Interview with Mycoop founder Alex Norman

My name is Dustin Betts. I'm the content editor at the Founder Institute, and I'm here this afternoon with Alex Norman. He's the founder of MyCoop, which is an FI Miami and a Founder Institute Select portfolio company that's simplifying communication within buildings of all types. Alex Norman, thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you, pleasure being here.

Yeah, great. So before we kind of dive into your startup MyCoop, I always like to ask, you know, tell us a little bit about yourself first or your personal What were the experiences, professional or personal, that led you to founding this building communications technology company?

Yeah, sure. I'm, once again, I'm Alex Norman. I spent the last 20 years, if you can believe it, in digital marketing and advertising. And the idea for MyCoop kind of started early in 2012. So it was quite a while ago when I was with a large ad agency. We were pitching a large home builder at the time. And through our research, we found that the home builder wasn't building communities of homes, they were building communities of families, of friends, and people that needed to communicate with each other, and that required their own network. We ultimately lost the business pitch because they just wanted a Facebook page. And then the idea came to me that communities, home and apartment and building communities, needed a special place to communicate. And later that year, unfortunately, the hurricane Superstorm Sandy hit New York. And I was in the middle of that, living in New York City at the time. And realized that the hurricane put people underwater and put people in desperate need of access to resources and communication. And I realized that there was no better solution to starting a business that created better communication digitally for buildings, particularly in multifamily buildings in densely populated urban areas.

Perfect, perfect. I know because I've been on your website, I'm familiar with you as a Founder Institute portfolio company that MyCoop is providing a private environment for building communication that cuts down on the inbox clutter to keep residents happy. Let's hear it straight from you, the founders, give us your elevator pitch for those totally unfamiliar. What is MyCoop?

Yeah, sure. So MyCoop is a communication and collaboration platform for multifamily buildings. And we're the fastest growing global communication and content management platform for building owners, managers, and residents. All multifamily buildings need better tools to manage communication and content. In the US, there are 4 million buildings, and less than 5.5% of those have software of any kind. And when we launched at the end of 2018, with the help of the pandemic most recently, we've reached about 1,100 buildings on our platform. And our goal is for all multifamily buildings around the world to use software to manage communication and content like ours.

Perfect, perfect. Now, just to kind of describe the whole context, you know, for those who are not familiar with the latest of kind of what's happened in this space, like, tell us a bit about the existing types of systems for like intra-building communication, you know, what's out there, what are their strengths and weaknesses or efficiencies or problems with them, that building communication faces today?

Yeah, sure. So, so the way I like to view it is that there's this industry called a property management software industry, and it's usually broken into two segments. One is the back office segment, which is heavily focused on operations and helping buildings run more efficiently and have limited to no communication tools and features that allow residents and inter-building, inter- resident communication. And then the other side, there is what I call front office software, which is the area that we're in, which is really about giving access to communication and, and to resources, whether that's in building or externally. And so in our space, there aren't really many players focusing on the inter-residential communication space, where the majority of people in our, in our industry are focused on the back office, which in some cases, is the most lucrative because they're selling to large— in the real estate enterprise-level customers that have large buildings, more complex systems to manage, where we focus really on our sweet spot, which is 50-unit buildings, which could be anywhere between a 4-story walk-up in some cases, and which in fact are the majority of buildings, of multifamily buildings, not only in the United States but in the world. We live in large major metro cities and we see these large high-rise buildings and we think that's America or that's the world. And in fact, most buildings are two-story walk-ups, 10-unit, 20-unit buildings.

Yeah. Really interesting. Because just like you say, I think when people think multi or mixed-use, like their minds go to downtown skyscraper complexes, but it totally makes sense that, yeah, most of these buildings are much smaller. And I mean, the front office solution in many cases that you might be totally supplementing with a lot more value. It could just be like a bulletin board in some cases for some of these buildings, right?

Correct. And matter of fact, in most buildings, it is a bulletin board, literally, right? It's paper on the wall in some sort of common area that's a foyer or elevator or hallway that defines communication in buildings. And there's a lot of reasons why that is inefficient, right? I mean, we just—

Yeah.

We look at our own office spaces where we work or we used to work for that matter. Where better communication is required. And so imagine using, you know, phone and email and bulletin boards to keep your employees up to speed in the absence of communication like, you know, now we're living in a Slack world. Imagine not having those tools to communicate and relying on, you know, Byzantine-like communication tools in order to stay connected with each other. It's the same thing now that we sort of, we look at, residential buildings, the needs there.

Yeah, perfect. So in contrast, tell us a little bit more about your solutions at MyCoop, how they work for not just the building residents, but also for streaming communication with that back office or with the building managers or owners. What's the whole kind of suite in contrast in using MyCoop?

Yeah, sure. So for us, buildings get their own private network where they have the ability to post, send direct messages to each other, create alerts, notifications that push to email and to SMS text. Residents and members of these building networks can buy and sell goods from each other, as well as store important information and documents. So we have a combination of sort of a Google Drive meets Facebook meets Slack, kind of all in one for your building. And for residents, that's great. So, you know, our Primary target customer are building boards and associations, so HOAs, boards, empowered residents who are looking to take some control over the management of their building in some way, shape, or form, whether that is the hard management or really the management of interests and community activities. So building, we're going to renovate something, let's get consensus. We're doing— there's a park across the street, how many kids want to sort of have playdates, these kinds of things. So regardless of whether it's purely social or utility, for the managers that are on our— so property managers that are using our system, they're using it as a way to create more efficiency for themselves because instead of getting 100 calls about the same issues, whether that be the heater isn't coming on because it's not getting cold outside, or there's a flood and creates some issues. Instead of getting 100 emails at once, now they can just use their system, and then there's a post, and they can respond to it so everyone can see it. So it creates a bit of an easier way to communicate en masse, at scale, basically, with a level of acceleration that they wouldn't necessarily have traditionally. Plus, you know, With COVID I would say COVID is the number one source, but with downsizing and down-resourcing for buildings, managers have less of an opportunity to day-to-day make these updates and posts in a timely manner. So using technology like ours makes their job that much easier. So I think these types of efficiencies that managers have instituted because of COVID are only going to continue to be important and relevant moving forward.

Awesome, perfect. Yeah, thanks for kind of explaining how that works. So congratulations, I know that you're hiring. It's great that you're working to expand your team. Tell us, you know, briefly about the positions that you're hiring for right now at MyCoop.

Yeah, so really, really quick, I mean, we're looking for two positions. First, a growth specialist. Really to help us accelerate our growth. Right now we've been primarily growing organically, so people have been— our customers have been finding us through Google because they need us. So really looking for someone to help us with some outbound communication and growth online. And then the second is a customer success specialist, and so they're going to help us work with our current users, help them be more successful on our platform, help them use the features in the way that solves a lot of their problems, and make the product that much more valuable for the buildings that need us.

Perfect. Yeah, we've included the links down there for the customer success and growth manager hiring positions. So if that's you or somebody you know, check out those links. We're gonna include that everywhere that we share this video. Next question I wanna ask you is have you make a prediction for us? Always a little bit dangerous. What do you envision for the future of building communications and where this is going over the next 5 to 10 years?

Yeah, OK. So as I mentioned, COVID is a thing, right? And whether or not we have— I think today we announced or they announced that there's going to be— there's a vaccine for it that Pfizer produced. I think COVID may go away as a virus, but the impact of COVID will continue. And what we've seen— from the beginning of COVID is what I call this trend called home grounding, where society as a whole has refocused their attention on the home. Whether or not that's home goods, that's renovations, and in some cases, reestablishing relationships with neighbors that have value or can provide value for you and your family. And so as a result of this refocusing, people, we, seeing inefficiencies in the things that— in sort of this small universe around our homes. And those are inefficiencies, those are areas that need improvement. So companies that are in the space of making your life better at home are going to be— are important now, and we're seeing that in the market, but will continue to be important in the future. And I think primarily, and in much the same way that there was a a revolution, I would say, in the office and workplace communication and collaboration, solving issues of communication, creating transparencies in communication change and dialogue among employees. It's going to be the same, which broke apart hierarchies in organizations in some cases, are going to be the same things we're going to see in multifamily buildings. I mean, you think about it, instead of working next to someone in a cubicle, you're living with someone, 2 inches of plywood away from somebody, right? And so these types of situations require communication to change in a way that I think we've only seen in other industries like your workplace, but will feel new and feel fresh and interesting on the home front. So I see communication changing. I see things— resource management and planning and content changing around the home, both both in single-family environments, but most importantly in multi-family environments around the country and around the world.

Awesome. No, I really love that kind of vision. And it totally makes sense, like everything around it. And it's kind of a positive vision too, as far as forging those relationships through something that's basically much more robust than a bulletin board, allows you to connect with neighbors, people around you that maybe you didn't know about. But yeah, you can help each other in ways that you discover. So yeah, I really like that prediction. Thanks, Phil. Thanks for that. But a piece of advice, you know, we always like to ask our founders, you know, what would you tell early-stage or aspiring entrepreneurs? Maybe any kind of wisdom that you've learned along the way or something you wish you'd known 2+ years ago, you know, when you were kind of just getting started?

Yeah, yeah, how much time do we got? I mean, it's a lot, right? So if I would pick one, I would say I think that at FI, you know, we spend a lot of time thinking about is your customer, And I would say the biggest challenge was not believing who our customer was when we found out who that customer was, right? Which means we thought our— when we started the business, we thought our customer was X and it turned out to be Y. And we didn't believe it, right? Because we thought that we were right and we thought that we wanted to build something. And this was— and for us, it was property managers. We wanted to create a better tool for them when in fact, our residents were using our product in ways that we just didn't even recognize at the time. So what I would say, and that was a big challenge, it's been a lot of money, a lot of wasted time trying to focus on these folks and not on these folks, and it hurt us eventually. And now we're in a situation where we've embraced residents and said, okay, well, we're gonna lean in. So my recommendation for founders is to, you know, is basically give your product to people without any kind of bias associated with who you think your target is and just let people use it. And the people that use it the most, focus on them and never stop focusing on them. And even though you think they're small, even though you think the market is tiny, It will grow, trust me. And so I would say let people find the use case. Don't dictate it.

Yeah, I think that's very broadly applicable to most founders. So really good advice there. Final question I have for you is just kind of, you know, to give us an update, you know, where is MyKoop headed next, or you have any other news or anything you want to share with the Founder Institute community or any generic asks for the audience who might be listening?

Sure, sure, sure. I have a few. So, the big news for us is that we're launching a new polling feature on the site, which is ironic because I wanted to get it out before the election. But, you know, as we know, things, you know, don't happen when you want it to, unfortunately. But we're really excited about that because it gives residents and buildings more power to make better decisions and create stronger consensus, which I think is huge. So polling, we're going to be launching launching basically on Friday, which we're really excited about because that's a game changer for us, particularly around engagement and collaboration. I also, you know, obviously the new hires is a big thing for us. We're looking for people to help join the team that believe in our mission and the vision and can help us. You know, as being a Founders Institute company and an advocate, I know how passionate people are to build products and services that other people love. And so we want folks who believe in that, i.e., within the Founders Institute universe, to join us and help us make a big change in the world. And also, we just opened our fundraising round. So we are looking for introductions to investors, angels who once again believe in the vision that we have of being the content communication platform for all multifamily buildings in the world and would help— would want to join the team and be a valuable partner to us as we grow.

Perfect. Yeah, really, really exciting stuff with new features coming out, fundraising round, hiring. Again, the positions are for growth manager and community— oh, customer success manager. So we'll include those links. Yeah, like I said, everywhere that we share. This has been really interesting, you know, learning about how building communication works and how it's changing. And I know We're all really looking forward to keeping up with MyTube and where you're headed next at the Founder Institute. So at any rate, Alex Norman, thank you so much again for joining us.

Yeah, thank you very much. Happy to be here and happy to do whatever I can to support the Founder Institute network.