An update on Jurny, the fastest growing AI startup in STR

The Offer Sheet readers —

This Sunday, we are honored to have back Jurny founder and CEO Luca Zambello for another conversation and a deeper dive into their business and the incredible growth they continue to see since we last spoke, only two months ago.

Their public raise on Wefunder has been extremely successful in that time, in no small part due to the investments from this very audience - you all! In that time, their valuation has increased from $16MM to $20MM.

In today’s conversation, we dive deeper into topics like: how they plan to spend the dollars raised on growth, their revenue model, when they expect to achieve profitability, how they are thinking about an exit down the road, what about their AI is “secret sauce”, and how there’s still time to invest (though this round is closing soon!). Let’s go!

Here’s a peak into how their platform works.

It’s great to be sitting down again with Luca from Jurny, the AI tech platform that’s changing the STR space in a major way. How has the public fundraise on Wefunder gone so far? How much have you raised to date?

It’s great to be here; thanks for having me back! It’s hard to believe it's just been a couple of months - so much has happened in that time!

The raise on Wefunder has been incredibly successful, thanks in part to support from your readers! Since we last spoke, our valuation has increased from $16 million to $20 million, with $2.3 million already raised in our current round. Our last seed round plus our crowdfunding brings our total to over $8 million. The round is closing soon, so we anticipate a lot of activity and excitement in the days ahead.

Can The Offer Sheet subscribers still invest today?

Absolutely! As I just mentioned, we are planning to close this round very soon, but anyone interested in investing can do so, with as little as $250. I recommend visiting our Wefunder page (www.Wefunder.com/Jurny) to read more about our technology and to get additional insight into how we’re building artificial intelligence to fix the inefficiencies in STR and hospitality operations.

How do you plan to use the public investment dollars raised on Wefunder?

We believe AI will be the most significant technological disruption humanity has ever seen, and we expect it to disrupt most industries. The Jurny team aspires to revolutionize the hospitality industry by providing the ultimate tool that will boost efficiency and automation for hotels and hosts. In addition, we aim to elevate guest experiences to unprecedented levels at a fraction of the cost of traditional hospitality. Given the rapid evolution of technology and AI, time is of the essence. In order to accelerate our growth and develop our products further, we are raising funds. As our technology evolves and improves, operational costs will continue to fall, enabling us to increase profit margins with a superior product.

What will be the next big unlock for Jurny?

Honestly, it's AI. I know I might sound repetitive, but the majority of people are still vastly underestimating where we currently stand with this technology. Operating Large Language Models (LLMs) for generic tasks like ChatGPT or Bard is much more complicated than training those same models for specialized tasks or objectives. That's what we're doing with Jurny. We call it ASI (Artificial Specialized Intelligence). This allows us to fully leverage the power of LLMs to create a fleet of digital agents for various tasks. In the near future, Jurny's AIs won't be limited to just guest support. They'll function like a comprehensive team, handling tasks ranging from accounting and reporting to concierge services and upselling. We've mentioned some of this in our latest release about our AI, Nia.

If STR hosts who subscribe to The Offer Sheet wanted to try out Jurny’s unified AI enabled dashboard, what’s the best way to start? Can someone at Jurny offer a walk through?

Thanks for asking this! Readers interested in trying Jurny can book a demo or sign up directly on our website (https://www.jurny.com/).

And for readers that don’t know already, we offer the industry’s only free PMS, which offers a direct connection with AIrbnb. This product is easy to use and designed to be a single-click self-onboarding experience. However, all our customers can access Nia 24/7, which offers excellent tech support. Paid customers also have access to full-time human customer support, if desired.

What is Jurny’s revenue model, and what percentage of users do you convert from free to paid? What are the benefits of paid usage, and what are the tiers?

In May, we introduced a new freemium subscription model designed to scale with the needs of our customers. Since launch, we’ve more than tripled the number of hosts on our platform and usage continues to skyrocket. While it is still pretty early, we're conservatively projecting a 30% conversion rate to paid customers. But the truth is, we’re already seeing 70% conversions for customers that manage ten or more units.

Our system offers great ROI at every level; customers who need advanced features like channel management, dynamic pricing, access control and guest verification will need to upgrade to a paid tier. We have transparent pricing at Jurny.com, so you can find the best plan to fit your needs.

Where do you see Jurny in five years in terms of an exit?

While I can't predict the future, our ultimate goal is to go public. However, potential buyers could also be strategic, such as large online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia, Booking.com, or Airbnb, who may see us as a valuable acquisition due to our technology that enhances property management efficiency, making short-term rentals accessible to a broader audience. OTAs are also some of the most liquid companies in the industry, improving their ability to make substantial acquisitions. Based on recent conversations, another possibility could be acquisitions by large hotel or real estate groups. While we're not interested in entertaining such discussions right now, with the rise of AI, the urgency for some of these large groups to catch up will increase. Consequently, what they'll be willing to pay to gain a competitive advantage through acquisition will likely rise as well. While I cannot predict the future, our ultimate goal is to go public. However, potential buyers could also be strategic, such as large online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia, Booking.com, or Airbnb, who may see us as a valuable acquisition due to our technology that enhances property management efficiency, making short-term rentals accessible to a broader audience. OTAs are also some of the most liquid companies in the industry, improving their ability to make substantial acquisitions.

Based on recent conversations, another possibility could be acquisitions by large hotel or real estate groups. While we are not interested in entertaining such discussions right now, with the rise of AI, the urgency for some of these large groups to catch up will increase. Consequently, what they will be willing to pay to gain a competitive advantage through acquisition will likely rise as well.

When do you think you will achieve profitability?

We only need an additional $1.6m in new ARR to achieve profitability. Given our current growth, we project that we'll be profitable by mid-2024.

If you had to estimate the Jurny ROI in terms of dollars or time saved for the average host with one property or ten properties, what do you think it would be?

Jurny's software is designed to benefit both ends of the spectrum - from hosts managing a few units to those with extensive portfolios. We aim to provide an easy-to-use yet comprehensive solution, enabling even small-scale hosts to operate like seasoned professionals. The advantage of a vertically integrated product, if done correctly, is its scalability.

While it's hard to put an exact dollar amount because it depends on how much a host or a hotel is spending today on both operations and software, I can say that we've had customers reduce costs by upwards of 50% when properly leveraging our platform. Users utilizing our AI, Nia, have reported an 80% increase in guest communication efficiency and response time.

How is Jurny better than platforms like Guesty or Hostaway?

Great question. Our number one differentiator is unquestionably our advanced artificial intelligence, Nia. Specifically designed to address our industry's many complex pain points, Nia is yielding exceptional results. Our customers are raving about the ease of use, and many are already reporting improvements of up to 80% in guest communication efficiency.

Beyond Nia, Jurny stands out from the likes of Guesty and Hostaway due to our modern, digital-first, and streamlined approach to hospitality management. This approach was born out of our own experience with the limitations of existing property management systems. Previously, I personally managed over 300 units across five different cities, and the limitations of those systems were a major issue. That's why we decided to build Jurny.

Guesty and Hostaway were among the pioneers in the Airbnb management software space. However, they operate with an outdated approach of attempting to be a marketplace for multiple vendors across numerous verticals (e.g., pricing, guest verification, IoT management, etc.). This results in a fragmented, complex system with poor integrations.

Conversely, Jurny opts for a more agile and efficient model, focusing on one vendor per vertical and developing some of our own in-house solutions, such as access control and IoT control. This makes Jurny more scalable, user-friendly, and the industry's first vertically integrated system. But most importantly, it eliminates the fragmentation problem of our industry, unifying everything under a single, easy-to-use, dashboard and eliminating syncing problems and long setup times that come with other PMSs.

Do you primarily use GPT-4 and if so, what is the secret sauce that differentiates you?

Yes, we primarily utilize GPT-4 and our "secret sauce" lies in our unique approach. We believe the next wave of successful companies will be those that can expertly adopt and train LLMs such as OpenAI to address specific industry problems within their existing infrastructure. While tech giants will commoditize LLMs, companies focusing on particular verticals and building proprietary infrastructures will prosper. This is our strategy at Jurny. We have solved the pervasive issue of technology fragmentation in the hospitality industry by consolidating multiple complex technologies under a unified platform. We have trained our AI to use our platform to assist hospitality companies with their day-to-day operations, which include providing guests with accurate information, managing reservations, verifying guests, escalating tasks to supervisors, and managing other daily tasks such as review management and tech support. These are tasks that an LLM would only be able to handle with proper training and the right infrastructure.