Aaron Norris is filling in for Bruce this week, and he is joined by Shubber Ali. He is co-founder and CEO of Centriq, a software platform designed to connect homeowners with everything they need to know about the home in an easy-to-use app. Previously he was vice president of strategic innovation for salesforce.com. This was Forbes most innovative company for the past four years. He held C-level executives at Fortune 100 companies to develop and execute on transformational business process innovation initiatives across retail, banking, and manufacturing. He is a regularly featured speaker on Process and Disruptive Innovation, and he has published numerous articles on topics ranging from innovation to management of core competencies in corporations. He serves as a consultant to the World Bank on digital infrastructure in developing markets. Recently he was a new member of the digital infrastructure working group for the World Economic Forum. Shubber has a very impressive resume, and there is actually more on the website.
Episode Highlights
-
- What is the new app his company came up with that is essential for your appliances?
- How can this app make things much easier for renters, tenants, homeowners?
- How did he first get involved working with technology?
- How did Aaron have a first-hand experience with this app?
- How could this same app work for real estate?
- What does Shubber see for the future with his app?
- Where can you go to find this app for your own use?
Episode Notes
Aaron ran across his app from a radio show he produced when he received information from the builders and realtors. It came across within a week; and Aaron was curious about the app, especially since Shubber had a sales force background that was a customer relations management system. This reminded Aaron of this for the home. He asked Shubber how he came across this and ended up in real estate. He said the funny thing was he had nothing to do with real estate from a background point of view other than having purchased 3 homes in his life. It was actually while working at Sales Force when they were working on some of the biggest brands out there. These include Home Depot, GE Appliances, and others. They were all asking the same question about Shubber’s company, which was how to connect better with the customers.
Their first thought was the app since these were all the rage. If you think about how many brands you have in your house, you would not really want 15 different apps for 15 different appliances. You would then have to ask how you would mix better with the customers, and at the same time Shubber was going through his own purchase for his current house. When he bought the house, it was like the Winchester mystery house to him. He had to learn the house all over again, and pretty much everything he had learned in his previous home was irrelevant here. There were new switches, new ways to work the sprinkler controller, and new methods to take care of the garden. There were also many new appliances that came with this house.
From this Shubber thought that there had to be a way to keep all the information for housing in one place. He and his colleague James connected the dots on this by connecting both sides: the homeowner to their house and the retailers and manufacturers to it. There was a real opportunity here to create Google for your home. They put their perfectly good jobs in tact in order to build it. Aaron said what is interesting is that with the angle he is coming from, people are probably asking why they are even having this show today. Aaron said it was because of the angle from builders and realtors and it is not very typical to see the same company come through, and even they were taking a different angle.
Aaron talked about his experience with this new app. When he received a notice about it, he did not know what it was and was curious. He downloaded it onto his phone, and it basically said to go through your house and take pictures of the appliances. He would take a picture of his refrigerator, then he would go inside and find the serial number. This kept him busy, but he did the majority of the major appliances in the home. He thought he was going to have to go back and enter in the actual serial number itself; but lo and behold, he did not have to do any of that. He used his refrigerator as an example, which he bought brand new when he moved into a new place. He has not changed the water filter in five years because of the big process it will be.
However, the beauty of the app is that because it was able to say the brand and serial number, you can click a button that shows you all the parts you can order within the refrigerator. He clicked on the link, it took him to Amazon, and he ordered the filter. It ended up coming to the house two days later. Because it knew the brand, serial number, and what kind of refrigerator it was, it automatically linked him to all the different manufacturer manuals and how-to videos. Aaron said he embarrassed himself because it was a one-minute video and was easy. It is like this with every single appliance, and it is brilliant.
Aaron thinks about real estate investors and how often they do rehabs. This app has the ability to take pictures and shoot video. If you have a house and want to remember how to turn off the gas in case of emergency, you can film a short video and upload it to servers. Best of all, it is organized in a way that makes it easy to find. He has purchased software management for property managers, and he has not seen anything like this that is intuitive and easy. Realtors can use this to market themselves because this app brings all this information on your house and major appliances together. You can order parts and see how you can install them.
Aaron and Shubber went on to talk about the advertising piece of it and discussed the realtor side of it. The app was developed to give a closing gift to customers, especially buyer’s agents to help them move into their house. They saw if they could brand it and saw a nice big open spot on the menu page. They created a platform that allowed them to go in, upload their brand, photos, headshot, or other details. Whenever they give it to a customer, the customer is connected with the realtor every time they use it. Also, in all the emails they send out periodically throughout the year, they are typically targeted toward everything in the house and relevant to the house. There is usually low investment in terms of time and effort from a builder’s point of view.
Shubber said when he talked to the National Association of Realtors, they said 70-80% of the customers and home buyers can tell you they will use their agent again, but less than 20% actually do. This is usually because they no longer had their contact info because it had been so long since they did business with them. The question is how they stay in touch, and the problem with traditional methods like sitting down to a bottle of wine is when the consumer is gone, they lose touch.
What they ended up doing was whenever somebody wanted a referral, buy a second home, or sell their house, was to be there right in front of them. They are trying to promote this to realtors all across the state and have had similar discussions with groups all across the country who do the same thing. Any real estate agent or brokerage can find out from the people that even if you do not want to brand it, you can still give customers what they want because the app is free. It is a great tool for people to use as an ongoing marketing tool.
Aaron asked if the realtor can go through the home and do the prep work on the existing appliances, then hand it over fully-loaded to the customer. Shubber said they can and they built the app to be something the average homeowner can use. It is really as simple as snapping a photo of the main place and see things show up. For a realtor to go through and capture pictures of ten appliances, for example, there are a certain number of major fixes. These would include the refrigerator, dishwasher, stove, oven, washer, dryer, and water heater. They can do all of this in less than ten minutes by just walking through and taking the photos. What they have done is started to create a user manual for the next owner. They buyer’s agents are normally the ones who recommends the inspector. A lot of times they can use this as an opportunity for the inspector to build a relationship with the homeowner.
They can also help the homeowner gain more knowledge by passing on what they know. This includes how to operate it when the gas and water are shut off, something a lot of homeowners do not consider and don’t really have a lot of time to figure out. Aaron said this solves a lot of issues, and he can see this being very popular with millennials, especially for first-time homebuyers who wouldn’t really know a lot of these things. It does not take an experienced person to do a thoughtful job of uploading those kinds of things. This app is a customized, cool gift instead of a consumable that you are just going to throw away. If somebody did this for Aaron the first time he bought a house, it would have been crazy cool. He thinks it is a good personal touch and a good way for the realtor to be in front of their clients any time.
Shubber is also attached to interesting data like recalls. What a lot of people do not realize is over the last five years alone, there were 15 million appliances recalled in the U.S. alone. There are somewhere between 50 and 100 million existing recalled appliances across America that people do not know they have at their house. This is because people don’t take the time to register the product or send in the cards that come with the product. Companies tend to take advantage of this; they will collect the cards but then you stop hearing from them. The problem is that with recalls, the government requires manufacturers to notify people of the recalls. If they never registered it, how are they supposed to know what to do?
If you have the Samsung Galaxy Note, you have the benefit of having everybody on national news talk about your recalled product. Many don’t realize that two months after the recall, Samsung recalled 2.3 million washing machines because they had the problem where they tend to blow up parts. Two months prior to this, GE recalled about 200,000 washing machines because they would catch on fire. The issue is that people do not know about these things in their home; so when Shubber found out about the recall issue they started talking with the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
They spent a number of months integrating into their database. They have a record of everything that has been recalled, and now they automatically check. When you take that photo of your refrigerator or other appliance, they have a database now of those things. However, they do not send this information to the manufacturers or register you. However, they check this database every single day and find things. Ironically, he found two recalled items in his own house, one of them being a Cuisinart processor, which had 8 million recalled back in December. If you own one of these, take a picture of the name plate and it may show up as Recalled on the app in roughly 24 hours. This takes less than 3 minutes to do.
Aaron said it is so easy to order the parts for the replacement. He said it was $15 for the refrigerator part, and it took him a minute to install. He was ready to hire a handyman because he did not want to deal with it since he thought it was going to be a process. Shubber said a lot of people are more “do it yourself” than they think they are. They are capable of handling the problem, but the issue is them not knowing what they are supposed to do. Because they do not know, they end up calling. Shubber has heard this referred to as the $200 switch problem. They call someone to come up, this person arrives, and just pushes the right switch. This is something they are trying to help people solve.
Shubber had this open with an oven of his that had glass panels behind the oven rails. As he watched one lightbulb after another burn out over the course of a year, he did not want to call someone but he also did not want to take the rails off himself. If he messed these up, he would need to call somebody to come fix the entire oven. Finally, he found a video that showed in one minute how to take the lightbulb covers off without removing the rails. He was able to get four bulbs replace and light the oven up with the push of a button.
Aaron thought of another way realtors could use this app. There is a spot in it that has contacts. If you have affiliates or trusted partners you want to promote, whether it be a plumber or air conditioner servicer, you could almost pre-load these for your clients and figure out a cross marketing opportunity with these vendors. The app is really a platform for your house and everything you really need to know about it in order to stay on top of it.
When Shubber first moved into the area, people were still using the Yellow Pages. Now you have all these different companies trying to sell you access to service providers. It turns out the best person who can recommend someone to work on your house, whether to service your pool or garden, is the previous owner. They were probably having people working on the house already, and you would want people who have already worked on it. The first step is to have the seller recommend someone to you who can do quality work as well as create a sort of Carfax, but for your house, in terms of history. If there is any doubt, they should definitely ask because the realtor would have their list of people with whom they have worked. You would need to know who to call if something happens six months down the line because trying to find the right person is time-consuming.
Aaron said when it comes to real estate investors, some of them are in these houses fixing things up anyway. He is a landlord himself and has several rentals. He has a full-time job, and when somebody needed a repair he is at the mercy of having inherited a lot of the appliances and therefore does not really know the parts. Their handyman has to go in blind, whereas if Aaron knew the make and model number he could tell them exactly what is wrong. He could actually order the part and have them stop by the office and save the tenant time. Aaron could upload videos to remind himself where things are since he is sometimes not in these houses for years at a time and would not remember where things are.
You can upload videos, and eventually you will be thinking of landlords and upgrading capabilities to be able to share this with the tenant. Right now you have the ability to have multiple properties in the app on a single account. What is coming soon is different access modes, such as guest mode or tenant mode, where you can share with them some of the information about everything. If you have house guests or a babysitter, you can have a video ready for them to watch to know how to use the appliances in the house. This is great for a tenant, renter, or guest. Aaron said he could see this being very helpful for those doing Airbnb where you give access to let people know how to turn things on like the Jacuzzi. Aaron stayed at a place through Airbnb a couple months ago, and it was a process. If he had a video, he could have figured it out quickly.
Aaron asked Shubber what he sees for the future on this. He said they are partnering with This Old House, which is very well respected in the home media marketplace. They will be featured in their May issue and will be working with them on their tv programming and website. They will be providing access to their content for the app. Anything they are trying to figure out can be accessed directly through the app. This Old House also has a fantastic YouTube channel.
A lot of information is available out there on the web, but you have to go find it. This is the problem because a lot of times it is like finding a needle in a haystack. Shubber sometimes gets 3 million results for one thing. On top of this, you would then have to scroll through to find exactly what you are looking for. This could be trying to find a how-to manual, discussion form, or anything else. With this app, as long as you just take a picture, everything else will be brought to you.
Another part of what is coming is communities. If you have a certain model of a product, you could be connected to all the people who have this same model. However, instead of going into a forum, you could be connected directly to the manager. Shubber once had a water heater that he did not know how to work and went years not knowing what to do until it eventually broke. This app helps prevent this. Aaron asked if you can set up reminders within the app, which Shubber said is part of the maintenance side and is coming shortly. You can think of it as three different calendars running in the system. These calendars would run in timed cycles and could vary from person to person.
There will also be the calendars that remind you when it is time to work on a specific thing in your house. This could include a tree that you would need to know what to give and when to give it. There will also be an events based calendar, which includes weather alerts. They are tying into the national weather service system so that you could get something like a freeze warning. Shubber said if he had one of these years ago, his lemon tree would not have been killed. All it took was for him to put a sheet over the top of his lemon tree, and it would have been fine. You would receive alerts specific to where you are. There is also the user-created calendar so that at a certain time of month you are reminded when to turn something on and when to turn it off. Then when the time comes to sell the house, all of these calendars go to the next owner. Amazing.
It is very rare that the Norris Group does this kind of technology update on the radio since it is much better in the visual format. However, Aaron was excited because there are so many applications for realtors and investors. Aaron ended by asking how to find Shubber online as well as the app. He said you can go to their website at www.centriqhome.com. You can either click the Get the App button at the top of the screen or go to the app store and type in Centriq. It is available for either your iPad or iPhone, but if you want it for the iPad make sure you deselect iPad only because it is an iPhone app but works fine on the iPad. Stay tuned for what’s coming out next, and they are always looking for user feedback. Let them know if you love it, hate it, or wish it had another feature.
For more information about The Norris Group’s California hard money loans or our California Trust Deed investments, visit the website or call our office at 951-780-5856 for more information. For upcoming California real estate investor training and events, visit The Norris Group website and our California investor calendar. You’ll also find our award-winning real estate radio show on KTIE 590am at 6pm on Saturdays or you can listen to over 170 podcasts in our free investor radio archive.