Can this startup get your college-town landlord to shape up?

When you were in college, did you wish you could get help hunting for apartments beyond shady Craigslist ads? Did you wish you knew how to deal with your absentee landlord when the faucet would not stop leaking and it kept flooding the kitchen floor? Well, you should’ve had TenantU.
The fledgling University of Delaware startup wants to become a platform that bridges the gap between student tenants and landlords.
Horn Program student Jacob Jeifa will be starting his graduate studies this fall, but this summer he’s working on the Summer Founders Program. That’s where he got the idea for TenantU. He recruited his friend, Adam Goldstein, who is a graduate student at Lehigh University, to work with him, along with Wilmington University grad student Wilson Hsu.

Let's Head Home. pic.twitter.com/Jov7S3CQ0i

— TenantU (@TenantU) May 7, 2016

What ties this team together? They all attended the University of Delaware as undergrads.
“We have 120 properties listed right now, we expect to have more than that by the fall,” said Jeifa, who is optimistic about the platform’s user growth. “We expect to be at over 500 by the fall. We could add all of these properties if we really wanted to, but we wanted [the platform] to grow organically. We wanted the landlords to come to us. We want their engagement.”
The platform is currently in beta testing among student and landlord users in the University of Delaware and Lehigh University areas.
The design work was outsourced. Families and company partners funded roughly $24,000 for web development costs, Jeifa said.