ashley qin

ReRent — Software Development and Product Management

Timeline
12 weeks
June 2020 - Sept. 2020
Tools
Python, Django, PostgreSQL, Heroku, Figma, FlowMapp
Key Skills
Web Development, Agile Software Development, Prototyping, User Research


$4,320. That’s how much money the average college student wastes every year paying for rent when they’re away on break. Though most students only need housing for around 9 months out of the year, high demand and limited options allow landlords to keep leases at 12-months long in many college towns. Operational difficulties — such as needing to clean before and after a guest stays in your home — have made home-sharing out of reach for most college students. ReRent was created to take care of all these operational hassles and help students save money on housing.


ReRent has successfully helped students book out 1000+ total nights and accommodate 400+ guests since 2018. However, all prior services were handled manually — from helping students list their places on Airbnb to scheduling cleaners. This created a problem where ReRent had the user demand to expand to other colleges, but lacked the infrastructure to meet this demand. Thus, my role at ReRent focused on this key question:



[ What infrastructure is needed to make ReRent scalable so we can help students across more colleges save money? ]

Solution

My team and I built a web application that receives data from the ReRenter — a.k.a. the student looking to rent out their home — and distributes it to appropriate ReRent staff for them to handle. Automating this information distribution would allow ReRent to reach a wider customer base by allowing staff to spend less time going back and forth with ReRenters, and more time doing the actual work of creating listings on Airbnb.

Specifically, I implemented an email manager script that parses, stores, and distributes information that comes to ReRent's email from Airbnb. Examples of important emails that are handled by the script include bookings, cancellations, and reservation modifications. The script not only allows for information coming into a single inbox to be distributed automatically and securely to relevant staff, but also provides staff with a direct Airbnb link to the issue or request.

In essence, the script automated what used to be a group of small, tedious tasks (cumulatively 10 hr/month of work) in a single click.

Impact and Results

ReRent was a small but mighty team of 8 at the time of my internship. As a product management intern at such a small startup, I had the unique opportunity to not only make product decisions, but actively implement them. The size of the team allowed for frequent feedback and really let me feel the impact of my work.

Here's a summary of the work I did:

Software Development

  • Built email manager to parse, store, and distribute data from emails generated by Airbnb (bookings, cancellations, reservation modifications, etc.)

  • Implemented ReRenter (student host) and ReRent staff home dashboards

  • Created "Bookings" dashboard that displays to the ReRenter if someone has booked their place, or if a booking made on their place has been modified

Product Management

  • Led weekly agile development sprints

  • Designed user and onboarding flows, wireframes, and mockups in Figma and FlowMapp

  • Conducted 4 user interviews

Reflections

A huge thank you to my mentors Fazail (PM) and Alikiah (CEO) for giving me this amazing opportunity and challenging me with such a large-scope project. I also want to thank my development team for creating such a great work environment and for constantly giving me helpful feedback that has allowed me to grow immensely as developer.