We want to provide the means to make payments online, enable messaging between the landlord and his or her tenants, enable them to find quality maintenance personnel, keep the books so that they have a full record of income and expenses, and much more.
For example, John and Sue have rented an apartment from Mr. Smith. He has asked them to give him 12 post-dated cheques for the year's rent, plus other securities. Two months later, a pipe bursts and floods the hallway. John and Sue send Mr. Smith an urgent message. He instructs them to have it mended and provides them with the details of his plumber. He'll pay them back by cheque.
With Reliance, Mr. Smith enters the rent as a recurring expense, it is automatically deducted each month, and for the month with the burst pipe, John and Sue only pay the rent minus the cost of the repair. Not only that, but if they don't know a plumber, they can locate trusted maintenance people on the site. Once a maintenance item is identified, a docket is opened and its progress can be tracked by the tenants and landlord.
Both the tenants and the landlord can keep track of their detailed monthly expenses and income, and the landlord can quickly understand what each property is earning or costing.
So that's the idea, and currently we are getting close to releasing the MVP. This is the basic product, and will be used for the pilot. Not all the features I mentioned will be there, but they will be available soon after (we hope).
We have a web page up, www.reliancerent.com, that provides more details. You can sign up to be part of the pilot.
What do I do for this project? Well I started out by taking the concept and creating well documented user stories so that a developer would know the logic behind each step. Of course these are constantly being updated. In addition I do whatever is required - that's the great thing about startups; you are exposed to so many other facets of running a company. This is not the first startup I have worked at, but it is the first that I am so emotionally invested in.
