The “Airbnb for Swimming Pools” Started with Good ol’ Fashioned Door Knocking
It's the summer of 2017, and 20-year-old Bunim Laskin has a problem. He's the oldest of eleven siblings, and there's not much to do in the suburb of Lakewood, New Jersey. If the family wants to get out, they have to haul fourteen people, and pay the price of 14 admissions.
Looking next door, Bunim notices his neighbor has recently built a swimming pool for her grandchildren—one that sits empty most days. He works up the courage to approach her with a proposition: could his family use the pool when it isn't in use? She agrees, with one practical stipulation: the Bunim family needs to contribute 25% toward her monthly maintenance costs.
What happens next reveals an untapped market.
Within two weeks, six other neighborhood families strike identical deals with the pool owner. Instead of bearing the full financial burden of her pool, she is now collecting 150% of her maintenance costs. Her pool is turning a profit.
Bunim immediately recognizes the scalability of this exchange. Could this neighborhood arrangement work nationwide? To test his hypothesis, he needs a critical ingredient: willing pool owners. With no marketing budget or technology platform, Bunim turns to Google Earth's satellite imagery, identifying 80 homes with backyard pools in his area.
His next move exemplifies "start before you're ready": he goes door-to-door, pitching his concept directly to homeowners. The rejection rate is staggering—76 doors slam in his face. But crucially, four homeowners say yes. It’s enough for Bunim to launch a rudimentary website called PoolForU.
Within just four weeks, the platform grows to 30 hosts and 150 swimmers. When MSNBC features the fledgling startup, the resulting traffic crashes the website—a telling sign of market demand. Bunim, who is attending yeshiva in Jerusalem, drops out to pursue his venture full-time.
Not everyone sees the potential in Bunim's vision. In March 2020, he appears on Shark Tank seeking $300,000 for 5% of his company—a $6 million valuation that the Sharks find outrageous. Mark Cuban calls the valuation "nuts," while Kevin O'Leary is put off by Bunim's ambitious projection of $289 million in marketplace revenue within three years. Despite Bunim's rapid-fire defense of his business model and the $675,000 worth of bookings that have gone through the platform (though only $150,000 is actually processed due to technical issues), all five Sharks decline to invest. And on top of that, Bunim’s Shark Tank pitch goes viral for his rapid-fire pleading with the Sharks.
That rejection might sink a less determined entrepreneur, but Bunim perseveres. By July 2018, PoolForU evolves into Swimply, a streamlined marketplace for private pool rentals. The business model is straightforward: Swimply collects 15% from hosts and a 10% booking fee from guests. Prices range from $20 to $300 per hour, depending on amenities and location.
On top of “start before you’re ready,” Swimply represents a masterclass in the "borrowed idea." While the sharing economy concept isn't new—Airbnb has already popularized home sharing—Swimply applies this framework to an entirely different asset class. The company recognizes that swimming pools represent a perfect sharing economy opportunity: high-value assets with significant maintenance costs that sit unused most of the time.
Today, Swimply operates in 125 markets across the United States, Canada, and Australia. The company has raised $63 million in capital, facilitating bookings for over a million users across 10,000 different pools. 2023 revenue reached $25 million, and the platform has expanded beyond pools to include tennis courts, pickleball courts, and other recreational amenities.
Bunim Laskin's journey illustrates that innovation often doesn't require inventing something entirely new. Bunim had a borrowed idea, a map, and the courage to start. And his success has certainly shown that while Kevin O’Leary and Mark Cuban may be Sharks, they’re clearly not “pool sharks.”
