Episode 29: From Apartment Scam to Startup CEO: The RentBamboo Story

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Active Capital. I knew of geekdom though. I kind of just looked like VC

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funds and yeah, it’s all good. VC funds in San Antonio. Um, and then was

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pitching Pat for Active and then he was like, you know, you’re way too early.

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Uh, but he was like, I like supporting basically people that are building here.

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Um, so yeah.

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>> Okay.

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>> Yeah, cuz you did like, you know, I’ve been around Geekdom for since they were

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in the Weston building, so about 12 years now. Okay.

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>> 10 or 12 years. So, whenever I see like new people kind of pop on the scene, I’m

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like, “Oh, okay. Let’s see.”

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>> And and you’ve gone the faster route. A lot of people like, you know, they pop

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in and they don’t they don’t do it and then all of a sudden, you know, they

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start to really grow. You were just like fast.

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>> I was impressed with how fast.

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>> Yeah. Just trying like I just try to surround myself with like people who

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have done it,

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>> people who are way better than me, and see basically what I suck at to try to

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improve.

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>> That’s right. Um, yeah. So, and one thing I’ve like been

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surprised I I lived in Houston and so the tech community here is like so much

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better than Houston, which is surprising to me. Like Houston has really nothing

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outside of like if you’re building an oil and gas is probably a great place to

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be.

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>> Um, and I know Graham’s son, I think he’s invested in this company out there

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that turns like fossil fuel into like Bitcoin miners or something like that.

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Grant, they did that for a long time. And now Grant is doing a

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>> like an AI startup. It’s like AI time tracking.

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>> Yeah.

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>> So,

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>> um, my one of my cousin, he Angel, he was like our first Angel and he went to

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school with with, uh, with Grant.

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>> Okay.

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>> Yeah.

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>> I think they were in like the same I don’t know if they’re in the same frat

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or something like that, but um, yeah, I haven’t talked with him yet. I know he’s

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like kind of more of a I know Grant really tapped into real estate, but um I

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think he’s more of like a tech founder than anything.

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>> Yeah, happy to make the introduction to Grant.

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>> Yeah, we love that.

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>> I can do that. We work with his company running ads, so

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>> I talk to him quite often and he’s always, you know, another one kind of

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like looking for smart people. He doesn’t want to be the smartest in the

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room. That’s always the goal. So, um

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>> Okay, I think we’re good. right there. Yeah. So, super casual again. Um, we’ll

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just kind of talk. We’ll have you do an introduction. Um, what is your last name

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again?

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>> Kakitus.

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>> God, I knit.

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>> Kakinus.

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>> K. Kakitus. Yeah. Trips me up too. Or Kakitus is mine. Kakitus.

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>> Kakitus. Kakitus.

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>> What What’s that? Greek.

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>> Greek. Okay. Very cool.

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>> Yeah. Uh, pretty hard to say though. It

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>> does give me uh I just say it’s Greek. I’m like I’m like okay where which which

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which Greek god did you do from? Okay. So um you’re Matthew Kanakinas.

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>> Um and then you’re the CEO

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>> co-founder

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>> co-founder of Red B. Okay. Cool. Close this door a little bit more. And I’m

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going to turn this AC down. Perfect.

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>> It gets warm in here sometimes. Cool. And then also on the on the flip

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side too, I’ll give you all the videos. So some people like, you know, love to

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do clips. Other people take little parts of like, you know, you talking about um

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you know, your company and then clip that and just take that. So

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>> yeah, we’re doing like a website redesign, so that’s going to help.

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Probably put some of that on there

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>> as well.

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>> This is the most awkward part.

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>> Never gets better. Um, okay. Welcome back. Welcome back to the marketing

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boost. Today I have Matthew Kanekinis. I think I said that right. Right.

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>> Yeah.

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>> Okay, cool. You are the founder, co-founder and the CEO of Rank Bamboo.

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>> Yep. So, yeah, Ren Bamboo. I’m the co-founder and CEO. So, we make AI

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agents for property management companies. Really trying to help them

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scale their leasing operations without hiring more staff.

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>> Okay. So, AI agents, super fun. A I think a little buzzy of a term. Can you

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break it down like what what is it kind of doing?

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>> Yeah, so we are essentially a CRM that pairs with their main property database

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and from there we really ingest all the leads reaching out from Zillow,

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Apartments.com trying to reach out for an apartment, organize all of that

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inside of a nice clean CRM and then we layer in AI agents around leasing,

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marketing, you know, lead generation to help them grow more efficiently.

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>> Okay. And then that that seems like an a market that traditionally isn’t super

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tech forward. Um you know whenever I would rent an apartment like everything

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was a little archaic. Go get a money order something like that. Like how how

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did you find that this was a market? And then also how did you get into it?

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>> Yeah. So we actually started off with a app. So we were making a apartment

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marketplace for college students. And so we were doing that for roughly about a

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year. Uh I was scammed for an apartment near UTSA and I really wanted a more

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transparent leasing process and so uh Axel and I my co-founder we created this

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app was similar to Tinder like that swipe style for apartments only for

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college students. There was like a little AI widget Facebook team.

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>> Exactly. Yeah. It was little AI widget where they could ask questions about the

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property management company about the apartment the reviews and everything

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like that. And so we did great on the supply side. Bunch of apartments wanted

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to on board with us. We had about 97% of UTSA student housing onboarded. The

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issue

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>> that that is that’s an impressive like early founder style.

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>> I appreciate that. But the issue with marketplaces is that it’s two sides. And

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so um we couldn’t generate any demand on the renter side. College students I feel

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like they know where they want to live from their friends from drive around

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campus.

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>> Parents dictating where they’re going to spend their money

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>> 100%. And they don’t need a Zillow Apartments.com. to kind of just know uh

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from the resources at the school and just driving around where they want to

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live. And so we quickly just kept talking to management companies saying,

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you know, what is the issue you’re dealing with? Because they wanted they

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wanted to be on this app. And uh really what we found was it wasn’t the exposure

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side. It was more so dealing with all the exposure these apartments were

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getting, qualifying all the leads, putting them in a clean standard

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process, and really automating it from there. And so that’s really how we found

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that, you know, this was something that we do need to work on. We feel like

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there’s a massive issue in the industry in turnover, lead response time. And so,

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yeah, we just dove in head first and made that pivot to build that leasing

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software. I that is an impressive story. I also like that from a problem that you

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had, you found a solution. I think often times the best founders solve their own

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problems. That’s that’s always a cool part. But the part that I want to dig on

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is you said that you were talking to all these leasing companies. Like how did

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you get to them? Did you use marketing? Did you show hope and knock on their

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door? Like what was kind of that progression out there?

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>> Yeah. So it was a lot of cold calling. So we would just call apartments, you

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know, they’re most of the time they’re always going to answer. They want to

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lease up their property. Um and so we would just call them, ask if they’d want

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more exposure to be on the app. Of course, we’d onboard them that way. And

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then we always have that kind of connection from them wanting to see

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visibility, the analytics from our app, but of course it wasn’t the best

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analytics cuz we didn’t have the demand side done. Um, and so that’s really kind

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of what led us uh down that path.

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>> Okay. Uh, you have a co-founder. Are one of you guys technical, one of

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you not technical? Like what what’s kind of dynamic at the moment?

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>> Yeah, so I’m not technical. My co-founder is I really help a lot on the

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product as well. So, a lot of our mockups, a lot of our early prototypes

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are all done by me. And then kind of Axel will put his spin on it. Um, polish

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it up and make it usable in a way. And so, uh, but yeah, I kind of handle all

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sales, marketing, um, and everything like that.

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>> Okay. I I like the duo. I always think having one technical person like dive in

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gives somebody else a really good time to kind of like market. So, there

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there’s somebody to hold each other accountable like, hey, why is product

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not working? Hey, why is marketing not working?

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>> Exactly. So you’re handling all the sales, all

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the marketing. What does that look like? This is a I call it a B2B play. Is it

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more cold calling? Like what’s the marketing stuff that you are looking at

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doing?

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>> Yeah. So we did cold calling for a while and it does work, but what we found was

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that it wasn’t the most efficient because you’re always connected with the

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leasing office, the leasing agents. Exactly. And you need to be connected to

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the decision maker. And so for us, we found the best way to do that is cold

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email. 100% of our pipeline is cold outreach um through LinkedIn email. Of

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course, we do get some inbound as well, but everything is through cold outreach

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targeting, you know, upper level execs and property management companies. And

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so that’s really where we generate a lot of our pipeline. I absolutely love cold

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outreach. I think that’s uh the highest ROI channel that you could have. And so

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for us being early stage, it was just super easy for us to polish our

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messaging uh you know get deep penetration in the market as well cuz

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you’re emailing a ton of people and also you just get great feedback even when

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it’s a no. You can ask them you know what are we missing? What’s missing from

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our product? What’s better about you know the process you have and so it led

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to a lot of conversations for product discovery.

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>> It’s very cool there there’s a tech stack I imagine. I I can’t imagine that

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you’re sitting there doing it. Maybe it’s an AI agent made a platform. What

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is what is that kind of?

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>> Yeah. So, we do have a uh kind of a cold email system. So, we do a lot of lead

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generation through other channels. Like there’s a lot of real estate databases

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that help us out. But of course, we do just do keyword searches on LinkedIn. Um

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that helps a lot. And also just Apollo, I think just a lead database um is very

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helpful. And then we put all that through a cold email system or excuse

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me, an enrichment system through aircale. It enriches all of it. We

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search for intent uh intent signals around hiring expansion uh maybe

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keywords that they’re saying on their LinkedIn as well. And so from there we

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gauge the intent, put them in different buckets and send out those cold emails

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from there.

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>> Okay. And then those cold emails uh going through Apollo or like a list.

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>> Yeah. So we use uh plus five. We were using instantly. Plus 5 is just kind of

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like a cheaper alternative.

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>> I’ve heard of that one. I’m going to have to take a look at it.

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>> Definitely. It’s it’s really good for lead generation. We like their um

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enrichment uh features that they have more than instantly.

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>> Okay. More affordable. I always like that. I imagine maybe a little bit of

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startup. There’s

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>> Yeah.

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>> There. But gold email. Uh are you did you buy like a bunch of domains to set

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that up or like

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>> Yeah. So we have over I want to say eight domains around 24 emails. And so

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we do rotate those pretty frequently. Um and so we’re always warming them up.

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Always have subdomains. Um so we use like Zapmail for our infrastructure. Um,

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and so that’s really how we kind of scale that side.

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>> Okay. I’m super impressed with that because it took me maybe 3, four years

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to figure out and get to like a really good state like that. A lot of my

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outreach is cold, too. Um, how did you get to that? How did you learn it? Where

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where did that knowledge come from? You know, you’re pretty early out of college

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and, you know, way way smarter than I am, but that that’s an impressive like

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scale and and process build out that you’ve done.

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>> Yeah. So, at first what we would do was just find 50 to 100 accounts that we

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think would do good on our platform. Then it was manual uh cold emails from

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me to the probably the top three to five decision makers at that company. That

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really helped us dial in like our messaging. And then from there, when we

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really wanted to scale up our sending volume, we invested in Instantly. um and

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they have a really good um cold email accelerator that helped us like kind of

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learn the ropes around you know enrichment um you know lead databases

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and things like that. But I also look a lot at agencies. I think uh for founders

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I think agencies have some of the best sales motions and I think I always look

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at other businesses and see what I could take to make us more successful. And so

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looking at agencies tech staffs helped us a lot. Instantly has a lot. Smartweed

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has a lot as well. So just looking at kind of what those companies are doing

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to succeed at scale um really helped us kind of mold our system.

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>> It’s a really interesting take on that agencies have a really good sales

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motion. Like I I run an agency and I don’t think anybody’s ever complimented

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an agency like for anything. So thinking about it like that like you you took it

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you took essentially another system in it into your business. like is there any

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other things that you’re looking out there because you are forging a new kind

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of category for the rental market like how how are you finding other companies

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now?

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>> Yeah, so it’s a lot of AB testing. Everything we do now is just AB testing

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around our messaging, our core value prop. And I think that’s important for

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us at scale too cuz you do kind of see what will convert when you start pouring

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money in paid ads and everything like that. Um and so for us it’s a lot of AB

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testing like the smallest words spin tax as well um different subject lines we’re

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testing and so um it’s a lot of test also around like intent signals seeing

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what it what um converts higher and stuff like that. So now it’s really like

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we have our foundation now it’s kind of how can we apply it more to what we’re

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seeing in our actual business. Um so a lot of what we look at is how users are

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you know saying no to our cold emails. So is it around our messaging? Is it us

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saying something wrong? Is it they already have a tool in place? And so

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that’s kind of how we kind of tweak a lot of that messaging um as we’re moving

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through our motion.

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>> I I love that the marketing is feeding the actual product, too. I think you you

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essentially have a really big feedback loop from the nos and the yeses. I I How

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are you filtering that? Because I hear a lot of people like, “Hey, if they don’t

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want my product, I don’t care about them.”

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>> Yeah. I always see and I’ve worked a lot in sales, too. So rejection is just part

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of it. Um and so I look a lot at like you know even when you get a no can you

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learn from it but the hold it’s the same as in a demo if they tell you no why is

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it a no. Um our adviserss always tell us the five W’s. You need to dig deeper

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into as to why it’s a no and you know fix that. And so

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>> I haven’t heard the five W’s before. I’ve heard it but like what what is

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>> so just constantly digging deeper. Why is it a no? Once they give you that

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issue well then why is that an issue? and then just keep on dialing in deeper

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and deeper till you get to really the core problem and then you can kind of

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fix that through releasing a new feature or maybe selling them on a different way

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on how to use your product. Um,

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>> so, so often times like the classic, oh well, this is my boss. Okay. Like, why

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why does it have to go to your boss? Like, is there an amount or stuff like

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that?

14:48

>> Exactly. Is it a budgeting issue? Is it kind of us having, you know, too too

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many enterprise features in place, maybe they have to sign a contract or

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something like that. And so, that’s also what we look at. Property managers have

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a has a have a on-site budget as well. And so, we always look at, you know, can

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we price into that budget so they don’t even have to go to upper level

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management to get a yes or no. Um, and so yeah, always digging deeper. And then

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sometimes, you know, that no might be the smallest issue. Maybe one minor

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feature that you missed on the demo that you already have that you didn’t

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highlight or that’s super quick to build that you could still easily sell them.

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And so for us, I never kind of leave it at just a no. I always find out why. Is

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it they’re they have a better product in place or is it something, you know,

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we’re missing?

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>> It’s It sounds like a lot of fear fearlessness. Like

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>> Oh, yeah.

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>> Like there’s no shame. Like I think the best sales folks are they’ve got a lack

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of shame to some capacity. They’re like they’ll miss the cues of like get out,

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but they’re also the nicest and friendliest people. So that that’s an

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interesting take um on the on the wise and how it feeds that. Are you doing any

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other marketing out there? Is there SEO, PPC, like

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>> a little bit of SEO? We do have like a blog and things like that. And now we’re

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kind of working more in referrals. I look a lot at like Airbnb’s referral

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strategy early on and how they were able to grow. And so how can we take like

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some of those consumer strategies and apply it to B2B in a very like

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enterpriseheavy footpr?

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>> Um no I don’t.

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>> So Airbnb store really cool is um they were trying to raise their seed round

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and it was like 2008 2009 time and they just couldn’t raise any money so they

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made this like fake cereal box. They were called Obama O’s and then the

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McCain

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>> John for John McCain. Yeah. And they raised like $30,000

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that way. Like I like in a viral moment. That’s how they got to the next step.

16:44

And kind of a cool story.

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>> Yeah. And now Airbnb is one of the most successful travel companies. And back

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then, you know, they were struggling to find the smallest.

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>> Everyone was telling them no.

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>> Exactly. Yeah. And so, yeah, always looking at strategies like that.

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Referrals is going to be a big part of our strategy. Also, just, you know, real

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real estate’s a relationship driven business. And so we want to get out at

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conferences. Um that’s going to be the next point for us, but they are pretty

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pricey and we definitely want to have a strategy in place before you know we

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make those investments.

17:12

>> Okay, that’s good that you’re thinking through that. And yes, like the the hard

17:16

part of marketing is everything’s quite pricey. I love the unscalable part of

17:21

like cold email. You’ve scaled it a little bit. You’ve you’ve figured out,

17:25

you know, the cold calling is there. the the blog and stuff like I’m kind of

17:30

curious like how are you writing stuff based on conversations like where is

17:34

that content?

17:35

>> Yeah. So it’s through LinkedIn through our website it’s mostly around the

17:40

conversations I have with property managers and their pain points. So a lot

17:43

of it is, you know, how can you generate more leads for cheaper and then kind of

17:48

we look a lot of instantly. So relating kind of that problem, showing them how

17:52

to solve that problem, but then slowly funneling them to our product and they

17:56

could solve this problem on our products essentially. Okay.

18:00

>> Exactly. And so that’s what we look at as far as our blogs go. And of course,

18:03

we do want to get into content and that’s going to be another uh massive

18:06

part of that as well. Um but yeah.

18:09

>> Okay. Uh back to your experience, you know, you you got burned on an

18:16

apartment. Like this is a whole new industry for you. Like how are like how

18:20

did you learn all this? Like is it was it a lot of trial and error? It sounds

18:23

like that.

18:23

>> Yeah, it definitely was a lot of trial and error. I did wholesale real estate

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before. So my freshman year of college, um I was calling uh pre-forclosed

18:31

homeowners, trying to get them out of their mortgage, uh essentially selling

18:35

their home to a real estate investor. And so did a few deals. And so that

18:39

really kind of opened the floodgates to real estate. And so I got interested in

18:43

property management and in leasing through that. I definitely didn’t have

18:47

like any experience, wasn’t building products in that space or anything like

18:50

that. Um, but definitely kind of learned the ropes. Um, and then I’m also just

18:55

constantly trying to learn from people. I always tell our users like I’m of

18:58

course I like to be the expert on the tech side, but I’m not the property

19:01

management expert. Tell us exactly how it is so we could fix it. Um, and so I’m

19:06

constantly just trying to learn from our users and just trying to be a sponge

19:09

essentially.

19:10

>> I out of all the conversations I had, I think that is like a through line is be

19:16

as a sponge as possible. Um, you you know, exceptionally impressive like so

19:22

far. Um, the conferences, what do those look like for you? Like

19:27

are are you thinking booths or are you thinking maybe like a gorilla? you know,

19:31

like I I’ve seen some people go and be like, “Hey, you want socks?” And you

19:35

walk around. What What is your your thoughts on those?

19:38

>> So, as much as we do want to be kind of or do want to have that gorilla style

19:41

marketing, sometimes that doesn’t go the best of these conferences. They’ll end

19:44

up like kicking you out or something like that. And so, ideally, it would be

19:47

a booth. Um, and so that’s going to be a large part of our strategy because I

19:52

think just getting in front of decision makers is a massive part of what people

19:56

need to be doing in real estate. And you know, we’re early stage right now, so we

19:59

haven’t had the most opportunity to be able to do that. But that’s a massive

20:02

focus like getting myself getting my co-founder in front of these property

20:06

management companies to spread what we’re working on, our mission. Um, and

20:10

so yeah, a booth is definitely going to be um where we want to be at at some of

20:14

the smaller conferences. And then of course at those bigger ones, we’re

20:16

definitely probably just going to piggy back on another bigger vendor um and see

20:20

what we can do. And then on those referral parts, and I’m jumping around a

20:23

little bit, the referrals, is that more like a partnership program or are you

20:26

thinking it’s more like an actual referral, like one one leasing agent

20:30

refers another one, or is it more like, hey, um, big big real estate, you know,

20:34

conglomerate has 200 locations and you want to like, you know, partnership to

20:40

them where they they make the money.

20:42

>> So, more so from property management company to property management company.

20:45

And so getting that referral, incentivizing them on their subscription

20:49

or uh other ways to incentivize them as well as far as like expanding through

20:54

their portfolio, that’s a little bit of what we do right now is like a land and

20:56

expand strategy. So being in real estate, it’s a trust driven business.

21:01

You’re probably never going to sell the person on their entire portfolio on day

21:05

one. And so it’s always getting one property, two properties, testing it out

21:09

for two weeks, letting the results speak for themselves, and then trying to

21:12

expand to the rest of their portfolio. Um, and so for expanding through the

21:16

portfolio, it’s land and expand just proving through results and then of

21:20

course expanded to other property management companies is that referral

21:23

strategy.

21:24

>> Those results, what do they like look like for somebody? Is it like ROI or is

21:28

it time? Like how do you

21:29

>> Yeah, definitely ROI, NOI as well. Uh, closed leases is kind of what we want to

21:34

show. Uh, I think tours is big. Uh, it’s a big metric, but I think nothing speaks

21:39

bigger than actual converted deals and that’s always kind of what we’re looking

21:42

to do. I think obviously we’re looking to convert tours, but at the end of the

21:46

day, if those tours aren’t converting, we’re not doing our the best job at

21:49

qualifying those leads anyway. Um, and so we always look for actual lease

21:53

conversions, uh, lead to lease times, lead response times, and kind of

21:58

showing, you know, the benefits that they’re seeing with our platform.

22:00

>> Okay. And then it’s so it’s AI agents essentially like if I was on the if I

22:06

went on an apartment and they were using Rank Bamboo, what what would that

22:10

experience on my side be like?

22:12

>> Yeah. So instead of receiving one of those annoying templates saying wait for

22:15

a leasing agent to get back to you, it’s all dynamic. So whatever you’re saying,

22:19

if you’re coming in from Zillow asking about the pet policy, the application

22:22

process, scheduling the tour, we’re going to be able to fulfill all that

22:26

information to you. Of course, within 5 minutes, schedule your tour, send that

22:30

application, or of course, if the management company needs to qualify you

22:34

a little bit more, of course, we’re going to answer your email, qualify you,

22:37

schedule you a tour, um, and stuff like that. And so essentially for the renter,

22:42

we’re giving them their answers upfront. We’re not letting them wait for people.

22:45

They could, of course, find out all of the information that they need so they

22:48

can make their decision, either schedule a tour, lease that property, or, you

22:52

know, move on to the next.

22:53

>> Okay. I really like that because often times when you go to an apartment, Yeah.

22:57

you you get hit with a someone reach out 3 days later, you’re like, I’m I’m like

23:03

fully down a path with somebody else. Like it it really is speed to to leave.

23:08

>> Yeah. It’s so frustrating because now it’s gone so bad where Zillow will send

23:12

the renter an email to follow up when in reality that’s the property management

23:16

company’s job is to follow up with the renter. Why should the renter have to go

23:20

out their way to follow up with you to live at your place? You should be

23:24

earning their business and reaching out to them. And so, um, I just think the

23:28

industry is broken in a lot of ways, but, you know, we’re looking to solve

23:31

that.

23:31

>> I I like that. Um, co-founder, you how did you guys meet? Was that a college?

23:37

Was it something else?

23:39

>> Uh yeah, so Axel uh he’s only a year younger than me and so I definitely got

23:43

lucky there. Um so we met on uh the Y Combinator co-founder platform. Got

23:48

super lucky that he was local as well. Um and so he reached out to me. I kind

23:53

of put on there non-technical founder really mad that I got scammed for an

23:57

apartment looking for a better way to kind of build this out. And then he

24:01

reached out to me essentially saying like you know if you’re not wanting to

24:04

build you know unicorn we should have worked together. And I was like, well,

24:07

you know, I’m pretty ambitious myself, so let’s, you know, let’s take a jab at

24:11

it. So, uh, living together ever since.

24:14

>> The egos are always like they’re good and bad in there, but I love when people

24:18

are like, “Yes, this is what I want to build.” And, you know, if you hit a $100

24:22

million and you don’t quite get that, you’re still like happy in the end.

24:25

>> Exactly. And with Axel, you know, through our marketplace when we were

24:30

seeing very little traction, you know, we were still sticking together as a

24:33

team, shipping every day, figuring out what’s working, what’s not working. And

24:37

so, you know, we’ve been through the lows and uh yeah, couldn’t ask for

24:40

anybody better on my team.

24:41

>> So, are both of you guys full-time? Do you work like what’s

24:44

>> we’re both full-time on the product? Uh we work like day and night on it, trying

24:48

to make sure, you know, all of our users have everything they need. And so, uh

24:52

yeah, completely full-time. that we just brought on a uh founding engineer from

24:56

UCSA, our first hire.

24:57

>> Okay, very cool. Um I I assume you guys have like what guess you define as like

25:03

product market fit PM enough a little bit or where

25:06

>> Yeah, I I like I never like to say product market fit when we’re not

25:10

scaling. Uh but I will say I think given that we have a very vertical play, um I

25:15

think we kind of know exactly who we want to target and companies, you know,

25:19

leasing CRM exist. We’re just kind of a new version of it. And so this market is

25:24

already there. Real estate is a massive opportunity. And so um yeah, we believe

25:29

there’s a lot of opportunity there.

25:30

>> Okay. Those competitors, are they doing any of the similar features or anything?

25:34

Like how stiff is the competition?

25:36

>> Yeah. So uh the biggest competitor in the space is Elise Aai. They just raised

25:39

over 250 million. And so they’ve believe they’ve been around for about 8 to 10

25:45

years. And so they’re focused on the enterprise scene. And so Grey Stars, RPM

25:50

Living, those guys with over 20, 30,000 units, that’s where Lease AI lives. They

25:55

have a very, very similar product suite at the enterprise level. But for us,

25:59

we’re focused on giving middle market and smaller operators the tools to

26:02

scale. We feel like there’s nothing for them between those smaller landlord

26:06

tools like Show Mojo and smaller property management tools and then, you

26:10

know, at least AI, funnel, your more enterprise leasing solutions. We feel

26:13

like there’s nothing for middle market property management outside their CRM.

26:17

And you know that’s going to be ri bamboo.

26:19

>> Okay. So you’re looking at maybe like you know somebody with 20 to a couple

26:22

hundred doors.

26:23

>> So we’re looking for the middle market and property management is roughly

26:26

between a thousand to 10,000 units.

26:29

>> Okay. So somebody that’s probably a real estate investment group some capacity

26:34

that’s that’s growing

26:35

>> about 30 to 100 employees.

26:36

>> Okay.

26:37

>> Okay. And you you’ve got the big competitor on the on the enterprise

26:42

side. You’re competing in that middle market which I think is interesting. Do

26:46

you have competitors there?

26:47

>> So, we don’t have really a direct competitor making a sole leasing CRM. We

26:53

of course always compete roughly with the PM system. So, that’s going to be

26:57

their big data set. Sometimes they’ll have a leasing CRM in place, but you

27:01

know, we believe, you know, our aentic solutions that is layered behind our CRM

27:05

is really what sets us apart. Um, and so it’s always some competition there on

27:10

the PM side, but other than that, it’s, you know, a really wide open market.

27:14

>> Okay. I have like a couple more questions. Like one of them is AI. It’s

27:19

it’s super expensive. Like is is that affecting profit margins or how are you

27:24

guys dealing with that?

27:25

>> Yeah. So our AI costs aren’t the highest. Um and so for us it hasn’t been

27:30

a big issue. We’ve always been told to be cautious around like credit inflation

27:34

um and things like that. But AI cost hasn’t really been a massive issue for

27:38

us. I mean we spend a very minimal amount on testing and our a and our

27:43

users right now. Um, excuse me. The biggest cost for us is Twilio and SMS.

27:48

Um, and so the actual and I guess you can kind of work that in the actual AI

27:52

cost as well, but the actual sending of the text of the phone call is kind of

27:57

what makes the platform a little bit expensive.

28:00

>> That’s good. I I’ve been hearing a lot of the token inflation. People it it

28:04

used to be like the conversation of cloud was eating everybody’s lunch and

28:08

then it kind of got cost optimization. same thing’s happening around AI

28:13

>> and I do think like a a lot of the bigger models are so subsidized and

28:17

invested in by the government. I think it is definitely driving prices down. I

28:21

don’t think it’s going to stay like that long term. I hope

28:23

>> I definitely for us, you know, we’re hopeful that it will free.

28:27

>> Exactly. And you know, the more competition that comes about with these

28:30

models, the cheaper they’re going to have to make their prices as well. Um

28:33

but I don’t see a world where the 2x 3x pricing. Um and so I think we’re we’re

28:39

just fine there.

28:40

>> Okay. And then last to the AI parts is are you using it a bunch in the like the

28:46

content the you know the marketing game the sales game like I can’t imagine

28:50

you’re buying gong but like do you use like a fathom to take those transcripts

28:54

like that

28:54

>> like so we do use like a fath we do use fathom to kind of go through our calls

28:59

uh we do use like AI personalization for cold emails sometimes it’s a very fine

29:04

line on when you can use it cuz sometimes it’ll refer something

29:07

completely random on their LinkedIn

29:09

>> hallucination Exactly. And it has nothing to do with our product and it

29:12

just makes that cold email terrible. Um and so we’re leveraging a lot on our

29:17

sales process of course just coding as well. Uh our team that’s you know we

29:22

heavily leverage um AI coding systems as well. So

29:26

>> no uh no open claw none of that like no no agents running everything.

29:31

>> I we definitely don’t trust that. I think um

29:33

>> that’s an interesting considering what your product is.

29:36

>> Yeah. So I well open claw I think the issue with open claw is people give it

29:40

free reign and I think when you give AI free reign it hallucinates and it does

29:43

things you don’t want it to do. Um and so for us we haven’t deployed openclaw

29:49

at all. Um and we were looking at kind of a way to integrate into our product

29:54

but again we just want to make sure the security is perfect and that

29:57

>> that’s the biggest part like um collage just launched dispatch um for complexity

30:03

is called computer. They’re all kind of going to the the agent model and I think

30:07

you know as you talk about agencies agencies in the next I’d say even two to

30:11

three years are going to be substantially different. It’s going to

30:14

be more agent excuse me more agent driven than human driven.

30:19

>> Yeah. There’s a uh agency right now on Twitter where they’ve reached like $4

30:22

million run rate in like 2 weeks and it’s an AI founder making like all these

30:28

agency plays for a bunch of business owners. So, I do think it’s definitely

30:32

going to look a lot different. But I think AI is only as good as the data you

30:36

give it. And I think that’s the bigger issue here and especially in our

30:39

business is people have a false sense of hope when it comes to how AI is going to

30:44

perform versus the data they have available. Um, and so for us it’s how

30:48

can we make that data and kind of feed it more efficiently to the AI to kind of

30:53

have it actually automate these workflows, know more about their

30:55

business. And so I think at scale I think the biggest opportunity is

30:59

probably who’s going to make data the most accessible.

31:02

>> Okay. Um how can people find you on the internet?

31:06

Like is there a LinkedIn? Is there a website?

31:09

>> Uh www.rimpbamboo.com. Uh they can also reach out to me on

31:13

LinkedIn. Matthew Konikitus. I always love talking anything regarding sales,

31:18

startups, real estate, whatever it is. Uh just feel free to reach out.

31:22

>> Okay. Very cool. Um any are you raising anything at ask outside of that?

31:27

>> Um we are not raising right now. We’re pretty locked in on kind of just

31:30

building out uh the product getting our early users successful. But if anybody

31:35

did want to give Rim Bamboo a try, feel free to reach out and we more than happy

31:38

to get you started for free.

31:40

>> Cool. We’ll put all those in the show notes and really thank you so much for

31:42

joining us.

31:43

>> Yeah, I appreciate it as well.

31:44

>> Cool.

31:47

>> Okay, man. That was a really fun conversation.

31:49

>> Yeah. Um, you