Caleb Wursten is an entrepreneurial prodigy who paid for college at Babson with a bike rental business. He’s now building a platform to provide digital nomads with fractional ownership of properties in desirable locations. International business executive Jon Aboitiz joined as co-host.
Highlights:
Sal Daher Introduces Co-Host Jon Aboitiz and Caleb Wursten, Founder of Worldhaus.co
“The pandemic unlocked this digital nomad lifestyle for millions of people.”
Getting Expensive to Be a Digital Nomad as Airbnb Prices Go Up
Fractional Ownership vs. Timeshares
Owning 1/13 of Properties in Desirable Locations via an LLC
“You're addressing a key factor, it seems, which is the cost of living and how to make it even more affordable...”
“The first property is a $220,000 condo in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.”
Can Choose Between Occupancy or Renting for Income
Comparison to Fractional Ownership of Yachts
Developers Are Responding to Demand from Digital Nomads with Attractive Designs
How Cobu Intersects with Worldhaus
“...we wanted it to be simple and scalable, so we can also expand to Portugal and Colombia, Thailand easily...”
Examples of Exciting New Communities: Culdesac and Las Catalinas
Property Developers Can Be Remarkably Inventive
“They don't need to put up with the $3,000 rent for an isolating experience in a hundred-year-old house.”
“It's not so much that Gen Z doesn't want home ownership, it's that no one can afford home ownership...”
“I was super lucky in that both my parents are small business entrepreneurs...”
Caleb Wursten’s Bike Rental Business Paid for Babson
“Then in that time I got a couple rental properties, which is also a common theme with digital nomads...”
Real Estate Developers Are Already Designing Projects for Digital Nomads
“For, let's say $4,000, you can now own a season, an entire season in Bulgaria.”
Jon Aboitiz’s Parting Thoughts
ANGEL INVEST BOSTON IS SPONSORED BY:
Transcript of, “Worldhaus.co”
Guest: Caleb Wursten
Co-Host: Jon Aboitiz
Sal Daher: I'm really proud to say that the Angel Invest Boston podcast is sponsored by Purdue University Entrepreneurship and Peter Fasse, patent attorney at Fish & Richardson. Purdue is exceptional in its support of its faculty, the faculty for its top five engineering schools in helping them get their technology from the lab out to the market, out to industry, out to the clinic. Peter Fasse is also a great support to entrepreneurs. He is a patent attorney specializing in microfluidics and has been tremendously helpful.
Sal Daher Introduces Co-Host Jon Aboitiz and Caleb Wursten, Founder of Worldhaus.co
Some of the startups which I'm involved, including a startup came out of Purdue, Sovereign Technologies. I'm proud to have these two sponsors for my podcast. Welcome to Angel Invest Boston, conversations of Boston's most interesting angels and founders. Today, we have a special treat for our listeners in a sense that you're going to get less Sal and you're going to get more of my co-host, Jon Aboitiz. Say hi, Jon.
Jon Aboitiz: Hello.
Sal Daher: Jon is a world traveler. He's an executive who's worked for major brands all over Latin America. He has a tremendous background. I brought him on because we're going to interview a very interesting founder. His name is Caleb Wursten. The interesting thing is that five years ago, Caleb was a young student at Babson sitting in on one of the Walnut meetings, Walnut Ventures, my angel group meets at Babson, which is a university entirely dedicated to entrepreneurship. Caleb was there and now he has his own company, which he started, which is very interesting. A company called Worldhaus.co. World and then haus as in the German haus from hausfrau .co. Welcome, Caleb.
Caleb Wursten: Hey. Great to be here, Sal.
Sal Daher: Tremendous. Let's get the ball rolling by just asking you, what is the problem that Worldhaus.co's solving?
“The pandemic unlocked this digital nomad lifestyle for millions of people.”
Caleb Wursten: The pandemic unlocked this digital nomad lifestyle for millions of people. We went from 7 million to 35 million in the past three years, which is set to double by the end of the decade. These digital nomads, myself included, I'm sitting in an Airbnb in Mexico City right now, we're all stuck in hyper-precarious tenancies. It's even worse than being a regular tenant because instead of having a 12-month lease contract, you have a one-week lease contract or one day or one-month contract. These are more expensive than long-term leases. Not only do you have less control, but you're paying more for what you're getting.
Getting Expensive to Be a Digital Nomad as Airbnb Prices Go Up
Airbnb is amazing. It stepped into the short-term leasing category and basically defined it beyond hotels and we're now at the point where people have been living out of Airbnbs for, in some cases, years in the same cities or same pattern of cities that they love and they're just getting sick of it. They're getting sick of that cost. We're stepping in with a homeownership model that lets them step out of tenancy but maintain their flexible lifestyle.
Fractional Ownership vs. Timeshares
Sal Daher: Interesting. I know that you like to differentiate that from timeshares. Please unpack the difference between the fractional ownership that you're offering. By the way, listeners, as you can tell, I have a bit of laryngitis. The good news is you're going to get less of me talking and more of Jon and more of Caleb. Anyway, Caleb, would you unpack that, please?
Caleb Wursten: Yes. I love that question. We actually added it to-- it's now the first thing you see on our website in the bottom-right corner because I get this question at least once a day. The short answer is timeshares are a lifetime lease and they come in a lot of different varieties, kind of like ketchup before Heinz. You didn't really know what you were getting unless you could study the ingredients of the ketchup, and it's the same with timeshares.
They'll have different clauses that make them difficult to sell. They'll have different levels of ownership. Some it's completely not ownership and some you do get some ownership with deeded timeshare. What fractional homeownership is, is we're doing away with that model and making it real ownership. Typically, it's governed as a US LLC. That's exactly what we're doing and that is named on the deed in the case of foreign ownership through a local corporation, in the case of the US, the LLC would be named directly on the deed.
Owning 1/13 of Properties in Desirable Locations via an LLC
Sal Daher: The owner becomes a member of the LLC with... entitled to 1/13, that's 4 weeks in a year of 52 weeks. That is specified. It's a certain four weeks. It is not just any four weeks. It's a specified four weeks, a certain time of the year. It is real ownership, but at the same time, it can be traded possibly in the future. Anyway. Jon, any thoughts on this? Any questions on this?
Jon Aboitiz: I always found the nomadic lifestyle romantic. Anyway, I managed to travel through work or studies in many different places, but I found out that I started following this about maybe even 10 years ago as an idea, as a concept. I was curious, but eventually I figured out that most of them were tech nomads, and I didn't have the tech angle so I just followed it on the side.
Sal Daher: Jon is more like a spearfishing nomad.
Jon Aboitiz: More like a sailor nomad [crosstalk]
Sal Daher: Or sailor or spearfishing and that kind of stuff. He's a sportsman.
“You're addressing a key factor, it seems, which is the cost of living and how to make it even more affordable...”
Jon Aboitiz: Anyway, the selection of where to live was pretty much driven by, from what I hear, the nomads, on the cost of living and maybe the ease of working, getting connections, maybe opening bank accounts, maybe a visa or not. Certainly, the fancy towns desired by nomads had a lot to do with cost. Mexico, Costa Rica, Thailand. You're addressing a key factor, it seems, which is the cost of living and how to make it even more affordable or even a better investment, Caleb.
Caleb Wursten: Yes, I'm glad you mentioned romance because, really, that's the fundamental reason why we started this company, is because travel is a beautiful thing. That's why so many people have opted to make it a bigger part of their life, a central part of their life, with the digital nomad lifestyle. Those are the people that we're servicing. We're letting them secure that lifestyle a bit more than they're able to now. At the end of the day, what we're doing is unlocking this romance for people in their lives.
Sal Daher: Very good. Can you give us a concrete example of properties available right now at worldhaus.co?
“The first property is a $220,000 condo in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.”
Caleb Wursten: Yes. We just released our first sale on Wednesday of last week. We've got 23 partner real estate developments and we're going now one by one, co-marketing them both to our prospects and their prospects, and so we're learning a lot right now. The first property is a $220,000 condo in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Playa del Carmen is about an hour south on bus from Cancún. The Mexican government is building a giant region-wide train to connect the region, which will be going from Cancun to Playa del Carmen, in addition to other places.
We picked this property to start with because it's so affordable. It's a luxury unit. It's got a rooftop pool. It's got a bar. It's got actually a co-working space in the building. It's within a walk to the beach and the downtown, but it's $220,000, which is a foreign price point to most people coming from the US. That's also at a high-level why we chose to start with Latin America, because we can offer these crazy price points and then knock it all the way down to $10,000, $12,000 a share for folks. As a vacation product or home base for nomads, they're comparing, let's say, a $400,000 condo in Florida to a $12,000 condo purchase in Playa del Carmen.
Sal Daher: Very good. Very good. How does Worldhaus make money? What's the business model?
Caleb Wursten: It's twofold. We get upfront commission. We're getting between 4% and 6% commission from the developers. Right now, we're working exclusively with real estate developers and not individual home sellers. Then we're actually paid by the property management company. We never charge buyers or owners. We're only charging sellers and the property manager, so the cost structure will look the same if somebody buys a full property on their own or if they want to purchase a co-ownership through us. Yes, happy to jump into what ownership looks like either now or at any point in the interview.
Sal Daher: Sure. Please go ahead now.
Can Choose Between Occupancy or Renting for Income
Caleb Wursten: Yes. We really designed this for digital nomads. What do digital nomads want? Well, they want flexibility and they want the freedom of their lifestyle. That is what we designed for. All of the time that folks have in their property is the default is actually it will be rented out. If you forget about the property or you're busy this year, default is you just get cash on your property and the other two options are to use the property. If you want a vacation there, you want to use it as a home base as a digital nomad, or you can swap the time you have with other owners in your unit or around the world in the broader ecosystem.
Sal Daher: There's obviously the possibility of owning more than 1/13 of a property, 2/13, 3/13, or eventually in the future, someone who wants to sell her property or his property might just sell a 1/13 and just go off that month and just come back and stay there most of the time. There are a lot of combinations that are possible.
Caleb Wursten: Exactly. That's what we're building towards. It's a world where anyone with a home can flip a switch, exit equity on their property because they know they want to be a snowbird in Boston and they want to go spend time in Puerto Rico or Florida or Mexico. They sell the three months in their property in the winter, which they're seasonal pricing, so it's not going to be an insane amount of cash to sell January in Boston, for example.
You would be able to exit that, not have the responsibility for that time, and then reinvest that cash in a property share down south. There are all kinds of different lifestyles. People in Texas might want to leave during the unbearably hot months in the summer. People in Mexico might want to enjoy the fall season in the north, in Ohio, or in Massachusetts. There's this huge cornucopia of lifestyles that are completely unoptimized now because people are just stuck in their one city all year.
Jon Aboitiz: I think of nomads as more committed than one month a year. I think of them more like six months a year at least abroad. Do you think the average time that people will purchase is half a year, four, five, six months as opposed to one month?
Caleb Wursten: We're getting a lot of interest with the one to two-month range. We don't have an incredible amount of data right now, but I think it's a function of just how accessible one month is. It's $12,000 and just in terms of the population, there are a lot of people with $12,000 that they can spend to basically guarantee a home base or a vacation pad or a real estate investment. I'm very curious to see how this plays out long term and the pie chart of offers that we're getting on properties, but so far it's just the highly accessible one or two months that's getting the most attention.
Jon Aboitiz: The entry point. I see. If I were a real nomad, I wouldn't say it'd be six months, maybe three in Mexico or three more somewhere in Portugal, and then maybe the rest go back home maybe live close to my mother, in the basement, I'm not sure. At least, the time commitment, I think, would be a bit higher.
Comparison to Fractional Ownership of Yachts
I think of time, not timeshare, but you have a similar model with charter boats where you buy a piece or a whole charter boat and you get eight weeks a year of your boat, or you can trade those four of those eight weeks with some other boat in a different location. You have these DYC or the Moorings or things like that that you're buying a piece of the boat and at the same, trading your time with other places in the world. This is a huge growing business model right now.
Caleb Wursten: Yes, I could see offers and buyers shifting in that direction as we build more trust because we're a new company and these are pretty big-ticket purchases for folks. It's not a $20 DocuSign subscription, it's $12,000 at minimum. Some of these folks that are submitting small offers, they could very well end up collecting larger shares or as we get further with them on this property in Playa del Carmen purchase a bigger share when they get really excited about the property, and it starts seeming less risky and more familiar territory to them.
Jon Aboitiz: If you looked at it as a payback, say you spent 12,000 and it's yours, and you spent 3,000 every year in Airbnb or something, in four years, you'd have a payback by using your own location and then it's yours after that.
Caleb Wursten: Yes. The math turns out to be about 75% discount to Airbnb, the owner fees compared to what you're paying an Airbnb if you're using the property. Then of course, the math's different if it's an investment, but yes, it pays for itself pretty quickly.
Sal Daher: Who are you competing with?
Possible Competitors: Pacaso & Airbnb
Caleb Wursten: In the US, the big player is Pacaso. They raised 1.5 billion. A lot of that was debt because they're purchasing the properties and then renovating them and then selling them in shares to folks. Their properties are around $5 million. Their ticket size is like $500,000 and that they're also focusing within two-hour drive of major cities. They're definitely going after a different market. A person putting $12,000 down is a different person than putting $500,000 down.
Sal Daher: Are those for fractional ownerships, or are they owning the house outright?
Caleb Wursten: It's fractional ownership of a property. It's real ownership but in co-ownership.
Sal Daher: Basically, the guys are very expensive. Then the other competition that you have is basically Airbnb, which is getting very pricey.
Caleb Wursten: Yes, it's gone up 28% globally since 2019.
Jon Aboitiz: Well, in a city like Brazil, you have the concept, they call them flats. There are short-term rental apartments, two weeks, two months. Usually, it's corporate people working and passing through São Paulo. The only thing that I'd say is that the concept of the flat is boring. You have such a diverse mix of tenants going through that there's no community to it. I'm wondering to what extent the concept of Worldhaus has more of these co-working, networking ideas around it in addition to just where you park for a couple of weeks or months.
Developers Are Responding to Demand from Digital Nomads for More Suitable Designs
Caleb Wursten: That's another great call out. Digital nomads, I would say their other main pain point is community. These are folks that, in some cases, digital nomads have just completely uprooted their life and they have no home base. They're living full-time out of Mexico, let's say, as an American. There are a couple of things that we're doing to-- I should say building towards for these folks.
First, we're partnering with properties with common space. Our focus property right now, for example, has co-working space in the building. Anyone that's an owner there is going to benefit from that common space from the co-working. The second is a feature we're going to be launching in the next couple of weeks called Communities. Anyone coming on-- I did not tell you guys about this. This was not prompted at all, but it is a coincidence that we're launching this feature.
Sal Daher: Caleb's referring to when he pitched at Walnut last week.
Caleb Wursten: Yes. The feature is going to aggregate everyone looking into a particular city. We're going to have hot links to WhatsApp groups as the MVP of the feature built into the marketplace. Everyone looking at Playa del Carmen gets introduced to each other in the WhatsApp group. We'll have the sales managers for our developers there, will be in the chat answering questions, and then the folks will be able to get introduced and start to know each other before they co-own together. Then, of course, there's the inbuilt aspect of your owning with other people, and you're part of a broader ecosystem that's all eligible to swap time with each other. There's a bit of a filtering and a bit of trust that comes with being part of that group.
How Cobu Intersects with Worldhaus
Sal Daher: Caleb, have you run across a startup called Cobu? Ben Pleat is the founder.
Caleb Wursten: Yes. I met Ben at an event, and I'm familiar with this company.
Sal Daher: Exactly. I'm an investor in Cobu and what they're doing is they're for rental buildings in the US. They're not doing this overseas and so forth. They're a platform to create social engagement in the building like the seed events and so forth. They actually have people who are community builders under staff and then they have software that tries to get tenants in buildings that get to know each other. Actually, in those flats, what they call the flats in São Paulo, might be useful in a situation like that. Whereas the digital nomads are, I think, a very specific case, which may not be amenable to it. Anyway, just curious to hear your thoughts on that.
Caleb Wursten: Yes, I think there's a lot that we could learn from Ben. I should probably reach out to him. It would make sense for us and I could see us eventually hiring a global community manager that's active in all of these WhatsApp groups and is working with local event managers and just staying on top of what's happening and being that spark that people need to say, hey, let's all meet, or in the case of somebody doing it remotely, you should all meet at this bar. Here's a special promotion, two for one that they're doing tonight and maybe Worldhaus is sponsoring the first round of drinks or something like that.
Jon Aboitiz: When you invest in Mexico, for example, if I were to invest as a nomad, how does that affect your tax residency in Mexico the moment you begin to have property there, even though you are not Mexican, so you end up going there? Now you are working. You have property. Depending on each country, it goes in all kinds of directions in terms of visa or tax or how you open a bank account. Do you get involved in that side a lot? Because it seems to be what nomads really worry about all day long. If you look at their support community sites, those are the issues they're talking most of the time.
Caleb Wursten: We issue a K-1 to all owners, and what they're buying and selling is a US asset, so it'll be a more familiar experience for them. They're buying membership and selling membership in a US LLC, which simplifies things a lot, and that unlocks things like instant transactions. 2.9% total price to sell versus 7% or 8%, including all the costs and taxes and such, to do a transaction with changing the name on a deed like in the US or in Mexico.
“...we wanted it to be simple and scalable, so we can also expand to Portugal and Colombia, Thailand easily...”
Yes, we wanted it to be simple and scalable, so we can also expand to Portugal and Colombia, Thailand easily without having to completely reinvent the wheel. We just plug US LLC acquisitions into the local real estate law, which, luckily for us, a lot of Americans buy property abroad with LLCs. All of the real estate lawyers that we've talked to in Mexico and Costa Rica, they've understood how to make this work, and I would expect something, a similar reaction to real estate lawyers in other countries.
Jon Aboitiz: Nomads are still diverse, right? You might find a guy from Latvia. It seems that the commonality is not a nationality, it's sort of a skill. The K-1 concept is very normal and relevant to, I guess, an American or American resident. How about these other people who have no nationality? On top of that, they may or may not have to declare taxes in their own country. They work abroad. How many of your clients do you think will be actually American K-1?
Sal Daher: Recipients, Schedule K-1 recipients.
Caleb Wursten: So far, probably just as a function of who we know and who we're marketing to, it's then all of the serious prospects have been US. I am told that there aren't restrictions for most internationals to buy membership in US LLCs. I would assume we can make that work for folks from other countries. Yes, I would want to make sure we understand exactly what it would look like for somebody buying from with Brazil, Brazilian nationality or et cetera.
I have a question for you guys, though. Have you gotten wind of any of these innovative communities popping up around the world like Culdesac in Arizona or Las Catalinas in Costa Rica that are redefining what a city looks like and building new town or city-like structures in new places and trying to attract nomads and other folks?
Jon Aboitiz: I have a close relationship with a real estate developer in Argentina, and of course, the mixed-use thing has gone way beyond. They're including these entrepreneurship centers, and whatever school they put into has to have like a Babson-equivalent concept. They're putting the students in the place, and then they want to give them these networking communities, and they think that that's what it's going to develop in the future.
That's where they're invested. They're not putting more supermarkets or malls or hotels. They're trying to give also the sons of the people who were there, give them a reason to stay and not leave forever and leave these communities on their own. This is one called Nordelta, in particular, in Buenos Aires, where I know the developers are looking at this entrepreneurship education, hub workspace as part of their own development and relevance into the—
Examples of Exciting New Communities: Culdesac and Las Catalinas
Caleb Wursten: Yes, I don't think people always think first of real estate developers as the folks that are innovating and pushing how we live forward, but I love talking to these developers. They're a bunch doing super cool projects that are rethinking how people live and building structures and communities that fit this lifestyle. In the example Culdesac and Las Catalinas, we're not working with either of them right now. Just as an interested observer, and I've talked to the folks there, but they noticed that people are happier in walkable neighborhoods.
Property Developers Can Be Remarkably Inventive
They built from the ground up these new cities that are completely designed for pedestrians. That Las Catalinas in Costa Rica, the founder who's an American successful entrepreneur, he bought tons of land and he wanted to make it not only walkable neighborhood, but to make it an Italian city. You have these Italian marble fountains and statues. It feels like you're walking around an Italian city. They're communities in Costa Rica that are completely dedicated to spiritual well-being. There aren't many apartments in Boston where they're marketing themselves as a spiritual wellness.
Sal Daher: Well, the apartments in Boston are for spiritual isolation over there. They're kind of emotional isolation. That's why Ben created the Cobu. His mother was a very social real estate broker in the suburbs. She bought this dream condo in Manhattan and moved to Manhattan to this amazing building. Very nice, very fancy and so forth. Pretty soon she was isolated as she was like, "Ben, I'm depressed. I don't know anybody in this building because I'm retired, everybody's working all the time. I don't see anyone. It's really isolating." He saw that, my gosh, the most sociable and gregarious kind of person you can imagine feels isolated. There's really something wrong with these buildings.
Caleb Wursten: Yes. I agree 100%. It's like the 1800s where you had only a few different items that you could buy in the Sears catalog and everyone just had to make those items work because land is limited and it's hard to build in a lot of these cities. Historically, people have been tied to their jobs and the urban centers. That's just not the case anymore, there's been a gigantic unlock of product in Mexico.
“They don't need to put up with the $3,000 rent for an isolating experience in a hundred-year-old house.”
Quintana Roo, it's like Shenzhen, China, the number of real estate developments happening there. If somebody's no longer tied to their 9:00 to 5:00, five days a week in the Boston office, they don't have to put up with that product anymore. They don't need to put up with the $3,000 rent for an isolating experience in a hundred-year-old house. Maybe a triple decker in Somerville, which Somerville is great, but there are a lot better places to rent properties for a lot less than the triple decker in Somerville.
Sal Daher: Absolutely. Very interesting. Is there anything else that you would like to mention about the business model and how far you've gotten and so forth? What I'd like to do is I'd like to do a brief promo for the podcast and then go into your entrepreneurial journey and into the founding story of Worldhaus.co
Caleb Wursten: Yes, I'll quickly mention our traction and where we're heading. We've got 23 partner real estate developments and with zero marketing, over 350 people signed up to our wait list. We, last week, like I mentioned, unlocked that first sale in Playa del Carmen. We've got five inquiries to tour scheduled, and now we're working through our sales funnel, looking at drop-off points, upgraded our analytics to really study what people are feeling and what are the hesitation points as we get them from website visit to lead.
Where we're going over the next six months is we just applied to a handful of top accelerators, which folks would recognize their names on. We want to go through one of those. We're about halfway through our angel round right now. As we lock down the sales funnel, we'll be putting that cash to use in marketing and just expanding from there. Every additional house or unit we bring into the ecosystem, the more valuable the next property is to buyers, because they now have this larger network of liquidity, both to buy and sell, but also to swap time with, which each new unit is further unlocking this vision of being able to travel the world at a 75% discount to Airbnb while growing appreciation and while getting out of housing insecurity.
Sal Daher: Tremendous. Jon, any thoughts, any question at this point?
Jon Aboitiz: Well, I'm just thinking about conversion. In other words, Miami, which is where I live now, I know that everything that's coming up around me are rental apartments. The justification is that the younger generation, X, Y, Z, whatever you want to call, they're not interested as much in property to begin with. Secondly, it's so expensive, rental apartments, this thing going on in Miami right now. I wonder if many of these properties might eventually say, actually, I need a philosophy around my-- I need a target market. Maybe I'll do better if I use it under this flag of nomad or whatever. There I have a more focus. You might even find places where in the future, once you have a brand, that might actually convert back into your concept.
“It's not so much that Gen Z doesn't want home ownership, it's that no one can afford home ownership...”
Caleb Wursten: Yes, I'm part of Gen Z. I'm right on the cusp at 26. It's not so much that Gen Z doesn't want home ownership, it's that no one can afford home ownership anymore because the prices are so high. It's just like, if you can't have something, stop thinking about it. That's the case that so many people in Gen Z and even millennials are in, that it might seem like your Gen Z friend or cousin or whatever might not be interested, but they are. They just can't get it.
We're coming in, we're letting them leapfrog these problems and actually get a home base at a price that they can afford in a lifestyle that actually suits them better than a property in Somerville or Cambridge. Yes, it's a huge problem, and the US has acute housing crisis, and we view ourselves as part of the solution.
Sal Daher: That is a really, really intriguing point, Caleb. What you're saying is it's almost like an entry level, your entry into a home ownership while you're a digital nomad. Because if people start having children, you can be a digital nomad and have children, but a lot of people might go into a later stage in life from that. This might be like their first bite at ownership. This is really interesting. Yes, fascinating. It's a good thing that you put that in.
If you gentlemen are okay with that, I will just put in a brief plug for the podcast, and then let's get into discovering entrepreneurship and the founding story.
Listeners, Follow Us on Your App + Rate and Review Us, Please...
If listeners are interested in what you're hearing, these two gentlemen talking about this really exciting idea and this exciting company that a young founder is putting together, you can help us get found by doing a few things. First, follow the Angel Invest Boston podcast in whatever app you use so that interviews like these show up every week and you have the option of listening.
Also, you can really highlight the value of a particular episode because by the week, if you leave a rating and a written review the week that it launches, it privileges it in the algorithm of the app. What happens is it gets shown to lots and lots of people because one or two reviews, all of a sudden, the app says, oh, people care enough to review this particular interview.
Caleb, on the launch date, do a review on Apple Podcasts. You don't have to write much. You can even be critical in the written review, but make sure it's a five-star rating. My mom always told me to ask for a five-star rating, Jon. You never met my mom. [laughs] She was very much an advocate for me. Anyway, consider doing that because it'll help people find this podcast which is really about helping founders and angels build better technology startups. Anyway, Caleb, how did you decide to become an entrepreneur? Is there entrepreneurship in your family? How did it come about?
“I was super lucky in that both my parents are small business entrepreneurs...”
Caleb Wursten: I was super lucky in that both my parents are small business entrepreneurs, so my mom runs a small gardening business on Nantucket and my dad has a five-person construction crew also on Nantucket. I had always been exposed to that and I just quickly fell in love with it. Since I was a kid, I was selling things and trying to make more money than my friends and just like accumulating was the initial attraction, I guess. Then in high school I partnered with hotels on Nantucket to build them bicycle rental operations so that they could rent bikes through my company to their guests. That went really well and paid for Babson.
Caleb Wursten’s Bike Rental Business Paid for Babson
Sal Daher: [chuckles] That must have been very successful. Babson ain't cheap.
Caleb Wursten: Yes, the Babson scholarship helped but yes, it was a great time. Then went through Babson, went through their tech accelerator with a company called Daybreak. We were trying to end burnout, partnered with UMass Medical and the University of Groningen to commercialize their research on mindfulness and other what we viewed as burnout-related subjects and then got 1,000 users, got to work with PwC and a handful of other companies to pilot that tech, then weren't able to convert those leads into sales.
Then I joined Superpedestrian which is an electric scooter sharing startup now company. They were very successful over the last several years in Cambridge, where I was a product operations manager, and that unlocked the digital nomad lifestyle. I joined July 2021, fully remote company at that point. I was responsible for the product relationship with the operations team, so I was always in market in Lisbon, and Vienna, and all over the US just living out of these Airbnbs.
“Then in that time I got a couple rental properties, which is also a common theme with digital nomads...”
Then in that time I got a couple rental properties, which is also a common theme with digital nomads to buy rental properties because it lets them do whatever they want. In this case I could just go and try this crazy idea and live off of rent checks in low-cost markets like Mexico and in Costa Rica. That's what I did over the last year, and happy to see the progress that we've made in that time.
Sal Daher: This is really interesting that you were initiated into entrepreneurship by both your parents in a place that is very conducive to the kind of thing that you're doing. Nantucket being a vacation island, which is becoming more and more residential, people are spending more and more time year-round, I suspect. It's gone tremendously upscale. It's become very expensive. It used to be like a cheap Martha's Vineyard.
Caleb Wursten: [laughs]
Sal Daher: It ain't cheap no more. [laughs]
Caleb Wursten: No. [laughs]
Sal Daher: They have these interesting, cute upside-down houses. Houses where they-- like the living room are on top because it's a very flat island. The living room and the dining room are on top, and then the bedrooms are on the bottom, so you can have a view and still see the ocean from your living room instead of seeing the ocean from your bedroom. Caleb, let's think in terms of five years from now, where do you expect Worldhaus.co to be?
Caleb Wursten: Yes, so in five years, we'll have some hundreds of co-ownership in Mexico, Costa Rica, and other digital nomad markets, and a vibrant ecosystem of folks swapping time with each other.
Sal Daher: When you say co-ownerships, you mean hundreds of properties where you have co-ownership?
Caleb Wursten: Right.
Sal Daher: Okay. That would probably be maybe thousands of fractional owners?
Caleb Wursten: Right.
Sal Daher: Please continue.
Caleb Wursten: Yes. There are just so many folks that we talk to that, fundamentally, this works for and they're intrigued. They've just never heard of fractional real estate, they might only be one year into the digital nomad journey and it takes usually over a year for people to start thinking about, "Okay, these are my favorite cities, this is where I want to buy property." As both, we mature as a company, as digital nomads mature, and we get those case studies that show people exactly what the life cycle of ownership looks like. We expect to unlock rapid sales there just because fundamentally, it's such a better option for folks.
Sal Daher: Definitely, definitely. I could tell you that I've seen a company that's been backed by a VC, they're backed by Two Lanterns and what they're doing is they're putting commercial real estate properties, a fraction ownership of commercial real estate properties, making them tradeable. Now, entirely different market, it's a totally different thing. Commercial properties, it's not for personal use, it's just for investment, but I think there is really ample space for creative thinking and sound product building in the space.
Real Estate Developers Are Already Designing Projects for Digital Nomads
Caleb Wursten: Oh yes, totally. The folks that we've seen, see what's coming down the pike with the most clarity are the real estate developers themselves. They've already started designing for this lifestyle. Like I mentioned, the project that we're working with in Playa del Carmen, they have co-working space in the building. How many projects in Boston, how many apartment buildings in Boston have a co-working space in the building for the owners?
There are a lot of these changes and developers are the ones studying and building for it. Over 90% of the conversations we've started with developers have ended up with us working with them, because they want to attract the digital nomads and the part-time vacationers and the real estate investors, and they see fractional as a way to unlock all of these small budgets that right now they're just deleting from their CRM.
Sal Daher: Really well said. Jon, Caleb, I invite you as we think about wrapping up the interview to raise points or ask questions that we haven't touched on that you think might be important for this audience of founders, angel investors, and people who are interested in startups. Jon, is there anything that comes to mind that you would like to bring up here?
Jon Aboitiz: In that five-year vision, which are the places on earth that you aspire to and that might be part of the dreams of so many people besides Costa Rica?
Caleb Wursten: Yes, these are the most livable places in the world. It's Chiang Mai, it's Bali, it's Lisbon, it's Vienna, it's several cities in Southern Spain and Southern Italy. It's all the places that people would live if they had no other constraints which are being taken away. I'll even say for families thinking about the digital nomad lifestyle, it's becoming a lot easier. There are now startups that are-- and companies making early childhood education possible in these remote communities so folks can go with their family.
It's not just for young people or post-family folks. It's increasingly accessible to everyone. The second response to Jon's question is there are a lot of these very interesting communities that we were talking about earlier that are just perfect for a co-ownership model. We talked about a couple, but there's another in Bulgaria, and the founder of this project, he's a thought leader in the digital nomad space, and he's putting together a giant group of people to buy a abandoned Soviet hotel in the middle of Bulgaria, next to ski mountains.
Sal Daher: Lots of reinforced concrete.
“For, let's say $4,000, you can now own a season, an entire season in Bulgaria.”
Caleb Wursten: [laughs] Yes, and get this, the units are going for €15,000. For, let's say $4,000, you can now own a season, an entire season in Bulgaria. We're at the very early days of this super interesting trend.
Sal Daher: Excellent. Caleb, is there anything that you'd like to add here as we wrap up this interview?
Caleb Wursten: You did a great question of asking the good questions. Yes, I would just add that I'm happy to talk to anyone. You can find me on LinkedIn. My email is caleb@worldhaus.co. Really glad to be here. I'll be back in Boston in May, so I can grab coffee with folks as well.
Sal Daher: Tremendous. Jon, any parting thoughts?
Jon Aboitiz’s Parting Thoughts
Jon Aboitiz: We've hit on a lot of things. The romance, the locations. Also, that early entry into real estate, the flexibility. From the developer's point of view, I think this is something that, certainly, communities could use. I'll try to put you in contact with one at least.
Caleb Wursten: Thank you.
Sal Daher: Very good. Well, Caleb Wursten, I thank you for making time to be on the Angel Invest Boston podcast. Jon Aboitiz, thanks for co-hosting. Let's get together next time you're in Boston for some [unintelligible 00:42:39] Jon, by the way, we're related, and we enjoy sitting down for great meals together. Gentlemen, it's been a really interesting conversation. Thank you both.
Caleb Wursten: Thank you. Bye-bye.
Sal Daher: This is Angel Invest Boston. I'm Sal Daher.
Sal Daher: I'm glad you were able to join us. Our engineer is Raul Rosa. Our theme was composed by John McKusick. Our graphic design is by Katharine Woodman-Maynard. Our host is coached by Grace Daher.