Manny Bamfo

Emmanuel Manny Bamfo is a technology entrepreneur based in San Francisco who has worked in and founded startups focused on providing individuals places to rest that can be rented by the hour, or the minute. He was Head of Growth at Hitch, which was acquired by Lyft, co-founded and served as CEO of Recharge, and is currently the co-founder and CEO of Globe.. Bamfo was selected for the Business Insider Silicon Valley 100 list in 2016, and Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2019. He has appeared on Mornings with Maria with Maria Bartiromo and on Too Embarrassed to Ask with Kara Swisher.

Early life

Bamfo was born in Southfield, MI and grew up in Ann Arbor MI. While at Washington University in St. Louis in 2009, Bamfo met his co-founder at Globe, Eric Xu. The two worked on a startup together with other friends, and have been involved in various ventures through the years. After studying traffic patterns and noticing how the placement of coffee shops had a significant effect, Bamfo and his co-founders believed that something was missing. "You know the founder of Starbucks always talked about this third place, if you will, the place that’s in between home and work, and for us, from our viewpoint, that place was missing the comforts of your home."

Career

As Head of Growth at Hitch during its acquisition by Lyft, Bamfo's experience in the ride sharing space led to his interest in providing something other than overnight hotel stays or coffee shops. The amount of downtime ride share drivers have was a key statistic, which caused Bamfo and his co-founders to question whether there were multiple sectors in which people needed a place to rest away from their typical circumstances, without having to book overnight hotels in advance. JetBlue was one of the early strategic investors in Recharge, which was focused on metropolitan cities and hotels.

During his tenure as co-Founder and CEO of Recharge, the company raised $10 million from investors interested in the service "sharing" sector.

While appearing on Maria Bartiromo's show on Fox Business channel, the host mentioned, "“Manny there is an old joke about hotels that charge by the hour.” (laughter) To which Bamfo replied, “Absolutely, you know, this is not about rock and roll, this is not about that…”, and Dagen McDowell added, "This is about sleepy, tired people." On another occasion, Jimmy Fallon ran with the joke in one of his opening monolouges: "Listen, there’s a new app aimed at businessmen called Recharge, which lets you rent hotel rooms by the hour to take a nap, or shower,” (laughter), “and also that’s definitely not what it’s really for...uh, we have a great show you guys give it up for…"

In June of 2019, Bamfo and Xu founded Globe, with the stated mission of "organizing the world's housing." Whether achievable or not, their long range goal is to reach an economy of scale that combines any length of stay with other localized goods and services, which could cause a reduction in costs. Y Combinator accepted Globe into their lineup of early stage companies.

In the media

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External links

• Emmanuel Bamfo on linkedin
• Emmanuel Bamfo on twitter
• Team - Recharge
• Recharge - Forbes
• Emmanuel Bamfo - CEO and Co-Founder @ Globe
• Manny Bamfo Archives | Hotel Business
• Manny Bamfo Archives - Short Term Rentals
• Rental startup Recharge to add private homes to platform