Oikoi

Oikoi operated as an online apartment matchmaking platform, positioning itself as a 'dating site for housing.' Founded in 2012 by Logan Fuller, the company was based in Kitchener, Canada. Fuller, an Electrical Engineering student at the University of Waterloo, was inspired to create the platform due to his own frustrations with finding housing while moving for co-op placements every four months. He found the process of sifting through thousands of listings on sites like Kijiji or Craigslist to be inefficient, lacking crucial information about the neighborhood or the identity of the listers.

The platform aimed to simplify the rental process for both tenants and landlords. For tenants, Oikoi provided a curated list of properties based on specific needs, such as price range and neighborhood characteristics like proximity to the city center or quietness. This was designed to eliminate the need to browse through countless irrelevant listings. For landlords and those looking to sublet, the service streamlined the process of finding quality tenants by making it easier to filter applicants, manage communications, and decide who to show the property to. The platform also intended to use users' social graphs to enhance the search for sublets, rentals, and roommates. The business targeted the vast apartment rental industry, recognizing the significant time investment and difficulty property managers faced in finding suitable tenants.

In December 2012, Oikoi secured an undisclosed amount in a Seed funding round from investors including Canrock Ventures and Communitech. Despite its early efforts to address a common problem in the rental market, the company was officially dead-pooled in December 2013 and is no longer active.

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