Boom company update - Recap: 2023 Q1
Buildout to enable further scalability of product, continued subscriber growth (more ATHs), brand / external push to go public with the business, etc. Happy hour on June 27 in Austin, TX.
Hi!
A quick mention that we will be having our quarterly open bar happy hour in Austin, TX on June 27. If you’re around, pls join! Details: https://www.mixily.com/event/5272383099761016667
Reminder about who Boom is and what this newsletter is at the bottom.
Progress in 2023 Q1
TL;DR: in Q1 our plans shifted a bit from some of the growth and consumer-facing product work that we had planned to more foundational work. Namely, the credit bureaus audited their largest data furnishers and we’ve now reached scale where we receive this level of scrutiny. While we passed the audit (one person from the bureaus was so impressed they asked if we had job openings), it did require some of the company’s attention and we also decided to refocus resources to bolster our verification and furnishment processes to better enable speed and scale. Despite all of that, we did still see revenue and subscribers hit record highs and moved the ball forward on several product fronts. More detail below:
Grew paying subscribers → we hit all time highs on new subscribers during this quarter while merely launching <$3k/month in Google Ads (we were bottlenecked on additional initiatives while we wired our product for analytics/attribution)
Implemented a range of product improvements → resolved bank linking issues, new anti-fraud tooling, switched identity verification provider to Plaid, uplift on our communication system (Intercom) to enable easier customer resolution of account issues, etc.
Dramatically improved rent reporting verification and furnishment → we released an updated version of our system which is now modular in construction and enables human-in-the loop operations on specific tasks.
Started going more public with Boom → we had not done any press or external communication about Boom to date. This kicked off with this post Announcing Boom (Feb 2023) and was followed by funding announcements on Inman, HousingWire and elsewhere.
Industry news
It was a quieter last quarter. However we did see some relevant announcements, such as Blackstone closing a $30B real estate fund, with a lot of it allocated to multifamily. This is a trend we are hearing from our apartment owner/operator clients: bigger buyers getting more and more into multifamily and single family rentals even at smaller scales. With this trend and others (interest rates ratcheting up, vacancies rising), owners and operators are increasingly seeking tools to improve the acquisition and operation of properties.
Asks
Connections to landlords/PMs: do you know any apartment operators, especially those in small-medium multifamily Class B, and affordable housing. Know anyone? Rather than a sales call, we’d like to offer a compensated ‘discovery’ interview. Let us know!
Connections to industry-specific entities: we are always looking to further build relationships with leaders at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and HUD. Know the folks focused multifamily innovation and resident credit?
What could be better
Growth foundations dragged: we had to really clean up data and take time to implement the analytics the right way to enable us to scale partnerships. Chalk it up to running many things in parallel, not enough hands.
Hiring was good, not great: while we were excited to bring on a new FS engineer, Yevhenii Lukashevskyi, we didn’t make any of the the other key hires we were seeking such as Head of Ops or Senior PM. More to come on this, though.
What’s next
Focus areas for the next quarter (2023 Q2) include:
Kick off consumer growth initiatives → as we were able to finalize implementation of the majority of the data, analytics, and attribution work with Singular, Amplitude, etc. this quarter we’ll actually launch net new growth initiatives as we start to stack a diversified set of consumer channels (e.g. affiliates, FB groups, ad exchanges).
Integrate with first property management software systems → now that we’ve shifted all of our existing landlords/PMs onto our Partner Portal, we are going to launch our first first 1-2 PM software integrations.
Implement several Partner Portal improvements and expansions → while we did go live with the Partner Portal (which our landlords and other partners use), it leaves a lot to desire. We are going to come out with our v2 version which will have a number of improvements and additions (e.g. adding Algolia for search).
Start a new product customer discovery sprint → now with the foundation in place, we will kick off a customer discovery sprint to define our next product (unlikely to launch this quarter, though).
Thanks!
Rob and Kirill
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Quick reminder about who we are:
Boom is on a mission to level the playing field for the 110+ million renters in the US by making housing more flexible, affordable, and rewarding. We’ve started by building an app to help renters build credit with their largest monthly expense: the rent payment. Now serving thousands of renters, Boom is led by second-time founders Rob Whiting (ex-BCG, Rubicon) and Kirill Moizik (Eco, Technion, Grubhub). It's backed by investors such as Starting Line, Clocktower Ventures, Gilgamesh Ventures (Petal co-founders), and angels such as William Hockey and Zach Perret (Co-founders of Plaid) who anchored Boom's pre-seed round (joined by Harry Stebbings and others from places like Cash App, Mint House, Landis, Party Round, and Redfin).