private swim, but you don’t own a pool? That’s when you notice a beautiful, sparkling water oasis at your neighbor’s house down the street, and you wish you could swim there.
Meanwhile, that same pool owner would like to earn some extra money by better utilizing their often-underused swimming pool. Meeting both of these needs through pool sharing is the very reason startup Swimply launched in 2018.
With headquarters in both New York and California, Swimply was recently introduced to the Richmond area, where Vice President of Growth Sonny Mayugba said, “It’s been really developing.”
Swimply is an online marketplace, similar to Airbnb, where people can make reservations to rent private pools by-the-hour, and the pool owners earn money.
The Swimply website shows seven listings in the Richmond area. Mayugba expects the number of listing to increase as word of the service spreads. He said there are more than 20,000 listings nationwide.
“The number of pools that have signed up… we’re up 400% from last year,” he said. We’ve seen the number of swimmers in the hundreds of thousands this year.”
The host determines the hourly rental rate, which typically ranges between $15 to $100 an hour, Mayugba said. The average hourly price is $45. Swimply receives 15% of the fee.
A top priority for Swimply is the safety and well-being of both guests and hosts Mayugba said.
“When hosts sign up on the platform, we go through a vetting process and a background check process,” he said. “We make sure the pool exists; we make sure they’re real people; we have them upload legal documents; there’s a lot we do — there’s a few different layers to make sure they’re quality hosts.”
One of those protective measures is connecting the host and the guest through a chat function after a pool is booked, Mayugba said. This allows both parties to feel comfortable with the other.
“Our hosts do sometimes say, ‘This person is trying to throw a party, so I don’t want to do this one,’” he said. “We let the guests review the hosts, but we let the hosts review the guests as well, and the minute somebody is a bad actor, they get reported.”
The platform also has an insurance program that covers $1 million in liability and $10,000 in property damage.
Swimply recently raised a $10 million capital round, led by Norwest Venture Partners. Mayugba said the funds will support additional market launches, expand the Swimply team and help build the product.
Some of the hosts have additional amenities beyond private swimming pools. As a result, Mayugba said, Swimply is going to launch a new service called JoySpace later this year. JoySpace will be a sharing platform where people can rent these additional private spaces like tennis and basketball courts, home gyms, rock climbing walls, outdoor kitchens and putting greens that the hosts may also have on their property.
“The big picture vision is to connect people … and really create a community, that not only drives revenue for those people who own these assets but then in turn creates joy [for others],” he said.