Back in 2020, Tom DeRose was in college in New York City when he got into a jam.

He says he couldn't afford his rent anymore, but he also couldn't get out of his lease.

And then he heard of a possible solution.

One of my friends told me about Airbnb, which at the time I was extremely skeptical,

I figured, OK, I'll put it up on Airbnb and then maybe someone wants it for the weekend.

And my expectation was I was not going to be making the baseline rent, the kind of normal

rent that I was paying.

I would still be losing money, but I thought, well, OK, this can supplement it.

So Tom moved in with friends, and he put his place up on Airbnb, a ground level street

facing studio apartment in Midtown Manhattan.

And this was like full of my own ugly furniture, half I found on the street, not designed

to be providing a nice experience for people just as a way to say, here's my apartment,

if you want to stay there for the weekend, here's the price.

And I was completely booked up.

It was extremely surprising how well it worked out.

So well that he decided to do more and more.

And soon Tom built a bona fide business where he rented out apartments and listed them

on Airbnb.

And what did that look like for your wallet?

It was really good for me.

I mean, I went from basically being a broke college student, like a lot of college students

to someone who had a lot of excess income all of a sudden.

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