Founded 2014 | ||
Roost is an online marketplace that matches renters who have cars to park or stuff to store, to neighbors who have unused space in their homes, garages, and driveways. It develops, markets, and runs the Roost platform and mobile app. Based out of San Francisco, the startup currently operates in over 22 cities, including San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
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For other uses, see Roost.
Early history
Roost was founded by Jonathan Gillon and his brother in 2013, The company received $130,000 in seed funding that same year. In 2015, Roost raised over $1 million in additional funding. It was incorporatied in January 2014, The name "Roost" is refers to the definition of the word itself, "a perch upon which birds or fowls rest" (Dictionary.com). Similarly, Roost believes it offers a safe haven for neighbors to store their things with a reliable host.
In August 2015, the company did an alpha launch in San Francisco. The launch proved successful and resulted in recognition by Entrepreneur Magazine, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Bloomberg, and other publishers.
In September 2015, Roost established its first partnerships with Lugg and Enterprise in San Francisco. In October, Zipcar, Getaround, and Carma became partners of Roost in San Francisco as well.
After penetrating the self-storage and parking marketplaces in San Francisco for about a year, Roost launched in Washington, D.C. in June 2016. Enterprise and Zipcar in D.C. became partners. Within a few weeks of the D.C. launch, Maven, a General Motors car sharing service, became a partner in both D.C. and San Francisco. Roost moved into its new headquarters in the Soma district of San Francisco that same month.
In late June 2016, Roost launched a referral program for Lyft drivers in San Francisco and held a launch party to establish the partnership.
Roost application software and services
Roost's pricing infrastructure is similar to that of Airbnb: it exclusively handles all billing and payouts to ultimately take a 15% fee of the renter's pay. The host earns their desired monthly amount and the renter is charged to cover Roost's fee.