Sublite: Penn Law student launches students-only sublet finder

Sublite is a website that lists sublets only from other students.

As cofounder and Penn Law student Alisa Melekhina put it: “No more Craigslist horror stories.”

There are currently 32 Philadelphia listings.

Melekhina, 22, said she was inspired by the difficulties she had finding a sublet while doing internships in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. The platform has 1,300 users from more than 125 different universities and will launch free pilots with Rutgers Business School and the University of Pittsburgh, which will advertise the site to their students. The Sublite team is eyeing paid subscriptions for universities as its revenue model.

Melekhina, a chess master, developed the site with Yale undergraduate and fellow chess master Yuanling Yuan. Yale freshman Qingyang Chen is Sublite’s CTO. Clearly there’s interest here: Penn’s college newspaper the Daily Pennsylvanian also has a website advertising sublets, focusing on students who rent West Philly homes and apartments but don’t use them between semesters, including the summer.

A Northeast Philadelphia native and Drexel graduate, Melekhina plans to move to New York City when she graduates this month for a job at a law firm.