Disrupting the Deals Landscape: Matt Renner's Entrepreneurial Leap from Corporate to Startup with PassPass

Alex Husner  0:01  
Welcome to Alex & Annie: The real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex.

Annie Holcombe  0:40  
And I'm Annie.

Ad  0:41  
And we're here today with Matt Renner, who is the co founder and CEO of PassPass. Matt, it's so good to see you.

Matt Renner  0:48  
Good to see you again. Thanks for having me.

Annie Holcombe  0:50  
Well, we're excited to have you here. And you've been doing some stuff since you left track. We're excited to talk about that. And I daresay there's probably not many people that don't know who you are. But just in case, Why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey and through vacation rentals and how you got to where you are today.

Matt Renner  1:06  
Yeah, so I originally started working for Ryan and Charles Bailey, who were the founders of travel net back in the early 2000s. And it's kind of on again off again with a company for a few years and then started a small business in kind of 2009 ish and 2010 they acquired my company brought me back to travel net, and that kind of set off a 12 year sprint. And at the time, we were building a marketplace called resorts and lodges.com, which was kind of a director consumer marketplace, we worked with independent resorts, vacation rental companies, just connecting consumers with those brands and helping them it was an advertising platform pretty much kind of like the old VRBO listing model. And in 2014, we we decided to kind of go back to our roots, because traveling originally actually started as a software company in the PMs space way back in the early 2000s. They had built a software called rest tracker. And they had built a call tracking system called Phone analytics. And it basically was tools that they were using to give to resorts and companies to kind of power their back office while we did advertising marketing on the front end. It was cloud before the cloud. And so it was like the wrong time and it didn't work out. But you know, when we decided to get back into the software space, and we ended up acquiring a small company out of Tennessee called resort Zilla. And during that process, I became you know, a partner in the business and kind of helped get track off the ground. But that was actually the second time we had built a full scale PMS system. And so we kind of took the approach of like slow and steady, you know, we kept our relationships going, we signed some key relationships with long term customers that we had, you know, Southern vacation rentals and a family resort up in the Northeast Pennsylvania, it took about four years to really get the product until where it was like capable of really handling larger enterprise because at the time, we were looking at the market, it seemed like all of the PMs systems that were in the market were kind of basically channel managers, you know, they were really they started as channel managers, and they they built it on some other tools. And if you looked at the time, the PMs space back then kind of the leading enterprise solutions were were kind of all the ones that were rolled up under HomeAway, right, like property plus and v 12. And these types of systems. And so it was clear to us, if we were going to, if we were going to kind of find our niche, it, we wanted it to be at the larger enterprise scale kind of companies that we wanted to serve. And if we went to market too fast with that, we could have failed, right, we wouldn't have been able to meet the needs of the customer base. And so we first went to market with pulse, which was our call tracking lead management CRM program. And we did that for about four years. And then in 2018, as fate would have it, homeboy announced that they were sunsetting D 12. And right at that time, you know, we had just spent the last four years working with Southern vacation rentals and that team building out a whole enterprise accounting system and all of the stuff to be able to handle the needs of those kinds of businesses and so we were just ready and then you know, it's like a rocket ship you know, in four years we you know, sign the majority of the what we will consider kind of the larger companies in the US and you know, the revenue followed and then we had a nice you know, nice exit in in July 22. And I stayed on for about a year afterwards consulting still great friends with the with the team love the team. But, you know, I spent almost 16 years at that company is pretty much my entire career. And I've always wanted to an entrepreneurial I've got a couple of restaurants I've owned, I've got some investments and I was kind of wanted to to be the CEO and build another company and so it just seemed like the right time and I'm still an owner and the company in minority owner and you know, friends with everyone and still rooting for him, but you know, it's time to go on to my next x so that's kind of my backstory.

Ad  4:55  
Yeah, time to try something new and what you've tried that's pretty new and we'll we'll get to it. In a little bit pass pass, we'll do a deep dive but very interesting. And yeah, 16 years of one company that is a long time, I can understand the need to want to try something different. And after all that, and you certainly racked up a lot of success over the years with track and it's been really fun to watch the journey. We've known you guys for a very long time. And when it was just the call center component, and we're on resorts and lodges for many years, and a lot of the same people are still there today. So that's, that's the cool thing about it. Yeah, it's

Matt Renner  5:30  
kind of you know, the old guard. It's funny to be the kind of the old dogs now but 16 year overnight success, right. And you're also

Ad  5:36  
a country singer. Yeah. Or at one point, you were doing that a little bit. Yeah,

Matt Renner  5:42  
I'm a musician. I've done music my whole life. A lot of people see it. And they asked because they see it on social media, like on Instagram or whatever. And I'm on Spotify and stuff. And they're like, Oh, how's the music on so about same as my golf game. So you can find me on Spotify and look me up.

Annie Holcombe  5:59  
We can have him do our next theme song. That's what we need. Yeah, exactly.

Matt Renner  6:05  
I don't know if you remember. But back at the vrma conferences back in the day, there used to be an industry band that played at all the conferences, you know, vendors would all get together

Annie Holcombe  6:14  
vaguely. Yeah. I don't know that I ever actually started do I think I feel like I've heard about it's not too late

Ad  6:17  
to bring it back. We're looking for fresh new ideas. Matt, if you're

Matt Renner  6:21  
listening, my current company pass pass. My partners are pretty much all out of Nashville. And they're all musicians from like popular touring bands over the years are some of them are. And so I kind of joked like if we have a partner conference in, in the small business space, we probably have one of the better conference bands out there. Yeah.

Annie Holcombe  6:39  
I love it. Okay, so you took your decision to leave track. And that was, again, I mentioned to you off camera, I was really surprised because I didn't see that coming. I thought you were going to be there forever. Just you were a staple part of the organization. And in my eyes, as much as people know, Ryan, it was always like, if I talked about track, it was like everybody knew, Matt. So when you left it was kind of I think for some people just just shocked, but maybe for others that knew you well, not a shot, but you wanted to go out and start something new. And so you have started something new, and we wanted to talk about that. So why don't you tell us what you've been doing? Yeah, yeah.

Matt Renner  7:12  
Well, I mean, you know, like I said, 16 years, it was, you know, was happening adult life, you know, so I kind of was there forever, maybe it was a good thing. But it was nothing other than that. It was just time to do something new. And Ryan supported me the whole time. I may have been the guy at all the conferences, but I mean, Ryan, the team that we had there, like it was a really special team that built that company. I was fortunate, you know, to be a part of it. Yeah. So as far as what I'm doing today, kind of like, in the vein of stuff that I've done my whole career, which is I've always kind of been a proponent for independent businesses. I've always been a proponent for the little guy, you know, the entrepreneurs, small businesses. And so I own a restaurant in Woodbury called birdie golf verde golf is like an indoor golf facility. And it's, it's a cool spot. And I did it because I wanted to play golf in the winter in Minnesota, but it's a business, you know, it's tough to make money in small businesses and small businesses are really squeezed. And what a lot of people you know, I'm sure maybe are aware of but don't quite know, as if you look at the world that we live in today, you have like a conglomerate of like five to 10 companies that have trillions of market cap, right? You have Microsoft, and you have Google and Apple and these massive, massive companies that have trillions and trillions of value, and they employ, like, 600 700,000 people, right. And they're really important for our society. They do good things versus our society. But if you look at our economy, there's 33 million small businesses independent business just in the US. And it's over 60 million employees, it's almost 6 trillion in GDP, and it's 43% of our total US GDP is small businesses, right? So it's like 100 times the amount of people that work at these small businesses, then this small consortium of companies that hold all the power. And if you look at those small businesses, it's something like 65% of all small businesses go out of business within 10 years, right. And so you're talking about 20 million people, and businesses, you know, turning, you know, every 10 years, and the stress that puts on our economy, the stress it puts on families, the stress it puts on communities, you know, look at it in our own space in the vacation rental space. How many companies have gone out of business in the last couple of years, how many millions of dollars of investment, either by institutional investors or by just family offices or whatever, there's just a lot of stress on it. And then you add in, you know, persistent, you know, inflation or stagflation, whatever we're in right now, you add in taxation, and you add in kind of the instability of the economy, and I think people really struggle is what I've seen. And so, you know, when I was thinking about what I wanted to do next I was I was talking to my my business partner, my co founder agile and we were working on this media company at the time, and we're trying to find a way to make money off of the audience that we have because advertising wasn't a very Good business. And so we said, Well, why don't we create kind of a coop marketing platform that we could opt in companies to give us offers, and we'll sell kind of like a discount card. You know, let's start there that wasn't new that's been done before, and everything like that. But we just needed a place to start. And so we went out into Nashville, and we signed up a bunch of businesses, and they came on, and we were selling them a little discount card. And that was going okay. But then we were talking to one of our customers company that's on the platform called Nashville tractor. And it's like a tractor tour guide in Nashville. They were like, you know, we're trying to sell more of these cards. Do you have any ideas? We're testing price points, you know, all that kind of stuff. And the owners is like, Well, why don't you let me sell for you? And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. He's like, Yeah, why don't you just let me sell it? And I'll split the cash with you. And we're like, Oh, okay. How many do you think you can sell? He's like, Well, we do 100,000 rides a year, we probably sell 50,000 of these. And we're like, Okay, that's interesting. I wonder how many other businesses would be interested in getting a deal to the marketplace, and then selling the card and making some money off it like CO opting. And basically, and every business we talked to is like, yep, Sign us up. So we're like, Okay, we've got some hair. So we shut that program down, we rebranded as pass pass. And so what pass pass really is or still trying to work out like the proper nomenclature, but it's basically a direct to consumer location based app, you open up the app, it's kind of like Zillow, or Uber, see all the businesses around you every business that's in the app, it's free for the business. So it's free advertising for the business, they could put their business in the app under whatever categories they fall under, they offer a deal to the consumer, the consumer pays $5 a month for access to this app. And they can use it anywhere they go, you know, presumably in the world eventually, and just open it up and see what's around them and get a deal. And it's really simple, easy user experience. It's kind of like Uber for discounts. And what's unique about it is any business that wants to share in the membership revenue with us, if they refer one of their customers to pass pass, and that as soon as that customer signs up with pass pass, we deposit $2.50 into their account. And then in perpetuity, we share the revenue back with the business that brought on the member and we essentially are helping every business create their own subscription business on top of their core, whatever their core business is, the only requirement is they have to offer some kind of a discount or deal to the membership. So that's where the Win Win comes in. Because if you look at kind of traditionally discount industry, you know, people don't really think of it as an industry. They just think well, coupons, we do coupons, or we do a promotion, or a discount or whatever. And some people are snobby that like aren't we don't do promotions like well, target does, like everyone does. Especially when times are tough, and you need to generate demand, people do promotions, right? It's just what businesses do are out forever. But the way it's been done, it's sort of been the same thing forever, you pay Valpak, or you pay Groupon or you pay some company to take a deal, put it in their database, and either mail it to someone or emailed some or whatever. And so what you end up having is you end up having a bunch of businesses that are paying to give away their product, right to give some kind of discount on their product. And if the customer comes in and uses that you're making maybe 30 or 40 or 50 cents on the dollar, or in situations like a group on or something, you might be losing money on those customers just to try to get them in. And so with our program we decided to do was, let's make it free for the businesses. So more businesses participate, let's charge a small monthly fee to the members, they're going to get access to many more discounts to be able to save can be a small amount here, there, but it'll add up and then let's split the revenue. And so we take essentially, almost 66 cents out of every dollar and we put it back into the network. Our mission is to keep every business in business. And our vision is a world where consumer savings directly correlate to the success of business. So make it more of a win win. And then we're building the platform to allow that to happen. I love

Ad  14:06  
it. Yeah, it makes so much sense. And I know when we tried to use Groupon, it's like when you had to give an offer that was not available anywhere else. And in order to do that would undercut what any of our upside was in it. So to your point is like those really weren't even good bookings on the vacation rental side, at least I know for regular businesses, restaurants, spas, anything else that that uses it, that's normally the case. And I guess you can look at it as a way of acquiring a customer. But when those people are coming in specifically for these like bottom bottom discounts, like there's not a whole lot of repeat customers that are going to come in that way. So like, if

Matt Renner  14:42  
you look at the vacation rental industry, you maybe get one shot at a person per year. And if you think about in the software world, when we sign up your company, we make money every month forever as long as you're a member of if you look at all of the largest companies in the world. What do they all have in common, they have recurring revenue. And so we went through this whole phase, you know, through, call it the mid 2010s, into the early 2020s, where all these vacation rental companies were coming out over tech enable and blah, blah. But they weren't subscription companies, yet they were getting multiples like they were, but they still had to serve a customer and that has cogs, and that has labor, and that has acquisition cost. And if they don't come back, you don't ever get to monetize them again. And so why not our theory, or at least my theory, in the vacation rental spaces, every company in the space needs to think of themselves as a, they have a customer funnel, they're spending all of this money, whether it's with Commission's to third party channels, or whether it's for their direct marketing efforts are spending all this money to acquire a customer. And when that customer leaves, if they don't come back, there is no lifetime value of the customer. It's not like software software, you have customer acquisition cost and lifetime value. That means how much did it cost to acquire? And how long do they remain a customer, but that doesn't exist in the vacation rental space. So a pass fast, what a vacation rental company could do is they could sign up with pass fast for free, get found in the marketplace, give some type of a deal, some kind of an offer to acquire the customer, when that customer then signs up for pass pass. And then they maintain the past pass after they leave. And they go back to wherever they came from. And they're using it and getting value and saving money and everything. Well, in perpetuity that vacation rental company now is making $30 a year off of that person. And now has also developed a following of 1000s of people through the app where they can reach and communicate directly with and they know who their customers are. And so that is how I think vacation companies should start thinking is they should start thinking about, look, you're getting squeezed, your fees are getting squeezed, you know, whether it's by the OTAs that are putting the pressure on you pressures coming from everywhere on margin? And how do you build some other sort of business or source of revenue on top of all of these customers that you have come a high value customers, by the way that are spending lots of money, why not just give them a pass pass, and then when they maintain it for the next 10 years, you're making money off them and you've built a relationship. So we're already signing up companies in the space, you know, companies are coming to us. And I think it's going to be something that people be interested in. Because

Annie Holcombe  17:28  
as you're talking to this, I'm thinking about back in my vacation rental days, and just kind of some of the arguments that's going on now about the amount of revenue that's driven within a market, do you see yourself being able to share data to municipalities to some of these advocacy groups that are trying to determine like, what is the true value of a vacation rental guest within the market? I think people can guesstimate that. But it's like this will really give you a good sense of like what they're spending in a market by even if they didn't use the coupon or the discount. Yeah,

Matt Renner  17:57  
so that's actually really interesting you bring up so on our roadmap, you know, we're first of all, we're launching in July. Okay, so right now, all we're doing is we're building out 1000s of businesses all over the country are signing up for this marketplace as a chicken in the egg thing, you know, the offers, if you don't have deal density in a market, then if a consumer signs up for the app, and they download the app, even if they get it for free, you know, for 30 days or whatever, if they don't get any value, they're not going to keep it right. So right now we're just in the process of building out our marketplace. But in our roadmap is we are going to be integrating with all the different point of sale systems, so that when a perk or a deal or discount is redeemed, we will be able to sync up to that person exactly what they purchased. And we will have that data in the system. I don't know what that's going to look like in terms of how we'll use that data, you know, mostly it'll probably be used for providing a better experience for the consumer, right? If we know their purchasing habits, we can use AI, we can build models to kind of help them discover other things. We can build pricing indexes to help people understand where the best deals are things like that. So you know, we're really focused on building a world class consumer brand and consumer products. But I think core to our value proposition is keep every business in business. That's our mission statement, right? Keep every business in business. And so if you have municipalities or you have politicians, or whoever that are fighting against a business, and we're supporting that business, it's in our mission statement to do what we can to try to help people understand the value of these businesses to the world. So I would think, at some point, you know, if we're ever in a position to help that way, I would think that we would at least be aligned with our mission.

Alex Husner  19:53  
But we'll be back in just a minute after a word from our premier brand sponsor, post away.

Ad  19:57  
 Buying a new property management system can be daunting task, we get it. Researching, implementing and onboarding new software can be time intensive and costly. And there's always that lingering fear that the product might not deliver on its promises. But for short term property managers, there's a game changer in the industry. That's right. Hostaway is the fastest growing and top rated property management system for short term rental property managers. And for good reason. Most of it doesn't just streamline your operations, it makes you more money. 1000s of hosts or users have quickly realized their return on investment with profitability boosting features like increased bookings through multi channel distribution, cutting out commission by driving guests your own direct booking website and increase revenue for reservations, you're offering tasteful upsells Plus, with connections to industry leading dynamic pricing products like price labs, you can increase bookings and your ADR without worrying that you're leaving money on the table, or pricing yourself out of the market. Listeners of Alex and Amy podcast can onboard host away for only $100. That's $400 off the regular onboarding fee is a get dot host away.com. Forward slash Alex and Annie for a demo. And to learn more ready to go pro learn why 1000s of property managers are using host a way to take their vacation rental business to the next level. Visit get.hostaway.com/AlexandAnnie and get started today.

So what is the distribution look like? And the outreach to get these businesses whether it's regular restaurants stores in a market versus a vacation rental company? What does that look like at this point? Yeah, so

Matt Renner  21:34  
we decided not to try and go out and raise, you know, the 100 million dollars or whatever, right? So we're kind of, we did raise some money, but we're kind of taking a more grassroots approach. I think that's best, you know, you do the hard work, you get the good results. And so we're not trying to like partner with big aggregators, we're not scraping, we're not you know, we're going hand to hand business to business. And one of the ways we're doing it is we built a two tier affiliate system. So some people may hear that and be like, Oh, you built a network marketing company built a pyramid, not a pyramid, it's not about recruiting your friends. And you know, buying a bunch of product, it's a referral program is what it is. And so anyone or any business can sign up to be a referral. It's kind of like, if you refer someone to the Cash App, you get five bucks, right? The difference is, let's just say you are I'll use an example, let's call out one of my old customers, Jacob door, okay, let's say your real joy, right? And well, real joy has been in that market, how long right in Northwest Florida. They know all the business owners, they probably had conversations about marketing programs, and deals and everything like that. So Jacob signs up real joy, and he's going to put a deal in the marketplace. And we give him 1000 memberships to give away for free for all of his customers when they book so you can use it as an incentive to get people to book with them. It's kind of a value add to his guest, Then Jacob sends his team out into the community and they sign up, you know, 100 businesses around where they serve and where they have their customers. What every business that Jake, that real joy signs up, they will earn a revenue share off of every membership that sold through those businesses, as well. So let's say, you know, they go sign up 100 businesses 100,000 people come through all those because Jacob's not gonna, you know, host everyone, right. And sorry, if you listen. But let's say they had 100,000 members, well, you know, that would pay out $450,000 a year to the affiliate that referred all those businesses into the program. So it's just another way that again, it's all about network effects with our businesses, we bring our business on, they bring other businesses on, and now the member has a bunch of places they can redeem and save money. So they're saving money, so they have no problem paying the $5. And then we split that $5 back with the community. And we take some for operating the platform that

Ad  24:03  
makes a lot of sense. I know in our market here, and I'm sure in most markets, back in the day, you had like the monster coupon books that were in the front lobbies. And as people have transitioned from in person check in to now all being digital, those books don't get distributed anywhere near the way that they used to. So I think the competition has gone down for you as well. But just even from being in, you know, thinking about from the vacation rental company perspective, I think a lot of companies want to do something like this internally, where they go out and they get discounts from local restaurants and stuff like that. But it's also it can end up being a nightmare to manage that. So this kind of makes it easy. I mean, like they're doing one thing, they're distributing it to any of the companies that they already know and their guests go to but then that's it and then they're still making money off of it. So I think you've solved that problem with the legwork and the tracking on everything. Exactly.

Matt Renner  24:54  
And there's a whole back end system. So like when you sign up, you get a portal you log into You can manage your deals, you can see all the members that sign up through it, you've got all their contact information, you can see how many times they've redeemed deals, you can change out your offers, it's completely controlled. It's not a review site, right? We're not trying to weaponize people and like leave reviews to Yelp and everything like that, like we're your think of our company is like a big Costco membership for the world. Think of it that way, right. And so people are going to get value from the app. But instead of us keeping all of the money, we're putting the money back into the network that are providing the services in the form of a subscription. Whereas those old books, the problem with those books is once they're done, they go home. Yeah, like if they fly back to Minnesota, and they can't use those coupons in Minnesota. So what they got to buy another $30 or $50 coupon book in Minnesota, right, and then it expires, and then you got to you got the shipping cost and the printing costs. And like is that really the best model probably not, you know, the best model is a global Co Op. That's all inside of a simple, easy to use app. And then you share the revenues with the people that build the network and that provide the services. And that's really what our model is about is that when someone gets a membership through the vacation rental company, anybody that signs up through this will give them free credits when they sign up. So they can just give memberships away as a value add. And then when people go home to Minnesota, we've already got 200 businesses in Minnesota all over the twin cities that are signed up that members can now use the coupon or use the app and get deals, so they're more likely to keep it for longer afterwards. And because they got it through that business, they are now following that business on the app. Let's say the business wants to do you know some kind of an offer on the fall or for rebooking or something, they push it out and they've got 1000 followers 1000 People are gonna get a push notification, it's free, we don't charge the businesses. So that's the win win. When we talk about win win. That's what we're talking about is where we feel like if we make this really good for businesses, and accessible for all businesses, then more businesses are going to participate and get better offers and better deals for our members. And that's going to benefit the members. And that's where the Win Win comes in. So

Annie Holcombe  27:08  
cool, I think not having to have multiple layers of work to be done. I think back and Alex and I both experienced this when in years ago where I was like you had to go out and negotiate a deal. And then you had to like get the coupons printed. And then you had to like get it to the get like there was just so many pieces that it just became you almost had to have a full time person to do this. So this is like just a lot more condensed in steps and easier. And are you signed up today? I did. I did. I had to see what it was. It was very easy. So I'm excited about that. But I wanted to ask you, so you said you're going to launch in July? How many markets do you think you're going to be able to launch that time, we're

Matt Renner  27:46  
primarily focused on four markets right now, that's at the corporate level. This is not just for vacation destinations, by the way, like we have affiliates and businesses all over the country that are signing up. But we're focused on the Twin Cities, Minnesota, Nashville, Atlanta, and San Diego as core markets. And part of our thesis is just from a business standpoint, like go to market strategy. Part of our thesis is with getting vacation companies is that we know that they have a high volume of high value guests that are coming through where if they build out the vacation market, and the guest comes through them and gets it, we want to make sure that when they go back home, wherever they go, that there's plenty of deals where they spend 99% of their time, which is their community. And so we're focusing our corporate kind of sales and marketing and everything on those core markets. The reason we're starting with either cities to Nashville is because that's where the company is headquartered. And so we want to make sure that when people come to Nashville, that they go home that there's deals.

Ad  28:49  
And so whether you sign up with a restaurant, a gas station, a vacation rental company, no matter who sells it to you, it's all digital, there's no actual card, it's just download the app, yep,

Matt Renner  28:58  
download the app, you can save it right to your apple wallet, or Google Wallet, pull out the app, anywhere you go, you'll be able to just open it up and just like OpenTable or Zillow, or any location based app, it's going to show you what it's around that it'll be a feed where it'll start to recommend businesses if you're following a business that will notify you if there's a deal in there. If you're a member and you just like the app and let's say you just want to refer you know, your brother, your sister, your mom, your dad, your uncle, whatever. If you refer them and they sign up for the app, we pay you $1.75 A month in perpetuity. So if you refer three members to the app, yours is free forever and then we just want to make it super simple for business signups. So if you're an affiliate, sign up as an affiliate, you'll get a login you log in you grab your link, share it with the business signs up, it's now connected to you we take care of all the setup we take care of all the support all the outreach. All you got to do is sync your bank account up to it and refer businesses in and some point you'll start getting some mailbox money are

Ad  29:57  
you providing to these Companies have sales material, whether it's in person or like in their confirmation, emails, stuff like that on how they're actually going to distribute

Matt Renner  30:05  
it. Yeah, we provide all that. It's a lot. It is a lot. This

Ad  30:09  
is the fun stuff, though. For you talk,

Matt Renner  30:13  
Brian's hairs.

Annie Holcombe  30:16  
You mentioned that kind of the the mission was to help businesses and to keep support businesses. And so one of the things that I know I hear in my market a lot is that the when these big franchises or big brands come in, they squeeze out the local guy that's had this coffee shop for 10 years, or the local mom and pop restaurant, do you see yourself avoiding relationships with big brands? You know, just like in the restaurant space? Like there's so many of those, you could go to like a TGI Fridays, or whatever? Do you see yourself steering away from that and really wanting to work with a local flavors of the communities?

Matt Renner  30:48  
You know, what a lot of people don't really know is most franchises. In fact, a lot are like locally, right? Yeah, there locally on franchisees. So like, we've got 14, Jersey, Mike's up in Minnesota, well, that's a local family, they've been in the community, you know, they had some success in business, they started a sandwich shop. And so you know, they're getting squeezed to like, in California, when they they recently did this $20 minimum wage for fast food workers, you instantly had all of these businesses go out of business, you've got franchises that employ 1000s of people that are locally owned franchises, where the owner might only make 50 60,000 a year out the franchise. And now because of this change in policy, they're barely making any money off of it. So to your question, are we specifically going after large corporate brands? No, we're not what we're specifically trying to do is to help level the playing field for all businesses to be able to compete. I think it's kind of Main Street versus Wall Street in a way, right, like, you know, why should Google make all the profit? Right, but if you're a local franchisee, and you want to put your, you know, your jersey, Mike's on our platform, great, you know, we'll support you as well, I love their sandwiches, right. But I don't think it's about like, trying to squeeze out the big guys, I think that they're not going to care anyways. So you know, we're focused on the independence, we're focused on people that are, you know, entrepreneurs. And if those, you know, large brands eventually want to work with us, we'll you know, we have to consider like, what is good for the consumer of the app, what makes it a good experience, because if the consumer is getting value out of the app, they're going to continue to use the app, and we're putting 66 cents back into the marketplace. Everyone benefits. So, you know, I just think that we need to be thoughtful about that. But no, I'm not. I'm not trying to call Howard Schultz, and, you know, get 1000 Starbucks,

Annie Holcombe  32:42  
I just wanted to ask the question, because I was just curious about, like, you know, that is a comment that comes up in smaller markets. A lot of times people feel that, but you're absolutely right. I mean, I know people that have owned franchises, and they do tend to live locally, they are there, they're struggling just as much as anybody else. There's that perception of the big corporate overlords that can come in and put other people out of business. So it was

Matt Renner  33:02  
just cute. Yeah, sounds good point. It's definitely something to consider for sure.

Ad  33:06  
I feel like the destination marketing organizations, Chambers of Commerce will love this as well. Have you thought about the angle for pitching this to those types of groups? Yeah,

Matt Renner  33:15  
it turns out there's a lot of them. Yeah. We all need our membership or like, Oh, yes, be a member.

But no, you're right. Their job is to advocate, you know, for their businesses and their communities. Right. And so, like, we feel our mission is perfectly aligned. So you know, we're in the Nashville chamber, we're in chambers all over the country now, and and we're going in person boots on the ground, we have market managers in the markets that we're in their boots on the ground, they live in the communities, we don't have, like a central, you know, HQ somewhere, we're totally remote company. So it's really like a grassroots movement more than anything, like we incorporated the company, January 4, we launched our pre registrations at the end of February, and we have, you know, 800 affiliates that are boots on the ground, bringing on businesses all over the country, we have hundreds and hundreds of businesses signing up. And chambers are like perfectly suited to provide this to their members. And it because it's free, and it helps them and so those are some really good relationships that we've developed so

Ad  34:23  
far. And you've also brought quite a few of your old teammates on to the roster now, which is exciting to maybe tell us a little bit about that and how you've built out the team.

Matt Renner  34:34  
I think it's just the world we live in, you know, people do things for a couple years, and they move on, you know, and while I'm not interested in recruiting anyone from my former company, like it's in my best interest, I'm an owner in the company, I support the company. I want everyone that's an A player to stay there and just kill it at that company. But, you know, if people leave there and they reach out to me and they're interested in a role I happen to have at my company and I I've worked with them before, you know, I'm always, you know, open to having those conversations. But you know, I want to be careful to make sure that this is not a vacation rental only business, you know, this business is for all kinds. And so we're trying to take the things I learned, you know, being part of a special company that built a special culture, and we're trying to hire for that culture. And so you know, wherever those people come from, as long as they believe in our mission, as long as they fit the culture, they understand what we're trying to accomplish, then we're gonna take a shot.

Ad  35:30  
That's super exciting. Well, we knew you before you were who you are now. And now we're meeting you again. And we can't wait to see where this continues to go. And hopefully, this is the first interview that you'll do of many on this journey. And I don't know that will be the case, but exciting to see that you're, you're doing well, and they're different to you. First, you

Matt Renner  35:50  
got the exclusive Well, thank

Annie Holcombe  35:51  
you for asking us to talk to you about it, we're really excited. And I'm excited. Like I said, I did sign up because I wanted to see what it was all about, and just kind of get a peek. So again, you're going to launch it in July. And I believe Nashville is where you're going to do your launch party. And so maybe we need to go to Nashville. It's one of my favorite cities,

Matt Renner  36:09  
to come to back some of the conferences, seeing old friends, I made a lot of friends in the industry. And you know, we had a good run. But like I think the vacation rental industry is a super special industry and glad to be able to talk with you all again. And we've had some good times over the years at conferences, and I've been watching you and listen to your podcasts for last couple years and how it's grown and your journeys. And I've always been super impressed with how you built this and kind of doing your own mission to make the industry better. And I've always appreciate that about you guys.

Ad  36:40  
Thank you. Appreciate that all good times over the years for sure. Matt, if anybody wants to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to get in touch and learn more about pass pass?

Matt Renner  36:49  
Well, you could probably LinkedIn, you know, is a good place. I'm on there quite a bit, but you can just go to pass pass.com And Google me Instagram, whatever, you know, Spotify, monthly listeners for one to two on

Alex Husner  37:05  
your website to you've got the deck that kind of like goes into depth about the whole program. So anybody that's interested, I would definitely recommend going over there. There's a lot of great information. Just

Matt Renner  37:15  
you know, if you want to just have a conversation, you got questions, let me know, you know, no pressure, I'm not selling software now. I want to try to sell your software

Alex Husner  37:25  
way less expensive than what you've been selling in the past. I

Matt Renner  37:29  
get I get to give money back to all these people now. So

Alex Husner  37:32  
yeah, I love it. Well, if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie now you can go to Alex and Annie podcast.com And until next time, thanks for tuning in everybody