In this interview we talk to the Mike Meyer, Founder of Propertyments, a property management platform. He in currently in the launch face of his project and therefore not sharing any revenue numbers just yet. We will be following up with him on how he grows his platform, for today, we want to go over how he got to this stage of his project. Development of Propertyments began in January of 2017 and they are based in Denver Colorado in the United States.
During the launch phase, did you maintain a full time job? (or even currently)
This is always a difficult balance. I generally enjoy writing software so I fill my free time with development. I’m a builder – sometimes that means writing code, sometimes it means building the business and networking. As long as progress is being made I don’t worry too much about timelines right now while it’s still a side hustle.
How did you acquire customers/subscribers/users?
The current users are all signed up for free and will never be subscribers. I need open feedback about using the app so I offered it on real estate investing forums/reddit/etc free for life if they sign up while I’m in the alpha version. The feedback I’ve received and improvements I’ve made will always be worth more than the subscription fee I charge in the long run so this has been a very good decision.
What software / platforms / tools have you utilized since launch? and Which have worked / not worked?
Tech side tools: .NET Core/EF Core backend, SQL Server database, js/jQuery front end with about 100 JS libraries. All hosted on Azure for ease of deployments and scalability.
I use Trello for managing the work pipeline and coordinating with the other developer. Code versioning is handled through TFS. @propertyments email addresses are all handled through Google’s G suite/admin. Automated emails from the app are sent through PostMarkApp. I use Cloudflare for DNS/CDN/Caching.
How did you fund your startup and how do you make money/revenue?
Totally bootstrapped, however I’m pitching investors now.
To date, what have been your biggest challenges as a company? What have you done to overcome them?
The time needed to write the code – so much coding and new development, fixes, bugs, rewrites etc..
If you had to do it all over again, would you? What would you do differently?
Like I said – I’m a builder at heart and it just so happens that software development aligns with that mentality so I’ll always be hacking away at something. Before I built Propertyments I worked on a hardware controller that connected to your vehicle to help tuners understand what forced induction power adders were doing to the engine. It was a huge undertaking as I wrote native apps to support it in Android and iOS (objective-c) but I enjoyed every minute of it.
Lastly, if anyone reading this wants to know more about your company… where do we send them?
Send all emails to [email protected] or you can follow the progress on Twitter @Propertyments.
