UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Two years after graduating from Penn State with a degree in economics in 2021, Ezra Gershanok quit his first post-graduation job as a business analyst to pursue his new business venture, Ohana Subleasing Co., with co-founder Jacob Halbert, a 2022 University of Michigan alumnus.
Throughout his career as an entrepreneur, Gershanok, a Paterno Fellow and Schreyer Scholar alumnus, has always had a knack and passion for finding solutions to problems he, his friends and his colleagues have faced. During his first year at Penn State, Gershanok created Keyper, a phone wallet to hold both an ID/credit card and dorm key, after watching other students lose their dorm keys.
“Keyper gave me experience that couldn’t be captured in the classroom,” he said. “It proved that to build something, you can't just follow a rubric. You have to try a lot of things and get rejected a lot. After you endure this rejection and still succeed, you develop more confidence than getting A's in class. It’s hard for classwork alone to prepare you to be an entrepreneur because people hardly fail or face rejection in the classroom. It's too safe of an environment. I think you have to actually try to build something — even something small like Keyper.”
Gershanok and Halbert saw another opportunity to reshape a challenge they personally experienced into the basis for their current company — connecting summer interns to empty apartments around the country.
“Simultaneously, millions of college students are paying for an apartment they do not need in the summer, while millions of interns are looking for short-term housing over the summer. That realization was the tip of the iceberg,” Gershanok said. “We realized that we were not the only ones in this dilemma.”
The duo began researching this problem and the potential solutions. They recognized that services like short-term rentals or hotels are expensive to book over the summer, resulting in students turning down internship offers due to the inability to secure affordable summer housing. Their solution? Ohana Subleasing Co., a housing marketplace for the United States’ 20 million college students.
From their experience with Keyper, the duo said they knew they could not pursue this new venture alone and had to leverage any available support and opportunities, like they did in college. Luckily, Gershanok and Halbert received $625,000 and acceptance to a four-week boot camp at Neo, a mentorship community, startup accelerator and venture capital fund, helping the two accelerate their business and connect with other like-minded founders.
“When somebody is willing to introduce you to people in their network, you do not want to take that for granted. It is too valuable,” Gershanok said. “When people get a little older in their life or career, they want to be a mentor and pass on their insights. It is like their way of giving back and staying connected to new generations.”
Neo also introduced them to “never-ending" connections with industry leaders — including current and former Airbnb and Zillow Group executives — who have been pivotal to Ohana’s success and have served as advisers and shareholders. They closed their $1.2 million pre-seed round last October, and this May, they raised another $3 million.
In April, Ohana saved their customers over $500,000 in rent with the hosts saving over $6,000 per sublease, on average, according to Gershanok. In 2024, the co-founders said they are “laser-focused” on helping college students save $10 million in rent by subleasing their empty apartments to interns moving to their city this summer.
“The most rewarding part of our Ohana journey is seeing where we are right now,” Gershanok said. “Now, we are seeing and helping people use our service successfully. It is just showing us how our idea and this service is finally solving this problem we set out to solve close to two years ago.”