Transforming the rental ecosystem, with Openroom co-founder Weiting Bollu (#17)

On this episode, the boys welcome Weiting Bollu who co-founded "OpenRoom" which aims to provide transparency in the rental ecosystem. What started off as a small passion project from a tenancy dispute has quickly grown into an online database with almost 2 million searches in past year by nearly 130,000 visitors to help Canadians make informed decisions on succeeding in the rental market. Weiting also dives into the world of entrepreneurship and product management with key leadership roles along the way. Lastly, Weiting shares her key success factors with inter-racial marriages, parenting and immigrant parents. Follow Weiting: https://www.instagram.com/openroomhq/?hl=en https://openroom.ca/ Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:40 How "OpenRoom" started 3:49 Difficulties in identifying good tenants 4:35 Weiting's Highschool journey 7:20 Shifting from business school to product management 8:26 Experience with university exchange programs 15:15 Buying a home 6 months after graduation 17:30 Unintentionally starting property management 18:32 Effects of a tenancy dispute 19:27 Misconceived notion of passive income through real estate 21:09 Historical trends of landlord vs. tenant issues 22:33 Inefficiencies in Ontario's landlord and tenant board 23:25 Leveraging "OpenRoom"s database for finding repeat offenders 24:55 Career in product management 29:40 Finding your inner "curious learner" 31:00 Powerful learnings from immigrant parents 33:00 Why I wanted to be an entrepreneur? 35:30 Complex problem-solving in the corporate world 37:10 Learnings from corporate world carried over into Entrepreneurship 39:50 Scaling "OpenRoom" 41:15 Passion project vs. viable project 42:10 Starting a business with your partner 47:20 Future of "OpenRoom" 48:38 Diversity of thoughts in interracial marriage 50:15 Managing entrepreneurship with parenting 55:04 Potential career as a "Chief of Staff" 56:20 Biggest takeaways from failures 1:00:10 Memorizing versus understanding content 1:01:20 Advice for career in product management 1:04:00 Growing social media following 1:09:00 OpenRoom's social media strategy 1:10:20 Social media strategy of Linkedin 1:12:30 Openroom going on viral 1:13:50 Advice for future entrepreneurs 1:14:45 Closing off