Wes Smithe

General Info

About

Wes is the co-founder and CEO at Direct® where he oversees the company's growth and development. Founded in 2017, Direct is an end to end enterprise software platform for vacation rental management. The all-in-one property management system adds tremendous value by bringing every feature professional managers with 100+ units need to operate under one roof, including a proprietary channel manager (directly integrated with Airbnb, HomeAway, and Booking.com), CRM, fully-automated housekeeping & maintenance workflows, white label website builder, accounting with fully-integrated payouts, smart home automation, revenue management, auto messaging, and much more.

Prior to starting Direct, Wes began his career in the late 2000’s working on the front lines with hundreds of short-term rental property owners in 10 markets across the country who listed on his site GamedayHousing (which still operates and currently runs on Direct). Along the way, he helped his clients generate over $10 MM in income, and then spun off a vacation rental marketplace called Vaystays that consolidated professionally managed units across the globe. During this transition Wes experienced firsthand the difficulties working with incumbent B2B property management systems, and made a decision in early 2017 to completely pivot his focus to Direct.

Alongside co-founder Chad O’Farrell, Wes is focused on providing professionals in the space with a next-gen, innovative software solution that is built to work at scale in response to the major consolidation currently underway in this emerging asset class.

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