The View from the Office.

I met up with Gabe Einhorn, co-founder of the startup VryfiD, at Le Pain Quotidien. I had a mint lemonade; Gabe passed on getting a coffee.

I stumbled across Gabe while doomscrolling on LinkedIn. He posts these fantastic videos interviewing strangers in Washington Square Park and tries to guess how much they pay in rent. I had to know more so I sent him a DM to meet up.

Three days later we are sitting in a cafe near Bryant Square Park and he is explaining that he does the videos to promote VryfiD, which he describes as a matchmaking exchange for renters and landlords.

The problem they are trying to solve is that renting in big cities can be a nightmare, especially these days when landlords list an open house and dozens if not hundreds of people show up. All those applications have to be evaluated and verified.

The trick is signing up people who want to rent and pre-qualifying them based on income, identity and any other requirements so that landlords don’t have to check later on. The company also seeks to match renters with their optimal apartments.

Gabe has a great backstory. He ran a sneaker reselling business and an e-commerce company in high school. In college he played soccer, but when the season ended his freshman fall, he found himself bored and with time on his hands.

The solution was to shift his courses to nighttime and look for work. He said he made a LinkedIn profile, searched “real estate” and started messaging every CEO, principal and managing partner in the tri-metropolitan area asking for work. He was 20 at the time.

He was offered a position at a commercial real estate finance firm and spent three years as a mortgage broker, sourcing deals via cold DMs through LinkedIn.

He graduated last May with an MBA through an accelerated program and was looking for his next role in real estate when his brother, then a rising junior at NYU, came home frustrated after trying to find an apartment.

The company pre-verifies renters who pay a one-time $20 fee. They use AI to compile a profile about the renter so they can try to match the person with a property. Landlords receive the two or three best candidates for each unit.

About 500 renters have signed up and they plan to officially launch Sept. 1.
The company is bootstrapped. The team is Gabe, his brother and three NJIT students.

The videos are the only marketing. He said he got the idea from all the influencers who wander around Soho asking “can I see your apartment” or “what do you do for a living.”

He realized he needed a unique hook and that’s when he hit upon the idea of asking strangers if he could guess how much they pay in rent.

You can connect with Gabe via LinkedIn or DM me for a warm intro.