How Independent Talent Helps Lighthouse Share the Wealth With Renters

Homeownership feels like an impossible dream to many Americans. According to real estate brokerage firm Redfin, about 15% of millennial and gen Z adults find it hard to imagine they’ll ever own a house. One of the biggest challenges? Coming up with a down payment amid rising purchase costs.

Matt See and Alan Chang, co-founders of Lighthouse, hope to change this narrative. Lighthouse is a rental location service with a unique goal: They want to help people move forward in life—all by moving into a new apartment.

Developing the rental platform of the future

The company’s vision is inspired by Alan’s parents. They moved several times after immigrating to the United States, trying to find a place to call home.

After spending eight years in leadership at Airbnb, Alan joined forces with Matt, a certified financial analyst (CFA) who was seeing firsthand how hard it could be to buy a home.

“Here in San Francisco, buying even a rather small apartment can still cost over a million dollars,” Matt said. “And I knew that if I was wondering how homeownership could be possible, a lot of other people are feeling that way too.”

The two men combined their experience in housing and finance to begin a revolutionary rental service—one that considers having a roof over your head to be a right, not a privilege.

Turning renting into an opportunity to build wealth

The company’s premise is straightforward: Renters find an apartment through Lighthouse—either online or with the help of a licensed real estate agent—tell the landlord they were referred by Lighthouse, and receive up to $1,000 back upon signing a lease.

This isn’t a lease discount, either—it’s cash that renters can use as they please, whether that’s to pay bills, help furnish their new place, or, as Matt and Alan envision, save up for a down payment.

“One of the biggest steps toward wealth is home ownership,” Matt said. “But putting together a down payment is the biggest challenge people face.”

There’s no limit to how many times a renter can benefit from Lighthouse’s service. As soon as their lease is up, and they’re ready to look for a new apartment, a renter can return to Lighthouse and get cash back on their next move.

“Our vision is to work with people who are young and looking for their first rental. Ideally, they’ll love our platform and want to come back in two years when their lease is up—and then two years after that, too,” Matt said. “If they use Lighthouse for all of their rentals, they’ll keep getting cash back. We want to help them build their savings.”

Realizing the benefit of independent talent

At its launch, Lighthouse was a bootstrapped company—and Matt was coding the site. One day, while troubleshooting an issue, he decided he was ready for some help.

He turned to Upwork’s platform and found a back-end engineer who quickly resolved the issue, freeing Matt up to focus on other parts of the Lighthouse operation. He was immediately impressed.

“He was fast and skilled. It was more efficient to work with him than to do it all myself,” Matt said. “From there, I looked for design help and connected with an agency in Ukraine. They’re some of the best designers in the world, and it showed me how I could be location agnostic and find the best talent wherever they are.”

Leveraging AI to deliver even better customer experiences

Today, Lighthouse does maintain an internal staff, including 60 apartment locators—agents who help Lighthouse users find and apply for the perfect unit, all at no cost to the renter.

These locators spend a lot of time searching for apartments that match renters’ preferences, and then communicating with users through phone, email, and chat.

Matt and Alan were curious to see if generative AI could free up some of their team’s time. Once again, they turned to Upwork for help.

“We wanted to surprise our team with a product that could help to produce building recommendations,” Matt said. “I found two awesome candidates and wound up hiring an AI freelancer based in Paris.”

Soon, Matt and Alan had exactly what they needed.

“The talent got us so far, so fast—that was really exciting. And now we have this chatbot with access to 9,000 buildings and it’s always on, always super responsive,” Matt said. “You can chat with the AI and tell it what you want, such as an apartment under $2,500 per month, with a pool, and a Starbucks nearby. The AI can tap into a lot of data sources to find exactly what you want—it does a really good job at that.”

By handing off some of the initial work of apartment searching to the chatbot, Lighthouse’s locators can spend more time on high-value work that requires a human component—such as calling renters to provide support and communicating directly with apartment complexes.

Looking toward new markets—and talent projects

Right now, Lighthouse is only available to renters in four Texas metro areas—but the company has plans to grow.

“There aren’t enough housing opportunities for young people,” Matt said. “We want to put money back in more people’s wallets and help them build their savings.”

He sees Upwork being a big part of that process.

“I love the platform and the amount of talent I have access to,” Matt said. “We really couldn’t be this far along without help from the talent on Upwork.”