A Boston startup that launched its rent-payment app last year has renamed itself and shifted its focus to software integrations in the property management industry.
The startup, now known as Propify, recently announced its launch after joining California-based Y Combinator.
Y Combinator hosts two, three-month programs for early-stage startups each year. YC says it invests $500,000 in every company. Since 2005, when YC still had a physical presence in Boston, YC has funded over 3,500 startups, including big names like Ginkgo Bioworks, Dropbox and DoorDash.
The idea for Propify came to CEO Remen Okoruwa and his co-founders Nick Johnson and Ben Keller after launching their first company’s app last year.
The startup Rentdrop launched an app in June 2022 that offered a selection of rent-payment options for landlords and renters. Okoruwa said the idea for the app came from conversations about challenges paying rent when the preferred methods of payment for landlords and renters don’t line up. At the time of the app’s launch, Okoruwa said it enabled renters to pay with a card or with an electronic fund transfer. Rentdrop would also mail a check to landlords who preferred a non-electronic payment method.
Okoruwa said Rentdrop was targeted toward “DIY landlords” who owned one to 10 rental units. To grow, they wanted to start selling to property managers with hundreds or thousands of units. But when they tried to sell their product to property managers, they kept getting the same feedback: “They might say that they liked the app. It was a better payment experience than what they were using today, but they always had the same request: ‘We will only buy from you if your software integrates with the property management software we’re already using on site to keep track of our leases, our tenants,’” Okoruwa said.
Okoruwa said they realized they did not have the team to build a rental-payment app and “really good, deep integrations.” Instead of pursuing both ideas, they began investigating how property technology (proptech) companies handled integrations. Okoruwa said they found small companies who put them off or created just one integration and large companies that have entire teams just to maintain integrations, not add new functionalities.
“Property management software in this industry is the source of truth. It’s the system of record. Why don’t we go in and make it super easy to plug any software into the source of record in this property management industry?” Okoruwa said.
Property-management software tracks things like active leases and maintenance.
“We’re making it really easy for companies to connect their services with this software,” Okoruwa said.
One use case could be a tenant-screening company, Okoruwa explained. This company could pull information on potential tenants for background checks from an application in the property management software.
“We can sort of take that data directly out of the property management software, send it to the tenant screening vendor via API (application programming interface), and then help them send the data, like the result of the background check, to the property manager, once again through our API,” Okoruwa said.
The team began shifting from Rentdrop to Propify in August, Okoruwa said, and launched its new product at the start of 2023.
Okoruwa said revenue has been doubling month-over-month since the start of the year.
The Propify team plans to return to Boston after completing YC. Okoruwa said the proptech industry is strong on the East Coast given the housing markets in locations like New York City and Boston.
Through this process, Okoruwa said he’s seen the importance of recognizing when there’s a more compelling opportunity and being able to pivot.
“Being flexible is just one of the skills that you have to bring to the table as a founder because it’s rare that you just do the same thing,” Okoruwa said. “There’s a lot of zigging and zagging along the way to get to the company you finally land at.”
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