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Optimizing the Resident Journey, an Interview with Jude Chiy, Founder of Flamingo

Optimizing the Resident Journey, an Interview with Jude Chiy, Founder of Flamingo

Jude Chiy has one of the most fascinating stories in multifamily, from his origins in Camaroon to studying medicine, he took the lessons he learned to develop ways to maximize the resident experience through his company, Flamingo.  Flamingo was an Elite demo presenter at our previous Multifamily Demo Day event.

Brent Williams: So we just finished up with multifamily demo day, and one of the absolute stars of the show was Jude Chiy of Flamingo.He is the Founder and CEO, and my goodness, the response we got from it was absolutely unbelievable. So I wanted to talk with Jude a bit about the founding and the story of Flamingo, and to hear, what was the inspiration?

How did he begin this journey and all the great stuff that comes along with it. Jude, thank you so much for joining me.

Jude Chiy: Yeah, thank you, Brent. I am excited to be on and also really excited about the response that we received at Demo Day, and I really appreciate you all putting this together prior to this.

I was just saying that we were, I would say, most likely the 1 that was most difficult to work with, but we got it done. We had a lot of things going on, but really appreciate you and your team for your patience and obviously for such an amazing experience.

Brent Williams: You know what? We're all moving in a thousand different directions.I totally get it. And so we're all good. And it turned out to be an amazing time with you, and you just knocked out of the park. So I'm thrilled. So let's dig into this. Let's rewind the clock. You said that you all had been around for about 10 years, but maybe even a little bit more than that, a little bit about your backstory and then the impetus the start Flamingo.

Jude Chiy: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm glad that you said take it a little bit further back because I tend to do that and people get bored. So I appreciate the invitation to go back in their life further.

So for background, I'm originally from Cameroon.So born in West Africa, I moved to the U.S. when I was 11. I grew up in Baltimore and I had always wanted to go to med school. So that was my thing for a very long time. I had a younger sister that passed away, so that kind of made me want to go to med school to ensure that no one else ever goes through that.

So for most of my, I'll say, middle school, high school, and then a lot of college, my singular focus was going to medical school. And did all the things that we needed, even got a grant the summer before senior year of college to go to Australia to do research with a group of neurosurgeons, because that's what I really wanted to do.

And I got to work with those neurosurgeons, attend their surgeries, do patient intake. And I really enjoyed the experience, but I also got the opportunity to interact with the administrators at the hospitals. So the actual business, the operations, the marketing people. And I really got to learn a little bit more about the business side of health care, which is a part that I have never really paid much attention to.

I have been singularly focused on the clinical side, so become a doctor.But through those interactions, I realized that there's a whole spectrum within health care, and I also came to the realization that the Australian health care system is set up really well. And at that point in time, I thought the U.S. health care system was the peak of everything, but after doing that, I realized oh, wow, the bigger opportunity in health care in the U.S. isn't really about the clinical. Like doctors already do amazing work where I could have a much bigger impact would be more on the operations, the business, the technology, the access side of things.

So all those things that impact healthcare, but not necessarily on the clinical front. I just realized that I can have much, much greater impact going to the business side. When I came back to the U S decided to leave the clinical path and go more into healthcare operations. So I got recruited to work for the cancer treatment centers of America.

That was my 1st and only job at a college. I got recruited as part of the company's leadership development program, where you do rotations at the company's different hospitals all around the U.S. Every 3 or 4 months, you get to go work at a different hospital, interact with a different team, do a different project.

For one hospital, you might work with the operations team. The next hospital, you might work with the marketing team. The next hospital, you might work with the I.T. team, the sales team. I really got to know the entire skew of healthcare governance and really enjoyed it. Absolutely love the company.

They do amazing work and they were extremely patient focused where they would interview or get feedback from patients about every single thing that needed to be changed. And I just absolutely love that model. But after working in a cancer hospital for a few years, I think about three or four, I realized that an even bigger opportunity is prevention.

How do you keep people healthy so they don't actually get sick to go to the hospital in the first place? Obviously, that's not always possible, but there is a high likelihood of when people eat better, exercise more. They are less likely to end up in the hospital. So I just realized that it was much better to focus on the prevention side of health care.

So that's where I decided to start my first company, and it was the first iteration of Flamingo, where we would focus on bringing wellness to where people live, work, and play. So we work with offices, we work with apartments, we work with senior centers, we work with hotels to bring wellness services.

So everything from fitness classes to resident events to ways to bring people together. And that was really my first iteration into multifamily. We started working with different companies to help them really optimize their fitness centers, create like real fitness programs, bring real things and connections to residents, and really enjoyed doing that.

After doing that for a few years, we grew and we ran into some operational challenges. So we decided to build a basic app to allow residents to RSVP for fitness classes. And to answer a few questions that residents would like to get and we had prior to that, we had reached out to the property managers to say, you all are paying us like, frankly, a lot of money to offer these services to your residence where residents can sign up so that you all are able to track attendance, but none of them really had anything.

So we're like, okay, let's just build like a really basic app. So residents can sign up for events. Sign up for fitness classes, and then we kept growing and we would get a lot of questions from residents. What do I need to bring to class? When does class start? Just like a lot of different questions over and over.For me being very operationally focused, I was like, this doesn't make sense for us to respond to the same questions over and over again.

Within the app, we added a very basic like FAQ feature where it could answer the majority of questions that residents had.When we did that, we had a few of our customers reach out to say, oh, my God, we on in the leasing office, we also get a lot of questions from our residents. Can we also add our FAQs and resident guide and all that information into the app? So that kind of stronger idea, there is a business here.

I'm a very analytical person. I like to go as deep as possible.So when that happened, I decided to go spend about four months where I went to every apartment building in Chicago that had more than like 200 units. So basically picked out a map of Chicago, pick the street, and then every morning from 9 to 5, I just walked down that street, stopped at every single apartment along the way, talk to the property managers, the assistant property managers, the leasing consultants, the residents, the front desk, really anyone that would listen to ask them like, hey, how do you do X process?

What do you guys do for this? What are some of the challenges that you have? And from those 4 months, we really learned a lot about the industry, really understood the big challenges that the onsite team face, the perception that residents have about their communities, and everything that the front desk like does.

From there, came up with a really strong thesis for what we could provide the industry.

Brent Williams: Let me jump in there because I think this is really interesting because one of the pieces of feedback that we hear from this inflow of technology into multifamily is that it's not always coming from multifamily itself.

It's coming from outside and people seeing opportunities, but they may not have a background in multifamily. So I love that you took that deep dive into what are the challenges, not just from an outsider's perspective, but from the people who are inside and how they view those issues and what's really the driving needs there.

And also, I think it's really interesting where I think a lot of people see a company that is done amazing, and they think that it was almost burst in that way. That's how it sprung up. And so it's so interesting that how it's a meandering timeline of events.

Who would have thought that coming from the medical field would then lead from point A to point B, which is a little bit different to point C. It's so fascinating to hear that how things you evolve as you went through to then build up this app into different features.

Okay, I'm sorry for interrupting. I just love those pieces. So now you have some of the first building blocks of the app. Where does it go now?

Jude Chiy: Yeah, absolutely. From those conversations we learned some of the biggest challenges are on the resident side, residents were always surprised or shocked when they would go through the leasing process, have amazing experiences and figure out where they wanted to live.

And they would sign a lease and then they would move into this beautiful apartment building with amazing amenities. Everything's super modern. And then when they would go to pay rent or reserve an amenity, they have to log into what for a lot of them, frankly, looked like a platform from the nineties, like early internet.

For a lot of them, it was just like a jarring experience. Oh my God, this building, I'm the first person to live in this unit, but the technology that I have to interact with just seems like it was built 20, 30 years ago. So that was one of the big things residents mentioned.

The second thing for a lot of residents was that there were just so many things that they had to log into or create accounting.They might have one to pay rent, another one to reserve amenities, another for rewards, another for you name it. And for them, it was like, I just want one place to go to get everything that I need. I just want to live in this apartment. I don't want to become a tech expert on how to live in this apartment.

So we realized that there was just too many single point solutions that the residents had to interact with. And it was the same thing, too, for the onsite teams who said, at any one time, I have 10 different browsers open, and I also have to do this process, this one. So we just realized that there were two really big issues in the industry.

One was that there were just a lot of solutions that didn't really speak to each other. And then two, there were a lot of manual processes that were being done that other industries have automated. So whether it's the move in process or something like verify and renter's insurance, that's a process that every single company has to do.

But most industries would automate a process like that because all the different insurance companies, they have APIs. So part of what we looked at were what are all the processes that are done that we could simply automate. But the big thing that we really learned from the onsite teams is that it's really difficult for them to differentiate.

The multifamily industry is very unique when it comes to your competitors. In every industry, like every industry, you have competitors, but your competitors are out there somewhere in the world. But in the multifamily industry, your competitors are across the street from you. You see a resident coming for a tour, take that tour, then walk across the street to your competitor, and it's just like a weird thing.

But the issue is that all the communities are similar. You have a fitness center, they have a fitness center. You have a pool, they have a pool. You have nice amenities, they have nice amenities. You have exactly the same things. So how do you like differentiate? So from all of that, we realized that we needed to help the industry have a way to really differentiate whether it's through building a brand, having an app that's fully branded to them, or automating processes to really allow the teams to offer better customer service.Because at the end of the day, if your teams are spending hours on very manual processes, those are less hours that they have to offer a differentiated experience to your residents.

From there, we realized that what we were really focused on doing is to help our customers stand out. And that's why the name is called Flamingo, because our whole goal is to help them stand out like a flamingo amongst a flock of pigeons.

Brent Williams: I love that. And hopefully somebody in the comments can give the answer to this. There is a concept. It was really designed for the working world as far as employee satisfaction. And the idea was that there are certain things that are expectations, and there are certain things that are going to actually create satisfaction.

And so if every single competitor has a gym, it's no longer a unique, selling point. At some point it becomes an expectation or you have to ramp up the gym or ramp up the pool to offer services that are going to make it a unique, compelling and a selling point.

I think that you are totally correct as far as, one of the major pain points that we hear from the onsite teams is this idea that, yeah, we have all these new technologies and they're fantastic and they can do some really cool things.But every single new technology that's added to the mix creates more complexity for their own job. And there's a challenge to how much is it taking a burden off of the onsite teams versus, yeah, we have this new functionality, but now it's so much more difficult to to manage from the onsite team perspective.

One thing that you mentioned in your demo was that that renters insurance piece, and I remember when I worked on site having to check renters insurance, and so I think it's really fascinating to be able to do that in one click. Tell us about that. So how does that work exactly when so you have this API with the renters insurance companies and it's all done for them.

They don't have to check PDFs or email confirmations.

Jude Chiy: Yeah, absolutely. So how we view the industry is that property management is just a lot of processes, which is true for a lot of industries, but property management in general just has dozens and dozens of processes that all have to happen over and over again.

And the nice thing about technology is that when something is repeated, you can always automate it. So in the case for resident onboarding and the moving part of the onboarding process is rent us insurance verification. Most companies require you to have renter's insurance, so for most companies, how the verification happens is the new resident moving in emails a PDF to a leasing agent that leasing agent receives it via email and then reads through it to make sure that all of the information is correct. Is the start date of the insurance before the residence moving date?Is the policy amount correct? Is the name of the resident listed correctly? Are their roommates on the policy? So it's a lot of checks that they have to do. For us, we realized that's a thing that can just be automated. So we reached out to find a way for us to get APIs for the different insurance companies.

And with those APIs, we know all the information on the backend. We know for this specific resident, here is what the policy looks like, because we can directly pull that from the insurance company's database. With that one, rather than a resident have to email that PDF, they simply log into the app during the moving process and click a button.

To enter their credentials that they will log into the renters insurance website, but they enter that on the Flamingo site. And then that gives us the authentication to then pull that information from the renters insurance company database. And then we simply match the information to say, is the amount of the policy the same as the company's requirements?

Is the resident's name on the policy? Are your roommates on the policy? Is the start date a match to the leasing date? So all the information that's required and then if something is incorrect, we let the resident know hey, you haven't added your roommate. So you need to add your roommate for this to be valid.

Or the amount that you have listed isn't correct. You need to reach out to the insurance company to increase that amount. So all that back and forth is now fully automated. And then once the policy is approved we then update the property management system to say this person is insured and they are ready for move in.

And then the same thing too on an ongoing basis, we monitor the policy. Unfortunately it happens where a resident sets a policy and then might cancel it afterwards. So we just make sure that policy is active by constantly monitoring the status.

Brent Williams: Very cool.

Now let's go move forward through the renter timeline, as it were. You all then have ways that you're surveying or pinging the residents in some way to get their feedback throughout their stay.

Jude Chiy: Yep, correct. So how we really view our platform is that it's the front end of the resident experience.

So the back end, all of that's taken care of by the Yardi's of the world. We really focus on that front end for that day to day living of the residents. So our platform is broken up into a few pieces. The 1st is the pre move-in. So we help the resident move in. That includes getting them to complete all the required move-in items.

It could be register your vehicle, get renters insurance, get your utilities set up, register your pet, all of the things that they need prior to moving in. Coordinate that automatically through the app, so the teams no longer have to do that.Then the same things like activating all the keys that I needed because we integrate with all the access control and intercom systems. Then when the resident moves in, we also help with the onboarding process because one thing a lot of companies forget about is that when a resident moves in, they don't really know anything. So for a lot of residents, this might be their first apartment. They don't actually know what a work order is. You'd be surprised. They just don't know.

Companies tend to assume that residents know a lot of things, and then they end up with a lease violation or realizing that person just didn't know or didn't actually read the lease.

So we have a whole onboarding module help on board a resident to the community, whether it's teaching them the basics, here's how to submit a work order request.Here are the policies of using the fitness center. Here is this really tricky thing that a lot of residents interact with like when they need to use the stove. So some of the nuances that are specific to that specific company. And then we also help them get onboarded in a fun way as well, too.

It's hey, go use the fitness center, the pool, the whatever, and complete the scavenger hunt and get a reward. So we get every resident to really have a great experience simply by moving into the community and getting accumulated. And then once they have moved in, we then also help them manage their day to day.

So within our app, they can use the app to pay rent because we integrate with the property management systems, submit work order requests, message management, earn resident rewards, complete other things that are needed, such as providing feedback through surveys. We survey them throughout their resident life cycle so they can complete all the surveys.If they need help, they can use our chat bot within the app to ask questions, like what's Wi Fi?

So everything they need they can manage through the app. And then throughout that life cycle, like you asked, we are constantly getting feedback from the resident about their overall experience. And then once the resident moves out, that also then takes into our alumni app.So for residents, they get to stay on the app as well, too, but at a limited capacity. From pre moving to move out.

Brent Williams: So what features do they have as alumni? I think it's really interesting.

Jude Chiy: Yeah. So they have a couple of things. One, they are able to continue earning rewards or use those rewards.

So throughout their life cycle, they can earn different rewards. It could be for completing a moving process on time, attending resident events, connecting with their neighbors. So they can keep using their rewards. They can still book services on the app. So within Flamingo, we offer services like house cleaners, dog walkers.

So they can keep booking those services. And that revenue from those services go back to the management team. So even when a resident moves out, the management team can keep earning that revenue from that specific resident. The resident can also continue using the perks program within the app. So we have partnerships with about 50,000 retailers, restaurants, and all of that throughout the U.S. So residents can get discounts at those different places, whether it's 10 percent off at this mom and pop shop, 50 percent off appetizers, or a free appetizer. They can even use travel rewards as well so they can keep earning those rewards.

They can also keep using the app to access amenities for some of our customers.They allow residents to keep using amenities across their portfolio and they get paid for those. So if you are a national brand and you want to keep earning revenue, you can say, book a guest suite at our community in Chicago, in New York, or whatever, so they can keep using those bookings if they want to keep using that.

And then they are also able to access an in app ILS. So within our app, we have an ILS where residents can see all the available units across the portfolio. If that resident does decide hey, I want to go back into renting with this company, they can quickly complete that process all within the app.

It just allows them to stay within the same brand for as long as possible, but for our customers, the most important thing is they can keep earning revenue from that resident.

Brent Williams: Yeah, absolutely. I think for a lot of companies, and maybe this is changing, but when the resident puts in their notice to vacate, it's like they're lost.

Without sounding crude, there's a lot of meat on the bone still there as far as ways to generate revenue. I think that's really interesting. Moving forward, what should we be on the lookout from Flamingo in the next couple of years?

Jude Chiy: So a lot of really exciting things that we have planned. Like everyone else, we are really focused on how can we utilize AI to automate more processes provide more insights to our customers and provide more predictions on what the residents might do or not do. So we have a huge focus on utilizing AI to really streamline what residents are doing.

And what I like about our approach is that we are super practical, so it's not using AI to do this like crazy thing. It's, let's use AI in a very practical way. So one of the first things that we did three years ago was our AI chatbot. So literally answer the basic questions that residents like have.

So by doing that, we take away about 75 percent of the questions that would have gone to the on site team. So whether it's as simple as what's the Wi Fi password, or how do I renew my lease, our AI like fully takes over that completely. So we are really focused on those very practical use cases for AI.

One of the things we recently released is AI to summarize resident sentiment. What are the top five drivers of high resident satisfaction this week? What are the top five drivers of low resident satisfaction this week? And just providing that to leadership so they can quickly see what is needed.And then the same thing to utilize that information within the app to allow a resident to know what options they have if they happen to not be renewing.So a pretty big focus on AI.

The 2nd big focus for us is to continue our integration ecosystem. So right now we are already integrated with over, I think, 50 access control systems, and that's across all of the different locks. So we want to continue our integrations with those access control systems, intercom systems, and dozens of other tools that our customers are utilizing, because our goal for the app is that it's the single point touch point for the resident. So we want to continue with our integrations across the board.

And then the third bit is we really love automations. So again, property management has a lot of manual processes, so we are continuing to automate those processes.

One of our upcoming updates in the next couple of months is we are automating the utilities verification. So when you move in, you have to sign up for utilities. So we are looking to integrate with different utilities companies to automate that process. So again, the team doesn't have to manually say, Oh, you need to go in and sign up for utilities and prove that you have.

So a lot of focus on those types of automations. So we are very practical with what we do.

Brent Williams: Yeah. Oh my gosh. The vast number of functions that you are tackling is just astounding, honestly. It's very cool to hear. Jude, thank you so much for taking the time with me. I love your story.

It is fantastic. I think it's really fascinating how you have gone, started in one place and ended up in what seems to be a completely different place, but there's a logical flow of how that worked. And so thank you so much for taking the time to share your story with me and with the Multifamily Insiders community.

I can't wait to see how you all progress in the future. Thanks again.

Jude Chiy: Yeah. Thank you, man. Thank you for the opportunity. Had an absolute blast with the Demo Day and for this conversation as well too.

Brent Williams: Fantastic. All right. Good to see you. Thanks again, everybody for joining us and we will see you soon. 

 

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