Transcript was automatically generated.

Frank Curzio 00:00

How’s it going out there? It’s Tuesday, December 23rd. Hello, Frank Curzio and this is the Wall Street Unplugged podcast.

Frank Curzio 00:05

Where I break down headlines and, uh, tell you what’s really moving these markets.

Frank Curzio 00:15

So, guys, the past couple of weeks, Wall Street Unplugged, Wall Street Unplugged Premium, I talked about Savvy, the private company raising money to Curzio Research. It’d be Curzio One member to come into it. And I think we have about 70 people or so that signed up already. Uh, I’m sure we’re going to have a lot more. Uh, Savvy is run by Eric Goldreyer,

Frank Curzio 00:36

who founded BedandBreakfast.com. He sold it to HomeAway in 2010 for an eight-figure exit. He co-founded TurnKey Vacation Rentals. So that’s a Vacasa. In 2021, it’s for a nine-figure exit. So he’s very, very familiar with this industry. Guy that doesn’t have to work anymore came off the sidelines because he saw a huge opportunity. And Savvy,

Frank Curzio 00:55

he launched because it’s an alternative to Airbnb and Vrbo, who have raised their prices considerably, which makes sense if you look at most companies, especially over the past five years. And Wall Street wants to see this constant growth. And when your market is kind of saturated, you have to find ways. And some people say it’s AI.

Frank Curzio 01:14

Some people always say robotaxis for, you know, or space for, for Tesla or whatever it is,right? To find new ways of growth. But these companies, they don’t have lots of ways of growth, so they’re raising prices considerably. And that opens a door,right? That opens a door to innovation. And he created Savvy because it’s no fees to customers. So let’s them save 15, 20 percent in fees.

Frank Curzio 01:34

And he does this pretty much through an SEO model where they could bid to go up higher and they get their results shown more. But he’s also a fantastic start,right? This isn’t like the startup where he’s thinking about starting. You can go to savvy.com. You could book. He’s going to show you the prices compared to, to Airbnb, Vrboright on the site. There’s lots of listings. He’s signing deals like crazy.

Frank Curzio 01:54

And Eric attended our Curzio One Wealth Forum in November Fort Lauderdale, and I interviewed him on stage. And it was one of the best interviews of that day. And it’s probably why so many of our One members, especially the ones that attended, invest in the company. And he even said, because they got access to him at a conference, you get access to all the CEOs and everything as a One member. It was really cool. They stuck around even for the early breakfast the next day, uh, you know, which, which was awesome,right?

Frank Curzio 02:15

And that’s how it should be with investors,right? You should have access to the CEOs,right? They’re investing, especially if your company’s private, not public yet. Public, you got a million things. You got to be careful what you say and stuff like that. But when you’re private and you’re raising money and you’re one of those investors that are coming in, which is high risk, super high reward investment, you should have access to these people. So as a holiday gift,

Frank Curzio 02:36

uh, I wanted to share my exclusive interview that I did with him on stage, uh, at Pier 66. That was the hotel. Uh, and he was covering everything. Why he came off the sidelines and launched Savvy, which again, he’s wealthy. He didn’t have to do. Why he’s already seeing tremendous growth, month after month, massive, massive growth. He’s providing those reports for investors. Uh,

Frank Curzio 02:55

why some of the top people in the hospitality industry are backing him, which you’re going to see. I mentioned this before, like leading CEOs and former CEOs of some major companies of Travelocity, Expedia.com. They’re advisors to him. They love this idea. They know him very well. They’ve made money alongside him. And why he believes this will be his first ten-figure exit, which is billion. And considering where we’re coming in,

Frank Curzio 03:16

if that happens, and you know, again, a lot of people make promises, but when you’re investing in someone who’s done this, been there, done it, knows the system, knows how to create a business that’s perfectly set up for a larger company to come and take it over. And he was very clear. You’ll listen to them. He listened to the interview. He says something great. He’s like, I’m not trying to put Airbnb out of business. I’m not trying to put Vrbo out of business.

Frank Curzio 03:36

And a lot of people, when they start companies, that’s their mindset. He’s like, I just want to capture a small part. If I capture a small part, this is going to be a billion dollar, multi-billion dollar business. Uh, and it’s probably going to be bought by one of these guys who can’t really afford to do this because they can’t afford to lower prices. It’s not like, hey, let’s, let’s change our business model. Kind of like with, uh, you know, Zuckerberg did with,

Frank Curzio 03:54

with Instagram and Reels once he saw TikTok was annihilating them,right? Well, let’s just change our system. You can’t really change because we’re going to result in lower prices. So these are guys that might have to buy this site, which they probably will. And he’s setting it up absolutely perfect. And he’s going to go over all this in an interview. And here is that interview with Eric Goldreyer.

Eric Goldreyer 04:13

The reason I started it was because, you know, when I sold Bed and Breakfast.com, I thought, okay, I was fortunate enough to be able to retire if I wanted to. Um, and so I was like, if I’m going to get back in and, and, you know, it’s starting a company is hard. It’s hard work.

Eric Goldreyer 04:27

Uh, but when we realized that if we did this business, it was one of those businesses that would bring friends and family together to create memories. And that’s sort of the thankful, I’ve been thankful. That’s the industry I’ve always been in. So, uh, still own that company. I don’t operate it. It’s been around since 2013. It’s called Fun Air.

Eric Goldreyer 04:47

Um, and, uh, it’s the leader in the space. That same year, I co-founded a company with a business partner of mine, and we created the second largest property management company in North America. It was called Turnkey Vacation Rentals. And we exited that in 2021 to Vikasa. Um, and really the thought there was,

Eric Goldreyer 05:07

let’s, let’s do a tech-forward, uh, property management company. Because at the time, again, all mom and pops, someone’s a property manager in Vale because they live in Vale, Colorado, and one of their friends had a vacation rental. And they’re like, hey, can you manage my classified ad and, you know, turn this property? Because I live in Austin.

Eric Goldreyer 05:26

And the next thing you know, they’ve got 20 properties, 30 properties. But these aren’t people that, you know, went to the Cornell School of Hotel, uh, business. So, um, we’re like, okay, let’s take that industry, uh, move from the bed and breakfast space into the vacation rental space, do a property management company. And, uh, again, a lot of work, but, uh, very successful.

Eric Goldreyer 05:47

And, um, so I’ve been fortunate that over 30 years been in hospitality. It’s like, frankly, I liked his line. He was, uh, he was the Dead Sea when it was just sick. I feel like that’s how long I’ve been in hospitality. Um, but I’ve been very blessed because I’m a big believer that everything we do,

Eric Goldreyer 06:08

you work with people you want to work with. You hang out with people you want to hang out with. Life is relationships. And I’ve been fortunate to be able to see opportunity and create companies in places that sort of enable that and move that forward. And I think Savvy came about just, you know, owned a boutique hotel. Um, I’ve got two vacation rentals.

Eric Goldreyer 06:31

And, uh, personally was frustrated with what I was seeing with the OTAs or online travel agencies, the Airbnbs, the Vrbo’s of the world. And, you know, when a customer wants to book, they’re not my customer. They’re Airbnb’s customer. And it’s not my terms and conditions. It’s Airbnb’s terms and conditions. And it’s not my cash flow.

Eric Goldreyer 06:50

I don’t get the money when someone books on Airbnb. I get it after they check out. And it’s just, and if you’ve seen any of the announcements they’ve made in the last six months, it just keeps getting worse and worse for the suppliers. Um, and so I was frustrated from that side. And then ironically, here we are in Florida,

Eric Goldreyer 07:09

but we were going to Seaside, which is up on the Panhandle of Florida, 30A, um, years ago, four or five years ago. And I was booking what I thought was a four-night stay in a $400 a night place. And when I hit the, you know, the final button, $2,700. I’m like, wait, $1,600 wouldn’t have been sort of.

Frank Curzio 07:29

It’s like a bunch of tickets,right?

Eric Goldreyer 07:31

Yeah, yeah. It’s like a Ticketmaster or stuff. Frustrated by the fees. Um, and, you know, the amount of negative press around fees. It’s almost like, you know, auto gratuity and gratuity inflation. Fees have just gotten crazy, whether they’re resort fees or they’re,

Eric Goldreyer 07:50

heck, I went to get takeout Chinese food two months ago and there was a takeout fee. And I’m like, wait, don’t you want people to not use your tables and just, but no, they, you know, another $9.95 because I was taking the food out. So I think people have fee fatigue. Um, and, you know, when I started, people are paying,

Eric Goldreyer 08:12

and not everyone knows it. There’s definitely, you know, Savvy hints the name. There’s Savvy travelers out there and you guys obviously Savvy investors. There’s people that realize they’re paying 15 to 20 percent more when they book on Airbnb or Vrbo. Um, but there’s a lot that don’t.

Eric Goldreyer 08:28

And so, uh, we set out in Savvy to create a vacation rental marketplace that sort of facilitates the reservation between the traveler and the guest, sorry, the traveler and the hosts, and saves the traveler the 15 or 20 percent extra in fees, which adds up to hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.

Eric Goldreyer 08:48

And that’s, that’s money that the traveler could use to have an upgraded stay,right? Instead of being just in Vale, maybe they’re skiing, ski out in Vale, or instead of being in Fort Lauderdale, maybe they’re on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, or they’re bringing in a chef, or they’re, you know, taking the team out on a deep sea fishing excursion.

Eric Goldreyer 09:07

And then on the supply side, it’s money that they could have earned through selling a nicer place or offering concierge services, et cetera. So we just felt that, uh, we had done it before and we, we, we, not that things are exactly the same as they were, obviously back when I started Bed and Breakfast.com,

Eric Goldreyer 09:27

but we had the experience and we knew we could bring a solution to the market that enough people would want to use that it would be a very profitable business. And it was, you know, I’ve had an eight-figure exit. I’ve had a nine-figure exit. And so I want to, I want a 10-plus figure exit.

Frank Curzio 09:43

Nice. I like it. I like that. Uh, I think people are noticing the fees. I mean, you’re seeing traffic down in Vegas. If you go to Vegas and now it’s spread out to New York, spread out to all the major cities, as you know, where I go to Consumer Electronics show every year, they charge me like $75 extra. And I go there five, six times.

Eric Goldreyer 09:58

Yeah, because you want USA Today,right? You want to get that newspaper, whatever it is.

Frank Curzio 10:02

Yeah, whatever it is. Or it’s parking and you flew in, you don’t have a car.

Eric Goldreyer 10:05

Yeah, and they’re like, you have a refrigerator fee. I don’t need it. It’s, you know, a parking fee. I don’t have a car. And just, I just, just say it’s the FU fee. It’s easier,right? It is. Just let me know. Uh, now when I look at Airbnb, this is something where I go to Saratoga with my friends every year around opening day. And, um, we started getting Airbnbs about three, four years ago. And the price was up like three, $400 for four nights.

Eric Goldreyer 10:24

And it was, it was insane. I was like, wow, that’s, you know, it’s a lot. Uh, and you might be asking yourself, well, why, why are the fees up so much? Remember when you’re dealing with publicly traded companies? With publicly traded companies, they have to grow every single day forever,right? For their investors. That’s why it kind of sucks when you have to report earnings every quarter. I don’t think you need it every quarter,right?

Eric Goldreyer 10:43

Because you focus more on the short term,right? Uh, and when I see them raising fees, what does it do? It opens up opportunities. Uh, when I used to take, you know, I still take Ubers. Ubers were, you know, I say in order to disrupt markets, it’s got to be cheaper, faster, better than both parties,right? Easier,right? And you can disrupt markets very easily. Uh, and that’s what Uber was. Like you just checked off all the boxes.

Eric Goldreyer 11:03

But if you notice Uber now, when I take Ubers, it’s comparable to taxis.

Frank Curzio 11:07

Sure.

Eric Goldreyer 11:08

And then you saw Uber’s stock get hit a little bit. So they’re raising fees,right? Because now they have this massive scalability and they’re like, okay, you know, you can only scale sometimes with a certain amount.

Speaker 3 11:16

My fee to get here from the airport was 25% above the rate.

Frank Curzio 11:19

Really?

Speaker 3 11:20

I paid for the, yeah, yeah.

Frank Curzio 11:21

And it was on Uber specifically.

Eric Goldreyer 11:22

On Uber. So I’m like, okay, now I don’t have to go to that specific area because usually the taxis are right outside the airport,right? And you have to walk like a different area. So I’m like, why don’t I just take a taxi? So what does that do? It opens up the door,right? To more innovation. And what happened with Uber is their stock got hit, but they had a kind of, you know, now you have Uber Eats, now you have Robotaxis,right?

Eric Goldreyer 11:41

So you have more growth models. But when you have, you know, Airbnb and I’m looking at, you know, Vrbo, Vrbo, uh, they have to continue to raise fees and that’s opening up the door for what you’re doing,right? Which you saw the opportunity, which is savvy. Talk about your company because this is existing now. You can go on the platform, you’re generating revenue. Uh, you’re seeing tremendous growth already,

Eric Goldreyer 12:00

but it’s a business model, which I think people would question and say, okay, you’re talking about not doing any fees.

Speaker 3 12:06

Yeah, that’s how we make money.

Eric Goldreyer 12:07

Yeah,right,right,right. So, uh, you know, when you’re building a two-side marketplace, you have to start with the supply so you can get the demand. I mean, if we get demand, I can’t go out and spend money getting people to come and I don’t have a product or they’re going to be like, you guys suck. So we spent, you know, we launched Savvy.com, uh, in February. And,

Eric Goldreyer 12:27

uh, we now have, and we were working before that on it. It’s not like we came out of nowhere,right? Um, but we’ve got, uh, 150,000 properties in North America from over, uh, nearly 3,000 property management companies. So, you know, we’ve got enough now that we can go out and start letting people know we exist,right?

Eric Goldreyer 12:48

Two-sided marketplace. We can’t start extracting value and revenue until we’re generating reservations,right? Every property manager we speak to is like, man, so sick of Airbnb and Vrbo would love to pay you guys if you can drive reservations.

Frank Curzio 13:03

You just went to a conference,right?

Eric Goldreyer 13:05

Yeah, I want you to talk about it.

Frank Curzio 13:07

Just, well, yeah, we’ll do.

Eric Goldreyer 13:08

Yep. Um, so, so our model, uh, is we allow, we only work with professionally managed properties. So you can’t be some bro that’s, that’s writ, you know, gigging, uh, a vacation rental on the side. Uh, we don’t want guests to show up at 11 o’clock at night and the Bluetooth lock doesn’t work.

Eric Goldreyer 13:30

And they go to call their host and their host is in Costa Rica surfing,right? We want someone to be able to drive over and let those guys in. Uh, we want professionals. So we only have professional hosts. Uh, and then we don’t, we don’t charge the fee. So our value proposition to travelers is you’re going to save hundreds of dollars and you’re going to have less anxiety.

Eric Goldreyer 13:49

You’re going to have peace of mind and that the place is going to be as advertised. And if there’s an issue, someone’s there to help. So, uh, now that we’ve hit sort of the 150,000 mark and, uh, that continues to grow really well on the supply side, it’s time to get out there and start letting people know that we exist,right?

Eric Goldreyer 14:09

On the demand side, the travelers and, you know, uh, one of the biggest things that I sort of learned as we were doing this was we’re not trying to displace Airbnb. We’re not, you know, they’re a hundred billion dollar company. We’re not saying we’re going to knock them off that. You’ve got 400 million people that stayed in a vacation rental globally last year,right?

Eric Goldreyer 14:30

It’s a hundred billion dollar annual gross booking value with the market cap of the top three Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking is $200 billion. Can we go in and get a few percentage points of that? Three, five, eight, ten. Uh, I think we can. So we did a, we did two things.

Eric Goldreyer 14:50

Um, there was a survey done by a company called Skift and they do, they’re a big travel, uh, data warehouse and they do conferences. Um, 68% of people said that they showroom. So that’s, you know, like you go to Best Buy to look at TVs, but then you go home and you go on to Amazon and you order the TV,right? Same thing with Airbnb and Vrbo.

Eric Goldreyer 15:09

You’ve got over two thirds of the people that are shopping there, but then they go spend 30 minutes, an hour, hour and a half trying to find the property directly so they can book it directly because they don’t want to pay the fees,right? So the big sort of eye-opening experience to me is I was like,

Eric Goldreyer 15:27

okay, well, what percentage of people, you know, really would switch to a new Savvy.com that currently use Airbnb or Vrbo if we didn’t have the fees? So we’ve done, we did two different surveys about nine months apart.

Eric Goldreyer 15:44

And one of the questions we asked was, if you were aware of a website like Airbnb or Vrbo that didn’t charge service fees, would you use it? And let me just ask the audience real quick. How many of you guys have stayed in an Airbnb? If you could just do a show of hands. Most of you.

Eric Goldreyer 15:59

And how many of you were frustrated by the final cost once you saw the bill above what you thought you were going to pay? Most of you. So for those of you that have used Airbnb or Vrbo, if you were aware of a site, now you are Savvy.com, uh, and it could save you 15 or 20%, would you check it out? Show of hands. Most nods hit.

Eric Goldreyer 16:17

Great. I was expecting 30 to 40% of the people would say yes because I would have thought that Airbnb would have had some type of brand loyalty, affinity. 90 and 91% of people, and we had 700 and 750 respondents, so pretty statistically relevant, said that they would.

Eric Goldreyer 16:38

And we got to get like 5%. So, um, it’s, it’s been fun. We launched Savvy.com in February, uh, to very small numbers, but our traffic has grown 20% month over month over month. Our, uh, gross booking value, which is the metric that we use to total dollar value of all bookings that happened on the platform,

Eric Goldreyer 16:58

has averaged 50% growth month over month since then. And we haven’t, you know, we’re just now starting to really lean into driving awareness. So, uh, the raise that we’re doing is really about that. It’s driving awareness and we’re sort of social first. I mean, we, that’s how people consume content now.

Eric Goldreyer 17:19

So it’s, it’s collaborations, it’s influencers. It’s getting out there with those influencers that have, uh, you know, like your rich BFF, she’s got 3 million followers,right? And they’re all about how do I, how am I savvy about my spending money,right? Then you have the people that have two, 300,000 followers and they’re about travel hacks.

Eric Goldreyer 17:39

And it’s like, go do, you know, collaborations with those guys. Press, we’ve been in travel and leisure, we’ve been in Forbes, we’ve been in USA Today. I mean, you know, there’s been so much negative press. It’s nice to bring a solution to market that, uh, we think the positive press will continue. But, you know, the biggest thing, and it’s,

Eric Goldreyer 17:57

it’s, it’s sort of like fun air when you put the slide out, everyone sees it. Thankfully, uh, travel’s sexy,right? Travel’s something we all do and it’s something we all talk about. And then we, you know, we’ve got Thanksgiving coming up and we’re, like it or not, we’re all going to be with our family or our friends for Thanksgiving. One of the things undoubtedly that will come up is travel.

Eric Goldreyer 18:19

It’s just one of those topics. You get together with friends that you haven’t seen in four to six weeks for happy hours. Oh, where’d you go? You know, like I just got, just came from the Bahamas. But, um, we think word of mouth is going to be really big because, you know, everyone wants to truly be savvy, uh, if they’re savvy anyway. And,

Eric Goldreyer 18:38

uh, and once you save someone four, five, six, seven hundred dollars on their vacation, they’re going to tell their friends and family and they’re going to come back and check you out before they go somewhere else. And so one of the nice things that we went ahead and did on Savvy.com, because truly we think it’s savvy not to overuse that,

Eric Goldreyer 18:58

but when you find a property on Savvy.com that you like and you give us the dates, we show you the savvy price and then we show you Airbnb and Vrbo’s price for the same property for the same dates, like right there. So even if we’re not the lowest price, we’re going to show it because we want you to come to us.

Eric Goldreyer 19:15

Now, we should be the lowest price every time because we don’t add the 15 to 20% in fees. But occasionally we’ll get a scenario where a property manager onboards their fees incorrectly. So we get notified and we got to go back and say, hey, you didn’t do this correctly and we fix it. But, uh, you know, so I think it’s one of those things that,

Eric Goldreyer 19:34

uh, we raise this round and we go out and we start sort of banging the drums and it just continues growing.

Frank Curzio 19:42

How do you make money without charging the fees?

Eric Goldreyer 19:45

Forgot that part, didn’t I? So, uh, sorry. That’s a big one. So, you know, really we’re, we’re, I wish I could say I’m inventing some new amazing algorithm of how to, how to make money. I’m not. So when David Plouse, who’s on our board, uh, advisory board,

Eric Goldreyer 20:04

when he launched a vacation rentals by owner, mouthful, now obviously Vrbo, um, and when I, same year that I launched Bed and Breakfast.com, 1995, it was a listing model,right? So it’s a subscription. And so we allow a property manager, whether they have 10 properties or 10,000 properties,

Eric Goldreyer 20:25

to put them on our site for free. And then if they want more exposure for a low flat monthly cost, they can bump their properties up and get a featured or sponsored listing. So it’s just placement in search results.

Frank Curzio 20:37

In Google.

Eric Goldreyer 20:37

And yeah, like Google, like an ad word. Um, you know, and the whole thing is, is, is we’re making the assumption that we’ll add all these free listings and we think we can get one in 10 of them to pay us. And if we do, that’s a 93% gross margin business. So, uh, we think we’ll get more than that, but,

Eric Goldreyer 20:56

you know, we’ll have to play around with the monthly pricing versus how many people are paying and dial in what’s the right economics there.

Frank Curzio 21:07

Talk about your advisors, which I thought was pretty cool.

Eric Goldreyer 21:12

You know, I’ve been very blessed just from being in the industry for as long as I’ve been in the industry. I know a lot of, uh, of people in the industry. Um, and so, you know, I would say our, our biggest, uh, advocate and advisor is Carl Shepherd. He was co-founder of Home Away, uh, another Austinite, and, uh, we get together fairly often.

Eric Goldreyer 21:33

Um, but he absolutely, and if you follow him on LinkedIn, you know exactly where he sits. And he’s a huge proponent of, of what we’re doing. Um, we’ve got, uh, Carl Sparks, who was former CEO of Travelocity and is, uh, was GM of Hotels.com, obviously formerly Hotel Reservation Network,

Eric Goldreyer 21:54

uh, also owned by Expedia. Uh, we’ve got David Klaus, who was the original founder of VRBO because he had a condo in Breckenridge, Colorado.

Frank Curzio 22:05

So these are people that are involved in savvy.

Eric Goldreyer 22:07

Yeah. And I, you know, I don’t want to oversell it in that, like we’re not having monthly, monthly calls or anything. It’s, it’s people that I can pick up the phone and call.

Frank Curzio 22:16

Have they talked to you about this business model?

Eric Goldreyer 22:18

Oh, for sure.

Frank Curzio 22:18

And what have they said to you?

Eric Goldreyer 22:19

They love it. They love it. Yeah. I mean, um, you know, it’s interesting. I would say the, the only sort of questionable feedback I got, and I feel we have a good answer for it, so it doesn’t keep me up at night.

Eric Goldreyer 22:31

But, you know, when David Klaus launched Vrbo, Vacation Rentals by Owner, everything, all of his traffic was organic SEO Google traffic,right? Because there was nothing else out there. A lot of noise now. So that’s why we’re doing social first. So he also didn’t have, uh, the industry wasn’t where it is today.

Eric Goldreyer 22:53

It was in its infancy. Now it’s a, you know, a hundred billion plus industry. People already know what vacation rentals are. They’re already sick of fees. So we don’t have to educate the industry with our value prop. We just need to make people aware of how we’re different. And so we feel that with social,

Eric Goldreyer 23:12

with press, with word of mouth, that we’ll continue to see a nice month over month growth.

Frank Curzio 23:17

So I have to ask you about AI, because AI is a big part of this industry. I see Expedi using it, um, wisely and not so wisely. I mean, I’m a member for 15 years and, uh, I was booking a flight and whatever it was, $500 or whatever. And I said, let me see, you know, see if I get a cheaper price.

Frank Curzio 23:34

And I just went on through my phone where I wasn’t logged in and it offered me a $250 dollar price. And I was really pissed off. I’m a member for 15 years and it’s like, if I went to this for the first time, so I know that I had to do it AI, they probably track how quick, how, when I book or when I’m looking to book where I’m definitely going to book it, they’re going to keep the price. How are you using that?

Eric Goldreyer 23:53

How many times you’ve looked at that search? Which did they cookie your browser? All that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, no. They’re trying to extract the most revenue they can from you. They’re not trying to give you the best price. Um, yeah. So, uh, AI for us, we’re right now we’re using it internally. I would say 40% of our code is written by AI.

Eric Goldreyer 24:16

Um, we’re, we’re integrating it into our marketing, into our sales. Here probably be, uh, summer before we use it internally. But for now, being, uh, sort of in the startup phase and, uh, not making money, it’s like, we’re not going to lead the, the industry on sticking our neck out in AI.

Eric Goldreyer 24:37

We’re going to be a quick follower. We’ve got the, the most recent code base and the space. So be, I’m not going to say easy, but it should be relative to everyone else’s code base, fairly easy for us to implement as we move forward. Uh, on our roadmap right now, we’ve got adding AI in the search box,

Eric Goldreyer 24:58

first half of 2026. So that’s just the, you know, open talk, here’s what I’m looking for. And then having all of our data, uh, through an LLM internally so we can spit out results. Uh, and then I think the other, obviously the biggest one is just for distribution,right? So writing to the, through an API to the MCPs so that when you’re on Perplexity,

Eric Goldreyer 25:18

you’re on ChatGPT, you’re on Claude, you’re on Grok, and you do a search, we’re going to, whoa, microphone, we’re going to come up as the least expensive,right? Because we’re booked direct. So if Airbnb comes up or Vrbo comes up, they’re going to be 15, 20% higher than we are.

Frank Curzio 25:36

Fast forward three years from now, where do you see your company?

Eric Goldreyer 25:40

You know, if, if, uh, if we’re delivering like we want to deliver, um, I think we’re well over a million listings on the site. Uh, and I think we’re the, the fourth big player in the space. Um, you know, if we can move share off of the three big guys,

Eric Goldreyer 26:01

because savvy people aren’t going to be chumps and aren’t going to pay more than they need to for the same property through us that they’d have to go pay for those guys. Um, I think it just continues to, the speed just continues to increase. You know, our sort of our internal goal is five years from now,

Eric Goldreyer 26:20

we’d like to have four million listings on the site. Okay. That’s half the size that Airbnb is today. That’s twice the size that Vrbo is today. Now those are free,right? Four million for free. If one in 10 of those pay us $50 a month, that one revenue line is a, almost a quarter billion ARR revenue line.

Eric Goldreyer 26:42

Once you’ve got a marketplace, there’s a lot of other ways to make money from it,right? Featured spots, uh, you know, vendors. I mean, the conference that you mentioned, uh, we, we dropped, uh, tens of thousands of dollars to be a sponsor at the largest vacation rental conference in the world in Vegas, uh, six weeks ago.

Eric Goldreyer 27:04

And the show went tremendously well for us. But already today, I’ve got three times more property manager members, customers than that association. So all the vendors trying to reach property managers, I’m a better marketplace for them. Granted, we’re not doing that yet because it’s a distraction.

Eric Goldreyer 27:22

We’re focused on this other thing. Um, but, you know, midterm rentals, not the short term, but the 30 to 180 day stuff. You know, Airbnb just rolled into hotels. There’s no reason we couldn’t eventually add hotels. They really want to drive booked direct,right? And then ultimately, I mean,

Eric Goldreyer 27:41

we’re, uh, savvy is a, a booked direct marketplace. You know, I mentioned fun air and here we are in the land of yachts. What, what’s stopping us from down the line after we’ve done it in the vacation rental space, adding incremental revenue streams in other markets.

Frank Curzio 27:59

So if someone, why would someone invest in your company right now?

Eric Goldreyer 28:04

I just think it’s, it’s a, it’s a really good time. I mean, we’ve, we’ve, I put in the first four to five million dollars. Uh, we, we are pre-seed round. We did an eight million dollar round. And, uh, we’ve got a team that has success. Uh, I’ve had, you know, three exits in the space.

Eric Goldreyer 28:24

Um, we’ve got collectively seven years of hospitality space with the, the executive team. Uh, we’ve got the, we’ve got the brand, we’ve got the product, it’s live. We’ve got that same conference that I mentioned to you. And this was a first for us,

Eric Goldreyer 28:43

but every single property manager we spoke to signed up,right? Some of them were signing up and they were already on. They didn’t realize because they’re like, oh my gosh,right?

Eric Goldreyer 28:53

Um, so they weren’t all net new, but, uh, we’re seeing solid success on the supply side and with 50% month over month growth on gross bookings and really not spending anything yet on marketing. Uh, I think it just goes to show you with 90,

Eric Goldreyer 29:14

91% of people saying that they want it, if we go out and make people aware of this, it takes off.

Frank Curzio 29:21

How much capital are you looking to raise?

Eric Goldreyer 29:24

We’re looking to raise eight to 10.

Frank Curzio 29:25

Eight to 10. Okay.

Eric Goldreyer 29:26

Yeah. It’s a, it’s a preferred round. So it’s a one X liquidation preference.

Frank Curzio 29:30

Explain what that means.

Eric Goldreyer 29:31

So that just means that, uh, if you invest in the round and let’s say, and some people mentioned it earlier, but we, we, let’s say we, we had to sell the company,right? And it was for less value than what you had put your money in at, you’d get your money back that you put in. So you sort of have downside protection,right? If it’s worth more than that,

Eric Goldreyer 29:51

it converts and you, you’re pro rata with everyone else, but you’re at the front of the capital stack to get your money back.

Frank Curzio 29:58

That’s great. Okay, guys, if you’re an accredited investor, you can get access through this deal to our Curzio One membership and you don’t have to have millions of dollars in a portfolio. Uh, usually when you have these deals, people never really get the price. I’m going to give the price. It’s $5,000 a year. So if you’re an accredited investor, the minimum investment, he wanted it to be a hundred thousand. I told him it’s going to be 25 and it’s 25.

Frank Curzio 30:17

Almost all the deals on minimum investors are 25. And I want you in at least three of these deals. So if you’re interested in coming in as a one member, you know, for me, I set up a call with you. Uh, I determine if, you know, this is right for you. I think since we launched this deal, uh, we’ve had several people come in. We have probably about, I think it’s like six or seven people.

Frank Curzio 30:38

And I think there was one call that’s thinking about, and they said, I don’t know if I can invest in like two deals. Maybe I said, you know, try to invest in three deals. You want to invest in several of these deals because you need one to work and it’s going to cover the next 20. And we’ve had a lot of deals in this membership, uh, which is really cool. Uh, we’ve had, uh, probably if I had to say 12, 15 deals over the past two,

Frank Curzio 30:57

two and a half years, I was able to get into a fund that’s one of the top performing funds in biotech. And not only that, we’re able to invest in a lot of the ideas where in the fund we were in at a low evaluation, very, very early stage. And then they’ve come out with phase two, a phase two studies that were great. And, you know, we’re in like 10 million in the fund and then they raise money at like 25 or 50 million evaluation, which is great for us.

Frank Curzio 31:17

And we have the ability to come into those, several of those companies. Uh, we invested in Sugarfina. I think it was the last time we opened up this membership and Sugarfina spoke at our conference. That was Scott Laporter. And they just told us and we invested in it at a valuation that during, this was a year ago, I think it was this time last year with Sugarfina. And I want to say it was a 70 million evaluation.

Frank Curzio 31:38

And then they had an independent evaluation come out that raised that to like almost 90 million. And we were still able to come in 70 million with warrants that are exercisable once the company goes public. Sugarfina is a real company. They were actually selling the candy and the chocolates and stuff like that, mostly gummies, not those types of gummies. Uh, and they’re seeing massive growth. They just had a huge acquisition of a coffee company.

Frank Curzio 31:57

It’s this roll-up strategy. This company is growing like a weed. They spoke at our conference and when they spoke, the place that we have here, 66, actually was selling the Sugarfina products in that store,right? Well, good to know for our subscribers, which is, you know, all people who invest in that deal that they just signed a letter of intent to go public, uh, by Q2 2026.

Frank Curzio 32:17

That’s going to be an exit for us,right? Which is great. It’s what we want to see. Uh, so if you had access to the Curzio One annual conference, uh, and some of you are listening to this, it was great. I interviewed personally, uh, 12 CEOs of companies that we were all invested in. You had access to those. There was a lot of work. I didn’t just let them go up there and do a presentation.

Frank Curzio 32:37

Uh, I said, you know, I want to interview them. And, and you know, again, a lot of work considering, you know, preparing for all those interviews, but it was great because I know these companies because I invested in them personally. And that’s what this membership’s about. It’s about you investing alongside me and what do I do? I make sure the terms of these deals are great. Sometimes I become an advisor for them, but sometimes the evaluations are too high and I say it’s got to come lower.

Frank Curzio 32:57

They say no. And I say no. I said, okay, I’m not going to invest in it. So there’s no pressure once you’re in to invest in any of these deals. I’m just letting you know, hey, I’m investing in these deals. So if you want to invest in it, here’s what I’m doing. And sometimes I’ll go a little heavy in it. Sometimes I’ll go a little light, but you know, you get access to me, you get access to the CEOs, access to everything. Uh, but the one membership, which is really cool and why it’s a fair deal,

Frank Curzio 33:17

that price is $5,000 for the year. So you don’t need millions and millions of dollars. And why it’s fair is because you have access to all of our products and services, which is probably more than $20,000 alone,right? So you have that, you have access to our conference, and then you have access to all the private deals that we get into. And they are opening up the private markets, uh, probably in 2026, going to be a major trend.

Frank Curzio 33:38

They want to be able to put more money in it. Why they want to open up the private markets? They want to have more liquidity for private companies. More liquidity allows the insiders to exit quickly,right? So it’s not about you and they’re like, wow, we feel like they should have the opportunity to invest. They’re trying to provide who the hell is going to buy some of this shit that we could unload to. That’s why that’s the real story of why you’re going to see so many private access.

Frank Curzio 33:58

You’re going to have access to a lot of this stuff. My job is to look through these deals and sift through them and go into the hood and say, okay, these guys are full of shit. This is terrible. And you know, you know that I’m not full of it because I’m investing my own money in a lot of these deals. Uh, and that’s what you have access to. So, you know, if you never invest in a private deal, we walk you through the whole entire process, you know,

Frank Curzio 34:17

signing documents, which we’re in DocuSign to make them easy because there’s a lot of signatures and things like that that you have to put. If you forget and it’s not DocuSign, they send you back to you back and forth, whatever. The wiring instructions, how to wire the money, uh, how you get your shares. You have total access to me, total access to CEO, like I said, and the management teams, uh, you know, and again, investing alongside me,

Frank Curzio 34:37

uh, and, you know, helping structure these deals is the most important value that you’re going to get because I’m able to look at these because I’ve gotten burnt before in some of these deals doing this for over 20 years investing in private companies. Uh, you know, you know what to look for, you know, antidilute clauses, just, you know, things that, that are hidden that you’re not going to see where you might say, you know, you know, everyone wants to invest in SpaceX,right?

Frank Curzio 34:59

Oh my God, SpaceX, I can get into the deal. Well, you’re going to be getting into it like a, you know, a 500 billion to a trillion dollar valuation. Okay. It would have been nice to get into very, very early. Uh, you know, so our job is to really look at these deals, look at the management teams, look to see when there’s going to be a liquidity period, meaning how are we going to make money from this company when they’re private?

Frank Curzio 35:17

Well, the liquidity period is going to come as if they get taken over, if they go public. So we want to make sure that’s going to happen within two to three years. If it’s going to take longer, we don’t want our money locked up forever,right? So this is the service that you get. Uh, if you’re interested in learning more, again, it’s a, it’s a price. You have the price already. There’s no sales pitch or whatever. It’s me getting on a phone with you and you can ask questions about the membership. Most people come in,

Frank Curzio 35:36

you know, just make sure you’re an accredited investor. Uh, you know, I’ll set up a call with you and see and determine if this is right for you. And almost everybody who’s come in recently to want to get into Savvy, there was just one person when I said, you know what, maybe it might not be right for you since you’ll, you know, you can only get into maybe two deals. I want you to be able to get into like three deals a year and, and diversify.

Frank Curzio 35:56

So, you know, this isn’t high pressure sales. It’s me giving you access because this is how I generate the most wealth. Uh, and you know, if you’re an accredited investor, some people said I’m there an accredited investor because they followed me for a long time, which is the ultimate compliment. Uh, I’m doing this for such a long time. I’m very humbled by that. Uh, but if you’re interested in learning more, frank@curzioresearch.com, I’m going to set up a call with you.

Frank Curzio 36:15

I’ll speak to you, uh, any questions you have, anything, but we do walk you through these deals. Some of you have a lot of experience. You don’t need that. Others, you know, it’s not a problem. You’re not bothering us at all. This is what we do,right? So we help people invest in these deals. We want to try to give you access.

Frank Curzio 36:29

And now that the platform is getting bigger and bigger, uh, it’s getting out there like a guy like Eric coming to us through someone who was already a member in our group and said, hey, you might want to talk to this guy. So our members are filled with great people, most of them own their own businesses. Uh, it was great. The conference occurred. You want to see everyone check that you got the door. There was all networking, everybody talking from different industries.

Frank Curzio 36:50

Didn’t matter how much money you made or how wealthy you were. It was just like, hey, you know what, the more access we have and the bigger that community, uh, and more money we can raise is the more access we’re going to have to great deals and the more money we’re all going to make together. And that’s the point of it,right? To have that kind of community of trust and building that trust. And it was just really cool to see that at the conference. It was really nice. So if you’re interested in coming in for a Curzio One membership,

Frank Curzio 37:12

frankcurzyresearch.com would be a great thing. Uh, you’re going to have access to the Savvy deal probably for the first two weeks in January. If you do come into that membership before that, I can guarantee you a spot as of now. Somebody can write a full check for the amount that they’re raising. Uh, but as of now, it is still open. Uh, I’m sure it’s going to be open pretty much the first week in January.

Frank Curzio 37:32

And then the second week is probably when we close it. That’s when the most people come in. But if you’re interested in the Savvy deal, uh, and you want to learn more about it, again, give me a call and you can get access to our Curzio One membership. So, uh, just want to say happy holidays to all of you and your families. Thank you so much for all your support.

Frank Curzio 37:52

I’m really looking forward to 2026 with our business model being changed and, you know, being marketing consultants now and also, you know, just providing services and one umbrella,right? Instead of providing like all these different products and everything you’re going to see early on in 2026, we’re going to switch our business model when it comes to publishing where, you know, everyone should have access to all of our ideas. You know, Daniel and I are recommending not just some of them,right?

Frank Curzio 38:12

Because that’s going to be the best value for your buck. And we’re not going to charge a massive membership fee for that where, you know, we want to lower it to where everyone can have access to all of our products and services because there’s always a bull market someplace. There really is. And this year it wasn’t in crypto. And some people in crypto got, got, you know, annihilated, but we offered a three-month membership for free because,

Frank Curzio 38:31

you know, crypto didn’t do that good and say, hey, here’s access to all of our products and services because almost every other one of our portfolios did great. And that’s what we want for you. We want to make you guys money. That’s the goal of this. This is why I do this. I don’t have to do this for a living. I don’t have to, you know, I could just retire now if I wanted to. I like helping people. I love this. I love getting into deals. I love learning, uh, from the companies that that I’m analyzing.

Frank Curzio 38:51

Uh, you know, that’s a big part of this. I’m always learning, uh, meeting new people, great people. You know, I really, I’m passionate about this. This is what I love to do. I’d be doing this no matter what. So I shouldn’t say I’d be doing this if I didn’t make any money because I do want to make money for my services. So I’m just like everybody else. But, uh, I just wanted to say, listen, happy holidays. Thank you so much for all your support. Uh, I love you guys and, uh, here’s to next year.

Frank Curzio 39:12

I’ll see you then. Take care.

Announcer 39:13

Wall Street Unplugged is produced by Curzio Research, one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry. The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its host and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money, and your responsibility.