Number
Swimply grew ~4,000% in a year
Sam reports Swimply, the pool-rental marketplace, grew roughly 4,000% (about 40x) over the year, with traffic hockey-sticking from ~50K to ~400K monthly visitors and an $11-12M Series A on the way.
$4K
Swimply year-over-year growth · percent
“I'm not a believer yet, but the numbers definitely show that I'm wrong. So they've grown 2,000% since summertime and roughly 4,000%. What's— so if you grow 4,000%, they've grown 4,000%. In a year. What's that mean? 40x?”
Idea
Swimply: Airbnb for backyard swimming pools
Swimply lets pool owners rent out their backyard pool by the hour (e.g. $50/hr); a group without a pool can book it for an afternoon. Sam thought it was one of the dumbest ideas he'd heard, but the traction proved him wrong.
“So the idea is like, I have a pool in my backyard. I can set like a $50 an hour rate. And somebody who doesn't have a swimming pool in their backyard, because that's a big expense, can say, cool, we'll rent your private pool, we'll rent your pool, we're gonna come swim for 2 hours, $100. There's 4 of us, it's worth it. Like, we're gonna have fun doing that, and you like kind of clean up your backyard later.”