Dan Mishin and the business of opening doors

At eleven, Dan Mishin discovered that missing a train could improve a journey. An unplanned night in a Berlin hostel put him among young travelers talking in languages he could not follow. They seemed to be having a very good time. Back home in Sevastopol, he wanted to make a place where people like that would come and visit him.

The available premises belonged to the family: his grandmother’s apartment. Mishin turned it into a backpacker hostel. A child’s enthusiasm had acquired beds, guests and chores. The international atmosphere that delighted him in Berlin now depended on someone doing the laundry. That someone was also the proprietor.

Today Mishin is the founder and CEO of Manifest OS, a New York technology company supporting law firms under the Manifest Law brand. Between the hostel and the legal business came Bear Hostels, Planet of Hostels and June Homes. The route looks restless on a résumé. Follow the customer, however, and a pattern emerges: a traveler needs somewhere to sleep, a newcomer needs an apartment, an immigrant needs help with permission to stay.

The night the train got away

Mishin’s origin story contains a useful distinction. What caught his attention was the life inside the hostel. The people, their conversation, the possibility of meeting a wider world. His first business was a way of inviting that world into a room he could manage.

A Norwegian hostel operator in Kyiv, Robert Hansen, taught him the basics and sent customers for a commission. The arrangement gave a young proprietor something enthusiasm alone could not supply: practical instruction and a route to paying guests. Even a charming origin needs distribution.

The initial setup cost was $200. Black Sea Fleet sailors made beds from surplus wood; bedclothes came through a friend of his mother. These were the materials at hand. The business started with arranging them into something a stranger would pay to use.

The step toward Moscow brought his brother into the venture. A small hostel could become another small hostel, then a network. The mechanics accumulated: booking relationships, furniture, reception, standards. A bunk bed is reasonably easy to understand. Making a collection of bunk beds behave like one business takes rather more explanation.

A chain is harder than a room

Bear Hostels brought Mishin attention while he was still young. In 2012, the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards recognized him with a Lessons from the Edge award. The title was apt for someone discovering the distance between a busy property and a business that could expand reliably.

The early hostel years supplied less photogenic lessons too. Seasonal occupancy could push a property into the red. Investors and founders could disagree about what to do with the proceeds. Plans for franchising ran into the problem that separately managed hostels did not yet offer a sufficiently consistent system to reproduce.

During an interview in the hostel years, Mishin noticed a loose plastic corner on a windowsill. He stopped attending to the interviewer and started putting it back. The scene has more explanatory value than a grand declaration of ambition. A service business can summon its chief executive through a piece of trim.

In 2012, Bear Hostels was majority-acquired by Planet of Hospitality, and Mishin became CEO of the Planet of Hostels venture. Investment brought the possibility of expansion, alongside a more formal way of running the company. He had to learn budgeting, forecasts and the discipline of reporting to people whose money was involved.

“If a person gives you money, you need to be accountable.”

Dan Mishin, on learning to work with investors

That lesson complicates the familiar portrait of the child entrepreneur. Initiative got him started. Continuing required a willingness to become more organized. He exited Planet of Hostels in 2015. The next substantial chapter would unfold in American housing, where the reception desk had been replaced by an application form.

A new city, another locked door

June Homes began in 2017, with its first property in Harlem. Mishin had encountered the difficulties of finding a place to live in New York. The company offered a more flexible route into rental housing, applying technology and managed operations to the relationship between residents and property owners.

The continuity with hostels is straightforward: both businesses put people into rooms. The change in duration makes everything else more demanding. An apartment carries a different set of expectations from a backpacker’s overnight stop. Housing has to accommodate lives already in progress, with all their inconvenient particulars.

By September 2023, June had announced EBITDA profitability, annualized revenue above $54 million and growth of more than 60 percent year over year. Mauricio Zuniga, its chief operating officer, became CEO. Mishin remained chairman. The company he had founded was reaching a stage where another operator would lead its daily work.

June Homes later merged with Outpost in November 2025. The announcement described a combined business managing more than 4,000 units across seven major cities. It was another turn in the housing company’s story, after Mishin had already begun devoting himself to a different set of customers.

Transitions are often compressed into a line in a biography. Here the line matters. Mishin had built a business large enough to hand over, and he chose to begin learning another one. The next industry had its own paperwork, its own gatekeepers and a particularly consequential version of the customer’s question: what happens now?

The founder takes the junior job

As an immigrant, Mishin had moved through an O-1 visa, a green card and U.S. citizenship. As an entrepreneur, he had also bought legal services for his businesses. Across those experiences, he encountered uncertain costs and the frustrating work of chasing updates. A bill could be punctual even when an answer was elusive.

Mishin spent months inside law firms, interviewing attorneys and examining their workflows. He wanted to understand the job from the other side of the transaction. The view from a client’s inbox explained the irritation. Watching the firm operate might explain its cause.

He has said that he spent two months working as a paralegal before starting Manifest OS. That is an unusually literal form of customer research: taking a junior role in an industry you intend to enter. It also fits the earlier proprietor who assembled furniture and worked reception. He keeps going toward the place where the service is made.

The question became how to support experienced attorneys who wanted to practice law without also carrying every function of a small business. Marketing, intake, document collection and billing all require attention. A lawyer’s professional expertise does not make those tasks disappear. Nor does a client particularly enjoy paying for the confusion around them.

“Getting clients is so much harder than building technology.”

Dan Mishin, on the work of building a business

The new venture also drew on a relationship from June Homes. Avi Goldenberg, who had served as its general counsel, worked with Mishin on launching Manifest and became Manifest OS’s general counsel. The connection brought a lawyer’s experience into a project led by an entrepreneur who knew the frustrations of buying legal work.

Rearranging the work around the lawyer

Founded in 2024, Manifest OS brings together an AI software platform, a centralized back office and a shared brand. The technology company supports Manifest Law-branded firms; the attorneys provide legal services. The distinction matters because the work being organized still requires professional judgment and responsibility.

The initial focus was business immigration. Manifest’s model uses fixed-fee or outcomes-based terms rather than billing for hours. Software helps with tasks such as drafting and communication, while shared operations handle the administration around the practice. The intended result is an attorney with more room for legal work and a client with a clearer picture of the process.

Mishin has emphasized the need for a human in the loop. The company describes multiple attorney reviews and final sign-off for AI-generated documents. In immigration work, an applicant’s next chapter depends on the handling of a real case. A clean interface is useful; accountable review is part of the service being purchased.

On April 28, 2026, Manifest OS announced a $60 million Series A at a $750 million valuation, with investors including Menlo Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, First Round Capital and Quiet Capital. The financing gave the young company resources for the next stage. It also raised the scale of the operating question.

At that announcement, Manifest reported more than 3,000 client engagements and more than 100 immigration attorneys, including co-counsel. Those figures describe a network already doing work. Growing it means preserving the communication and review that gave the proposition its appeal in the first place.

By September 2026, Mishin was discussing another operating lesson: faster software development could leave a team with code it could not adequately explain. Manifest’s response was to require clearer planning and understanding before shipping. The rule is a useful wrinkle in his enthusiasm for AI. Even a company organized around new technology has to decide when the machine’s apparent productivity needs a person to pause and inspect the work.

The next door to open

The personal stakes remain close to Mishin’s own experience. Immigration is the route he traveled and one his business now supports for other people. His stated ambition is to extend immigration services globally and make legal representation more accessible. The aspiration is broad; the work reaches customers one case at a time.

Menlo investor Croom Beatty has described Mishin’s focus on the quality of the client experience, even when that requires moving more slowly. It is a useful condition to attach to growth. Speed has value when the right work gets done and the customer can understand what is happening.

Outside the companies, Mishin lists hiking, trail running and work toward a private pilot license among his interests. For someone whose career began with a missed departure, learning to fly is a pleasing addition. Travel remains in the picture, even as the businesses have moved away from selling beds.

The eleven-year-old in Berlin wanted to understand the conversation and bring the travelers home. His current company deals with a more formal kind of welcome: the process through which people can establish a life and work in another country. Between those moments lies a career spent learning how much organization a seemingly simple promise can require.

A room available. An application understood. An update answered. These are modest things to ask for. Mishin keeps choosing businesses in which delivering them takes a considerable amount of work.