How To Build A Business That Beats Giants Like Airbnb | Co-Founder of Kindred, Justine Palefsky

Justine Palefsky co-founded Kindred by cold-emailing a spreadsheet full of her old colleagues' spare rooms. Four years later it's a $150M-backed home-swapping network with 400,000 members who've hosted each other for half a million nights, and she still checks herself in the mirror every morning and says: don't mess this up.Justine Palefsky is co-founder and CEO of Kindred, a members-only home-swapping community she launched in 2021 with co-founder Tasneem "Taz" Amina. Kindred has raised roughly $150 million in funding, including backing from Andreessen Horowitz, and has grown to around 400,000 members and 100 employees, with members hosting one another for over half a million nights. Justine grew up in San Francisco, raised by parents embedded in the city's counterculture scene, studied cognitive neuroscience at Brown, worked in management consulting at Bain & Company, then spent years at Opendoor and Homebound before founding Kindred out of her own frustration with the cost of living and traveling between the cities she loved.In this episode:- Why her parents' completely rule-free upbringing left her with a chip on her shoulder to prove she wasn't "too soft"- The chaos of her first day at Opendoor, including a same-day flight to Phoenix and a night on an air mattress with no Wi-Fi- Why Kindred deliberately built a model where members can't pay each other, and how that's different from Airbnb- The five days she and her co-founder spent alone in a cabin pressure-testing their partnership before starting the company- What building a $150M company has actually cost her, from missed birthdays to freezing embryosChapters0:00 "The Last Time I Made An Introduction Like This, It Became TikTok"4:39 Her Parents Only Rule: Talk To Us First7:02 The Chip On Her Shoulder About Being "Too Soft"7:45 Why She Chose The Hardest Degree She Could Find11:19 The City Literally Built On Burned Boats19:46 "Promise Me You'll Never Be A Corporate Dog"27:14 Flown To Phoenix On Day One, Sleeping On An Air Mattress54:59 Keeping Hope Alive When Everyone Says Your Idea Sucks57:31 The Spreadsheet That Sparked A $150M Idea1:01:39 Almost Everybody Told Her It Would Never Work1:03:39 Why Kindred Refuses To Let Members Pay Each Other1:07:50 Five Days In A Cabin To Test If They Could Be Co-Founders1:22:34 The Moment She Knew Kindred Had Gone Viral1:37:12 What Building A $150M Company Actually Cost HerFollow Justine:https://www.linkedin.com/in/justine-palefsky/Follow Olly: https://www.instagram.com/olly.303/https://www.tiktok.com/@ollyfawcett303?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pchttps://www.linkedin.com/in/olly-fawcett-668566177/Get frequent behind the scenes updates from Olly: https://whatittakes.kit.com/51cd36dc35Search terms: Justine Palefsky, Kindred, Kindred CEO, Kindred co-founder, Tasneem Amina, Taz Amina Kindred, home swapping app, home exchange network, Kindred vs Airbnb, Andreessen Horowitz Kindred, a16z portfolio company, Opendoor employee story, Homebound CEO Nikki, Bain and Company consultant, cognitive neuroscience Brown University, San Francisco startup founder, female founder travel tech, home swap community, building a startup with a co-founder, founder burnout story, What It Takes podcast Olly Fawcett