Case study

Stead

A home exchange between pet owners. Your pets stay home, cared for by another owner, while you stay in theirs.

Our own product, in development. Not yet in the app stores; steadswap.com.

Stead's first screen: two travellers wheeling suitcases to a front door with a golden retriever beside them, above the words Your pets stay home. You travel.
Stead's welcome slide: a couple with their dog, above the words Every swap is between fully verified members, with ID, home, pet and pledge checked on both sides
Stead's search step, Where could you go?, with a first step labelled Place reading Anywhere members have opened a home, above a city search field
Stead's dates step, offering any dates, exact dates, give or take, and a whole month

Welcome slides use the founder's own artwork. Search and dates are the real screens, cropped above any fabricated counts.

The problem

A week before the flight, pet owners do the arithmetic: the kennel, the sitter a neighbour used once, the friend who says yes and then goes quiet. Many shorten the trip, drive instead of fly, or do not go.

Existing home exchanges treat pets as a filter, a box on a listing that says an animal is allowed. Nobody is obliged to care for it.

What we built

A reciprocal exchange where both households have animals and both are occupied for the same nights, so looking after the other family's animals is the exchange itself. Four checks on both sides before a swap can confirm: identity, home, pet ownership and the care pledge. A person reads the evidence behind three of them, and the app never shows a tick nobody has granted.

Street addresses stay locked at the database until a swap is confirmed; a member who is not your confirmed counterparty cannot read one, whatever the app asks for. Reviews are double-blind within fourteen days. Reliability figures are computed from history, never typed in. Browsing, listing and asking for a swap are free; membership is a yearly fee with no booking, service or cleaning fees.

AI and automation inside

  • Care updates drafted for approval

    One edge function drafts the daily update from the handbook and the day's facts; the guest approves before it sends, and every call writes an audit row.

  • Messages screened for scam patterns

    The same function screens messages and flags the patterns scams follow in the thread, with the flag held server-side.

  • A digest for the reviewer

    A scheduled job asks every fifteen minutes what is waiting in the verification queue and emails ops, so no submission depends on someone remembering to look.

  • Reviews published by the clock

    Double-blind reviews reveal together when both land, or a nightly job publishes the lone review when the fourteen-day window shuts.

  • Retention sweeps

    Nightly jobs delete expired identity documents, old messages and old AI events, so the privacy policy's numbers stay true.

  • Membership from the webhook only

    Stripe's signed events are the only thing that grants or removes a membership; the app never tells the server it has paid.

Key features

  • Four checks, both sides

    Identity, home, pet ownership and the care pledge, with human review and no automatic ticks.

  • Address privacy in Postgres

    Row-level security keeps the street address unreadable until the swap is confirmed.

  • Search by place and date shape

    Any dates, exact dates, give or take, or a whole month, because two households must be free at once.

  • Swap threads with a backup plan

    Every confirmed swap names a backup before it confirms; the thread counts the days of the stay.

  • Care handbook and daily updates

    Routines written down and daily updates drafted with AI, approved by the owner before they send.

  • Message screening

    Messages are screened for the patterns scams follow and flagged in the thread.

  • Double-blind reviews

    Both sides write within fourteen days; nothing publishes until both are in or the window closes.

  • Computed reliability

    Response rate, swaps completed and cancellations are worked out by the system, not editable by the member.

  • Membership through Stripe

    Yearly membership with a founding rate, checkout and webhooks in Supabase Edge Functions.

  • Account rights

    In-app account deletion and the data rights the European market requires.

Platforms, stack and status

Platforms
Mobile app built with Expo and React Native; static website
Mobile stack
Expo (SDK 57), Expo Router, TypeScript, Hanken Grotesk, Maestro and Node test runners
Backend
Supabase: Postgres with row-level security, Auth with one-time codes, Edge Functions for checkout, Stripe webhooks, attestation, notifications and AI
AI
Edge functions that draft care updates and screen messages for scam patterns, with audit records
Status
In development. Not yet listed in the app stores; the site names no launch date and no platform.

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