A few years ago, I needed to quickly get ahold of my landlord but couldn’t just send him a text or email. It had to be a phone call, which was hit-or-miss if I was going to get him on the line or not. I was going to have to play a game of phone tag with him on the weekend, when all I wanted to do was get him a message and have the request logged.
An idea was formed: what if he had a way for me to get ahold of him, but didn’t have to be a text (he clearly didn’t want his private number used) or email that would languish away all weekend until he logged in on Monday? What if his team had a tool that met not only my needs, but respected his privacy and helped him keep on top of requests even when he needed a day off?
I was surprised there was not already products for this and current software platforms available for property managers barely covered basic messaging needs for managers. So I left my full time job a year ago focus all energy on a solution.
Doorkeep is the customer service platform for property managers, management teams, landlords, building supervisors, basically anybody who manage rental properties. It's the property manager's missing power tool to organize communications for rental properties.
Getting to know my past property manager and so many other real estate investors, other property managers, and landlords over the years, I’ve found one common problem: communication is hard and the software available to the industry struggles to keep up with their needs. I remember the first manager I met with had six phones with him. Other managers mixed their personal phone and just got a new number every few years to keep some sense of privacy from past tenets and vendors. I wanted to offer something better for all of them. After iterating on a few MVPs, lots of research, and talking a ton with would be customers, it is about time to ship it.
At launch, Doorkeep will offer a shared inbox paired with a local phone number. The phone number can be used for SMS text messaging (MMS for photos and video too of course) and powerful call controls to communicate with any of their residents, vendors, owners, sales prospects and team members. Every bit of activity is recorded so that no message, note, or notification is ever lost. Some standout features for managers are reports for response times, categorization to know the type of messages received, property specific message responses, shared replies for everyone on the account, personalized replies to tenants and much more. Post-launch I'll begin to incorporate Doorkeep's approach to email, chat, etc for more communication channels.
Building this product has been a real joy. I'm just getting started and there is so much more to share. I want to build in public more and share more of the journey too. You can follow me along by adding your email below. Or follow me on Twitter: @andypeters and follow Doorkeep on Twitter: @DoorkeepApp.
If you manage rentals or know of anyone managing them, please reach out to me because I’d love to talk to you: andypeters@hey.com
