The problem
Students transferring or subletting tenancies had no trusted, verified channel. Facebook groups and WhatsApp chats are full of scams; landlords and letting agents aren't set up for mid-year handovers. The gap was verification: proving you're a real student at a real university.
What we built
GrabStays is a .ac.uk-verified platform where students can list and take over tenancies safely. Sign-up requires a valid university email; listings are scoped to Warwick and Coventry at launch. Built solo on Next.js and Supabase, deployed on Railway.
Go-to-market was deliberately scrappy: printed flyers on campus, targeted Reddit posts, student press, with zero ad spend. The constraint forced focus on one thing that had to work on day one: trust via verification.
Lessons
Verification is the product. Features come second. Students won't browse listings if they don't believe the people on the other side are real. Everything else (search, messaging, filters) is built on that foundation.
More from the build log
Aug 2026 · 7 min
I expected the model to believe old documents. It did something else.
Building a conflicting-evidence benchmark, breaking the harness twice, and watching the main hypothesis fail.
2026 · 14 min
Building a draggable card-canvas hero (with the code)
A breakdown of this site's hero: ten draggable cards, centred copy, mono hover hints, and copy-paste code for each one.