Kiwi Entrepreneur Faces Backlash Over April Fools’ Post

Toby Thomas-Smith, the founder of the subletting platform Kiki, is facing significant backlash from the business community following an April Fool’s Day prank involving the announced closure of his London operations.

On April 1, 2026, Thomas-Smith posted on LinkedIn that he had made the hardest decision of my life to shut down Kiki Club in London. The post explicitly stated that the announcement was not an April Fool’s joke.

Thomas-Smith later reversed the announcement with a second post admitting the closure was a joke. Both the original announcement and the subsequent admission have since been deleted.

Industry Reaction and Criticism

The stunt drew sharp criticism from various New Zealand business leaders, who described the move as tone-deaf and irresponsible. Critics emphasized that professional credibility and trust are built through action rather than attention-seeking tactics.

He won’t be the first founder to learn that attention and trust are not the same thing, and he definitely won’t be the last. A genuine apology can usually fix a fair bit, and this one is definitely better than the original rollout, but when people feel like you’ve really misread the room, you don’t just get to reset because you’ve explained yourself better the second time around. He’ll need to earn some of that trust back.

Lou O’Reilly of PR firm Draper Cormack

Phil Thomson, the chief executive at Auror, stated that the prank exploited the goodwill of a community that supports founders during genuine crises and belittled entrepreneurs who have actually had to shut down their companies.

Bodo Lang, a marketing expert from Massey University, noted that for humor to be effective in a marketing context, it must be clearly signaled and carefully managed. Lang asserted that the Kiki Club owner failed this condition, specifically because the post explicitly claimed it was not an April Fool’s joke.

Company Background

Kiki is a subletting platform that originally launched under the name EasyRent in New Zealand. The company has a history of international expansion and contraction, having previously opened and closed locations in New York and Sydney.

The controversy surrounding the April 1 post has led to widespread disapproval among New Zealand business leaders, who view the incident as a failure in judgment regarding the sensitivity of business closures.