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Kiki

Kiki is an invite-only club for subletting a home, and it runs in London.

Category
Consumer and Marketplace
Fund
NZVC I
Website
kiki.club
Kiki members hold up inflatable letters spelling the company name at a member event at sunset.
Kiki members hold up inflatable letters spelling the company name at a member event at sunset.

What Kiki does

A member lists their place while they are away, Kiki matches them with a guest another member has vouched for, and Kiki holds the deposit and the rent and covers the host itself if anything goes wrong. Getting in takes an invite code from someone already in the club, or an application good enough to earn an exception. Toby Thomas-Smith started the company in New Zealand in 2021, matching student rooms over the summer holidays after an earlier version of the idea had failed, and moved it to Sydney, then New York, then London.

The secret

Handing a stranger the keys to the home you actually live in is a trust problem. Kiki answers it with vouching, so a host lets to a friend of a friend and Kiki stands behind the deposit, which is what makes the mid-term stay work where short-stay platforms and traditional leasing both leave it unserved.

Why NZVC invested in Kiki

We backed Kiki because the mid-term rental market falls between short-stay platforms and traditional leasing, and the need keeps growing as people work and travel more flexibly. Toby Thomas-Smith and the team brought sharp product instincts and a trust-first design, and they were willing to move the company to wherever the market actually was. New York closed that door, because the city's short-term rental law made stays under thirty days unworkable and Kiki shut the operation down. Thomas-Smith moved to London alone and rebuilt the club from nothing.

Kiki in the press

Kara Technologies · All companies · KiwiFibre Innovations