Hosts: Ronn Ruiz and Martin Canchola
Guest: Amulya Parmar, Founder/CEO of LeaseMagnets.com

Martin: All right. Welcome to The Multifamily Podcast with Ronn and Martin. Now, today we have a true entrepreneurial tech founder joining us today, who Ronn and I met about three years ago. I actually went back and looked at the first time we communicated and it was like back in 2021 from what I could find. We met at the Multifamily Social Media Summit in Napa, which is a great conference. By the way, if you haven’t checked it out, make sure to, you know, at least look at the website, multifamilysocialmedia.com. Check that out and see if it’s something. It’s in Napa, beautiful and wine Country. But overall, it was a perfect place for me and Amulya to meet for the first time. He actually came up to me after my session and we had a chance to conversate. And since then we’ve been in communication and hanging out pretty much kind of ever since. So it’s my great pleasure  to bring to the table Amulya Parmar, founder and CEO of leasemagnets.com. Welcome to the multifamily podcast. 

Amulya: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been so much fun to get a chance to know you guys, get a chance to be part of the Multifamily Social Media Summit. And I’m excited to see where this conversation goes. I think there’s so much to talk about.  

Martin: Totally.

Ronn: Absolutely. Amulya, thank you so much. Yeah. Welcome to the podcast officially. I know we’ve been talking about this for a while. At least Martin and I have been talking about, like we should have Amulya on. I think our audience is going to find out very quickly how knowledgeable you are, not only in the world of tech, but you know, you really embrace the multifamily industry that you came into. And so I am so excited to see you as a mover and shaker in our industry. And I honestly can’t wait to learn more today, but also share more with our audience about what you have going on over there at Lease Magnets. So, happy to welcome you and make this episode happen today. So let’s roll. All right.

Martin: So before we get into how you started Lease Magnets, I wanted to give our audience a little background on who Amulya is. Can you share how you initially got interested in software development technology during your early years?

Amulya:  Yeah. So for those of you who don’t know, lease magnets, basically a software that enables you to give a better guided tour on every single apartment website. Now, in order to build that task, you have to know items like front end development, full stack development, back end development. You need to understand some digital marketing, understand how the website visitor browses the website. You want to understand AB testing, pop up ads, and conversion. And to me, that entire journey started back in high school, where I got first fascinated with the art of building a website and getting it indexed. Now, Martin and Ron, you guys know this as well, as much as anyone else. SEO, search engine optimization, was birthed by a very magical concept. You can buy a 12.99 domain name, and you can suddenly publish, and a front door that is now accessible from anywhere around the world. And when the moment, when your website gets indexed, it’s like a magical concept. You can invite people, bring people there, you can teach them something. You can potentially convert them into a lead. You can get them to buy something, sometimes you’ve never met that individual. And to me, that journey was absolutely fascinating. I started building websites on my own, then I started helping some other businesses, built a web hosting company and then I helped everyone in the web hosting company build better websites. I got a chance to start a non-profit that touched smaller non profits to build higher converting websites, and I worked across a large span of you know, websites and, you know, basic web development. And to me, there’s a very magical concept. One is being indexed and the power of being indexed there’s truly no tool. It’s like basically you can publish, if you think about how foreign a concept that would be to fifty or a hundred years ago, it’s mind boggling. But then you add a second concept, which is okay, zero marginal cost with the web, you can, it’s not, the reason why people love SAS businesses or get into software is because you build it once, but you can scale almost not linearly with zero marginal costs. So for every additional unit you deliver to customer, it doesn’t cost anything else. And to me, those are two magical constraints or lack of constraints you have with software and web development, that you don’t have with the real world. With the real world, you have to have a certain fixed input, wood, et cetera, to build the table. It isn’t like that with software and that table now can be just shipped to anywhere across the world in a matter of seconds for free on the internet. Those are two moments that got me really fascinated and I’m growing and just got better and better at it. You know, I think the world is changing so quickly when it comes to software and software development and marketing. I have to think that Facebook just got introduced 10, 12 years ago, whereas in over the last, at least into the mainstream, and  it’s marking software as Google ads, et cetera, is still rapidly evolving each and every one or two years. And so keeping up with it has been and staying competitive and providing unique markets with different tools has been something I’ve really loved over the last several years. 

Ronn: That’s awesome. Yeah. And I know that like a lot of this excitement has taken you to some really great places before even starting Lease Magnets. But so what I want to share with the audience is what other companies did you work for and what kind of projects did you work on for them?  

Amulya: Yeah. So basically in my career before Lease Magnets has been separated into two separate domains. One, which was me as a consultant. And so we would help lots of small businesses build websites and help non profits. I ended up turning the web hosting company into a non profit that would also help provide non, you know, non profits with a free website that’s converted. That website became Host Your Voice. That organization became Host Your Voice. Eventually, Host Your Voice, and this is another amazing power of the internet. You are one message away from someone across the country and you have no idea. So I was on a host your voice Instagram one day and I was messaging individuals. Never knows in the front end. I was looking for help and supporters for host your voice and the free web hosting organization for nonprofits and someone on the other end said, wow, I think your org is cool. I like some people you’ve been supporting. I was asking for help. He said, okay, let’s hop on a call. It turns out he’s the media director for public.org, the media subsidiary for United Nations. 

Martin: Wow.  

Amulya: And you know, literally two conversations later, she’s like, we were helping one individual who was one photographer that was once blind. They really enjoyed what we were doing and that individual, they said, okay, we’ll fly out you and your host your voice sponsors and we’ll just, we’ll fly you out. We’ll bring you into the United Nations. We’ll make you one of the official partners of one of the seven partners. And this was like legitimately year after high school. And they brought me in and they treated both of us unbelievable. We’ve been invited every year since. But this taught me like the power of the internet. Like you’re only one conversation away from potentially changing your organization, changing another person’s life. That photographer would eventually get a full scholarship or get a scholarship  to college and it’s been, and he’s continued to grow.  You can look him up, mold me like clay, but, you know, from there, I think I just got more and more involved. So host of voice continue to grow. But you know, for me individually, I knew I wanted to go bring some of my knowledge and get better conversion monetization, but in media and with host your voice there was also media and training. We had, we created for these organizations. So like, okay, I wanted to bring some of that knowledge back into that business world. So, I got really good, like not just website development, but technology development from react, et cetera, and got better at AB testing. And then focused on, you know, learning the technologies as well in college. I got some internships and then eventually jobs, particularly around conversion optimization. So one of the places I worked with was Google. So Google put me on the Google store team. So it’s interesting at Google, they do, just their Google store. It does approximately 500 million dollars to a billion dollars in revenue. And the thing is, they’re not using Shopify or any kind of infrastructure. They have to build everything from scratch. And so I was put on a team for abandoned cart emails. So I legitimately wrote the code for Google stores, abandoned cart emails, and I wrote the Sales force integrations, etc. And to me, there’s like so many learned lessons in that you push a single button and switch on a certain abandoned cart email, campaign for Google that they didn’t have before and suddenly that’s just 10 million of additional revenue in a couple weeks. And like working on that scale is super cool. I think in some cases, it also taught me though, the power of what Shopify and just a platform that certain technology individuals and providers like both of us can provide some of these, you know, smaller medium SMB companies. Like SMB companies take advantage of our technology because it puts them competitive with Google like technology but for a margin of the price, to help them convert increased conversion. So I got really passionate about that. The other thing that working at those kind of companies taught me was like, you know, they have a lot of bureaucracy when you’re working at Google. But the one great thing is it helps you teach you the very fundamental infrastructure really well. So like concepts like pixel and pixel tracking is something I had to get really good at, you know, at Google and bring a lot of those learnings, you know, to Lease Magnets. 

Martin: Yeah, that’s amazing. Yeah, just learning that one part about the, you know, the given nonprofits free websites. I mean, that’s amazing. Like how many actual websites and nonprofits did you work with?  

Amulya: So we, yeah, so we support over 125 nonprofits and organizations, using on, on host your voice today. And then thousands of people, in fact, access the trading and resources. 

Martin: And is that still your platform? Like you still…

Amulya: Yep. Yeah, host your voice is like very much a resource that you can kind of, you know, we now have, you know, every year we select 10 to 20 more individuals that they can onboard and we provide them with resources to get started.

Martin: That’s awesome. Well, kudos to that. I’m gonna have to check it out and dive in a little more. I mean, yeah, there’s tons of opportunity there and I’m sure there’s people who do nonprofits that are listening to the call that might be able to possibly apply in the future too. So exciting. 

Amulya: That’d be awesome.

Martin: What was the domain one more time for that?  

Amulya: Host your voice.

Martin: Host your voice.com? 

Amulya: Don’t worry. Yeah. com 

Martin: Org. Okay. Great domain, by the way, too. All right.  

Amulya: I’m a big, I’m a big domain guy. 

Martin: He is really good at picking domains, by the way.

Amulya: I love domains.  I told you, it’s magic. 1299 and you can get a spot of real estate.

Martin: Yeah. I always like to call it because I do like flower farming on the side. I like to say like your domains, like your seed and you’re planting it in the Google soil. Right. And then you just got to nurture it. 

Amulya: Yeah, I love it.  That’s a great analogy. 

Martin: Let’s get into your founder story, Amulya. What initially sparked the idea for Lease Magnets, the mission, and what was it like in the early days of your startup? 

Amulya: Yeah. Yeah. So guys, I’m so glad we had the lineup questioning we had already. So you guys can imagine I’ve been building these websites. I’ve been doing it for these other businesses and you’ve seen, I’ve seen some of the value been created. But I went, when I went to student college, I noticed that there was this weird  kind of ambivalent opportunity. I’m actually, I would characterize it asymmetric opportunity. I was walking through all the, I was going through apartment shopping my own. Eventually you have to go from campus, on campus dorms to off campus housing  and the process for shopping. I was going through these different websites and I was trying to shop, but I just found myself testing the websites. I was like going through these websites. I was like, what is like, how are you telling me that this? And I remember spending time instead of shopping for the floor plan, I was like, wait, how many units do you have? You’re telling me this is a 10 to 25 million e-commerce company and all they have is a contact us form? It boggled my mind after I’ve been focusing on, you know, some of these e-commerce websites for a while. And so then I knew, okay. Like even more than shopping, in fact, I think I stopped shopping for websites and I was like, I’m shopping for a partner. I remember we went to, we literally, there’s a long story here, but end up knocking on every single apartment door.I had some experience with optimizing websites, but just because you have the experience doesn’t mean you get trusted and there’s a longer story, you know, there, but, and we can get into that if you guys would like, but, you know, ultimately it was seeded in the fact that these apartments were 25 million e-commerce companies, but they were not treated as such, their website presence was ignored and definitely was not optimized. And so we ultimately started9, before they would trust us with a digital presence, we ran a physical flyer campaign where I legitimately, for the one manager that gave me not even a paid shot. You see, just to sat me down. I knew it was an opportunity. We legitimately took the problem that he was facing, which was basically, he was competing with newer properties that had entered the market and he wasn’t sure why. We built like a robust, you know, digital physical fire strategy.

So before we did, we were physical because they wouldn’t just trust us the website based on conversation, the property manager didn’t even have the ability to do that. And so we printed out flyers. We had QR tracked, you know, QR codes that would turn into a digital form that would lead to them, to the website. And I remember we went to an on campus housing fair, and we basically started to try, I showed up at 10:00 a.m on the late registration housing day. So this is if you were looking for off campus housing, but you just couldn’t find anything, so you’re just going to resort to on campus and most of the time it just basically not because of a decision, but because of lack of search, you’d end up at the late campus registration fair. And so we found that as an opportunity, a pot of gold and then we just started flowering. So I came, I showed up at 9:00 a.m right when it opened and I just, no, additional information. No one was doing this. It decided to kind of pitch, call people in line. Eventually, I called some of my friends and asked if they could join me. And then they started basically, you know, we tried all the different types of strategies. At one point we were dropping flyers and I had my friends picking it up and say, oh, wow, this is so exciting. And then they started watching. We were trying to create any form of social, tried to create a reaction, digital marketing strategies that we, that we do on the website, but just in real life. And so we were trying to be testing everything, but I remember  it was around 3:30 p.m. The housing registration fair closes at four.  Christina, she says, I’m just, she was literally signing her on campus dorm. She said, okay, guys, I’ll give you guys a shot. She asked them how long they have until they close. Because this is the last day and this is the only day. He said, oh, you have 20 minutes? Okay. So we legitimately, myself, two of the guys, legitimately walked her to Zergon West, which is, you know, which is the apartment we had in the Flyers. She takes the tour and then she signs a 13, 000 lease. You know, shortly after, right on the spot, in legitimately in the course of 10, 15 minutes, after taking a tour. And that taught me two really important lessons. One, it taught me the nature is there people you can tour if you can reach them with a great tour and you can find those individuals. There are leases you can sign that have not yet been signed. There are people who were willing to sign that just got reached. And if you can make the tour an easier process or remove the friction from the taking the tour, you have an opportunity to sign more leases. That was the first lesson.  The second lesson is to get started, right? And even if you don’t have the infrastructure to know or a specific rule book on how to find a partner, get started and create value. And I think that’s what we’ve been doing over the several years, that we got chance to trust the website. That’s their one property turned into several properties. They gave us their portfolio to manage and optimize. And eventually as I was getting better acknowledging. We saw a couple opportunities, particularly sparked with COVID to bring the virtual leasing agent to the website. And so our first product was this smart virtual leasing agent that has, that’s really leaded by interactive guided video and right at the, right at the start of COVID is right around when we invented the technology.  And, you know, it kind of took off on a mind of its own non linearly from there. And now we’re in the 35 states. It’s been a really exciting journey. Hundreds of thousands of tours delivered, you know, millions of dollars worth of leases, tens of millions of dollars worth of leases. So, hopefully that provides some, some story and what sparked the mission and what was the early days and, you know, a little bit of where we are now. 

Ronn: That’s amazing. And you know what I love is every time we hear like a founder story, including yours just now, is that passion and that energy that, you know, that comes as if it was just yesterday and when you can still have that same like zest and, you know, for it and, you know, just the brainstorm to the conception to, you know, the success that you’ve had is amazing. And again, I appreciate your excitement still through it all because it’s almost like, wow, one thing led to another, literally, and as you know, a lot of opportunity for home. So you, you already jumped in a little bit about the virtual leasing and stuff, but I want to explain a little bit more about the AI, it’s AI powered centralized leasing platform, how it works, what makes it unique for our industry. And obviously sharing like a high level overview of the product offerings.  

Amulya: Yeah, absolutely. So we got started just trying to solve a very simple problem, with what we call a virtual leasing agent. Can we create and put an interactive, great, personally guided tour on every website? The older version of that would be to call it a, older version of that same kind of product would be a chatbot. But what we wanted to do was we wanted to provide a human guided video chatbot, really. That was like the first element. And the straight idea was, instead of providing just text based answers, we wanted to provide video based answers, and we wanted to provide video based information. Video is obviously a megatrend, it’s now over 50 percent of the internet bandwidth, over 65 percent of internet traffic. It’s a mega trend today. And I think people want to have a really realistic look of their apartment, as well as a guided human person look, even before they step in. Those were the trends that we were first operating in with and that’s what the virtually leasing agent is. Now over time, new technologies have allowed us to make that process and in product design has allowed to make that first product, even better virtual leasing agent, now can provide every single website visitor a guide tour. They can answer questions as you take the tour, it can help schedule appointments or integrated with several CRMs and PMSs.  So it’s a very interactive experience that feels like you’re leasing  and we have ideas and visions to make it even better with a virtual leasing agent. And one of those things when it came to brainstorming sessions that the customer and us came up together, it was like, they were asked the question, hey, what if somehow like a video, one of the, actually one of their other ideas was to combine 3d plus video. And so we did that. We had like a, you know, you can take 3d tour, but the video, the corner, and then one of our partners said, hey, what if you could just like turn that little video in the corner to a live person. What if we could just like knock, knock a website visitor because you have people walking through your front door all the time. What if you just knock, knock that virtual, you know, that website, you know, front door that you have and they turn these passive website visitors into active shoppers. And so that was the birth of the virtual leasing office. And so we talked about the virtual leasing website, which the virtual leasing front door, the virtual leasing agent that lives on the website. And then the virtual leasing office was meant so that your office could turn a passive website visitor into an active one.9 And so we took all the means that we already had on the leased magnet virtual leasing agent and turn it into a active experience, where you can basically provide a guide tour and really that took off with, people who were, you know, agencies that were helped optimize property management teams. And so those agents would come in, they would utilize our product, we saw with very active and more aggressive leasing style. They did unbelievably well, they helped out compete in their markets. And this was a tool to make it easier to turn someone’s on a phone call or someone’s on the website, turn them into an active guided prospect. We can answer some questions, not only in a passive way, but an active and then get them to nudge to start applying. And I think we’re still working on merging the two products that become even, even more powerful together. And that’s been really fun. Last big kind of mega trend. We talked about it, to answer questions with AI.  Like the other one is like, look,  we’re living in a time where more than ever, AI has, and Martin, you say this really well, AI has the potential to be one of the most disruptive forces in history. And it’s, I feel like responsibility for any one of us building a technology, for any of our partners to be able to provide really great experiences to our, you know, customers because If we don’t, someone else will. And so, it’s been, you know, one thing we’ve been really staunch here at Lease Magnets is to build, you know, integrate AI into reasonable but powerful ways. And so, there’s much more in the pipeline, but we already started using AI to answer questions while you’re In the tour, and then we’re using it to help make some smarter decisions based on the data, first party data we’re able to capture from website traffic. So that’s a snippet. There’s more coming and a lot more than I’m excited about. Like particularly around AI calling and making the virtual leasing office take the jump off, you know, even a video page directly to your phone. So much more there, but the virtual leasing agent, the virtual leasing office, and our ALA, our assisted AI leasing agent that helps follow up with leads.

Martin: Beautiful. I had a quick question. So there’s obviously the word artificial intelligence, AI is thrown around a lot, especially in our industry. From your perspective, how would you define AI in our world?

Amulya: So that so my question to, let me throw it back to you for a second. What do you think is the prevailing definition of AI? 

Martin: Could remember, dig into a little bit. I know like the first mention of artificial intelligence was like back in the early 1950s, where they kind of did the Turing test. And he developed that or a Bob Robert turn or something like that. And he was the one that first coined the term artificial intelligence. And that was the ability to basically test the machine against a human to basically be able to do what a human could do without the machine, with them even knowing that it’s a machine, essentially, right. That was like the original definition. And I feel like today, it might be a little bit different, but that’s from my perspective, kind of what AI, I guess originally meant, but I wonder your perspective today on what you feel like that means today? 

Amulya: That’s really great. It’s really fascinating conversation. Ivan can be here to discuss but it’s simply what, when it comes to AI is, it’s the nature of machine learning. It’s the nature of creating a neuron infrastructure, much like it is to a human. So it’s really about building the neuron pathways. We call it vector data databases and be able to find relevant information vectorized and be able to retrieve it. That’s just a way to say the way your brain works is with neurons, machine learning works with vector databases, and basically embedding information into this vector database to be able to pull it off with just some form of input, and then find an output that’s relevant. And there is a very linear way to think about it when it comes to machine learning in this. Text retrieval. But then there’s this next level where we’re entering which is not just text retrieval but it’s image retrieval, it’s video retrieval, It’s, you know, business auditors, etc. retrieval and learning how to embed information and then someone I went to see as valuable or almost equally as valuable is to ritually take that information to do or achieve it and then put it into a rich interface back to the user better, right? There’s a lot more we can talk about that but like the whole idea of what makes AI special, isn’t that it’s just always gonna be like an AI chat. If it was trying to evolving into basically turning AI query into very rich answers and responses with pictures, with videos. And the process of embedding the information and then when you put it in the back to information is, I think, where a lot of AI is going. But then it’s also about logical decisions, right? So when should we follow up with this individual. So you’re embedding, every piece of information is gonna be embedded and then the way you query it is going to have some form of logistic and heuristic to it and then you can put it into some form of, okay, I should follow up in 5 days or 10 days based on this leasing agent, or say this lead and prospect. And so learning to button information and pull up valuable data is what I would say the purpose of artificial intelligence. And then the way to actually create it is like you’re building neurons, or in this case, you’re embedding data into vector databases, instead of neurons in the brain, and you’re learning how to interpolate it after.

Ronn: That’s right. I think that that definitely is. I mean, you kind of like broke it down to for average person to understand it. I think that where we’ve been in the world, right, obviously machine learning, it’s now that matters. Talking about your platform, but you know, going back to your platform, I wanted to find out like I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this but what was the initial reception of your platform in the market? And how are you gathering feedback now for future improvements? I know you said you had a lot coming in next chapter. 

Amulya: Yeah. So I’m very pleased to have still been in conversation to hear how you guys have evolved and you know, how your reception has evolved over the years. But for us, it wasn’t linear. We started with like this process was learning with our customer. We helped them analyze the market see what market trends are. The property managers that we worked with continue to refer us if they ever moved property managers, and we started just building a cohort of customers that we could understand and study. And then from there, we built the virtual leasing agent. We took some of our shopping experiences. And we just put it out there on some of our partners websites. And from there we, it’s interesting, we have two sets of customers, and I think almost every multifamily, most multifamily vendors have two sets of customer. And you can probably guess it. One is a property manager, but the second is the end customer, the end shopper. And so  we’ve really tried to create a loop in the market where we do, you know, test in the market, some market test, and where we call back certain of our prospects who take the tour and see what they liked about the tour, what part of the tour could be better, and then do the same thing, obviously, with our PMS systems. When we COVID happened, our product felt like an absolute need in the market because there was no, there was actually even more apt, more aptly, it felt like there was no substitute for that in person tour. That was really significant. Face Time didn’t do the trick, a simple, you know, YouTube video didn’t do the trick and even the infrastructure for creating this media was broken. And so, what we started was filling a hole in the market. And then I think what we’ve started to evolve with this feedback is, okay, how do you not just make fill a hole, but how do you become part of an integrated team? And I think that’s what we’re continually to work across. You know, I think the market’s going to change. And so, What we started was filling a hole in the market. And then I think what we’ve started to evolve with this feedback is, okay, how do you not just fill a hole, but how do you become part of an integrated team? And I think that’s what we’re continually to work across. You know, I think the market’s going to change. We’ve set the market standard in some ways. We’ve had now people joining us in the market, which is exciting, but also something that has to keep us on our toes to make sure that we’re providing the infrastructure and tools that our customers need and then providing them still a virtual leasing advantage. But that’s ultimately what we’re trying to help do, is like only leveled the playing field but also give our true partners a virtual leasing advantage in the marketplace. So there’s, I think the market centers continue to evolve and keeping up with that is something that we’ve been really excited to push and the cool thing is we are, you know, eligibly, we took off as student living, we now are working with the number one ,we work with the top 10 properties in student housing, top 50 property managers. We are now working within senior living, and obviously we have amazing partners in multifamily. But the interesting thing is there’s just so much room for improvement. Like today I was just working on a new design for a virtual leasing agent. And when I was working on it, I just couldn’t stop smiling. It was, it’s such a, I like illegibly, I was like oh my goodness, this actually feels amazing. And this was literally just done today. And I just think my goodness, there’s so much runway for much so much more innovation. And I just, I think that to me gets me really excited, because like the truth is the market responds, but the market doesn’t necessarily create the solutions. We have to be forward thinking and put solutions out in the marketplace. And the cool thing is now we’re large enough where we can run the AV test on many properties and we can get data results literally tomorrow on tens of thousands of website visitors. So to me that’s super exciting.

Ronn: I think that’s definitely the need where you know, there’s some predictive analysis that has to happen, right? To really understand what your clients and the industry and the consumer are looking at your journey and to your point, for sure, the opportunity during COVID was there. I think your product was probably like so alive and well. And I think that what I learned as a business operator and even as a consumer, like there’s certain things that we should never go back, on or in because of things we’ve learned through COVID including like, you know, just the idea of doing a lot of things virtually, right? And the efficiency come from that and I think that our industry is certainly learning that. I think that they, the conversation or topic of centralized leasing has been something they wanted to do before. I think that now everybody’s just pushed into that. So again, kudos to you because you were a step ahead of it by creating the virtual leasing office. And I don’t think there’s going back, right? Because think about the scalability of that, even though you said 10 to 12 million plus dollar assets. Everybody is, that’s one thing to the post COVID is, everyone’s trying to save $1 or two and really maximize the bandwidth of their people. I think that there’s something to say about that as well. That you’re really getting back time to truly be that in person customer service agent. I came from the onset. So I know what that is like, like you don’t have enough time in a day to be an amazing leasing agent, an amazing bill collector, an amazing manager, an customer service rep, right? This is like I’m talking 20 years ago so imagine today. So if we could still help them to do their job and lease apartments and be great at what they do, you know, in person, I think that we’re giving back. That’s our charity. 

Amulya:  I love that. I love that so much Ronn. And so what we learned when it comes to like lease magnets is that we ultimately, when we say internally, lease magnets is not about the software. It’s about the people, we have power and what we want them to be after they’re powered. That’s what we want Lease Magnet to be. That’s always been who the least magnet is, we’re just a tool that empowers and magnifies that. 

Ronn: Absolutely. That’s it. That’s beautiful. And you’ve done a great job at it.

Amulya: Yeah, I’m excited to actually see it in LA. There is more to come, more to come for sure.

Martin: So we have one final question before we start getting into closing thoughts and just wrapping it up. So here it is, what lessons have you learned as a tech startup founder in the multifamily industry, that you can share with other entrepreneurs who might be listening, who might be scared to jump and start that product start that company?

Ronn: Great question.

Amulya: When the interesting thing about this question is, I think the first answer is you got to take the first step. That is I think, the obvious answer, but I think there’s a more nuanced answer that is there. I think there’s incredible leverage in taking the first step and then asking for help. And then testing in the marketplace as soon as possible. Find a way to provide someone else value quickly. Things don’t scale. We built a physical fire campaign before we got access to digital presence and I knew the whole time I wanted to access the digital presence. That’s what I pitched him from the beginning. But you got to find a way to create value right now. Before you can do what you wanted to do tomorrow. Over time, I would, the same thing is to get a better understanding of our customers. I eventually lived at one of our customers properties. I then volunteer to work one or two days out of the week at, you know, as a leasing manager just to see how they reach our tool under lease mentor, leasing agent and you know, see how they’re using the tool. And so I think the second thing I’m learning even better now is stay attuned to your customer, get involved. And then third thing is learn where the trend is right. I think there’s, you will always see, like for me, asymmetric risk and asymmetric opportunity comes best by a horizontal innovation. And that’s when you take something that you’re seeing it happen other industry, you take learnings for example, what I’d seen at Google. take some of your learnings, things that you maybe have a competitive advantage on, and try to bring that information insight as well as, you know, a thoughtful twist and iteration on it, into a new market that really could benefit from the help. I think Property Management is an industry that’s evolving quickly and becoming even more resources stuff but I think there’s markets like property management that just are servicing, including a lot of value in ecosystem that if you’re given the opportunity to make a difference, that difference can be magnified over not only incredible number of residents but also owners, investors etc. I think the last thing is, I think for me over all reflection on being a part of property management. I think what I feel is like I never expected to 100% be in property management. It wasn’t part of my game plan but I think for me the most, you know, one thing I felt is like I think there’s no more kind of awesome thing to do than affect how people live and make some of the most important decisions of their life, which is where they settled down and who their neighbor with and what they’re across from. And I think people who make those decisions and enable them and able to properly manage to serve those individuals in probably important decisions and moments in our life. I think is one of the coolest things we can do. 

Martin: All right, team. Well, we got to wrap it up. We’re getting to the bottom of the hour. Once again, Thank you again, Amulya, for joining us on The Multifamily Podcast, tons of insights and nuggets to digest here. So please go through the podcast once, go through it again. Make sure to just check out LeaseMagnets.com to learn more about their amazing products. And don’t forget to subscribe to The Multifamily Podcast at MultifamilyPodcast.com and also get your Free Marketing Analysis at ApartmentSEO.com. Until next time, bye everybody.