They Spent $700 to Rent a Stranger’s Pool for Five Hours

We Dive into the Pool-sharing Empire Built by a Would-be Rabbi

Hot enough for you this Labor Day weekend? 🔥

Here on Wells $treet, I'm staying cool and hydrated with multiple margaritas. It helps me stay focused on what’s important: Keeping you up to date on weird business stories. Like today’s installment, about a guy studying to be a rabbi who decided to create a pool-sharing startup, even though he didn’t know anything about anything. Well, as the Good Book says (channeling my inner Tevye), “Why not?”

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It’s bloody hot in Los Angeles. So Erika Schweitzer and seven friends — plus two kids and a dog — have hit the backyard pool. They’re in Studio City, part of LA’s San Fernando Valley, a region of SoCal I like to call “The Furnace.”

But this isn’t their pool. They don’t even know the owner. They rented the pool through a fast-growing app called Swimply. “My friend, Ashley, found this app just randomly,” Erika tells me as we chat poolside. “I think it was one of those Instagram advertisements.”

Swimply is nicknamed “the Airbnb of pools,” and it’s one of the latest apps in the “sharing economy” — a misnomer if ever there was one. You’re not sharing, you’re renting.

Jennifer Lloyd owns the pool Erika rented, and she’s making about $5,000 a month this summer from Swimply. “Every time someone walks down the driveway, that’s another $60 [an hour],” she says, showing me her packed calendar of bookings.

At first, Jennifer was hesitant to open her backyard to strangers. “I didn’t want to have parties,” she says. But she soon changed her mind. “I booked my first party of 15 people, and it was $900, and I’m like, ‘This isn’t bad, and they’re not horrible people.’”

More pool parties followed, along with a lot of bookings for just one or two swimmers. Jennifer limits the hours people can use the pool, and she’s established rules, like no running or yelling. She also provides access to a bathroom and the backyard grill.

Erika’s group at Jennifer’s pool/photo by me

From Rabbinical School to Tech Startup

“One thousand people are going to be [renting] a pool between Saturday, Sunday and Monday, just in Los Angeles,” says Bunim Laskin, Swimply’s founder and CEO.

Bunim founded the four-year-old company despite having zero business experience. He was in Israel in 2017 studying to be a rabbi when his mother back in New Jersey gave birth to her 12th child. “We needed a creative way to get out of the house,” he says. There were a lot of kids to entertain and not a lot of money. “Our neighbor built a pool, and we convinced her to let us use it in exchange for a fee.” Soon other people in the neighborhood wanted to pay to use the pool. Bunim became the intermediary, scheduling the pool for a commission.

And that, my friends, is when the “aha” moment happened.

Soon, rabbinical school was left behind as Bunim pursued the American dream of tech success. “My parents were so excited,” he says with a smile, and I can’t tell if he’s being serious or sarcastic.

He raised some money from friends and family but it wasn’t enough. He landed an opportunity to go on “Shark Tank,” but found no takers. “I’d already heard 100 no’s, so 104 didn’t really make that much of a difference,” he jokes.

Oh sharks, if you’d only known.

Swimply has since raised $52 million from companies like Airbnb and Instacart. Bunim moved the company from New Jersey to Los Angeles, its biggest market. A year ago there were two employees. Now there are 50.

Bunim claims that over the last year, Swimply has quadrupled the number of pools on its site to 25,000, with over a million users paying to swim. The company makes money through a 15% commission from the owner and 10% from the guest.

Revenues? “We’re definitely doing eight figures a month,” Bunim says, meaning they’ve pulled in at least $30 million over the last three months. In some regions of the country, Swimply is already profitable. When I asked him if anything from his biblical education helped him pivot to a startup, he tells me the critical thinking he developed has been useful. “No matter how experienced you are studying the Talmud, you are just constantly introduced to new challenges,” he says. “You constantly know nothing about whatever it is you’re learning.” He still studies two hours a day, “when it’s 6am and 11pm.”

Erika’s friends stay cool on a hot day.

Disneyland or the Pool?

Swimply has made a splash in the media, and there have been a lot of articles written about it recently, but no one has talked to customers — the people who rent the pools.

So I did. I sought out Erika in Jennifer’s backyard and asked her, “Why do this?”

“We all love swimming, but we live in Los Angeles,” she says. “None of us have pools. We’re all in apartments.” She really liked the fact that Jennifer allows dogs and access to a bathroom. Jennifer even lets dogs swim in her pool, something many owners don’t permit.

Erika and her friends spent over $700 to rent the pool for five hours. For that, they could’ve gone to Disneyland! “I can’t speak for the group,” Erika says, “but I personally am not into a crowded Disneyland kind of place.” (FYI, the temperature at Disneyland will hit 102 today.)

Jennifer’s Swimply page

Jennifer and her husband have invested nearly $1,000 to make the pool a popular listing — buying pool toys, an air pump, extra chemicals, beach towels, putting in a charging station for cellphones, and even purchasing a shuffleboard table, which turned out to be a good investment. “I’ve had people extend [their rental time] because they’re involved in these big tournaments,” she tells me.

Her pool is usually rented out multiple times a day, often to only one or two people. Some customers are looking for privacy — “We have a lot of people who have body differences.”

She’s also learned to deal with the unexpected, like the time she rented the pool to underwear models. “They can’t have tan lines,” she explains, “so they asked if it’s okay if they’re nude, and I’m like, ‘That’s fine by me.’” (She has a tall hedge blocking her neighbor’s view.)

One of her repeat customers is Shira Rosenbluth, a therapist who has an Instagram following topping 91,000 people. Shira brings her dog to the pool, and while they could go to the beach for free, “I can’t really swim at the beach.” She’d rather pay. “Swimply has been a really fun way to get out, get some movement, and play with my pup.”

Swimming Upstream

But Swimply is facing challenges. Cities like Palm Springs are trying to ban the service. Neighborhoods fear big, rowdy pool parties, but Bunim says 90% of Swimply bookings are for groups of fewer than five people. He says the most important thing a pool owner can do is communicate with neighbors. The company has set up neighborhood pages on its app to handle complaints, and an owner who receives less than a three-star review is taken off the site for a month.

A more significant challenge may be liability, a pool owner’s greatest fear. A girl drowned at a New Jersey pool party booked through Swimply. The company provides pool owners with $1 million in coverage, plus $10,000 for property damage. “From day one, safety has been part of our DNA,” Bunim says. “We educate our hosts regularly.”

Jennifer figures the liability insurance isn’t enough to cover something tragic. “I mean, if someone dies, you’re screwed,” she says. So she strives to limit her “negligence factor” by keeping the pool water crystal clear and removing anything that might cause someone to trip.

In the meantime, Swimply is working to expand its offerings, like letting people rent out their tennis courts. This would continue the revenue stream year round. The company is also expanding globally, because it’s always pool weather somewhere!

The only complaint I heard from both users and pool owners is that the app could be better. Jennifer would like to see dynamic pricing, and Erika says the user experience is a little clunky. “You can’t open up a certain message from the computer versus the app,” she says. Bunim tells me that about 80% of their internal work right now is improving the tech, but they are still a young company. “Most people don’t even know how small we are.”

Aside from the app, Erika also thinks that some pool owners charge way too much. She could just rent an Airbnb with a pool for the same price and have the residence as well. But as we wrap up our conversation while her friends frolic in the pool, Erika tells me she’ll use Swimply again, probably to rent the same pool. “I’m kinda sold on this house.”

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Would you rent someone else’s pool? For pool owners, would you let strangers in your backyard? And c’mon people, let’s think of the next big thing in the sharing economy. Like sharing ... shoes! Uh, lawnmowers! Hey, wanna use my washer-dryer?

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Cover image was taken by me at Jennifer’s pool, where I wish I was right now.