East Lyme ― Teddy Rainville’s two-and-a-half year effort to launch an app matching renters with compatible roommates has been as much about networking as the product he’s selling.

The Roomistry app, modeled after dating apps but geared to roommate chemistry rather than the romantic kind, asks users to answer questions about their lifestyle, location and budget.

It’s designed to help forge connections at a time when many young professionals are searching for people with whom to share the high cost of rent.

Rainville, of Manchester, grew up as a summer resident in Black Point. He moved away from home while attending Central Connecticut State University, but a series of failed attempts to find a compatible roommate led him back to his mother’s house – and inspired his new app.

The 25-year-old entrepreneur recalled in a phone interview Tuesday how a business relationship formed years ago with a Niantic business owner helped him gain an audience with Gov. Ned Lamont.

He said he first met Denise Thompson, owner of Artisan Framing & Gallery on Main Street, when he was a 12 years old and selling prints of an antique map of the Black Point Beach neighborhood for $20 each.

Thompson, who continues to sell his prints at her shop more than a decade later, put Rainville in contact with state Rep. Holly Cheeseman, R-East Lyme, after hearing about his efforts to market his new app.

The introduction led to a sit down with Lamont and Chief of Staff Matthew Brokman as they discussed how he might avail himself of support through the Connecticut Innovations venture capital fund administered by the state.

“It just goes to show, everybody knows somebody,” Rainville said.

Thompson on Tuesday said she was happy to connect the innovative young man with the state representative in a position to expand his network.

“You have to take advantage of everybody that’s willing to help you. That’s how anybody gets anywhere,” she said.

For Cheeseman, keeping young professionals in the state is a bipartisan commitment.

“I have increasingly learned, like so much in life, that relationships are key,” she said. “And when someone like Teddy, who is exactly the kind of young person the governor wants to encourage to be in the State of Connecticut with a product that will help other young people stay in Connecticut, if I can open those doors, then that’s what I’m here to do.”

The app has been on platforms including Apple and Google for about four months. Now, Rainville said he’s looking at bringing in investors to help with a marketing plan that started in Hartford, New Haven and Stamford and has since branched out into the Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., metro areas.

“Being what I want to be ― a nationwide business ― it can get pretty pricey to place ads all over the country,” he said.

Efforts to promote the app to his targeted demographic of 18- to 35-year-olds include using search engine optimization to help people find his site when they type in keywords that indicate they might be looking for an apartment. He’s also found success with audio advertisements on an online music platform.

Rainville graduated from Central Connecticut State University in 2021 with a degree in psychology. He worked for the family business and then as a bartender in what he described as a gap year before starting graduate school to become a clinical psychologist. But the plan changed when he turned to app development full time upon Roomistry’s launch.

Rose Rainville said her son’s business acumen was honed through nights spent dispatching calls for the Teddy’s Oil heating business she named after him. He was 12 years old when he’d take the overnight service calls from customers in need of a technician.

“Teddy had an uncanny ability to speak with adults at a very young age,” she said.

Rose Rainville started the oil company and an underground oil tank removal and replacement company after learning as a real estate agent of the niche that needed filling. She attributed her son’s longtime goal of being his own boss to growing up around successful, self-made businesses.

“He learned that from example,” she said.

Rainville credited his mother with encouraging him when the people he was dealing with and the amount of money he needed to spend was not just intimidating, but scary.

“She never let me quit,” he said. “She put her hands on my shoulder, she looked in my face, and she said ‘keep going.’ ”

e.regan@theday.com