Kiki officially gets back into subletting, but the “girls only” group is staying

Kiki, the subletting startup turned girls-only social group is now officially subletting again after the company’s controversial pivot back in January.

The business garnered a large amount of attention at the time due to the “girls-only” group being run almost entirely by men.

The startup community raised further concerns over Kiki’s publicity stunts, which included a founder wearing budgie smugglers on a flight and stripping on live television. Questions were also raised around Kiki’s hiring practices, such as inviting a prospective female employee to “pre-drinks” as the team felt she was too serious during a coffee interview.

At the time of the company’s pivot, Kiki pointed back to this same hire, saying it was her struggle making friends in New York that inspired the founders to rebrand the business.

The pivot was well documented in a series of now-deleted Instagram highlights from the Kiki account. This included commentary from the founders stating that one of its major investors, Blackbird Ventures, was supportive of the change, name-dropping investment partner Samantha Wong at the time.

Eyebrows were also raised at the time when one of the founders claimed in the Instagram stories that Girls Who NYC expected to lose $200,000 during its first two months, the company did not have a revenue strategy for the new direction, but it also expected to IPO in seven years.

Since then the company issued an apology on Instagram. Blackbird also released a blog post regarding its involvement with the company and its direction shift. It also quietly removed positive mentions of Kiki’s previous publicity stunts from its Investment Notes page.

Kiki returns to its subletting era

After staying relatively quiet since February, the company took to Instagram recently to announce the relaunch.

“Subletting’s back, back again,” a notes app screenshot in the post read.

“Secret’s out, we’re relaunching subletting TONIGHT, with a whole new approach.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/C4rFndxNHnZ/?igsh=eGtncWVjdmcwOWJ4

The post went on to recap that when Kiki launched in New York in 2023 that it saw over 1400 listings in the first three months, but it was missing the community it had in Sydney.

“So we decided to go all in on connecting those who’d just moved to NYC, launching ‘girls who NYC’,” the post read.

It went on to say that Girls Who NYC was a social club for “girls” who have recently moved to New York. According to Kiki, it has resulted in a “tight knit group” who have attended concerts, dinners and parties together.

“It’s been pretty incredible to watch so we’re going to keep growing this, opening up more groups every month.”

“We’ve finally figured out how to solve the transactional + magical connection part of subletting. The aim has always been to build a community with only 1 degree of separation and to do this, we’re launching for a smaller numbers of friendship groups and expanding from there.”

According to Kiki, in order to list or book on the platform now, potential users will have to DM the company on Instagram and one of the team members will either set a Facetime or coffee catch-up before approval.

“No one will be let in if we haven’t met them so there’s no chance of those FB weirdos,” the post read.

“We help people moving to nyc find a sublet and they can also apply to join our social club ‘girls who nyc’. We’ve found moving to a city isn’t just about where you live, but have the right people around you.”

Kiki’s pivot back to subletting was hinted at last month

This move was first hinted at in February when Kiki broke its silence on the direction change of the business, with co-founder Toby Thomas-Smith addressing the backlash on Instagram. It was also around this time that the company swapped its profile name from Girls Who NYC back to Kiki Club.

Part of the video included Thomas-Smith saying that Kiki was “still committed” to subletting. The same day this video was posted, Kiki’s primary investor, Blackbird Ventures, wrote a blog post that supported this narrative.

“We backed Kiki based on its world-class early traction in Sydney. Kiki’s recent update explaining that subletting remains essential to their strategy provides welcome clarity and we’ll continue to work with them as they navigate the next stages of the business,” the blog post read.

However, despite the assertions from both parties, they didn’t quite match what Kiki said at the time it advertised its rebrand to a “girls only” social club called Girls Who NYC.

A now-deleted Instagram story from January included a caption stating “no subletting anymore”. It’s worth noting however that in the same bout of stories, Thomas-Smith also said the business would look to relaunching subletting “down the track”.

SmartCompany contacted Kiki for comment but did not receive a response. Blackbird declined to comment.