Tech Talks Daily
00:18:14 · Dan Lifshits
And if you're trying just to kind of sell into those businesses, very often you will just be facing with some nature kind of in a way resilience, I think, and lack of desire of the teams to go through some of the maybe a little bit more risky and a bit more radical transformation of the internal businesses just for the sake of adopting some technologies. But I think that if you control both of them kind of in house, effectively, it allows you to, I think, tweak some things on the operational front, tweak some things on the psychological front. But then you can kind of put the end customer being kind of, again, the landlord, the tenant, and the contractor as the kind of centerpiece of whom you're trying to serve. I think it's it's to some extent, I don't know if a good analogy here would be or not, but like, let's say Apple also was always aiming not just to be purely software company and not to be a hardware company, but effective to try to build both hardware and software all under one roof to try to kind of provide the one unified service to the end customer. Right? And I think that they've known to be the company that I think pretty much excelled at providing the pretty outstanding level of service to the end customers with all the products that they've built, including iPhones, Macs, kind of AirPods, and the others. Because the fact that they control the whole kind of internal, both hardware and software end to end within one company. And they're not relying on their contractor or some other one to wait until they tweak some things so that they can get the full potential of the kind of technology that they're building. So I think some sort of similar philosophy is happening here.
00:19:45 · Neil C. Hughes
[00:19:45] S0: And looking at your journey here, another thing that really stands out to me is you're also backed by General Catalyst, which has been actively exploring roll up strategies recently. I've seen a lot about that in my newsfeed. So Yeah. How has that partnership influenced how you scale, acquire, and and think about that long term value creation as well, which is another massive part of what you're heading towards here.
00:20:07 · Dan Lifshits
[00:20:07] S1: Yeah. No. 100%. I think that General Catalyst has been an absolutely amazing partner, and I think that we could have not wished for any better, partner on this journey, update. I think that, they effectively been one of the first large institutional investors that I think made a huge bet on the kind of AI roll ups as a new sort of almost investment asset class or category. And I think that we're pioneering this strategy first in The US, and then I think that across the globe as well. And I think that it it very much coincided in time because I think that, if I remember the dates correct, they, raised their inaugural first year roll ups fund somewhere kind of around end of twenty twenty four. And I think that we started effectively and got going and incorporated the business in end of twenty three and made the first acquisition in the beginning of twenty four. So I think pretty much at exactly the same time when I think there was a growing understanding that AI roll ups do make sense as like as a new investment category, as an asset class, and that growing amount of investors will start looking into that. Then effectively, they're working on valley guys that kind of packed their staff, rolled up their sleeves, took their wives, moved to Holland already for kind of almost close to a year been kind of building the technology and effectively working vis a vis alongside the first business being acquired to kind of to be shipping this technology and AI enabling effectively and transforming the business kind of inside out. So I think it was just we happened to be... Well, I mean, for purely for our luck and coincidence, but we just, I think, happened to be a little bit before it became a mainstream topic. So obviously, kinda we've just been lucky to be there at the right time. And I think that, obviously, yes, since then the journey was pretty pretty phenomenal, I have to say. General catalyst as a fund in general kind of obviously maybe doesn't require that much of an explanation, but one of the largest venture capital funds in the world would like, I think close to 25 or even slightly more than that billion of capital under management. So kind of huge and one of the largest venture capital investors in the world. And I think the one of the most being looked up to in a way.
00:22:15 · Dan Lifshits, Neil C. Hughes
And I think that the type of companies that they backed, and I think that the type of outcomes that they've built with the likes of Airbnb, Stripe, and a bunch of others, I think does allow them to really dream big and kind of shoot for the huge outcomes. And I think that inspiring with this kind of global vision and thinking about how can you be... Okay. Kind of it's it's clear how you guys can build a billion dollar business. Right? But how can we together build a 10,000,000,000 business, a 100,000,000,000 business. Right? And they're kind of inspiring us to think bolder and more ambitious and kind of go faster. I think that this is where they definitely been a huge huge supporter on our journey. So to those listening, big thanks to general catalyst guys in case if they come across this podcast. [00:23:01] S0: I suspect we will have a mixture of people listening of founders and business leaders and also tenants and indeed landlords. So I'd love to bring to life everything we're talking about here with a a very real example. So let's say we have a tenant that reports something fairly typical like a broken toilet. What actually happens behind the scenes within your AI system and and how that differs from a traditional agency workflow?
00:23:27 · Dan Lifshits
[00:23:27] S1: Yeah. Traditional agency workflows have... Like, they they differentiate a lot. So that's why I think that I'll provide a bit of our unified, aggregated experience that most of the tenants go through today whenever they have, as you mentioned, the kind of toilet leak or something. I think that very often you will write to your property manager. Property manager usually is like working on 100 to 150 properties that they have in their portfolio under management concurrently. So that implies that they have at the moment at every single point of time, like a few hundreds of requests of such nature that they're dealing with. And obviously, kind of for you as a property manager, it's pretty impossible to keep everything just in your memory and in your mind just because as much is going on and put aside that a part of managing the kind of the toilet leaks, you also need to kind of make sure that you're diligent with compliance and with kind of upcoming Rentals Right Act and the regulation and the other things. So kind of more and more, you start having more and more just like mundane admin that you need to take care of rather than just kind of fixing the kind of toilet leaks. Right? So kind of we hope to believe that most of the kind of property managers would pretty imminently kind of pass this message over to the contractor, even though yet sometimes you might just simply miss it in your inbox because your inbox usually is a mess. And then kind of the job might be sitting there for some period of time. Even if you pass this job to contractor. I mean, contractors are always kind of... So all all... Also a type of people that kinda very often are on the road and they are riding and driving and something. So they also might miss things. Right? And effectively, kind of what you need as a property manager to happen is that the contractor would reach out to the tenant. They would agree on the date of the appointment. And then kind of the thing would be solved effectively. Right? But unfortunately, for you as a property manager, not that you've just might potentially have missed the kind of the email or communication, and maybe there were some clarifications that the kind of contractor had been pinging you about after they received the request.
00:25:22 · Dan Lifshits
Another problem is that whenever you send the request over to contractor, you're kind of flying in the dark about has the contractor ever reached out to the tenant? Yes or no? Did they agree on the appointment? If yes, then on which day did they agree on the appointment? And this all happens for you effectively out of the system, out of visibility, and you don't know what's going on. And I think that this is one of the problems that exists in the current world today because, like, property managers genuinely, from what we've seen, and I'm sure can hold to believe that this is the case if you just, look at, like, the, majority of the population, they're genuinely amazing people. They genuinely care about providing an outstanding level of service to their end customers. But I think that there is just a ton of basic mundane admin under which you bury it every single day that just restricts you from being on top of all the things because just as much is going on at every single point of time. And then whenever some of the communications hasn't happened, then whenever you don't know what's going on, it's not very, I would say, rare when what happens is that you pass the note to contractor. Should the contractor try call the tenant and doesn't kind of, for example, reach the tenant, or they kind of... Even if they kind of called and agreed in the appointment, it was, for example, kind of slipped or forgotten or something. And then let's say kind of three weeks has elapsed and you are as a tenant writing to the property manager saying, guys, I mean, my toilet is still leaking. Like, are we gonna do something about it or not? Right? And I think that this is a very unfortunate experience that I think quite a few of the tenants and to some extent the landlords as a result going through. That leads eventually to the results, and this is average statistics across The UK. It's not made up. It's just like factual figures. That average property management request, resolution time across The UK sits in the range of around forty five to fifty days. I think that on average is around forty eight days. Obviously, they range by the criticality. And obviously, if you have, like, really a flood going on in your property, then it's gonna be resolved with the urgent kind of ticker and would be done usually kind of immediately.