Why I started this
Travelling showed me that the first hours in a new place can feel heavy: confusion, hunger, noise, fatigue. Too much at once.
You walk into your apartment after a long flight. There's coffee, there's water. No bread, no yoghurt, nothing for a simple breakfast. So instead of resting, you head out again, past unfamiliar streets into a supermarket where the brands are different and the queue takes longer than you expected. Or you've landed at eleven at night, and the last thing you want to work out is what's still open, which route is safe at this hour, and what tomorrow morning will ask of you before it's even started.
You wanted to land. You're still landing.
These are small things. Not catastrophes. But the small things are what decide whether a first week starts with someone feeling steady, or already tired and behind.
For a long time I could see the problem clearly but not the answer. When it came, it wasn't a system or an app. It was a person. Someone already in Nairobi who knows which shop opens early, which neighbourhood grocery stocks the brand a newcomer would want, which route runs safe after dark. Someone whose calm holds at exactly the hour a stranger is most lost. I couldn't be that person in every neighbourhood, on every arrival. But you can.
That's what a host is. UrbanChill takes those small things off a guest's plate; KIMANZI is how it actually happens on the ground, through you. When a guest's first morning turns out well, that isn't luck and it isn't logistics. That's you. The guest may never say it out loud, but I always know where it came from.
So I build this slowly, and I stay selective. Not to keep people out, but because to me a host isn't help I hire. You're the operation. I'd rather have one careful conversation than a rushed signup, and I'd rather decline a partnership than dilute what you'd be part of. If you're considering applying as a host, partnering with us in Kenya, or setting up an arrangement from the Netherlands, send a message and we'll talk.
— Stephen L.Founder, UrbanChill & KIMANZI