Fil-Am Startup takes hassle out of extended stay home rentals

Ray Madronio of up-and-coming LocalBigWig.com

NEW YORK—Filipino American Ray Madronio is the tech startup founder of localbigwig.com, a booking platform for people looking for extended stays in this or any key cities. The site emerged from a co-working incubator spearheaded by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s NYU-Poly Business Development Program.

“I was lucky to be pre-selected to the NYU-Poly Business Development Program. It inspired us to be with other startups,” says Madronio. “It was a nurturing environment that kept us pushing ourselves.”

The program didn’t ask for equity stake from any of the startups, and it helped that the rent was free.

Madronio’s site aggregates all of the corporate housing and extended-stay options in any given city, giving users the platform to search, compare and book their furnished home rental.

Easy and secure

Local Bigwig now provides an easy, free and secure way to search and book vetted furnished monthly home rentals—to accommodate those staying beyond 30 days. The business lists only furnished, unshared apartments/homes. Home rental providers pay them fees, so it doesn’t charge anything to guests.

Madronio says the average stay in his extended stay business is 2 and 1/2 months.  Where Airbnb may be considered the opposite of hotel accommodation, Local Bigwig is all about extended stays in hotels.

Unlike many startups, Local Bigwig is largely bootstrapped.  “We don’t have an app yet, as we focus on our base platform made on Ruby on Rails,” he says.

Local Bigwig has the right mix of tech and real estate experience, as it aims to make renting less complicated and more streamlined online.  It claims that most of its customers, some students, come from Argentina, Europe, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the States with average rental fees of $2,300 a month to $18,000 a month.

Overstaying relatives?

Asked if his idea for extended stays came from Filipinos who visit relatives and overstay, he cracks up, “I love the Filipino sense of humor. There’s nothing like it in the world.” Like any Filipino kid, he was witness to fun Filipino parties and big extended families and friends.

The 38-year-old Madronio loosens up right away, talking about how a Pinoy told him he had “shagilid” locks. “Get it? Sa gilid, shagilid,” he points to his shaggy hair, as it sticks out from his fedora. He likes speaking in Tagalog.  “I’m very Filipino.”

Born in the Philippines, Madronio came to the United States when he was ten years old—what is called the 1.5-generation Filipino American; those born in the States are called second-generation Filipino Americans.

He got his entrepreneurial drive from his family. His father served as a firefighter in the Philippines and his mom was a credit union employee, before they went into the sedan and limousine service out of the San Francisco Bay Area, with 60 cars.

“They worked night and day.  They would pick up the phone at four a.m. If they were still doing it, it might have been uber.com by now. Uber’s app is the mobile way of getting a cab nowadays,” he said.

While they were doing that, Ray was running a lawnmower job, a pooper scooper business, and his own 7 Eleven in his backyard from age 10 to 14.

Techie start

From 1997 to 2003 after college, Ray worked as a programmer for Bed Bath & Beyond and Williams Sonoma and in 2004 for Gap, handling the massive technical implementation for its design process, to streamline its product pipeline.

“When I graduated, I wanted to be a CEO for a retail store. But once I was in it, I realized it wasn’t for me,” he recalled.

So he went back to the passion he discovered when he was 22–buying and selling real estate properties. “This time, I really listened to my heart. I just love it. It’s just really fascinating for me. I get a rush looking at crown moldings and floor plans.”

Since he admits to not watching sports on weekends, he explored the city’s neighborhoods to find their potential.  He walked around the city, talked to real estate agents, and checked out at least five open houses listed on the New York Times Real Estate Web site.

At first, he offered temporary accommodations. For example, if you were going to the Philippines, you would hand over the keys to Ray and he will clean the place, provide the necessities, de-clutter, insure it, market it, play the concierge, welcome the guest to the apartment, check them out and give them back their security deposit.  In return, he’d get 20 percent from the rent.

“That’s where I learned about the opportunities in this space,” he recalls of the time he did this for two years from 2007 to 2009.

Startup idea

It was around 2007 when the startup idea came to him. Back then his main concerns were finding a technical co-founder; coming up with a name, not spending too much writing his business plan for three months.  His co-founder is Sami Begg, a classmate from Columbia Business School.

Unlike other startups with new products or services, Madronio had the real estate business pretty much set; he just needed to put it online. “We were already making money from it (offline), because it was just a matter of bringing it online.”

“We just need to increase booking per month and get more global exposure. We will also continue to grow our supply of corporate housing on our platform,” Madronio says, adding he has Pfizer as one of his clients.

He picks up the phone himself at times, but he admits to having a virtual assistant in Cavite. When his business grows it’s not far-fetched to think he’ll have more virtual assistants in the Philippines. “They (Filipino) are the best.”

Of course, it’d be even better if other Filipinos start their own tech business.

SIDEBAR:

How do you start your own tech business? Here are some tips from Ray Madronio

1. Follow your heart. Listen to your gut.  Pursue it. Most likely you’ll succeed because you love it.

2. Seek out mentors. Having a network of mentors who has your best interest.

3. Find a community space like Poly NYU or Projective Space. Having a support system is helpful.

4. Attend events. Network your way through the tech community

5. Find players that may need your service. For his business, Trulia and Zillow agreed, because they get exposure to our listings.

6. Get help from a talented pool of interns.

7.  Just jump in. Don’t mortgage your house but find people with money

8. Teach yourself anything through Skillshare, Devbootcamp, General Assemb.ly