What does it take to build a world-class tech strategy inside one of America’s largest multifamily REITs? Rukus Esi, the Chief Digital Officer at AvalonBay Communities and today’s guest, is in the driver’s seat.
From centralization and AI to predictive maintenance and PropTech fatigue, Rukus joins us to share how AvalonBay vets new technology, pilots solutions across 90,000+ units, and stays ahead in a rapidly evolving PropTech landscape.
If you’re building for—or operating in—multifamily, this is a must-listen about what it takes to deploy and scale technology in real estate.
As always, you can listen (and watch the video!) here on Substack or on the following platforms:
The Thesis Driven Leader Series is made possible with the support of Neutral.
Neutral is redefining multifamily real estate with a focus on sustainability, resident health and well-being. For example, Neutral is building the tallest mass timber and Passive House residential building in the U.S with a state-of-art wellness club in Milwaukee. Beyond environmental impact, Neutral offers investors access to substantial sustainable tax credits and deductions. Accredited investors can explore available opportunities at invest.neutral.us or connect directly with their team to learn more.
The following transcript is automatically generated. Please forgive us for any errors or misspellings.
Brad Hargreaves: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to episode 17 of the Thesis Driven Leader Series. So glad you could all join us today. I'm Brad Hargreaves, founder and Editor in Chief of Thesis Driven, and your host here on the Leader series. So we've talked to a wide variety of leaders in tech, real estate, urbanism and today's guest really brings a number of those elements together.
Really excited to be joined by Rukus Esi, the SVP and Chief Digital Officer at AvalonBay Communities. AvalonBay is one of the largest multifamily owners in the United States. They have almost 90,000 units across, almost 300 separate apartment communities. So AvalonBay can be thought of as a small city, where a lot of people, over a hundred thousand people, ultimately live.
One of the reasons I wanted to invite Rukus on to talk a little bit about tech, multifamily, where the world is [00:01:00] headed is because of a quarterly feature we do on the Thesis Driven newsletter, which is every quarter we sit down and spend the better part of a couple days listening to every REIT, every real estate investment trusts, earnings call.
We do that because these are public companies that say really interesting things about… sometimes they say interesting things, sometimes they don't… about where tech is headed, where multifamily is headed, where the world is headed, and how it's all impacting their businesses.
And when I say some of them say interesting things and some of them don't, Avalon Bay is generally seen as someone in a group that always says interesting things. That is, they tend to be on the cutting edge of technology, of branding, of media, of thinking about how to get tenants into their units and keep those tenants happy. And our guest today, Rukus Esi, is really on the forefront of that as their Chief Digital Officer.
He is in charge [00:02:00] of not just understanding where tech is headed and how it can impact Avalon Bay. But vetting specific companies and understanding how those companies' technology may fit into AvalonBay's puzzle. And he's done this before. He's a veteran tech leader. Before this, he was Vice president and CTO at Capital One, so he's not just tech fluent, but he understands the needs of big companies and some of the ways they manage risk. And if you've been around, tech conferences, Blueprint, RETCON, NMHC, OpTech, things like that. You very well have run into Rukus or seen him speak. He's a regular speaker, talks a lot about the role of technology and where things are headed.
So before we get into that, I do want to thank our sponsor for Season 2 of the Leader Series, Neutral, really made this happen. They're a vertically integrated real estate developer building market rate multifamily in the Midwest region, and they've gained claim as one of the leaders in real estate development focused on sustainability, resident health and wellbeing. Their flagship project, the Edison in Milwaukee will be the tallest mass timber and passive house building in the United States, and they're making institutional grade investment accessible to accredited investors via the Charles Schwab platform.
So you can learn more at neutral.us. They've been a huge sponsor, huge supporter of us this season, so please and thank you, Neutral. Now. Back to Rukus. He has probably seen more tech companies apply to multifamily than anyone else out there and understands not just where that tech is headed, but how it intersects with data, with centralization, with AI and some of these big trends impacting the future of multifamily, so he sees as much as any real estate player out there. So really excited to welcome him to the show. Let's dive in.
Brad Hargreaves: Rukus, welcome to the Thesis Driven Leader Series. So excited to have you on today.
Rukus Esi: Excited to be here.
Brad Hargreaves: Awesome. As I mentioned in the intro, one of the reasons I'm so excited to have [00:04:00] you on is that every quarter at Thesis Driven, we listen to all of the REITs earnings calls, and I've always been impressed at AvalonBay’s discussion of technology, the way they approach it, and their thoughtfulness around using technology and multifamily operations. So why do you think Avalon Bay has gotten there? Tell me about, is it the culture of encouraging technology at the organization? Is it top down instruction that technology is important? Just why do you think the AvalonBay earnings calls are so different than the others in terms of talking about technology?
Rukus Esi: I'd be remiss if I didn't say it's because of me.
Brad Hargreaves: So what do you do?
Rukus Esi: There are actually quite a few things. Beyond AvalonBay, the industry in general is spending a lot of time talking about what they're doing with technology in their businesses. But with Avalon Bay in particular we have a culture and leadership very invested in technology and the value it can create for the [00:05:00] business.
I joined this organization in 2019 and leading up to me joining the company had a history of looking at where the pack is going. They did some assessments in 2016-2017, realized how they needed to think differently about technology and that's how my role got created and how I ended up here in the organization helping lead the transformation of how we look at technology, how we leverage technology, differently, more than just a ‘keep the lights’ on strategy, but really want to create value for the business. It really starts from the top down. It's a culture of learning. It's a culture of curiosity. What I've brought to the organization is opening up the perspectives of how we can leverage technology differently and how we can execute to deliver on the transformation of our business and our operating model.
Brad Hargreaves: So tell me a little bit about the breadth of what technology means to you in your role? Some people say multifamily technology, they're talking about implementing AI to help [00:06:00] with leasing and other people say technology and they're talking about modular construction.
When you say technology, what is the breadth of that you're looking at in the organization and where do you get your focus in terms of, hey, I'm going to do a deep dive into fraud detection this week?
Rukus Esi: Technology in general here really spans the entire organization, from functional departments, to customer facing experiences, to operations, but the heavy focus over the last few years is really around our operations. Think: customer journeys from the moment a prospect is interested in looking for an apartment home, how they search how we provide inventory for that journey transitioning to, touring an apartment, and providing the digital experiences that enable that, applying, moving into one of our communities living in that community, potentially renewing and maybe even moving out. Thinking about the entire customer journey and all the touch points, that customer [00:07:00] interacts with us, all the technology that actually enabled that from the software side down to smart access that enables some of the experiences that we're creating.
Brad Hargreaves: And how do you decide where to focus? Obviously, that's a really wide range of stuff and not all of it is gonna be relevant or interesting at any given time. What makes you say okay, we're gonna tackle fraud detection, All right, we're gonna tackle access control next quarter and focus on that, or is it just everything all at once?
Rukus Esi: Quite honestly, it's everything at once. They're all important topics. Fundamentally, we like to think about things from a customer perspective.
We start from a customer lens and the problems the customers is experiencing, or the touch points that a customer has essentially varies, and we have issues and opportunities every day that really boils down to how we think about addressing those problems.
It's about organization, it's about structure. We have product teams, we have streams of work aligned with these journeys, we believe it is a [00:08:00] continuous process. It's not a one and done. It's not a project. It's not a one day thing or one week thing where we focus on fraud today, we put it on the table and focus on smart access next week.
We have teams dedicated to basically exploring the refining of each of those journeys on a daily basis. Over the last few years we've been heavily focused on transforming our operating model, what we refer to as, the neighborhood concept or in, other worlds, it's, centralization, but everything that we're doing right now really centers around optimizing how we operate as a business. All the digital experiences, and interactions with our associates, are being touched and focused on to ensure that we deliver that stellar experience for our customer, both externally and our internal customers, which happen to be our associate.
Brad Hargreaves: So when you think about that holistic experience of the digital journey of a customer at AvalonBay, and what your internal team is seeing and tracking and how they're [00:09:00] doing that, how do you think about the build versus buy question of, how much of that is you are going and building it yourself, versus you are working with a third party prop tech company that's out there? I'm assuming you haven't built your own property management system yourself? That would be pretty wild. So where do you think about build versus buy and drawing that line?
Rukus Esi: I would love to build everything.
Brad Hargreaves: Yeah, that's what the REITs should do. They should build accounting software.
Rukus Esi: Core to my makeup is a desire to build and control my destiny.
Both, from a personal perspective and from a business perspective. In order to do that, we have to understand where differentiation could exist, where we can create the best experiences by controlling those experiences or components.
If there's an opportunity to create value differentiation, and control our destiny, those are things we desire to build as much as reasonably possible. The second thing is, thinking about cost.
Being introduced to this industry, and PropTech, the [00:10:00] economics matter and it's about unit economics. When you think about, adding PropTech that is, specifically adding costs for units for every individual tool that you add on, your costs can considerably go out of hand.
So those are the things that we think about: control, flexibility, cost. When I came on five or so years ago, one of the things that we talked about was that the technology ecosystem is constantly evolving.
There are new tools getting on the landscape. There are things that we may want to swap out over time. Because they get deprecated, less valuable or address the needs of our customers at that time. So how do we build a platform that allows us to plug and play solutions as we need to?
That's what we've done over the last four years getting to stabilization. We ultimately want the flexibility to buy [00:11:00] solutions if necessary, rent solutions if necessary, and swap them out however we want, then, build the things that create differentiation for us. By doing that, we're not subject to the implications of third party tools and their destiny. We can control our destiny.
Brad Hargreaves: Love it.I'm sure you get pitched by a lot of software vendors. I'm sure there's a lot of companies. We were at RETCON the other day and a lot of vendors there. So you meet a software company, they have a tool. What do you want to see in that pitch?
What are the green flags that make you say, “Hey, this is worth taking back to the team, this is worth spending more time on?”
Rukus Esi: First and foremost, this is gonna be the same response whether we're evaluating a pitch from a startup or deciding to build something internally.
It starts with the problem statement. For a startup, making a pitch, are they clear on the problem statement that they're solving for? The second thing is the solution that they have and does the [00:12:00] solution truly address the problem that they're focused on?
The third component is their ability to scale. My lens is largely from an operator's perspective. So I'm thinking about if this technology or platform is applicable to our business and can solve the problems that we're trying to solve for.
So those are three elements that I look for. Does that problem solve our problem? Can that business scale? Can I scale that solution across my ecosystem and my portfolio? So those are the key things that I look for when evaluating a pitch.
Brad Hargreaves: So on that last point, I wanna dig into the scale question a little bit 'cause I feel like every startup says, “yeah, of course we can scale. What's the problem? We're gonna get into one building and a pilot, and then we'll scale up to all, however many hundred buildings.”
What do you mean when you say something can't scale? What would be an example of something not being able to scale?
Rukus Esi: That's a great question. And there are two dimensions from a scale perspective.
One is the technical side, the technology, [00:13:00] platform side. As we add more units, more buildings, is it easy to just add new units onto the platform with negligible effort, from an operations perspective is one dimension.
The ability for the company to accommodate the changing needs that we have as a business. Not every business runs the same way. Conceptually it's the same thing. But, each of us has nuances around how we run our business whether it's how we think about screening or onboarding and moving in.
So fundamentally, they're going to have to make adjustments to their product. Are they gonna be able to do it with the rate at which we're developing new assets, acquiring new assets, disposing of assets? As our processes are changing as an organization, will they be able to keep up with those changes?
So those are the two dimensions that I typically look at and think about when about scale.
Brad Hargreaves: So let's take the [00:14:00] next step into the purchasing process at AvalonBay. You meet a company, it seems to check all three of those boxes. There's a clear problem, the technology seems to address the problem, and you think they might be able to scale.
What is the process from then forward of getting a new third party technology into AvalonBay? And I imagine it varies based on the technology, but let's try to generalize it as much as we can.
Rukus Esi: Yeah. It does vary, but, once we identify, a platform that checks the box, we'll start with a pilot.
We'll identify one or a few communities where we either have the volume, the processes that we're trying to change. People that can really get the results or at least the data points for truly evaluating the product, then we deploy it there.
Fundamentally, I would say high level, like the strategy, it's typically we're selecting solutions that eliminate manual work. A core expectation, it needs to have API integration so [00:15:00] we can connect to it, pull data from it - essentially relieve our onsite associates from doing manual work and complicating our processes.
It starts with a pilot. We run several tests. We get data. We analyze that data and determine if it does make sense, if our hypothesis going into that test checkoff, and if it makes sense, we proceed. If everything makes sense and we get the results that we expect, the numbers make sense, it underwrites, then we make a decision to expand the pilot, add a few more communities, and eventually scale. Across the portfolio. But the most critical step is being able to pilot at a small scale to, better understand, if the platform can actually perform.
Brad Hargreaves: And I assume you're picking properties that you think the onsite staff is going to be open to… Are there certain properties you're like, oh those are the ones that we have staff that are eager to test out new technology?
Rukus Esi: This is probably one of the unique things about AvalonBay, the staff has been through so much change over the years [00:16:00] that they're conditioned to adopt change.
There are some communities that are more willing to try out new things. But in general our associate base is very receptive to change and particularly when it works well. So we tend to be very thoughtful about the solutions that we try, that we select.
But, yes, we will try to pick assets that are best fit from a profile perspective, whether it's the location, the demographic, onsite staff that may be more amenable to driving the change that we're trying to affect.
Once that's successful, we build out all the training and additional artifacts to help the organization adopt that change.
Brad Hargreaves: You've implemented a lot of technology tools.
What was the last pitch for a piece of technology you saw that made you say, “Wow we really need this?”
Rukus Esi: That's a tough one. Part of the problem is I may be a little jaded with PropTech and my belief that it can solve some of our problems long term. Just to give you a little bit [00:17:00] of context around the things that I struggle with - thinking about PropTech in general, we're a long-term holder.
We, as AvalonBay, we're not looking to dispose of assets in the short term. We're looking to develop or acquire and hold them long term. So when we deploy technology, we need that technology to work for a long time, we need operations to be supported. In the PropTech industry, a lot of startups may not be here in the next two years, which could be problematic for us. The tech might be super cool, but is it sustainable? That drives our decision to answer your question, there are a couple that come to mind.
This is about a year ago, tech around in the construction space.
It's an AI robot dog that essentially supports onsite inspection of construction. And there's a significant benefit having technology like this if you just think 10 years out, [00:18:00] or assuming that the technology was perfect. It creates a lot of leverage for construction businesses to be able to basically identify defects, correct them with as little manpower as possible, which allows the business to scale.
Brad Hargreaves: I love that.
I'm very bullish on some of the computer vision stuff happening right now. Yeah, particularly on the construction side, on the inspection side. Some of that technology, and it's a little ways out before being fully baked, but there's some really cool stuff happening. You see the future of, once the training data set is large enough, once it is reliable enough, once the batteries are good enough - can't forget about that aspect too - I'm very bullish on some of the computer vision stuff.
Rukus Esi: Absolutely. The biggest challenge from my vantage point is really the training data. How do you get a large enough data set to train on, to accurately identify patterns and defects.
But, the technology is incredibly cool and can really have [00:19:00] significant impact in the industry.
Brad Hargreaves: Absolutely.
Rukus Esi: It does work.
Brad Hargreaves: Absolutely. I wanna shift focus to centralization for a minute. Centralization of operations, particularly in multifamily, is a huge trend among operators right now.
It feels like everyone is trying to figure out some aspect of centralization and how centralization can enhance their businesses. AvalonBay has been pretty early on the centralization trend. In your view, what has worked in centralization and what advice would you have to real estate operators that might be a little bit earlier in the centralization journey around how they should be thinking about it as well?
Rukus Esi: Yeah, you're spot on. AvalonBay has been in the game for a while. We launched our first customer care center back in 2007 in Virginia Beach where we really moved all our sort of back office operations to the central location.
We created a call center there allowing support of our residents way back in 2007. We've [00:20:00] been early in the journey. Now, what we've been doing over the last five years is really moving towards the customer facing journeys.
We've spent a lot of time sort of thinking through the touchpoints, understanding where we can create standards and standard processes across the portfolio. Those are the things that make sense to centralize, right?
If there's not a lot of thinking that needs to happen with processing or accomplishing a task from one reason to the next, it makes centralize.
And whether it’s centralizing in a specific location or just centralizing within a department or function in the organization, but the resources are distributed but not necessarily at the app level. So we're essentially thinking how do we get a lot of the mundane work that needs to happen away from the asset itself to some other location. The [00:21:00] big picture strategy for us is we want to enable self-service for our customers, target prospects and residents, to be able to do whatever they want on their own, effectively.
So digital experiences that we create essentially support that and where there's a problem, think, sort of automation to the Nth degree to essentially deliver that pristine that we're experiencing to the customer. Now we know that not every customer will be able to go through their experience without friction, without problems.
Where there is a problem, and the digital experience does not necessarily get the customer where they want, our first backstop is AI. We want to be able to leverage AI, to address issues, questions, problems and solve those problems for the customer. Where that doesn't work, we bring in the associates and add personalization and a personal touch to that experience to close out the issue and resolve whatever issue that the [00:22:00] customers have.
Now, when you think about all the touch points involved through the journey, not a lot of 'em require someone at the asset to actually address that issue. There's a subset that maybe regents specific or locality specific.
And in those situations, we'll make accommodations for an associate to address that. we call it our neighborhood concept. We think about the clusters of assets, in a specific location, which means that we don't have dedicated resources necessarily at each of those assets.
We have a pool of associates, whether it's office associates or maintenance associates to be able to support that neighborhood. Which allows us to move people around and meet the customer where the customer needs to be met. But technology is key to actually enabling that centralization concept.
So regardless of where they are, if they're on the road, if they're in a different location, they can still be able to solve the need of the customer. So my [00:23:00] advice to anybody who's actually thinking about getting on this journey is you have to be curious. You have to test things.
You have to be willing to fail because you're not gonna know everything upfront. You're not gonna know the implications of some decisions. You have to try it out. For AvalonBay we've really adopted a test and learn mindset, and that's essentially the journey that we've been on over the last four years, which has allowed us to test certain concepts.
We failed on a couple of concepts and pivoted on how we've approached centralizing certain tasks. The only way you learn is by trying. My encouragement to anybody who's looking to get on this journey, try it out. Be clear on your hypothesis. Do your tests, validate dry bot visits or invalidate it and then make the necessary adjustments to keep evolving.But you have to try.
Brad Hargreaves: So one thing you didn't mention about centralization that a lot of operators talk about is, once they centralize, they offshore. You mentioned a call center in Virginia [00:24:00] Beach, why not Manila? Or is that on the radar or something you've tried?
Rukus Esi: It's not something that we've tried. At least not in my iteration within the organization. It may have been contemplated prior to me joining the company. But currently our strategy is not focused on offshoring these centralized services.
We believe we can operate stateside and deliver stellar experiences, deliver the margins that we need with operating stateside. How things evolve is left to be determined, but our current strategy is really focused on operating state side.
Brad Hargreaves: One operational question that comes out of centralization as you were talking, thinking about this maintenance dispatch model where you don't necessarily have dedicated staff on site, you can use centralization automation, AI to dispatch maintenance techs, leasing agents, in a smarter way, does that change the minimum asset size, the floor that companies like AvalonBay can reasonably go out [00:25:00] and purchase?
Most companies like AvalonBay and your peers are thinking about, okay, it's gotta be a minimum 100 units and up for this to make any sense, probably 150 units. Now, more realistically, does that change with these technologies that are getting more popular?
Rukus Esi: I don't know that it necessarily changes.
But what I will say is our strategy, going back to the concept of the neighborhood strategy. What we fundamentally want to solve for is the neighborhood that we create or the clusters that we create, does it meet the efficiency metrics that we've defined?
That goes into acquisition and development, and we think about acquisition and development in the context of the neighborhood. Whatever adjustments we need to make, whatever additions we need to put into the formula, it ultimately boils down to the strategy and the neighborhood [00:26:00] model.
Does the neighborhood model underwrite with this new deal that we may be acquired? So it's less about the minimum number of units. It's more about where does this asset fit in our strategy for the neighborhoods? Can we scale to support it? Is it in proximity? Can we have resources to support it? What is required to support it, to submit, meet the profile and criteria that we're looking for?
Brad Hargreaves: I wanna shift for a second and talk about strategic venture investing in the PropTech world.
So about two or three years ago, it felt like all the real estate firms, the strategics, all the big ones, spun up venture arms and started doing venture deals. And sometimes that was on their own, sometimes that was alongside venture firms, sometimes that was through RET, Fifth Wall - one of the kind of strategics that would roll up LPs and then pick companies.
Feels like that's pulled back a little bit. What's your take on that, the role of venture investing, and [00:27:00] how do you see that evolving over the next few years?
Rukus Esi: I fundamentally believe that it boiled down to needs being met.
From a strategic perspective, it made sense for strategics to invest in venture firms at the extent that they were, then maybe even doing… with the investment as well.
Why? Because, the industry had been a laggard. Tech was, most organizations and particularly accelerated due to COVID, the need to leverage technology more predominantly to deliver on business leave where the customers were really, at the time.
So it made sense to leverage deck. Now as a strategic, if you're a long-term asset holder, I like to speak, from the lens that I look from. As a strategic, you want favored nation pricing. You need early access to some of these technologies, whether it's just for awareness, right?
To understand what's going on, what the opportunities are. So being connected with venture firms was important, was [00:28:00] valuable, right? Give you visibility into what was going on. It also gave you longer term assurance that the pricing model would work for you.
And because you're invested there were some benefits from the partnership. Over the last couple years, a lot of companies a lot of strategics and investors have realized there've been a lot of failed investments.
There've been a lot of startups that have not really fulfilled the promise that was made and not delivered on those promises. Whether it's overly complicating the technology ecosystem of, the strategic or the investor, and has caused problems essentially, I would say almost soured the taste and desire to continue utilizing those products in the operating system of that company. Given the maturity and evolution over the last few years, it's uncovered the reality of how challenging technology is and deploying technology is.
So if it's [00:29:00] translated into reduced investment.
For a strategic though it makes sense. Initially it makes sense to have some visibility into what new ways of solving tech problems exist. If you're invested, there's a tendency to believe that you can actually influence the product roadmaps of these companies, which is a huge benefit. If they exit, what are the implications to strategics using it?
From the startup perspective, makes a whole lot of sense because the strategic, if it is a problem that the strategic has, you can test it out, you can validate it. It's a great partnership from that perspective. Ultimately its finding the right balance of which product makes sense for you, which, for the strategic is there a right fit in terms of the problem, and is it meeting the need for the business?
Over the next few years there'll probably be some consolidation, some thinning out as some tools and products that really don't have a future, but it's just the nature of the space.
Brad Hargreaves: Right. That's [00:30:00] business. I wonder if that consolidation, thinning out is going to apply to the v enture ecosystem as well, since it doesn't feel like the LP capital is there in quite the same form and fashion as it was.
Rukus Esi: My suspicion is there will likely be some consolidation on that front as well.
It's a question of the solutions that are being created and the needs that are being addressed. If the problems being solved are so big enough, then maybe it warrants investment.
But it requires a critical eye. So they looking at the company and making the decision if it's worth investing in it. But LP capital will always be there. The question is how much risk are they willing to take on specific investments.
Brad Hargreaves: When you think about your key priorities for this year, what you wanna tackle and accomplish in 2025 for AvalonBay’s tech stack and what keeps you up at night in terms of the tech stack you have? Where does your mind go?
Rukus Esi: In terms of our priorities we remain maniacal about the [00:31:00] customer experience. And when we talk customer experience, it's not just the prospect and the resident. It's really our associates as well.
We believe that their experience is critical to delivering a stellar experience to our prospect and residents We're hyperfocused on showing both the digital experiences and the physical experiences are stellar. Where I believe we would like to be is in a position where for our residents, we know what they want, we know what they need. We know what they want to do, before they even realize it, before they even do it.
In my, words, I would say it's providing hyper-personalization and technology, AI, agentic AI are crucial to being able to deliver that. And more the underlying technologies that support generative AI, the transformer models, being able to predict what the word that are a following or are gonna come, to determine what responses to provide, if you think about that from a customer perspective and a resident perspective, How [00:32:00] can we leverage that technology to really meet the needs of the customer before they even realize it. That's the future. That's where we would like to be: mind readers.
What keeps me up at night: are we moving fast enough?Are we moving fast enough to meet the evolving needs of the customer?
I'm constantly thinking of our teams, our structure, our ability to discover problems and address them, think about the future, what technologies we need to be exploring, are we really understanding the customer problem?And are we moving fast enough to maintain differentiation from our peers?
It's almost a commodity business, if you will. Everybody builds, we all build beautiful buildings. We all build amazing amenities. We all have great people working for us.
So what are the things that give us different differentiation? How can we think about addressing those and being one step ahead, which is the key dose of the AB testing.
Brad Hargreaves: Love it. One last question before we go to the lightning round. Is there a tech [00:33:00] solution you wish existed, but doesn't, other than mind readers?
Rukus Esi: Mind reading. It's really that solution that understands the needs of the customer before they realize it.
We present an offer to them. We provide a solution to them. We meet their need, we solve their problem before it becomes a problem. It's that level of predictability, or predictive analysis, that allows us to meet the needs of the customer right when they meet it. A lot of times we find ourselves reacting to the need of the customer.
In my perfect world, at the moment, the customer has a problem. We have a solution for it, and it's resolved in a seamless facet. It boils down to our big picture strategy, which is, what we refer to as our North Star. We're creating seamless, personalized experiences and making it easy.
Fully realizing that with whatever technologies we need, whether today or in the future, being able to meet that need and deliver that seamless, [00:34:00] personalized experience for our customers is really the thing I envision.
Brad Hargreaves: The e-commerce companies and how they use predictive analytics to recommend products to their customers, I love drawing these examples between different industries. Sometimes they get a little creepy of women seeing pregnancy products come up in their recommendations before they even know they're pregnant.
Do you think we'll get there in multifamily, where the maintenance tech knows your sink is broken before it's even broken?
Rukus Esi: I'm optimistic. You think about just tagging onto the example of maintenance tech.
With transfer technology and data that we can collect. We can likely predict that there's a problem before the problem actually exists. It's really being more proactive and having technology and data that gives up the insights to actually understand what's going on before failure occurs.
You think, engineering and meantime to recovery and meantime to failure, and, based on those data points, you can likely predict when a problem could occur or could be occurring, and [00:35:00] then you take action before that. That's, a similar concept.
Brad Hargreaves: That's a goal.
The maintenance tech's gonna be showing up, bringing your doorbell at the apartment. You'll be like why are you here? Your sink's broken. You don't know it yet. Your sink's broken. I love it.
Rukus Esi: We have a nicer way to do that.
Brad Hargreaves: It's like the old Mafia movie.
Rukus Esi: We'll send them a notice ahead of time, like scheduled maintenance.
Brad Hargreaves: There you go. I love it. It's not gonna be like the old mafia movies where when they show up and say that something in your house is broken and it's not, it's a threat, not like that. Not like that.
Rukus Esi: Not like that.
Brad Hargreaves: So let's move on to the lightning round. These are quick questions.
I ask the same questions to every guest here on the Leader Series. Quick answers. So first question. Tell us about one startup, developer or entrepreneur you're watching and why?
Rukus Esi: I would say Elise AI again, we're partnered with them. We use their solution. They have an AI solution that essentially supports our leasing, touring journey, and parts of our resident journey.
it's a very robust solution. Great team, very clear on the problems that they're solving for. I'm pretty bullish about their product and about the [00:36:00] company. Most of all, it's all the needs that we have and they're great partners.
Brad Hargreaves: Yeah, heard great things about them. So when you and I are recording this podcast in the 2030s what's the most important real estate tech topic we'll be talking about?
Rukus Esi: Facetiously, I would say, the PMS industry is very disrupted, right?
The industry as we know it is no longer there. One of the topics that I've mentioned AI and robots in construction, will be a major topic in real estate, at least I'm hoping, there will be significant development in that realm over the next years.
Brad Hargreaves: What's one city or place you would bet on?
Rukus Esi: I am not sure this is actually a bet, but Chicago and in terms of technology startups, they got a really cool ecosystem. Some really cool companies coming out of there. Smart teams as well. So Chicago. Plus, I love the city.
Brad Hargreaves: Yeah. One the last like true, affordable, walkable cities in America.
Rukus Esi: Absolutely.
Brad Hargreaves: What's your favorite app on your home screen?
Rukus Esi: There are actually two. I would put number one is the [00:37:00] Whoop. I'm a huge health nut, particularly my sleep vitals, so I'm constantly looking at the data points to optimize my performance.
The second app is, it's TLN app, which is, Tennis League Network, so play a lot of tennis and I'm always looking at my performance in Whoop and understanding where I am in the standings and how the league is going.
Brad Hargreaves: Love it. Rukus, so good to have you on the Thesis Driven Leader Series today. Thank you so much for joining.
Rukus Esi: Thanks, Brad.
Thank you all so much for listening today for tuning into the Thesis Driven Leader series.
So next week we have a guest joining that I've really wanted to get on the show for quite a long time. He is one of the most successful new city builders in the US today.
So next week you definitely want to tune in for a conversation with Casey Roloff, the founder and creator of the Town of Seabrook, Washington, and he's going to tell us about his now almost 25 year journey in building Seabrook and what is coming next. You definitely don't want to miss that.
See you all next week.
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