With more than 10.000 new people moving into it per year, cities such as San Francisco need to get more interested people into the, basically, same number of flats and houses. For a lot of them, finding a roommate will be an obvious way to both share space and expenses – and this is where Room.Me, a new roommate matching platform, comes in.

As In love…

Room.Me wants to be the OKcupid, Tinder, and even Airbnb of the roommate-matching world. While there are other websites that try to do what Craigslist for example can’t, few have really matched what the previously mentioned websites have done for dating.

Dating and living together do indeed have their share of mutual issues. Living with someone is far easier when you share the same interests or habits. As an early riser I would personally have issues with someone whose nighttime noise wouldn’t let me go to bed until late at night. On the other hand, my own meat-loving attitude paired with a Balkan diet might go on some vegan’s nerves – and that’s fine. While if we were in love, that might be a minuscule issue between us – in a “roommate situation” it might escalate to a very bad mismatch and lead to someone storming out of the shared-living relationships.

Room.Me has decided to launch its offering with an emphasis on one of the larger technology hubs in the world – the city of San Francisco and Silicon Valley. With 10.000 new people coming to SF every year and a very tech-friendly populace, Room.Me hopes to show how its platform can improve a saturated “roommating” market.

It’s a logical decision by a startup that is obviously part of the sharing economy. Just instead of sharing rides in a manner similar to Uber, or a place just for a couple of nights like on Airbnb, Room.Me helps people share long-term housing.

Gaining traction in this particular location would help Room.Me prove its model and then try to grow to cater to other cities – around the world. For that, it needs the experience and insight of some of the world’s most successful sharing economy startups that grew out of, you guessed it, San Francisco. Proving its model on the doorstep of the sharing economy market will help Room.Me not just (obviously) gain traction, but also investors that will be able to help it in its mission, helping people “find the perfect roommate”.

Founded in Germany by Max Kersting, Felix Glaser and Wilko Kunert and Benjamin Urland (who is no longer with the company), Room.Me grew out of the Axel Springer Plug and Play accelerator located in Berlin. Part of the fourth batch of startups present in the media giant’s startup programme, Room.Me was the only German startup present in the round that also included a number of other sharing economy projects, such as Zizooboats, an “Airbnb for boats”.

How Do You “Find a Perfect Roommate”?

When you first register for Room.Me, whether to find a roommate or post a room, it presents you with a relatively short 9-question quiz. These first 9 questions focus on, among else:

• What kind of relationship do you want with your roomate? Do you want to be best friends or just some people living together?
• How clean do you want the space you’re living in to be and also how clean does your roommate have to be?
• Do you host friends often or just rarely? Would you mind if your roommate hosted people?

All of these question’s are part of Room.Me’s matching algorithm that should help you find people that are a better match for you. Room.Me co-founder Max Kersting told Techcrunch that he got the idea from dating websites that rely on their own algorithms to match up potential lovers.

While some of the questions asked are quite obvious, a lot of them will make you think for a second on what your preference is. Room.Me also offers a number of additional questions you can answer that will help guide the platform into matching you up with someone that fits your personality type. Some questions might need to be asked a bit differently, because I can’t see someone outright saying “Yes” to “Do you enjoy racist, homophobic, or mysoginistic jokes?”

Your Profile – Your Roommate Compatibility!

When you fill out your profile, Room.Me will automatically show a compatibility score when you go on someone’s profile page – and the platform really emphasises its perceived advantage in the market, which is quite smart: Room.Me relies on the answers to the questions it gave you as well as a matching comparison to fill in content that users might not have yet filled in themselves by using the service’s “About me” option.

So in order to have a lot of content rich profiles, Room.Me just needs you to login with Facebook (which will get it your age and photo) and answer its questions, which will get it 80% there in filling out your profile – thus helping it succeed in its mission. When you do find a compatible roommate you can send them a message through Room.Me.

While roommate matching will definitely get Room.Me users, having rooms to rent in on the platform might prove an even better way of monetizing the service. After all, why go to Craigslist if you can have everything in one place?

The Right Time to Find Roommates – and Offer Them

Room.Me seems to be entering the market at an ideal time, with a Zillow study showing that adults in the US and relying more and more on living with someone else and having roommates in order to save on expenses. The percentage of adults that need roommates has, according to this study, increased to 32 percent nationally. This is a direct result of rent as a share of monthly household income also increasing to 29% up until 2012., making living with someone an obvious choice to save money. Zillow’s Skylar Olsen says:

There are a number of strategies to cope with rising rents and stagnating incomes, including moving to a smaller home and/or moving to a cheaper area. But the likely first choice for many is to add more roommates to the household in order to spread the costs around, which creates more doubled-up households nationwide. Nationally, 32 percent of working-age adults – aged 23 to 65 – live in doubled-up households, up from 25 percent in 2000 and 26 percent in 1990.

If we look at a map it’s again obvious why Room.Me chose San Francisco and the Bay area to launch in the US. California’s metro areas are very keen on “doubled-up” households. The map also shows Room.Me’s obvious future markets in the US: Los Angeles and New York. For now – it’s youre looking for a roommate in the San Francisco area – find them at Room.Me!

Note: An earlier version of this article said that Benjamin Urland was active in the company. While a co-founder, Urland is no longer working for Room.Me