How to Optimize the Recommendation Algorithm

Our guest today is Justine Palefsky, Co-founder and CEO of Kindred. Kindred is the trusted home swapping network and harnesses the power of community to allow you to travel more for less. We discuss the opportunity within travel and house swapping and how to construct a marketplace where one unit of supply equals one unit of demand

1. What is Kindred?
2. How did you both meet?
3. Did you both always have the intention of founding a business?
4. When was the aha moment that led to Kindred?
5. How is Kindred different from other home swapping sites?
6. What was your first test to test this theory that people would be open to a house-swapping community?
7. Why did you think you both would make good co-founders for this business?
8. How did you first construct Kindred? It started off as a private Instagram group, right?
   1. What did you learn from that experience?
9. How did you think about the marketplace dynamics in this type of business?
10. How did you decide how to monetize since this is actually quite a complex business?
11. Once you’re part of this private community, how do you incentivize people to actually house swap?
12. Monetization. How did you approach?
13. How did you approach fundraising?
14. What are typical demographics?
15. How do you approach customer acquisition?
16. What was your approach to fundraising?
    1. When did you begin fundraising?
    2. What were the biggest reasons for passing?
    3. What did investors like the most about this business?
17. Now that the world is beginning to open back up, how do you think about change in consumer behavior and scale?
    1. Were people doing house swaps during the height of the pandemic?
18. What’s one thing you would change about fundraising?
19. What’s one book that inspired each of you personally and one book that inspired each of you professionally?
    1. Undaunted Courage by Lewis and Clark
    2. The Courage to be Disliked
20. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?