He Built One of Australia's Biggest STR Brands. Here's His Full Story.
episode
The Accommodation Show - Hospitality Success Series!
1h 0m
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 28 days ago
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What is the founder’s background and how did MadeComfy become Australia’s biggest STR brand?
Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of the accommodation show. This week I have the wonderful Kieran Schweighofer back in the room, back on the podcast. Welcome to the show.
Hi Bart, hi everyone, really, really happy to be here and thanks for inviting me again.
How things have changed, how things have grown, my friend. Uh the last time we had you on might have been around about maybe two or three years ago. Since then, you're now up to around about a thousand four hundred short-term rental properties under management, around about a hundred relationships with real estate agency partners. You've got sixty million dollars worth of gross booking values. Um, not only that, you're recently acquired by Oyo for over fifty million dollars. You've been busy.
Yes. The short answer is yes, very busy and uh very intense time. I think the last time we talked was actually during COVID. Yes. I was alone in the office and how how things have changed since then, yeah. Twenty one I think it was. Yeah.
But not without purpose. Uh one of the things that I've known about you is one is that you're kind, giving, you wanna help other people as you go, but you've got a lot of ambition. And one of the things that stuck with me that I talk to everybody about is you having a plan and that plan was based around by the time I'm X age and you'll have to remind me, I don't know whether it was fifty years old. I don't remember that. I want to achieve X, Y, and Z. That was a really nice way to put it because quite often when we make our plans, it can be a one-year plan, two-year plan, a five-year plan. But if you base it around your age, your age is finite or your time is finite. And therefore you have to accomplish whatever, not by an arbitrary one year or five years, has actually got some sort of uh consequence or significance on that.
How do you feel you're traveling to towards that goal. And was it fifty or what was the that age, uh
uh that you know when I think about this because when I when I had to do I had to do I was Like I'm by nature more of a I'm more of an intuitive person. I think the sales background you go with the shiny, the opportunity and everything. And planning is sometimes putting restrictions into doing certain things. So by by nature, I'm not someone when I grew up that was big in planning. But when I did my MBA in 2010, um one of the courses in managerial skills was before you lead and manage others. Really clear about yourself and what you want to do in life. And without that, it's very difficult to have an impact on other people. And that was the first time I really thought about this. Do I know what I want to do?
I know what I where I want to go to north, roughly, but to put this in uh in words on paper, I wasn't able to do. So back then, 2010, it was a 15-year plan. fifteen year plan, so by uh I was thirty uh then, um, forty five, forty four now, some uh a year, a year off. We had to document what are those kind of stuh milestones. Back then I was a sales engineer in the mining industry. I just moved from Perth to Sydney. I was on large scale projects. Um I didn't want to really I didn't see my future in there, like for the next like 40 years to just continue working in mining. So it was quite challenging to do. And the scary thing is like almost everything happened down to the year. um that was in that plan. And that sort of yeah, gave me the the sort of insight and power to to believe in what you put down.
Now there's a whole thing the universe sort of um has an impact on you, but I think once you know where you go, you know what corners to take, where to turn left and right, where to say yes and no to, and it becomes easier. And then things happen. Um if you keep pushing and you keep that's keep um
That's incredible, Kieran. I I had no idea that it was kind of that accurate. Um, I'd love you to to help everybody and and break that down a little bit. So you're going on that that journey and you're saying that every year your goals and your ambitions were uh very much aligned with what you had envisaged.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the founder’s background and how did MadeComfy become Australia’s biggest STR brand?
0:12–6:20
2
How did the 15‑year “age‑based” plan shape the company’s growth strategy?
6:20–14:39
3
What challenges did MadeComfy face during COVID and how did it survive with only three months of runway?
14:39–22:22
4
What was the strategic pivot that gave MadeComfy a massive competitive advantage?
22:22–28:33
5
How did the partnership with real‑estate agents become the core growth engine?
28:33–35:54
6
How did a single LinkedIn message lead to the $50M+ OYO acquisition?
35:54–44:34
7
What were the biggest hurdles in integrating MadeComfy into OYO and how were they solved?
44:34–52:34
8
What top advice does the founder give to aspiring STR entrepreneurs?
52:34–59:48
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The Accommodation Show - Hospitality Success Series!
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