Team Name: ALTEX
Aarushi Banerjee: COO (Computer Science ME, Cornell Tech)
Isaac Lichter: Head of Product (Computer Science ME, Cornell Tech)
Tingyue Wang: Head of Design (Communication Design BFA, Parsons)
Ophir Ehrlich: CEO (Tech MBA Program, Cornell Tech)
Larry Xu: CTO (Electrical and Computer Engineering ME, Cornell Tech)
Project Duration: 4 Months, February - May, 2022
Related Course/Activity: Cornell Tech Startup Studio 2022
Product Narrative
Problem Existing property management systems are not user-friendly, and processes exist in disparate, loosely connected applications.
Homey is a new property management software that streamlines processes for landlords and property managers by centralizing information across all users (tenants, landlords, property managers, and vendors). Homey’s easy interface and automated features increase property managers’ productivity, reduce redundant back and forth communication, and decrease frustration for all parties.
Financials - Assumptions
1. Subscription: $1 basic, $3 premium
2. Minimum monthly fee for the basic subscription is $100 (= 100 units).
3. Salesperson in the launch phase reaches out to 3 landlords per day (100 per month) with conversion rate of 1 out of 8 landlords (12.5%); Growth in outreach 10% every month.
4. Starting in the growth phase, we supply a premium version; Salesperson 2 reaches out to 100 landlords with conversion rate of 15% and growth in outreach 20%.
5. AWS expense calculated based on AWS calculator.
North Star Metric
Our “Game”: Productivity
Homey, our new property management software, is focused on productivity. We are aiming to streamline and simplify the communication between property managers and tenants through our new more inclusive and efficient portal.
This will allow us to prevent human mistakes, streamline communication and decrease redundant multiple channels (in person / portal / phone calls), and even speed up urgent maintenance requests.
- In order to achieve our goal (productivity), the most important action of our users is their engagement.
- In that regard, our north star metric is average number of times logging into the website.
Input Metrics
1. Weekly Active Users
2. Average number of times logging into the website per tenant per week.
3. Average time from opening to closing a maintenance request (minimized)
4. NPS (Net Promoter Score) given both by tenants and property managers
5. Qualitative feedback (gathered within the app)
Ethical Risk
Risk #1 - Economic and Asset Inequalities:
Older adults might be disproportionately disservice by our property management system.
Problem: Older tenants might have difficulties using online services, such as property management portals; thus, they might have difficulties in tasks, such as paying bills electronically and submitting maintenance requests.
Mitigation Strategies: In developing new property management software, one of our areas of focus is a clean UI. We’ll make sure the tenant experience is extremely streamlined, with a simple UI with few buttons for each type of functionality. This way, older people can easily find important features.
- For example, instead of having 3 tabs for setting up and confirming payment, as in The House’s portal, we will have a singular tab that deals with billing and payment setup.
- Another instance is the option to enlarge the font size to make things more readable for those with farsightedness.
- Another example is having a minimal landing page, which shows only the main functionalities, such as paying bills and submitting maintenance requests.
- For example, instead of having 3 tabs for setting up and confirming payment, as in The House’s portal, we will have a singular tab that deals with billing and payment setup.
- Another instance is the option to enlarge the font size to make things more readable for those with farsightedness.
- Another example is having a minimal landing page, which shows only the main functionalities, such as paying bills and submitting maintenance requests.
Risk #2 (Data Control & Monetization) Mishandling of user data:
Tenant contact information is currently publicly available on many housing portals, although people may wish to keep this hidden or private.
Problem: Many systems, such as Yardi, show tenants’ emails and names to other residents in the building. While most sensitive information is hidden, tenants still feel that their privacy is somewhat compromised since other contact information is available publicly in these portals.
Potential mitigation Strategies: We will explicitly hide all information from other tenants for a user, unless this user opts in to make certain information (such as a bio, their emails, or other contact information) publicly available in our software for the purpose of community building.
Upon creating an account with the portal, users will get a checkbox option to hide or show specific contact information. Users can change this anytime they would like with a clear option in their user settings.
We will hide all contact information for every user. There will be a separate “forum” section in the portal where users may choose to post a bio and contact information if they wish to meet other people in their apartment building.
Risk #3 (Machine Ethics & Algorithmic Biases):
Maintenance request fulfillment is often slow and lagging: landlords spend most of their time dealing with maintenance filing while tenants do not get proper care for apartment issues.
Problem: Many tenants do not get urgent requests fulfilled on time due to order-based ticketing instead of urgency-based ticketing. As such, tenants are often forced to pay out-of-pocket for external maintenance services. Landlords on the other hand get bad reputations for not fulfilling urgent requests on time.
Mitigation Strategies: We will create an automated filing system, using natural language, that ranks maintenance requests based on urgency automatically. Landlords can have the option to automatically assign tickets, so they do not have to worry about dealing with these requests manually. However, landlords can choose to manually change urgency levels of specific requests in case of misclassification.
We can install a voice-command system that allows landlords to pull up maintenance requests by case number on the spot without having to go through nested pages.
We will also add weight to tasks that have been waiting for a while, so that they don’t get buried indefinitely in the queue.
What’s Next?
Financials - Startup & Launch Phase
Financials - Growth Phase
