After eight years of connecting renters and hosts, Kopa will be shutting down. This decision was not made lightly, but a recent bad actor attempting to scam hosts on the site has unfortunately been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Our Journey Together
Kopa began as a personal struggle for us as co-founders. Back in university from 2012-2016, we struggled to find housing during our internships and school terms. Between the three of us co-founders, we moved 30 times in the span of 5 years. We crashed with family friends, lost money in scams, and more.
So for our final year engineering project at university, we tackled this problem of finding housing and housemates for medium-term rentals. We worked tirelessly after graduation, in our spare time, to build this “verified medium-term housing + housemate marketplace”. In October of 2016, we opened our doors to San Francisco hosts and renters as PadPiper.
Over the next year, we developed our mission to inspire renters to connect, explore, and live fully. We found that moving for a few months at a time could be quite lonely, especially during the “loneliness epidemic” we’re still living in. By July 2018, after 2 years of working on PadPiper in our spare time, we took the leap to pursue our passion project full-time.
From Summer 2018 until March, 2020, we were hitting our stride. We graduated from PadPiper to Kopa and had the privilege of helping thousands of students find the perfect place to call home with not a single scam through the platform. This progress came to a grinding halt when the pandemic hit. The renters we served stopped moving, and thus our business struggled. We each took full-time jobs to try and keep Kopa alive.
While we were able to keep Kopa running, we found that we’d burned ourselves out in the process. So when issues started popping up like our bank shutting down with little notice, malicious renters trying to scam money, and more - we realized we couldn’t keep Kopa running.
What’s Next
As we say goodbye, we want to express our deepest gratitude to everyone who has been a part of the Kopa story. Whether you’ve been with us since the early days or joined more recently, you’ve contributed to something truly special.
We understand that this news might impact your plans, and we will do our best to make the transition as smooth as possible. Our platform will become inactive immediately. All records will be deleted. If you need assistance, our support team is here to help you during this time.
Thank you for being part of this journey with us. It’s been an honor to serve you, and we wish you all the best in your future moves.
Warm regards,
The Kopa Team