Why Technology Operations is Eating the World
TL;DR: Mobile has unlocked a new level of ubiquitous computing that allows us to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds. These companies leverage two-way data systems that streamline processes and reduce unnecessary overhead to create products that are cheaper, faster, and better.
In my last post, Thank You, Next, I wrote briefly about how I believe technology-operations companies are the future. In this post, I wanted to spend more time on why we believe this at Doorstead and why this trend is happening now.
Today, we are seeing the emergence of technology-operations companies with both operations and technology crafted into their DNA. In these companies, software cannot exist without the human component, and the operations cannot exist without software managing the process. But, why?
First, mobile has unlocked a new level of ubiquitous computing that allows us to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds.
In order for ubiquitous computing to be fully realized, it was necessary for nearly every worker and customer to have a smart phone. Now that everyone has onboarded to this new ecosystem, pen & paper is no longer the default mode of communication. New systems can be completely designed without thinking about the old and that allows them to recreate much more effective experiences while legacy providers have to support traditional methods.
Second, this ubiquity unlocks two-way data systems that streamline processes and reduce unnecessary overhead resulting in products that are cheaper, faster, and better.
For example, every time an Uber Eats courier arrives at the restaurant and presses the button ‘I’ve arrived’, this triggers a series of updates to the dynamic system that bridges the digital and physical worlds. This information is sent to the cloud and delivered in turn to the eater in the form of an updated status, as well as the restaurant to inform them that they should make sure the food is ready for handoff. This streamlines the coordination process significantly and allows food delivery companies to create fairly accurate predictions on what’s going to happen by collecting data at every step (see Trip Inference Blog @ Uber).
“The rapid rise of gathered / analyzed digital data is often core to the holistic success of the fastest growing & most successful companies of our time around the world. Context-rich data can help businesses provide consumers with increasingly personalized products & services that can often be obtained at lower prices & delivered more efficiently. This, in turn, can drive higher customer satisfaction.” (Mary Meeker, Internet Trends 2019)
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
“Each technological revolution has led to the replacement of one set of technologies by another, either by outright substitution or through modernization of existing equipment, processes and ways of operations. Each involved profound changes in people, organizations, and skills in sort of a habit-breaking hurricane.” – Carlota Perez
While we’ll abstain from the ‘Frenzy’ or ‘Turning Point’ debate, we believe that the next wave of innovation will come from these technology-operations companies and these companies will be much bigger than they are today.
At Doorstead, we believe that the property management industry can be completely disrupted with better data and technology operations. By leveraging modern underwriting technology to efficiently model market and tenant risk, we enable owners to instantly get a rental offer (i.e. iRent) along with full-service property management. This eliminates vacancy risk and gives properties owners an unprecedented level of peace of mind.
As always, we’d love to meet anyone who is working on anything tangentially related. Please reach out at ryan (at) doorstead.com.
We also wanted to say thanks to everyone who reached out and offered to help our startup, Doorstead since the last blog post. In just a few months, we created a new class of property management, booked over $360K in gross volume (w/ 80% MoM growth), and brought on Bernard Liang as our Chief Technology Officer. We’ve known him for over ten years and he brings a wealth of experience from LinkedIn and DoorDash where he was the #12 engineer. In short, it’s been incredible and we’re incredibly thankful for all of the support.
