The Story of Hospitable

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This page is becoming a short video series. PC is recording a Loom for each chapter below, walking through it in his own words — everything on this page is the source material his videos are built from: the themes, the numbers, and the stories.

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Hospitable's history splits cleanly into three chapters, and each one has its own personality.

The Epic Era (2016–2019) — one person, one Airbnb apartment, and a lot of scrappy problem-solving, growing into a real company with its first big customer win.
The COVID Era (2020–2022) — the industry got flattened, then flipped upside down, and Hospitable had to rebuild itself more than once.
The Modern Era (2023–2025) — a near-miss with the finances, a full pricing rebuild, and a sprint to catch up with — and then get ahead of — the competition.

Timeline at a glance

Year	What happened
2016	Launches in August as Smartbnb, a one-person side project automating Airbnb guest messaging.
2017	Moves to monthly billing, climbs from a few hundred dollar MRR s a month to $13,000 MRR by August.
2018	First hires. First two team retreats (Cascais, then Prague). Nikita joins as founding engineer.
2019	Closes Belvilla — the largest property manager in the industry at the time — as a customer.
2020	COVID collapses travel demand almost overnight. Company-wide pay cut, no layoffs.
2021	Renames from Smartbnb (and smartbnb.io) to Hospitable.com.
2022	Revenue fully recovers to pre-COVID levels; team grows to around 40 people.
2023	Discovers the company is burning cash faster than its gross profit; takes a bridge investment.
2024	First real pricing overhaul since 2016, moving away from the original rent-based model.
2025	Feature catch-up with competitors, new product lines, ends the year near $24M ARR.
2026	?

Read the chapters

The Epic Era (2016–2019)

The COVID Era (2020–2022)

The Modern Era (2023–2025)