Swimply
👤 Bunim Laskin (College dropout, one of 12 kids; cold-approached pool owners he found on Google Earth to seed supply by hand.)🌐 siteLinkedIn
A 20-year-old paid a neighbor for her unused pool, found more on Google Earth, and built a market to rent them.
Will it work? · our read
Owns the category. Summer-only, hyper-local, 72% repeat — the classic disintermediation trap. The 30% take holds only while Swimply is the sole way to find and insure a pool.
01How the money moves
Owner lists an idle backyard pool
→
Guest books by the hour; Swimply insures + collects payment
→
Swimply keeps about 30% (20% host + 10% guest)
02The numbers
275,000+Statedreservations in 2026
2026-07-03
the sentence on the page
in the sharing economy? Rental swimming pools The Airbnb-style company Swimply said there have been about 275,000 private pool reservations so far this year. Business A hot summer trend in the…
GMV is not revenue: $70M+ lifetime booking value is not net take. NPR, Jul 2026
about $8-10M/yr (outside est.)
🔒
You have the verdict. Members get the work behind it.
- The CENTS scorecard — where it's strong, where it's soft
- The founder's key move, and the counter-move
- How it could die — the evidence, and how sure we are
- The case against our own call
- A 🚀 launchpad prompt — the case, as a plan for your business
We rate our own confidence — and argue against ourselves. Nobody else in this category does.
Sources always public on all 560 cases · cancel anytime · 14-day refund
See a full teardown, free → ImportYetiSourcesSources last checked 25 August 2026
TechCrunch: Swimply raises $40M (Dec 2021)Wikipedia: Swimply (fees, funding, Shark Tank)NPR: pool-rental sharing economy (Jul 2026)Forbes: Bunim Laskin profile
Revenue is an outside estimate (about $8-10M/yr); Swimply does not disclose net revenue, so tagged Estimate, not independently confirmed. The founder's "seven digits a month" (TechCrunch, 2021) reads as booking volume/GMV, not net take — lifetime GMV is $70M+ and is NOT revenue. Fee structure cited as 20% host + 10% guest (Wikipedia); TechCrunch (2021) reported 15% host, so the take may have shifted over time. Reservation, host, and lifetime-experience counts are company-stated (150+ cities, 15k+ hosts, 4M+ experiences, 275k 2026 bookings per NPR). Shark Tank rejection and Google Earth sourcing are documented. No figures invented; [our read] tags mark interpretation. We never score you.