HomeTech.fm - Episode 289 - SmartRent's Lucas Haldeman

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, February 7th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How are you doing, Seth? Good, man. Catching up with my, uh, the good old Kansas, the state of Kansas has that good old football team, I guess. It's pretty confusing where they're from. Stepping in it once again. There's a football team, and they won the Super Bowl. It was a good game.

From what I saw, well, I didn't see it. Did you see it? I did. I did. My neighbor here across the street had a few people over and we went. So in between kind of chasing the kids around a little bit, I was able to watch a good deal of the game. And, you know, I didn't really have a dog in the fight, although as a Denver Broncos fan, you know, you kind of cheer against the Chiefs. That's a big rivalry here in Denver. But, you know, the Broncos also got mopped off the field by the

49ers, uh, a long time ago in the Superbowl. So I just wanted a close game and, and thankfully got that. I thought it was pretty entertaining. Yeah. We, we were, uh, out of town traveling and we were, we were at a, a resort in Orlando and, uh, and I, they had these big screens inside the little cafeteria, the little cafeteria. It's one of those, you know, giant cafeterias with these giant screens and they had the game playing up there, but no audio. Um, so I could see that at the time it was like halftime. We saw a little bit of that. And then, uh, I think that it was like tied. And then all of a sudden, San Francisco just started cleaning up and then we left and i went to bed because i was tired and i woke up the next morning in kansas city had one so must have been a good game there you go i uh i did not i did not watch it other

than on those big screens that i said and uh yeah did you watch it in 4k i did not i don't think i did either is this the part of the show where i get shamed? Well, I can say that the feed that we were watching was definitely not 4K, although it was a large screen and looked good. It was probably like 480p, I would guess. It was very, very low res. But since it was so large, I don't think anybody cared. Because, you know, the bigger the screen you get, no one cares what the resolution is. Yeah.

Well, if you were a Roku subscriber, you were happy to just watch it at all yeah yeah there was like a last minute deal uh between fox and roku uh to get the super bowl streaming on that thing because there was a big like kerfuffle i saw like uh fox station saying roku saying call your fox station and demand that you know the roku gets gets the app put back on or whatever yeah i think they finally got it squared away like right at the last minute and you could you could watch it on your roku tv there in the corner had you you know gone into your basement and watched it rather than over to your neighbors right uh you're gonna watch it on your screen there. That's right. A little brinkmanship there from Roku and Fox. So glad they got that worked out in time. That's always unfortunate when those sorts of things prevent people from watching

sports. So glad they got that sorted out. Let's jump into our show here. We've got Lucas Haldeman, who's the CEO and founder of a really interesting company called Smart Rent, doing some really cool stuff with regards to the smart home in the rental space. And that's an area that we've talked about a couple of times before here on the show. I think it is a segment of the market really where there's still a lot of greenfield and a lot of opportunity. So definitely stay tuned for our conversation with Lucas. I'm sure you'll enjoy that. But in the meantime, Seth, what do you say we jump in here to some home tech headlines? Let's do it.

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence published a statement to try and clear up the announcement that Sonos announced it will cease delivering software updates and new features to its oldest products in May. So this caused a bit of a kerfluffle when they recently announced it. The company had said those devices would continue functioning properly in the near term. However, that was not enough to prevent an online uproar from longtime customers with many blasting Sonos for what they perceived as planned obsolescence. Quote, we heard you. We did not get this right from the start, end quote, said Spence. He apologized for any confusion and said that the so-called legacy products will

continue to work as they do today. Legacy products include the original Sonos Play 5, Zone Players, Connect and Connect Amp. These are devices manufactured between 2011 and 2015. So I think Sonos maybe got this a little bit wrong, at least in terms of the communications out of the gate. And I was glad to see them issue the course correction that they did. Yeah, this seemed like it was a communication issue from the very beginning. Because if you've been around sonos long enough like most companies would not have their 300 speakers working 10 years you know a decade later right or nine years later right um but sonos has put on updates for product that i mean potentially was bought nine years ago um for the longest time like i i have always been shocked as to how long they supported their product.

Now, there have been a couple of products that have kind of gone by the wayside. But, I mean, for the most part, Sonos has done a great job of maintaining the products that they sold and keeping them updated with all the latest and greatest software and features that, you know, if you go buy a new new sonos today uh it works almost exactly the same way as an old sonos with the exception being like the new voice assist voice assistant fad where you have a microphone built into certain devices and of course the older devices never had a microphone and even imagined having a microphone in them in the first place so right um i don't know i i was i i i said a couple weeks

ago that this was kind of like a big to do about nothing it continued to be a big to do about nothing and then sonos announced this and the announcement wasn't i mean this clarification that's been put out wasn't anything different than what the company said but it seems to at i haven't seen very much uh very much uproar after this, but it seems to have kind of like quieted down the Internet, so to speak. And people aren't freaking out about it as much. One of the things they did say that Spence said that they would keep the, if something does break like a core experience of Sonos, they were committed to offering some kind of solution and that customers will be notified about those changes ahead of time. So, um, I mean, all in all, Sonos has been a great company. Uh, you know, when I was a dealer, I love selling the product and the

customers all loved it. And as you know, as a, as an end user consumer of the product, I like it too. It works really well. And the company so far hasn't, you know, it's not a bad company, right? No, I agree with all that. They just never released the product I wanted at the time. That battery wireless outdoor speaker thing, that didn't come along until this last year. It was always something like, we want the new stuff, Sonos. Give us the new stuff. And they never did. They never did.

Better late than never. Yeah, yeah. Google is testing a new feature that can send Nest owners alerts about their furnaces when unusual or unexpected patterns are detected. The HVAC alerts will be automatically sent to subscribers of the Nest Home Report email list, notifying homeowners of any small issue with their heating, cooling, or ventilation system before it potentially becomes a serious problem. For example, if the system, based on historical data, started taking longer to cool down your house, maybe that might trigger an alert. Google stressed these alerts were not meant to replace

regular maintenance on furnaces and other equipment, and they won't warn you if a major component of your HVAC is about to fail. So, like, the compressor is going out. It won't warn you about that. But if you're doing regular maintenance, these alerts could help users catch a problem before it happens um an interesting bit of ai uh that that could help you uh find a problem yeah it'll be interesting to see like the implementation and how useful they're actually able to make this for users i know that i'm trying to remember the details because this was i believe a couple of years ago at this point, but we were having some issues with our furnace here. And I remember getting an

alert from my Ecobee and it had basically connected the dots that, hey, we've, you know, we've been calling for heat, like the heat has been on, the Ecobee obviously knows that, for some time now and the temperature's not going up. And so you may want to like look into it. Again, I don't remember the exact wording, but it basically had enough intelligence to say like, hey, the temperature is not going up at all. We've been running the heat for a really long time. And it turned out, you know, that it did correspond with some issues that we were having with the furnace at that time and helped us sort of tune into that and, and, and get them fixed. So, you know, I think, I think some of these things are, are really useful, uh, if they're

implemented in a thoughtful way. Yeah. Yeah. I could see like, um, that that's a great example. And I could see like, if you, um, had some work like this always happened when, uh, when I was an installer, like somebody would go up in the attic and monkey around up there and some ducks would get pulled loose or something like that. And, and you'd go up into somebody's attic and they would, it would be like as cool as the house. Right. And that's, that's not right. So you're like, it's Florida in July. Something is, something is amiss. And, and, you know, lo and behold, their $350 electricity bill or, you know, double electricity bill or whatever would come down after that, after they had that fixed. But, yeah, I suspect something like this could keep an eye on, you know, what your normal usage for HVAC is and then figure out, oh, there may be something wrong or something starting to go wrong in your system and give you a timely alert for that, hopefully.

Right. Right. And I continue to believe, you know, like Nest is going to be a little bit limited in terms of the actual intelligence that they're going to be able to get in. Like they said, they're not going to be able to tell you if internally a compressor is about to fail or something like that. But I think broadly speaking, this notion of bigger appliances in the house, like your HVAC, dishwasher, you know, laundry machines, being able to connect to centralized smart home platforms and give you these sort of maintenance alerts and updates, I suspect is something we're going to continue to see more of. And as that becomes more cohesive and unified, I think it's a great thing. So I look forward to, you know forward to more of that in the future. Moving on from there, Google Fiber announced that it will be dropping its TV package option to focus solely on providing high-speed internet service. It will still provide the service to existing

customers who pay for it, but the company says, quote, customers today just don't need traditional TV anymore, end quote, when so many options are available online through over-the-top TV services and streaming platforms. Instead, Google will partner with FuboTV, an over-the-top provider that specializes in sports programming. That way, new fiber customers can sign up for Fubo alongside an internet subscription. Google says this is in addition to YouTube TV, its own pay TV service that has some similar benefits to Fubo alongside an internet subscription. Google says this is in addition to YouTube TV, its own pay TV service that has some similar benefits to Fubo. So an interesting story and an interesting partnership there. Big win for Fubo, I would imagine. Big win for Fubo, but I mean, a big,

a loss for the traditional linear TV, I suppose. I don't know. They're kind of like, they have YouTube TV sitting there. So why not use it with your fancy fiber high speed Internet and get the I mean, this basically eliminates probably cable box equipment on their end. Right. Because they're not going to be installing that in people's homes. It'll just be an app. So it totally makes sense to see Google Fiber doing this. I suspect that this is kind of like a harbinger of what is coming. Comcast will just be an app one day.

DirecTV, Dish Network, they'll just be apps one day as well. And maybe the landscape's gonna look a lot different for these linear TV companies when we have so many of these over-the-top providers of specialized things like Fubo, but then you have linear providers like YouTube TV

out there that can offer what you traditionally get and then if you want sports, you add that in with Fubu. Fubu. Fubu. Fubu. Different. Yeah, different.

It's the large clothing company is what I remember them. That's right. That'll be a fun image to mock up for our show art. Indeed. Earlier today on its South Korean website, Samsung posted the Galaxy Home Mini will be released in South Korea on February 12th for 99,000 Korean won. Is that what that is? Yeah. I believe so.

Or approximately $83. The post has since been removed, but it was up long enough to give us a few details about the Galaxy Home Mini and suggest that rumors that the device will arrive in early 2020 could be true. Bixby. It's exciting. Cue up the Bixby sound effects. Yeah. Bixby. Another Bixby sighting.

I don't know if I'm more surprised by that or the fact that 99,000 Korean won is $83. Yeah. All the currency stuff is weird. They're all over the place.83. Yeah. Every, all the currency stuff is weird after you, they're all over the place. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think Japan,

the, the, the Japanese yen, is that what it is? Can get these, like you can get 220,000 and it's only like a few hundred dollars or something like that. Wow.

Yeah. So it's, it's all, it's all strange, but this is totally different. Yeah. It's all made up anyway. Um,

this is, this is good news though. Cause I, I've been waiting for this to for this little device to come out. Not particularly this one. I want the cauldron one, the one with the little legs. This one doesn't have the legs. It looks like a nice little pot that you'd have.

And this actually looks really nice, I think. But I want the ugly one with the legs. I really want that one. That's the one? Yeah. You're getting that one prepped for the uh for the graveyard in advance yep i'm gonna put it next to my my home pods the news uh does line up it's the story goes on to talk about rumors samsung might announce the smart speaker at its uh unpacked

event which is next week story says though we should remind you that samsung first announced the bigger galaxy home 18 months ago and the device still is not available wow yeah that's a lot going on next week we have uh ise coming up we forgot to kind of tease that at the beginning of the show but we're it'll be 11th through 14th for ise uh we'll sit down and chat next on the 11th so right at the beginning ise and then we'll have to check what happened and the 11th. So right at the beginning of ISE, and then we'll have to check what happened and do a little bit of follow-up the next show. But yeah, big stuff in the industry, big stuff going on in the industry.

Yeah, absolutely. Now, speaking of the industry here, and our final headline, after a long battle of brinkmanship, the US and China made their first deal in the tariff battle, bringing some much anticipated relief to integrators who have been forced to pass along increased pricing to their clients

in the so-called phase one deal signed by president trump and chinese vice premier lu hey great give me the names uh on january 15th tariffs on loudspeakers, turntables, TVs, projectors, and other electronics on the list 4A were cut in half from 15% to 7.5%. The deal affects products that land on U.S. shores after February 15th, 2020. So indeed, some good news going from 15%, again, down to 7.5% on many of those devices that I'm sure integrators will be happy to hear about. Yeah, I mean, February 15th is just long enough for everybody to forget this actually happened. And quite frankly, I don't think that any manufacturer is going to drop their prices that 7.5%. I think everything is going to stay the same. You think? I haven't got any indication on my end that they are willing or want to drop any.

Still a lot of uncertainty. Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. You have to hedge your bets. What if this happens again and we have a trade war again? Or why give up that 7. a half percent that you had to lose money on just a couple of months ago, uh, the, the first time around when these things went from zero to 15%. So, um, not, not a, not a great deal, but I, I doubt that any manufacturer out there is going to be given any of us that money back, uh, in, in the longterm. I think the prices

are just up where they are. Uh, they went up and that's where they're going to stay. Hmm. Well, yeah, you definitely have a good, uh, just up where they are. They went up, and that's where they're going to stay. Well, yeah, you definitely have a good line of sight to that, I would imagine. This all gets really complicated, too. I mean, the article goes on to talk about a List 4B, so there's all these different lists. And I thought this was interesting. List 4B includes loudspeakers get this with drivers less than 50 millimeters in diameter and a frequency range of 300 hertz to 3.4 kilohertz yeah that's most like if your frequency range is outside of that is you're not on that list and so you're on a different list like it just i mean it gets

complicated very quickly um which i think, Seth, highlights your point perfectly. Like, this is not a straightforward affair for anyone involved. Right. Least the manufacturers who are trying to figure out, you know, trying to make heads or tails of all this. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, I think you probably make a good point that just because the tariffs are being cut in half doesn't actually mean that manufacturers are going to reduce their prices necessarily. I don't see any of them, on my end at least, rushing to make that correction by February 15th.

It was already a major, major, major issue to update all the BOMs and on their end and then relay. I mean, you would not have believed all of the incorrect pricing sheets that we got as distributors. I mean, from our manufacturer partners that were just like, wait a minute, what about this? And we get an update that had completely different pricing from each day as this was going on. So I doubt that they're going to even just recover those. I doubt that we're going to see anything just to recover those profits that were lost doing all that, right? Because that's unexpected work. I doubt we're going to see anything handed back to us. I think the prices are up and that's where they're going to stay.

Yeah. All right. Well, time will tell. But great insights there. It's a good perspective. That'll do it for our headlines. All the links and topics we've discussed on our show this week can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

We'll send you show reminders and other occasional updates about all the great things going on here in the world of home tech. Once again, that link is home tech dot fm slash 289 hey don't forget you can join us in the chat room live wednesday starting sometime between 7 7 30 p.m eastern you can find out more about that at home tech dot fm slash live all right without further ado uh let's go ahead and jump straight into our interview once again we've got lucas haldeman on ceo and founder of smart rent talk about their unique platform designed to bring smart home benefits to the rental space. So we hope you enjoy. Hey, Lucas, welcome to the show. How are you? Doing great. How are you guys doing? Doing excellent. We appreciate you joining us. I

look forward to jumping in. I think I was talking about it in the preamble to the interview here. I think that there's just so much opportunity in terms of the smart home in the rental space and really as prepping for the interview, enjoyed learning a lot about what you guys are doing and I look forward to getting into that. But before we jump into the specifics, why don't you give our listeners just a quick personal introduction and maybe talk a little bit about the background that brought you to where you are today. Sure. Yeah. Lucas Haldeman is my name. I'm the founder and CEO of SmartRent. And my background has really been for the past 25 years in rental housing and technology. So I started out building websites and more of the marketing side of apartments, but I've always been in the apartment side. And then most recently before starting SmartRent, I was the CTO of a single family home REIT called Colony Starwood Homes,

and we owned 44,000 houses around the U.S., single family homes that we rented. And that's where I really discovered this problem that renters have largely been locked out of this smart home ecosystem. And I felt really passionate about unlocking that for them and bringing smart home sort of to the masses. So really happy to be here. Yeah, absolutely. And in just a minute, I want to ask you to kind of give the quick elevator pitch because we're going to get into a lot of the details of smart rent, but kind of the elevator pitch. But before we do that, I thought it was really interesting reading about your background as well as that of your leadership team.

And it sounds like most of you come from kind of the property management side as opposed to necessarily the smart home side. And I thought that was kind of cool. So talk a little bit about the background of the leadership team and why you think, presumably, you think that's a good thing for the company to have people that really come at it from that angle of understanding the unique challenges. Yeah, no, it's a great point. We think it's vital and not just amongst sort of the senior level and the executive ranks, but all the way down throughout the entire company. We prioritize experience and multifamily over technical knowledge, technical experience, all of that, because it's such a unique business. Everyone feels like they understand it because they've rented an apartment or they've lived in an apartment. But until you've been on the operations side and truly worked in a management

team and managed thousands of units, you don't have that perspective. And so we really felt like that's what we could bring to this. When we were on the operations side, we're all tech geeks, smart home geeks, love technology, but saw it through the lens of the operator's view and really felt like that's what we could bring to this. We felt like the folks that were trying to bring smart home to apartments didn't have that lens, didn't have that view, and didn't quite understand how to do it. And what we found, sort of fast forward a couple of years, is that that hypothesis was true. And we do think that's part of what really makes us a unique company. Right. Absolutely. Cool. Well, let's jump in and let's talk about the solution. So like I said, give us sort of the quick elevator pitch before we jump into a lot of the specifics. What is SmartRent all about? So SmartRent is about bringing smart apartments and connected communities to the multifamily housing industry.

We're an enterprise software company. What that means is in one platform, we tie together hundreds of different hardware devices. So we're basically a hardware agnostic company. We take the best of the different smart home devices or what the particular owner wants, and we weave them together into one platform, both for an owner to use while it's vacant or while they're trying to manage the common areas. They can control the temperature. They can understand the access control.

But also we have an app for residents. So once you move into an apartment, you as a resident get that smart home experience like you would at a single family home that you own. You get to control your lock, let the dog walk around, save money on your utilities, have a lot of the cool features that we've all come to love in this smart home ecosystem. Shades, blinds, cameras, light controls, all of the devices that you've seen are now unlocked for the renter, who really for the bulk of the smart home history have been locked out. They weren't allowed to change their lock.

They weren't allowed to change their thermostat. It wasn't their property. Yeah. Don't tell any of my former landlords. Nor mine. Yeah, exactly. And we do find that. I mean, that's exactly. And we do find that. I mean, that's funny, but we do find that a lot.

That's one of the first things we get when we show is, hey, so I've already got a couple things. We say, don't worry, we'll take care of it. We're like, well, it'll all be OK. Yeah. So that's that's one of the things that we on this show. I know that we kind of struggle when we're talking about some of the products that have come out in the past. So it's like smart light bulbs. You know, when Jason and I see those, we think toys.

But for someone who isn't a homeowner and who is renting an apartment, a smart light might be the only method or way that they could get a smart device inside their apartment. They're not going to change out a light fixture or a light switch, or maybe even have the ability to do that in an apartment or something like that. So this is something that I think has been needed for a long time for people who do rent properties to be able to break into the smart home thing. This is a great, great idea. What sort of, what's, you kind of briefly touched on it, but what sort of devices are included in a smart rent apartment? Like what types of physical devices? So it's a great question and it seems like it should be a pretty simple answer,

but one of the things that's unique about our platform is we really let an owner customize what they want to put into an apartment unit. The base package that we recommend, and it doesn't always get accepted, but what we recommend is that you put in a smart lock for access control, smart thermostat to control utilities, and then leak sensors, water sensors that are connected to our smart hub, which is the last thing we put in. The reason for water sensors, and that's one that as a homeowner, you sort of think, yeah, it's important, why worry about that?

But in apartments and multifamily, water is the number one cause of damage across all multifamily units. So taking an aggregate in the whole, protecting an asset against water damage has massive payback for an owner. It's also great for a resident. If the apartment above you starts leaking and you're the one who finds out about it because it comes through your ceiling, that's a very unpleasant thing to go through. Whereas catching that as soon as it happens and mitigating that damage before it's catastrophic is really important. So base system hub, which is our smart home hub, lock, thermostat, leak sensors is what we recommend. And what's cool, I think, that we've done that no one else has done in this space is above that, we let residents then customize whatever they want.

So we have an e-commerce store and we let them add on. We'd say, hey, your owner's put in your base system. There's a hub here. You can go and buy anything you want. Oh, and by the way, you can also buy it at Best Buy or buy it on Amazon. You don't have to buy it through us, but you can add on to the system and really customize it to be your own. And that's where we sell, as you were alluding to, a lot of smart light bulbs, a lot of smart plugs. I was just like you. I never saw the utility of a smart light bulb when I could change my switch. But suddenly when I'm not allowed to change my switch, it becomes a much more important thing. So it's funny, these sort of edge cases, smart home things where you say, well, is that sort of a solution looking for a problem?

We found sometimes we did find the problem in multifamily and the solution is there. So it's a really flexible system. Yeah. So, okay. So I need to back up one more step here. You said earlier, we recommend, and I'm trying to figure out, you have two customers you're probably selling to here. You're selling to property managers who may need your product one way and then a renter or an end user who might need a product another way and it sounded like you have you said there's a base package that maybe the property manager will put in every single unit and then it sounds like you also have we also as a renter i i could rent a smart a connected apartment and move in and then pick and choose maybe what I wanted above and beyond the smart thermostat and door lock.

Yeah, exactly right. And yes, so we have that bifurcated sale of we convince an owner, this is the reason you want to do this to your entire property. And where do you as an owner see value? Saving on your utilities is important. Getting access control is important. Mitigating damage, as we talked about, is important. But it's harder to convince them that, hey, you should put in shades or you should put in light bulbs. It's harder to see, is that really important to every

resident? So that's exactly right. We then start selling to the resident once they move in and say, do you want to upgrade this? And I'm amazed. A lot of people, the answer is yes. Some people, the answer is no. And either way is fine. The building owner gets what they need out of it. And that's what's really made that sort of ability to get scale is sell the right thing to the right customer. And when somebody does that, like say I moved in and I said, yes, I do want a smart light in this or smart light to be in this room or smart thermostat to be installed. The property manager

doesn't have to trust me to put it in it. You guys can coordinate how that gets installed. That's exactly right. And we have professional installers that come in and do it so that they know, Hey, my asset is being taken care of. So the biggest one that, uh, that we do like that is blinds. So if you think about smart shades, smart blinds, super cool, a lot of fun, you know, you can gradually wake yourself up with, with scenes and like all kinds of cool stuff. But that's really you're drilling into the side. You're putting up a window treatment. An owner of an apartment building gets a little nervous if you're going to do that yourself.

So that's where we say, look, if you want that, we can provide it. And we're going to come in and do a professional install. Oh, and by the way, training how to use it and show you how cool it is. Right. Very cool. So I want to drill down and get specific because you did touch on it a couple of times there. But I think it's probably a big I know it's a big question that I had as I was researching the company. So you say owners sort of have the ability. Then you get the property manager. They decide on a base package and then owners have the ability to modify on top of that. And I think if I heard you correctly, you even mentioned like go to Best Buy,

buy your own stuff and then integrate it with the system. Where are the limitations there? Because I have to imagine, and maybe this leads into a conversation about the hub and the radios you're using and things like that. So sort of compatibility, like how broad is that field? If I'm an owner, I'm sorry, an end user, not an owner, but an end user in a smart rent apartment? Just how much flexibility do I have in terms of the types of devices that I can add?

Yeah, and it does get technical. I know for this show, it's a welcome thing. So I'm excited to talk about it. So our hub that we put into the unit runs primarily on Z-Wave. And we prefer Z-Wave devices for when a unit is vacant, mainly because a lot of apartments don't have internet. There is no Wi-Fi in a vacant apartment. But our hub also has a Wi-Fi chip in it as well as BLE. So that expands the universe of what you can add on to this, to the system. But primarily what we're putting in for the owners is Z-Wave devices that have local control

with that hub. But yes, once an owner moves in, they can put in an S-cam, they can put in an Alexa or a Google Home. There's other devices that can go on. And we have a list of what we do and we try to be really flexible and help people put on the devices they already have. I always love hearing about somebody bought something on Kickstarter five years ago. And can we integrate it into our hub? And we actually kind of love that stuff.

So it's like, yeah, let's get that integrated. That's pretty fun. So we try to be flexible. It's not to say we can integrate everything or that every smart home device ever conceived works on our platform. But we try to be open and flexible. And really we try to encourage people to shop in our store where we know everything works seamlessly and perfectly. Um, but, but overall we want to really have a, a, an open ecosystem of smart devices. Very interesting. So there you, I think you kind of brushed on this, but it brought me back to it.

To use anything, most smart devices these days, you need to have that internet connectivity, right? So you are using the Z-Way devices for local control. But for most of the stuff that's out there today, you do need to have the ability to go online and send commands up to Amazon servers and back down. I assume most renters these days have internet, but how do you provide that service or do you provide that service in a situation where there may not be Wi-Fi connectivity? Yeah, that is why we have the Z-Wave. Z-Wave can work well also. The other thing, well, let me back up and say,

so in addition to the Z-Wave, all the devices we put into a unit, we believe have to have a manual control. So if we're putting in a smart lock, there's a keypad on that lock that has a code saved in that lock. So it works whether there's internet or not. A thermostat has to have buttons so you can control the thermostat. So we do make sure there's sort of an analog fallback in everything we're putting in. The add-ons, that's not true because that's in an occupied unit. But that gives you the case of, hey, if I'm not technical or I don't like smart stuff and I move into an apartment, what's my experience? And it's still a good experience. And it also still protects the asset and gives the owner the benefits that they need. But we are careful to say we're not forcing

people into a path. We want to be really open. And we think this adds a lot of benefit and makes your life easier and more convenient and safer. If you don't feel that way, we totally respect that. And we don't want to sort of pigeonhole you out of the departments that we're in. We make it so you can still live there. And we see some of that. I'm surprised at how little we see of that. We actually track that people who sort of opt out. And it's usually one or less per apartment community, you know, 200, 300, 400 units. So the vast majority of people are excited to have it. But no judgment. We're not judgmental of those who don't believe in or are worried about it. We're very respectful

of that and just show them how they can use it without partaking in those features. Gotcha. Okay. Well, I am in the market for an apartment and my department that I'm looking at has a smart rent equipped unit. What does the move-in experience look like for me as I move in? So it's the experience that you would come to expect from any modern transaction you're doing. So it's really cool. So when you move in and you sign your lease and you digitally sign it, we have API integrations

with the property management software. So we automatically pull over your name, your email, your phone number, and we'll email you and text you a link to then sign up for the service. You sign up for the service, you get the code to get into your unit, you get the tutorials, you also get the opportunity to sign up to have someone come out and show you how to use it. So one of the things that we love to do and feel like we're

different and say, hey, if you like tech, but you're scared of it, just click this box and we'll actually schedule an appointment with you, almost like you would if you bought a newly constructed home. They do the post move-in visit. They'll come show you how to use everything. And so without ever talking to anyone, without ever going into an office, you can be in your U-Haul truck and get your code to get in and you're in your unit. And so it's pretty cool. Well, that sounds very cool. And I actually would love to learn more as we progress through the conversation here about how you sort of work with property managers. And I think it's really interesting that you're integrated with that software. Excuse me, but I want to talk a little bit more still about the end user experience. So we talked about the move in and how all that works,

but we really haven't talked about sort of the day-to-day interaction. And if I understand correctly, you guys have this hub, I think Alloy Fusion is what I saw on the website. And so talk about that. I believe that came with like a touchscreen interface. Like what are the ways that end users interact with the system? Yeah. Alloy Fusion is our brand new hub that we're just launching this month in February. And so it's an upgrade.

It's a premium product. But it is an all-in-one hub and thermostat. So this is sort of hard for podcasts, hard to explain verbally, but if you look on the top because it is how you change your thermostat. And it actually wires into the wall where your thermostat used to be and is mounted to the wall. And it's an all-in-one device that gives you Z-Wave, Wi-Fi, cellular, Bluetooth, as well as in local control of all those devices. So to lock or unlock your door, if you're doing it from the Fusion Hub, you're doing it locally staying in the apartment. It doesn't have to go to the cloud and have that command come back, turning the lights on and off, running scenes. And because it is a touchscreen, it also gives us the ability to integrate into one app or into one user interface all your other smart devices you may have brought with you as well. Bose speakers or Sonos or other smart devices that you have. So we really conceived of this to say, our current system has a separate hub that looks more like a router

and kind of sits in a closet and then a thermostat. And we thought, what if the hub actually was combined to be that all-in-one experience? And it's been the feedback that we've been doing, we've been beta testing it and focus grouping it. We've gotten just incredible response. Other cool things that I know your audience will appreciate is we're working on our integration with Ring. So the Ring doorbell will show up.

If your owner put in a Ring doorbell, your Ring doorbell can show up there. We also have a video intercom that goes to common areas. So someone could be out on the street, your friend can come up, and their face will show up on your Fusion Hub, and you'll be able to let them into the front door. So really, really cool new product that we're excited to launch. Very cool. And so you alluded to an app there as well. I would assume that you guys also have like your own proprietary app for end users to interact with the devices.

Right. Yeah. Great point. Yeah. So in addition to the Fusion Hub, which runs a version of our Android app, we do have a standalone Android app and a standalone iOS app, both natively developed for residents once they move in. We also have an app for property managers and owners, but the app for residents, all the same functionality that I just described about the Fusion is also there in the app. Other things that we see residents using the app for, setting a schedule for your thermostat. People are saving 20 to 30 percent on their utilities, something we've been doing in single-family owned homes for 10 or more years, right, with Ecobee and Nest and others. Now renters are getting to do that. The ability to create codes. So my favorite is the recurring code or what I like to call the dog walker code. So it's a code that'll get the dog walker in, but it only works Monday, Wednesday, and you know your dog walker just tried to get in your house? So create codes, set your thermostat, control your lights, control your functions, all in one app that's custom built by our software development team.

Got it. Very cool. And I do want to move, like you alluded to, to property managers and talk a little bit about them. I do have one more question on the end user experience before we shift gears. Voice is a huge thing nowadays. Obviously, it's kind of become table stakes in terms of interacting with the smart home. What do you guys do in the voice area? So we try to be really flexible with this and be open. You'll sense the theme of being open. But so we have Google Home compatibility, we have Amazon Alexa compatibility, and we also have Siri commands for people who use Siri as their voice controller.

So we're really open to that. The dominant things that we're seeing in apartments is Alexa and Google Home are kind of neck and neck. They're sort of less Siri, less HomeKit. That definitely skews towards homeowners. But we're fans of voice control. We do think it's important to not put one or the other in a unit. And we help educate owners to say, you know, you shouldn't put an Alexa in there because if someone moves in their Google person, that's frustrating and vice versa. But we do think that they're a great add-on and really make, they kind of add that sizzle to the versa. But we do think that they're a great add-on and really make,

they kind of add that sizzle to the experience. And we definitely recommend owners put them in their model units because when you're showing off and showing the smart home, we think it's the best way to showcase it. You know, when you say, Alexa, it's movie night and you see the shades go down and the lights dim and everything happens at once. It's a really, really cool experience. And as a renter, you've never really been offered that at any place you've tried to try to rent. It's a brand new brand new thing for you. Right now, that is that is actually pretty exciting. One thing that kind of took me here is like, this is all great if I'm an end user. But, you know, if you are also dealing with property managers, and I imagine that if you step back and look at somebody with 200 units inside their apartment complex that they're trying to manage, this type of system having access control and the ability to monitor for water leaks and the ability to control and turn off the HVAC system in the units when no one's there, when no one's renting, should I say, is probably so much better to have, like in a broad sense, than sending somebody around with a bunch of keys trying to, you know, unlock a door and

make sure that the power or the HVAC units on 85 or whatever and not turn down to 62 or something like that. And all these units that are unoccupied at that time. How does your smart rent platform interact with those property managers differently than it does the rentals? Yeah, great question. Yeah, and you're totally spot on that the sort of consumer sizzle and the fun stuff is great, but the real substantial piece of this platform is just more efficiently operating

and better protecting these assets. So the way the system works... It's like a small BMS system. I'm thinking large-scale condos and large-scale building management systems. It's not a small-scale that. It's just kind of like an interface almost at the same level BMS system. So I think this is really cool. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. It is a BMS system. It's just the problem. This was the dilemma we had

as apartments as BMS was too expensive because we weren't a commercial high rise, right? Like a garden community in Dallas. I can't afford a $2 million system, no matter how cool it is. And then on the other side was stuff that was really just made for you to put in your house or me to put in my house. And no one said, well, I got to control 200 of these at once. I can't have 40,000 logins to different devices. So, yeah, so that's exactly where we try to sit savings on leak damage, on utilities, on access control. If you go to an apartment community, like, you know, you go to suburban Dallas and you go to an apartment community, you will see a guy driving around in a golf cart handing keys out to people. That's ridiculous.

This is 2020. You know, it's like when was the last time you checked into a hotel and they gave you a physical key to get in your room? You'd be like, what is this? I'm kind of worried I don't want to stay here. And so hours of time back, better labor utilization, all these savings are massive. And they actually add up to be more substantial than all the sort of consumer benefit. Even though it's great for the renters and it's fun, the true power of the platform is in managing these buildings better. One of the things that's important I alluded to earlier is being integrated into the property management system. So we know when a unit is vacant or when it's occupied, no one has to go into a system and say, 101 is now vacant. As soon as it goes vacant and we get that move out, we automatically put that

into vacant mode. We lock out the thermostat. We put access codes in so vendors can use their personal PIN code to get in. And we change the whole way that the apartment lives and breathes. And same thing, as soon as it goes occupied and you move in and you're ready to bring your stuff in, we take it out of vacant mode. We remove all those codes. We make it ready for you to be the occupant. So that's the key that we found to getting scale is not adding another system people have to work in. But we do the hard work to integrate with the existing system so that it just works.

That's the feedback we consistently get when you're talking to service technicians, leasing consultants, and property managers is I just love this system because it just works. I don't have to think about it. I don't have to worry about it. I don't have to remember to go log into something else. It just happens. And that's been really, I think I can't, you know, downplay or overplay that enough. That's been the key to us getting scale, which we knew coming from sort of tying it back around. We knew from being operators, like we just knew that intuitively,

this is the right way to do it as former operators. Well, that's very cool. And I, yeah, I love that, that experience that you bring in terms of being a former operator and, and having that, that experience. And like you said, intuitively knowing, Hey, we got to go about this a certain way so that we're not adding just more stuff, but rather seamlessly integrating, uh, you know, with, with the systems and processes that, that already exist. So I think that's a very smart play. I am curious to know, I think property managers, owners of these assets probably have a really unique lens in terms of the attractiveness or the marketability of the smart home.

I think a lot of us, I know for myself, I'm kind of a geek for this stuff. And so I tend to get excited about it, but they obviously are dealing with a broad swath of people. And what's the sort of feedback that you get from property managers and owners with regards to the smart home as a way to differentiate their properties? Yeah, it's one of those things

where I'm cautious with how much I respond to it because it's such a huge differentiator right now that I want to sort of scream it from the rooftops. But what we're seeing is it won't last forever. I see a world where this is just sort of part of what you expect in an apartment. So what we're trying to encourage owners to do is take advantage of this pent-up demand. You know, for 20 years, no one has had anything. And so there's this big backlog of demand. People are willing to pay you more for it. They're willing to stay longer. They're excited by it. So take advantage of it now, but don't count on that lasting forever. So it is the number one thing that people are asking for in apartments today. Number one, high-speed internet and smart home are both the things that people are asking for. And we can see as we've gone out,

and we're installed now in over 80,000 units. So that means we've literally walked into 80,000 apartments and put our system in there. And as we've seen that, we've seen such a great cross-section of the population. And you make up these things in your head that this is only for this demographic or only for that demographic. And what I love about Smart Home in general and the platform that we've built is it's for everyone. And universally, almost without fail, it's been embraced. I saw this when I was on the ownership side, we were buying workforce housing. This was not high-end housing that we're buying. And the reaction we got from people moving in and how much they liked the system and how much it made their lives better, just even knowing,

hey, your child has a code to get in. So when they get off the bus, you get a text message at work saying, hey, your kid made it home. You know, little things that you just you don't think about, but they add up to be just such a much better living experience. And we're seeing owners take advantage of that today and really push it. And it is different even in metro markets in San Francisco and Seattle. It's still not the norm. It's still a unique offering. Right. Well, I think you're smart, though, to get both yourself, your company, and your constituents, your owners, in a position to be thinking about that as not something that's going to last forever. I do suspect you're right, that eventually this does become table stakes. But how long that takes is anyone's guess and go make hay

while the sun shines. Exactly. Right. So that all makes sense. You talked a little bit about the platform integrating with existing property management solutions, but I know you do also have, you alluded to it earlier in the interview, a dedicated community manager app, I believe, is what you call it. Give us a quick overview of that. Yeah, so the community manager app is also integrated with the property management software, but it gives the ability for leasing consultants and service techs to get the full control of all the vacant units as they're going around the property, where they might not have great connections to get new work orders and other things. So it's web-based software. It's app-based software. Our view is just make it easy to use. We have a large team of user experience designers, UI, UX designers. We work really hard to create simple and intuitive software. And what we found is, not all the time, and I'm trying to be careful how I phrase this, but sometimes

people who are working at the property actually prefer to use our app. And since it's integrated, it doesn't matter. So what I love is just the flexibility of good technology. It shouldn't matter where you make the change. It should be universal. And I think we've seen that in a lot of consumer things that you and I probably use in our homes, where it's like, if I'm using Sonos and I change a playlist in Spotify, it's changed in Spotify. I've just sort of come to assume that's the case. But this is brand new for multifamily. The idea that you could close out a work order in SmartRent, and it's also closed out in your property management system is still really delightful. And so that's how we try to think about it. It's not to replace the current software, it's really to enhance it and give flexibility and choice to the employees. Right. Well, that makes a lot of sense.

Want to shift gears here as we near the finish line to talk a little bit about a couple of areas, installation, activation, and support. And so I know you guys, we talked about kind of the activation from an end user's perspective, but let's shift and talk a little bit about, I'm a property owner. I decide I want to smart rent enable my whole property. What does that process look like? How do I go about getting all of these devices installed, training, things of that nature for my property? Yeah, great. I love the question because it is, again, somewhere where we really see the world differently than most people. So the way that we work is we say, hey, before I can even give you a proposal, I have to come walk your property. I literally have to send a w-2 employee out to walk

around he has to look and he or she has to look in every vacant unit we're going to take thermostats off we're going to take door locks off we're really going to take this apart and then i can actually come back and tell you okay here's what we can do with this property because every property is a little bit a little bit different has it has its nuance and so once we have that we say this is what we can do the owner says okay this is, this is great. I love it. Let's go. What we do, first thing we do is we have a big kickoff party where we invite all of the residents to come to a pizza party. We have a professional trainer who comes on site and we bring the staff together and we show everyone all these devices and we take all their questions and we talk to them about what we're doing and why we're doing it, what the

benefits are and what they're going to get out of it. And so we really work upfront to sort of build this sense of community around this and make it exciting. Once we're through that, we have our installation team and our trainers on site. So we actually handle this as part of our business. We come on, we do the installation, the pairing, verify the network is good, do all the sort of backend testing. At the same time,

we've got a trainer there helping train the staff and train residents. And that's what I alluded to, if you want a personal meeting, we can go do a personal walkthrough with you. So it's really a high-touch experience. And we do around 30 to 50 units per day is our goal. So at a 200-unit apartment community, we're going to be there about a week or a week and a half with our installation team, with our trainers. And what we do is we go from showing you to gradually you're doing it and we're helping you through the process. But so by the time we leave, everyone feels like they've had a sense of learning the system, getting to know it, working out the edge cases, understanding how to use it. And they feel really good about taking

ownership of that new platform that they have there. Excellent. And are these, uh, you mentioned W2 there. So is this full, uh, training and deployment installation team? Are these all in-house employees of yours? Do you use any local contractors? How does that work? Yeah. So we use the way that we work is we have one W2 employee who's an install manager and one W-2 employee who's a trainer on site for the entire installation process. The install manager will work with a local general contractor and will bring in some local labor to help us get through that. But it's under the supervision and management of our employee. And we do that for two reasons. One, it allows us to scale more quickly.

Obviously, we can have to scale more quickly. Obviously, we can have more people on site. But the second thing is our install manager may not live there. So when they go back to wherever they live or they're on to the next job, we've left behind 10 to 20 local people who we've trained and certified how to support our system. And so it also gives us a breadth of in-market support everywhere we've installed. Yeah, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And that segues perfectly into another question I had in this area. Is that ongoing service and tech support? So how does that work on an ongoing basis if I'm an end user or a property manager, for that matter?

What are my options in terms of receiving tech support or service on my system? So we offer 24-7, 365 phone, chat, and email support. We have a dedicated support center in our office in Arizona, and we handle all of that frontline support. Whether you're a property manager or a resident, it's the same support team. And what we've also done, we've trained all of the service techs on the property also how to use the platform. So there's always people, usually in an apartment community, there's one or two of the service techs actually live on site. So there's typically someone actually lives there who's also an expert who we can utilize. But we handle all of the support and all of the ongoing troubleshooting. And if we need to, we roll a van out. And that going back to those certified contract installers that we leave in market, they're

on call. We always have five or six on call who can go out if needed. So never are you sort of lost in this technical void with us. We take a real high touch approach to supporting it even after the install and ongoing. Sounds like it. Well, that's great. As we're bumping up against our time here, I do want to get an understanding for the high level kind of economics. I would imagine a lot of this is custom pricing when you're doing these big deployments and things like that. But give me a sense for how the economics of the system work from both a renter and a property manager or owner's perspective. So our economics, aside from the e-commerce store where someone buys something from us, our economics are really with the owner. And we're selling to that owner and they're upgrading their apartment community.

They charge for that in various ways. Sometimes they increase the rent, sometimes it's just a premium feature that they're using to help attract and use it as a marketing tool. So from an end user as a renter, it's a hard question to answer. Different owners do different things. But the answer to the primary question of the hardware, the installation, and the ongoing software fee is how our model works. So we charge depending on the hardware the owner picks, it's usually between $500 to $700 per

unit in hardware. It can be a lot higher, usually not too much lower, but that's sort of a good number. And then our team does an installation. It's market-based pricing for installation. It varies on marketing. But we like to say typically as an owner, including all of the, which we didn't talk a lot about, but a lot of the other areas of access control, the front doors, the parking garages, the elevators, all that a good budget is you can make a smart community, an offline community. You can make a smart community for around $1,100 to $1,200 per unit. You can take the whole community and bring it up to a modern standard. Got it. Very cool. Yeah. And it is a very robust platform. And I know there's a ton that we didn't have time to really get in and talk about. I would encourage anyone listening who's interested to go check out the offering because,

again, very robust. And I think it's really cool what you guys are doing. For those listeners who might want to find out more about what you guys are doing or maybe connect with someone on your team to ask some follow-up questions, what's the best way for them to do that? So the best way is just actually to send us an email to info, I-N-F-O, at smartrent.com. And that's a mailbox that actually I look at frequently as well. So there's a lot of people who will answer that. But we love hearing from people and love conversing. So please feel free to reach out.

Also on our website, there's contact information at smartrent.com. You can follow us on all your, your favorite social media platforms as well, of course. Very cool. All right. Well, we appreciate your time. What's, uh, what's next, uh, as you, you're, you're thinking about the immediate and sort of, uh, this year's timeline, what are you guys really getting excited about there at smart rent? Yeah. So my, the thing I'm most excited about right now is, so we feel like we've really cracked the code on the buildings and the facilities. But this year, starting in the second quarter, we're actually launching our smart parking and connected parking product,

which I think is going to alleviate the next wave of tremendous headaches. So I'm really excited about that. Maybe on a future show, we can go into detail, but essentially that's monitoring and controlling where and how people park at apartments and making sure if you're in the right spot that you aren't parking in someone else's spot and also gives the owner the ability to monetize guest parking. So smart parking is really a big initiative for us

that I'm really excited about. Very cool. Well, we'll look forward to hearing uh, to hearing more about that. And Lucas, again, we really appreciate you, uh, coming on the show and sharing all about, uh, smart rent. Thanks so much. Yeah. Thanks for having me. It was really, really great to talk to you. Really appreciate it. You got it. All right.

Well that'll do it for our interview with Lucas and I really enjoyed hearing all about, uh, smart rent, such a robust platform. And I think what they're doing in the space in terms of bringing these sort of smart home solutions to the rental market, such a great thing, both for end users, for people who are renting in those units. And of course, as you heard from the interview, property managers and owners are deriving a ton of benefit from the platform as well. So hope you enjoyed the interview. Definitely go check out their website or reach out to them if you want to learn more. All right. Well, nothing in the mailbag this week, but we do have a pick of the week, Jason. We are on Spotify.

Oh, good news. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a long requested feature by at least one of our listeners. So I figured why not give it a shot and see if I can make it work. And, you know, it actually wasn't very hard. I probably should have done this years ago. But if you do use Spotify and you don't do want to listen to the show using Spotify, we're on there now. So just search for HomeTech.fm or HomeTech. I think it comes up either way. And subscribe. I don't even know how it works that way. Yeah, or hometech. I think it comes up either way. And subscribe? I don't even know how it works that way. Yeah, I'm not sure.

I haven't done the podcast on Spotify, but I see it here. Just Googled it, hometech on Spotify. Came right up. You asked, we listen. Literally you. The one you.

Yeah. Well, it's funny you get breakdowns of your audience in here, which we have seven listeners on Spotifyify mostly because i i don't think spotify is a big podcast player uh right now um i knew it was pretty low but uh what's funny is like uh you can see that they're 100 male uh 83 in the 35 to 44 range and uh and they like rolling stones talking heads beyonce woohoo and david bowie and of course queen how funny i i would if if queen wasn't on this list i would just i would stop podcasting tomorrow that that was the one i'm glad it is i'm glad it is important important metrics there very important very important so yeah uh all of our it has the countries here too mostly uh mostly let's

see european it looks like cyprus finland norway and poland thank you very much for tuning in on spotify already international hopefully yeah we'll get some more on there but i thought that was funny thought i'd mention that uh we are on spotify uh and uh and you can uh you can listen anytime you'd like on the on that. All right. Great news. Seth and his wizardry got it done. I like it. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or ideas for a show topic or guest, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm.

Once again, that's feedback at hometech.fm. Or visit the online form at hometech.fm slash feedback and let us know what's on your mind. We want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as $1 a month. Any pledge over $5 a month gets you a big shout out on the show,

but every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat the hub uh where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for inside baseball conversations about power over ethernet i think is what we were talking about today i thought it was pretty nice a couple a couple of things going back and forth there always fun always geeking out in there i love it uh if you're looking for ways to support the show but can't do financially, we'd love a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating in your podcast app of choice. Those reviews definitely help more people find the show. So please take a few minutes to do that. We would definitely appreciate it. Absolutely. And Home Tech is a proud member of the technology.fm collective of podcasts. You can find other great shows like Home On,

The Smart Home Show, and DTNS over there at technology.fm alright well that'll do it for our show this week Seth had a great time recording with you after a couple of weeks off glad to be back and we'll look forward to reconnecting with you again next week sounds good Jason have a great weekend

alright take care