How Ohana Built a $40M Subletting Marketplace on Bubble

Jacob Halbert and Ezra Gershanok founded Ohana to address the subletting challenges in New York City, creating a safe and secure marketplace powered by Bubble, which offers features like identity verification, secure payments, and a sublease timeline to guide users through the process. Ohana's innovative approach, which includes video introductions between hosts and guests and an escrow system for payments, has facilitated rapid growth, achieving $16.2 million in host earnings and expanding to nine cities globally within two years. The platform's success is built on the founders' previous experience with Bubble, used in their first venture, Keyper, and allows them to quickly adapt and iterate on their product, leading to significant revenue growth and profitability within 14 months. The development speed and flexibility of Bubble have enabled Ohana to build custom internal tools and customer service platforms, giving the team an advantage, even without traditional computer science backgrounds. As Ohana continues to expand and plans to launch a mobile app, the company raised $5.8 million, tripling its valuation and empowering it to scale while maintaining profitability and control over its growth trajectory.