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Kiki

Kiki is a marketplace for mid-term rentals and subletting that matches people leaving their home for a period with trusted renters to cover it, for stays of up to around six months.

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

Started by New Zealand and Australian founders, it uses a network and referral model so hosts let their space to people who have been vouched for rather than to strangers. It raised an A$9.5m seed led by Blackbird in August 2023, and now operates from London.

The secret

Handing a stranger the keys to your actual home is a trust problem, not a listings problem. Building on vouching and referral, so a host lets to a friend of a friend, is what makes the mid-term stay work where short-stay and leasing platforms both leave it unserved.

Why NZVC invested in Kiki

NZVC invested in Kiki from NZVC Fund I. We file the company under Consumer and Marketplace on the portfolio wall.

We backed KiKi because the mid-term rental market falls between short-stay platforms and traditional leasing and has no obvious home, yet the need is large and growing as people work and travel more flexibly. Toby Thomas-Smith and the team brought sharp product instincts and a trust-first design that borrows matching ideas from dating apps to make subletting feel safe. The founders' ambition to build this globally, and their willingness to move to where the market is, matched the resourcefulness we look for.

Kiki in the press

Kara Technologies · All companies · KiwiFibre Innovations