When Jacob Halbert and Ezra Gershanok set out to solve the subletting problem in New York City, they had a clear vision: Create the safest way to sublet. Less than two years later, their Bubble-powered marketplace Ohana has facilitated $16.2 million in host earnings, achieved 9 times year-over-year revenue growth, and expanded to nine cities globally — all while reaching profitability within just 14 months of processing payments.
From finding your keys to a subletting marketplace
Jacob and Ezra’s journey with Bubble began with their first business, Keyper — a phone wallet for college students to hold ID cards and dorm keys. After getting their product into 800 college bookstores, they needed an order management system to handle the complexity of multiple products with different attributes.
“We were just using a spreadsheet, and Ezra was using the craziest Excel formulas I’d ever seen to try to get the right price for the right quantity,” Jacob says. That’s when they discovered Bubble and built that order management system, which their fulfillment center, distribution partners, and manufacturer all still use today.
“Discovering Bubble was game-changing for Keyper, and it continues to be scalable because of that system,” Jacob says.
Solving the subletting problem
The idea for Ohana emerged from personal experience. “Right now, many people moving to New York City find themselves in a situation where staying in an Airbnb or a hotel doesn’t make sense because they’re there for longer than a few nights. But signing a full year lease also doesn’t make sense,” Ezra says.
The existing solutions — Craigslist and Facebook — presented serious safety concerns. “There’s no security. There are all kinds of scams, and it’s a gray market where you have to structure everything yourself,” says Ezra. “People will just Venmo somebody a $500 deposit, then they’ll never see it again. Or they show up to the place and it doesn’t exist.”
With their previous Bubble experience giving them confidence, Jacob and Ezra chose to build Ohana on Bubble from day one. The decision proved prescient when they joined Neo's accelerator program: “When we were interviewing with the founder of Neo, we shared that we were building Ohana on Bubble. He was like, ‘No way! We were actually Bubble seed investors,’” Jacob says. “It was a really cool full-circle moment.”
Ohana’s comprehensive subletting solution
Ohana’s approach to solving the subletting problem goes far beyond just listing apartments. The Bubble-built platform provides multiple layers of security and support that differentiate it from existing solutions. They verify that people are who they say they are, facilitate secure payments through Stripe, and most uniquely, introduce every guest and host through video calls.
"We created what we call the ‘sublease timeline’ to provide an overview of Ohana’s process, from sending an offer to collecting security deposits, and then payments."
For those introductory calls, the team created a comprehensive matchmaking system with calendar integration. They also give users a clear picture of what happens next. “We created what we call the ‘sublease timeline’ to provide an overview of Ohana’s process,” says Jacob. “From sending an offer to collecting security deposits, and then payments.”
A critical safety feature is their payment escrow system. “We don’t release the rent until after they move in and confirm everything’s OK," Ezra notes, providing peace of mind for both parties in transactions averaging $8,000.
“We use AI to identify scammers and keep people safe throughout their journey,” Jacob says. The AI automatically detects when people try to add contact information to listings or photos — often a sign of scamming — and removes it from the site. This not only prevents fraud but encourages on-platform communication, which Jacob says “allows us to provide the best service to our users."
The power of fast, collaborative development
Ohana is unique not just for what users see — but also for what they don’t. “About 80% of the pages that we build are internal. They never get seen by the user," Ezra says.
Behind the scenes, the team built an extensive admin dashboard on Bubble that tracks everything from transaction value and payments per week to supply and demand analytics across different markets. Even more impressively, they built their entire customer service platform in-house. “The nice thing about building it yourself is that it’s fully customizable and you have immediate access to all of your data. You don’t need to use an API to send the data from our database to a customer service tool,” Jacob says. “And using Bubble, we can build so quickly that it’s not a crazy lift to do it.”
"The nice thing about building it yourself is that it’s fully customizable and you have immediate access to all of your data ... And using Bubble, we can build so quickly that it’s not a crazy lift to do it.”
The speed of development has been crucial to their success. “Whenever you’re building something, you often have to change direction, and you might have an idea that you want to implement really quickly,” Jacob says. “With Bubble, it’s usually a couple days, no more than a week max — not like the weeks or months traditional development takes.”
Today, four of Ohana’s seven team members work directly on Bubble, including both founders. This collaborative approach has also been key to their rapid development cycles and ability to iterate quickly based on user feedback. “Especially on our team, where not everyone has a traditional computer science background, Bubble gives us an advantage because anybody can go in and easily understand what’s going on.” Ezra says.
Today and beyond: Rapid growth and profitability
The results speak for themselves. Ohana achieved 9x year-over-year revenue growth, jumping from $200,000 in 2024 to being on pace for $1.5 million this year. In just 14 months of processing payments, hosts have earned $16.2 million through the platform across 2,700 sublease transactions.
That’s wicked fast growth: “We actually just crossed $10 million earned by hosts about a month ago, and it was only two months before that that we crossed $5 million. So the marketplace has tripled in three months,” Ezra shares.
The company has expanded from New York to nine cities globally, including Boston, London, and Sydney, driven largely by their international student network. “We have the most density in New York. The second best city is Boston, but now we’re quickly expanding to London and Sydney. That’s all based off of the network that was using us in New York.”
Most remarkably, Ohana became profitable within about 14 months of processing payments. And “when you’re profitable, you can raise on your own terms,” Ezra notes. The company has raised $5.8 million total, including an additional round that valued the company three times higher than their previous valuation.
As Ohana continues scaling globally and prepares to launch their mobile app using Bubble’s native mobile functionality, the Jacob and Ezra remain confident they’ve chosen the right platform to power their mission of making subletting safe and accessible worldwide.
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