Our Story
Trellis was born at a crossroads.
Lodovico had already scaled a short-term rental portfolio past $2M in annual revenue. He knew the industry inside out — the late-night guest messages, the cleaners running behind schedule, the maintenance issues that never surfaced until they became emergencies. Growth didn’t simplify operations. It multiplied complexity.
After operating, he went deeper. He built the AI backbone behind Conduit, a guest communication platform used by property managers to automate responses. But through working closely with operators, he uncovered a harder truth: automating messages only solved the visible layer.
Behind every automated reply was manual coordination — dispatching cleaners, following up with vendors, resolving issues, closing loops. The real operational burden remained untouched.
At one point, Lodovico seriously considered walking away from property management altogether. The industry felt structurally broken.
Jan saw it differently.
Having worked across point solutions, PMS platforms, and consulting with operators on their tech stacks, he knew the problem wasn’t the industry — it was the missing layer. And he believed Lodovico was uniquely positioned to fix it. Few people combined deep operational experience with elite AI engineering the way he did.
Jan had already begun moving in that direction. He launched 
STR Tech Report, an open resource platform designed to help property managers navigate the overwhelming tech ecosystem and cut through the noise. He convinced Lodovico to join him.
What started as a media and education initiative quickly became something more: a proving ground. Together, they spoke with operators daily, mapped workflows, analyzed tech stacks, and uncovered the structural gaps holding the industry back.
One insight became unavoidable: the industry didn’t need another messaging tool. It didn’t need another dashboard. It needed an operating layer.
Behind the scenes, Lodovico began building. He started developing an automation engine for his own property management company, Xenia, using it as the first real-world use case. Instead of theorizing, he built directly against live operations — dispatching tasks, coordinating vendors, closing loops automatically.
When the system reached a point of real traction, he made a bold move: he applied to Y Combinator and added Jan as co-founder — confident they were the right duo to build this category-defining company together.
They got in. And Trellis was born.
In 2026, they formally launched Trellis to build what the industry had been missing all along — an automation platform that doesn’t just organize information or respond to guests. It runs operations.
Trellis coordinates cleaners, dispatches maintenance, communicates with guests, and closes the loop — without operators stuck in the middle.
They didn’t build Trellis because the industry was growing. They built it because without fixing operations, growth breaks everything.
