PropTech and Beyond: Adam Pittenger’s Vision

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, From the Ground Up, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, their challenges, successes, and lessons learned. We hope you be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, and excited to have with us today Adam Pittenger, founder of Moved, a startup that's raised $15 million in funding, helps automate the move process for real estate companies and their residents. Before we dive in, give us a little bit of your background and how you got into technology.

Adam Pittenger: Yes, so um I moved to New York out of uh, out of school after graduating, and I joined a startup as a Client Success Manager actually. We were um building some of the first social recruiting software. It was part of a really small team uh working directly with our clients. And I really discovered what product manage-, product management was back then, which is this wonderful sort of mix of art and science. It was uh sort of the perfect blend for me where I was in front of our client. These are massive companies we're talking um IBM, eBay, Goldman Sachs, Google, working directly with them on, on their challenges and, and you know notably around recruiting. Um and then I'd be sitting next to our product and engineering teams, quickly give them feedback, ideas, thoughts, and just worked with them to sort of create solutions that we would then bring to our clients, drive results. And it was this wonderful feedback loop. So I was sort of intoxicated by the process and fell in love with product management, which has really fueled my, my career in tech.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. You know they say proximity oftentimes dictates the work you do. If you live in the Midwest in Detroit, maybe you get into the automotive sector. Um you got into it, it looks like on the East Coast in New York. I worked at Oracle in New York, there's lots of technology innovation in really hub cities. Talk to me about the proximity of kind of how you started and launched your startup today, Moved. Anybody in particular influenced that decision? Walk me through how that started.

Adam Pittenger: Yeah, um I think you nailed it. The proximity and, and sort of what's happening in your life really fueled that decision for me and, and sort of the path I've taken to get where we are today. So that startup I referenced earlier, we uh, we built that up over a couple years and then we sold it to Oracle. I stayed on at Oracle for a year and jumped to another startup, which coincided with I was doing my fourth move in, in four years, all in Manhattan. So I was in this sort of renter cycle of, every 12 months uh I was moving from apartment to apartment. And it was just a very broken process. Uh and I saw not only the troubles I had myself, but my parents were going through a move, my girlfriend at the time was going through a move, and it was just this really painful and stressful experience with no technology, no automation, no hospitality involved in... you doing your research, it's a top three most stressful life event. Why is that, right?

So I think a combination of my personal experiences, those personal relationships, and having some really solid mentors uh and sort of support and advisement around me where I was like, "I'm gonna quit my job and start a company." Uh I had a lot of uh really helpful folks there to sort of walk me through that, think through all the different uh scenarios and ultimately took the plunge and decided to uh kind of work on solving the problem I was having myself.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, it's funny you say that. When I moved to New York you know, at, with Oracle, from San Francisco to Oracle, they got me a real estate agent that walked me around from a, apartment to apartment. And as I was walking through Central Park, I was really happy with that experience in general. I happened to see my college roommate running down the Central Park that I didn't even know lived in New York at the time. And it was just a... it was a funny moment that I remembered you know 20 years later. But the experience of you know working, relocating, is, is painful, and it's costly. And ultimately you end up um sometimes just settling for what you get. And I think anything that can help improve that experience, maybe reduce your cost in the process would be great. But I'm really excited to kind of learn about your company, where you took it from there. So that's kind of the idea that inspired you to start it. As a founder you have to do a lot of things. You got to find the right engineers, build the right product, have the right idea. What were those first initial steps for you?

Adam Pittenger: Yeah, um I'd probably do it differently in retrospect, but that's uh part of the journey is, is falling down and getting back up. But the journey for me was uh I did end up quitting my job. I remember I went to uh a coffee shop, uh sat down, was alone, solo founder. And I was like, "Okay, what do I do now?" Uh and, and that was kind of the start of the journey. What I did was um, for better [or] for worse, the lens through which I viewed everything was the problem I was trying to solve, and product right? Like my brain was wired through product management, building software to solve problems. That's where my career started and that's kind of where my headspace was at the time. Uh and so I very luckily had a strong uh technical foundation in terms of product and engineering team at the company we sold to Oracle, very close friends of mine. And so I worked with um a designer I had previously worked with to kind of create some initial mockups which I used from a sort of sales and fundraising perspective: "Hey this is what I'm thinking about doing." And then I was able to get a couple engineers to give me some nights and weekend time to start building a first version of the product. Um again probably do things a little differently in the future. But we built an initial product um, and then ultimately leveraged that to get into an accelerator which kind of took us to the next phase, and then our seed round, and sort of uh you know just cascaded from there.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: So many of the founders we talked to on this show went through accelerators, Y Combinator, Techstars. Which one did you go through?

Adam Pittenger: So we went through uh an accelerator called AngelPad. Um really popular back when I went through it. They were known as like the "anti-Y Combinator": super small classes, 12 companies in, in our batch. Non-competitive with each other. Um they basically put you in a co-working space and tell you to sleep there for, for weeks on end. And uh it was a really incredible experience for a number of reasons. Um but we went through that, sort of half in New York, half in San Francisco. Uh and it was really validating to um sort of my network and the folks that I was already talking to. Wow, this is um you know a really interesting accelerator that has bought in to what, what we're doing and what we wanted to do. And uh it taught me a lot personally. Like I said, kind of where I started was just like building product and going. So much focus on customer discovery, learning, getting close to the customers, getting close to the problem. And gave me sort of my initial um you know education into venture capital which was this world I was about to enter and, and work on uh you know selling into, but really I had no background and no, no knowledge of. So it was, it was super helpful I'd say on those two main...

Jake Aaron Villarreal: When you get to raising capital, it's I think for a lot of founders the first time there's really not a clear understanding of how you go about it and ultimately you know how, how many "no"s you have to hear before you get the "yes"es. Walk me through that a little bit with your company and how many times did you pitch before you really got funded? And were you funded by the accelerator coming out once you graduated?

Adam Pittenger: Yes, so um before the accelerator I brought on a little sort of like angel, friends and family capital. The first check I got was, was 100K from a woman who had sold her healthcare company, not at all in technology, but uh just sort of entrepreneurial network around and sort of met her and pitched her. Her friend said "Hey, I'll follow whatever she does." So I had 125K. I got to start paying some people, which was, which was nice to get it going. Then the accelerator came in, they put in uh 50K at the time. But again, I said you know I said earlier that sort of validated us. So a lot of the folks and investors I was talking to had said, "Okay, you know I, I trust uh Thomas Korte who runs AngelPad. Um I'll put in a little bit more now." So the combination of before and sort of during the accelerator we were, we raised 550K all in at that point.

And then you get to Demo Day. And Demo Day is sort of you know this big pitch to investors, and you run and you go try to raise re-, seed round. Uh and to your question, that's really where I started to take a large amount of meetings. I think I met with around 125 investors. That's not meetings, that's different investors before we raised our seed round, before I got that first initial sort of lead check that said "Okay let's, let's lead this round, let's do it."

Jake Aaron Villarreal: And as you go through that presentation mode and just the practice of it, do you feel like you, you, you sort of improve as you go? You kind of, you start with one way of pitching and then ultimately you know you get better at how you're positioning the product and the platform and the company.

Adam Pittenger: I think you have to. Um you know I think I'm certainly better at fundraising than I was back then, but even along that path you're, you're getting a ton of data, right? You don't have to accept it all, right. You don't have to say, "Hey, I believe in you know the feedback this investor gave me." Which not all of them give you feedback. Sometimes you just get a "no" and then you don't hear back from them. But um I'm somebody who very much wants to keep an open mind, take that feedback in, hear it, sit with it. And then I can you know choose to accept it or reject it. Uh so I think it helped us improve the company, I think it helped us, helped me improve the pitch and sort of my fundraising ability. But ultimately at that stage it's still so early, you need to find somebody who truly has conviction in sort of these core pillars of what they're investing in, which is team and market and vision. So um you know I'd say just having the, the number of at-bats I did was probably the most effective thing, just keeping my head down, being persistent and, and stepping back up to the plate was equally as effective than any sort of fundraising strategy I had.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: I like that. The persistence I know is really important and keeping a good attitude and psychologically just knowing that there's a, there's an opportunity in the future, you just keep plugging away. Is there a book or any insightful resource that other founders might... that are looking to raise capital might learn from, that you read or anything that comes to mind outside of the accelerator and just you know giving, getting guidance and pitching?

Adam Pittenger: Yeah, um Venture Deals, uh Brad Feld you know I think is, I think wrote that, that book is sort of a you know, the, the basics of like what a fundraise looks like. Um I think there's a lot in the process and sort of mechanics which are ever-evolving that um may not be in a book, but are sort of kept up in, in you know blog posts and you know sort of "hey here's the strategy I went through." Although I will say a lot of what you'll see online is sort of this "founder raised $60 million in 12 days with this process." Like that's the .1% of companies, the other ones have to go through a bit of a, a different process. So um I'd say sort of the, the fundamentals of what goes into a venture, venture round would be the book Venture Deals.

Um but learning how to truly fundraise, I would say most of what I learned was practice, getting you know in the arena if you will. And uh my network, right? Just talking to other founders. Uh those founder-to-founder conversations are always so meaningful because everyone else is, is going through it, notably with folks who have, who are ahead of you, who have raised those rounds, continue to raise those rounds and build the company. They'll give you really good honest feedback and help you um not fine-tuning your pitch but more fine-tune your process, which I, I'd argue is equally as important.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: What's the formula to really understand giving up equity and taking funds? Is there like a process that you learned or you go through? Because I know there's a lot of founders we talk to and they always ask us you know, "We're thinking about raising capital, not sure how much equity we want to give up." But you know what your thoughts, and I just always like to understand from others you know, what have you learned? What do you think uh worked for you or maybe others that you've, you've spoken with?

Adam Pittenger: There's sort of market benchmarks set, like seed and Series A, um that, that you'll sort of want to anchor into in those conversations. Call it you know giving up 15 to 25%, 30 on the high end in terms of um you know what that round looks like. I, early on you know there's sort of like misconception of "get the highest valuation you can." Sure there's merit to that. But I was lucky to have somebody in my network early on tell me, "Actually you don't always want to do that." And I think we're actually seeing sort of the effects of that [from] 2021 and sort of the explosion of capital and these crazy rounds and valuations, we're seeing that you know the hurt in the market as a result of that. Um, you have to grow into your valuation, right?

So there's this like balance you need to strike of: okay, the higher my valuation, the less I give up for, for this amount of capital. Um however, I need to make sure that in my next round, I'm raising at an up round. Okay so where does my revenue need to be at that point? And am I able to get there? Otherwise you run into a whole world of hurt when you try to raise that next round and your numbers don't support it, you have to lay off, or you do a down round and you restructure, you know recap. It's uh, it can get really messy. So you don't want to, you don't want to set it too high where you're in trouble in that next round, or you limit your optionality as a founder where um you need to sell the company at a, at a price that the market just simply can't support. Um and then you know you put all this time and effort, your, your team's time and effort um for an outcome that just isn't going to happen.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Makes a lot of sense. Let's switch gears a little bit here, let's talk about Move, um Moved. Walk us through the real problem you're solving. You, I, you gave us the high level but give us a use case. What's a use case of a company that's bought into your product, they're using it, and the experience that maybe the tenants get out of it, and, and what that's like too?

Adam Pittenger: Yeah, so we started as a direct-to-consumer concierge service for moving. Like the, the easiest way to think about it is Uber for moving, um with a concierge service attached to it. That's really hard for a number of reasons and I'm happy to, to touch on that. But fast forward, for those reasons, plus a really key insight we had along the way, we sort of pivoted the business to what you see on our website today. That key insight was moving isn't just hard for you and me as consumers, moving is really hard for these properties. You have real estate on all ends of a move, and there's a property management team or a leasing team who's being charged with all the manual effort and coordination around onboarding and offboarding residents. This is very nuanced and specific per property. This could be things like reserving elevators and loading docks, uploading your renter's insurance, uploading your insurance for your moving company, um you know scheduling time to pick up your keys, setting up your utilities and providing proof to the property, registering your pet, paying your security deposit. There's this list of things on top of your personal to-dos for, for moving that the property needs you to get done as well.

Uh and we saw that with our customers. I saw that with myself you know personally. I was moving into a property and I, I knew these things needed to get done, done by virtue of, of you know the company I was building and my leasing agent was like, "I don't have time for this, I don't know, figure it out." And it was just like, why is there not a single dashboard that allows me to have all my personal to-dos and all the property to-dos? Um and so that's really what we built. And, and, and the sort of where we hang our hat is we're providing operational efficiency for these property managers. We're taking all this time away from their team, from all that email back and forth and phone calls and texts where they're managing that process manually today. We're giving the residents a much better experience making sure they're ready for their move before the lease begins.

And then you know sort of a key part of our, our vision of the future is the ability for us to help these residents transact with the purchases and the products they, they need during the moving experience. And that's moving companies, that's renter's insurance, that's cable and internet packages, and furniture purchases, TV mounting, all these things that happen during the move, we're in a position to facilitate that. So what the experience might look like for a consumer today is: I find an apartment I love, I apply, I get accepted, and then I go through Moved to do all those things. Purchase and upload my renter's insurance. Book my move for Saturday at 8:00 a.m. Now I have a moving company who's going to show up [at] my place at 6:00 a.m. to make sure we're there at 8:00 a.m. Um they're already insured, that's on file with the, with the, with the move, with the uh the property that I'm moving into. Um setting up my utilities, making that really easy, getting my cable and internet hooked up on the day I move in. All those tasks you coordinate through our software. Makes it really easy for the property, and easy for the resident who's going through.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: So is the business model that you get paid by the property owner, or is it paid by the consumer that uses your platform as well?

Adam Pittenger: Um we're not paid by the consumer. The, the business model is B2B2C in that we are paid by the properties, so that's sort of the B2B element of what we do. Uh monthly subscription fee to you know use our software and get all the benefits I mentioned. Um and then by virtue of doing that, residents are coming through our software. They have to use us to do those sort of operational components of moving in like the elevators and renter's insurance etc. And by sort of having them at this moment in time, as we're sort of this check-in aisle of the property, um there are all these products and services they're looking for, they're you know setting up new habits and routines, and, and you know looking to sort of furnish their apartment and get these things set up. We really like to take the product philosophy of: you have a problem, we're going to present it to you, we're immediately going to present you with the solution. So we're going to make money as well on doing that effectively for residents. Meaning if you book a move through us, those, that moving company will pay us. If you buy renter's insurance through the platform, that renter's insurance company is going to pay. Furniture, cable and internet, etc. So we're getting paid by those vendors as well to help them acquire new customers at the perfect moment in time for a lower acquisition cost than they're getting on Google or Instagram or elsewhere.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. I've got a friend who is a major builder of condos and multi-tenant facilities in Silicon Valley, so I got to connect you with him at some point. I think it might make sense, and I think it's a novel idea that's really getting some attraction.

Adam Pittenger: I didn't know this was a biz dev call Jake, but I love it. Let's get it going.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: You never know where, where we, where we take it here. Um, in terms of the idea that you started with, you know every company starts with a thesis. You go to market, sometimes you have to make a change or a pivot. What was a major pivot for you in your journey?

Adam Pittenger: Yeah it, I mean the headline would be going from a direct to consumer business to an enterprise software sale. So you know we are that B-, B2B2C model, we're building... the majority of what we build from a product perspective is consumer facing software. But it's consumer facing software that's activated through an enterprise sale. So that changed our whole mindset, our whole organization around okay, "how do I acquire customers as you know through Google, uh through channel partnerships, um you know through Instagram ads, you know influencer campaigns, PR?" It changed that completely to "how do I get a property management company at the highest levels of their organization, in their operations department, how do I get them bought into what we're doing and what we're delivering to their teams and their residents?" And that's a complete-, completely different sales and marketing strategy, and, and go-to-market motion where we're no longer spending anything on ads, we're going to conferences. We are you know hiring a sales team and managing a sales team and commission structures. And uh working on you know complete enterprise agreements and rollout strategies, implementation. This isn't "hey, come to moved.com and book your move." This is "hey we're going to completely change the way in which your 50,000 unit real estate portfolio onboards and offboards residents, and change your operating model for teams across all of these properties." That was a massive shift that was very challenging and took place over um, God like you know there, there's still elements of the legacy business within what we do today, but I'd say like the full transition was probably a two-year process.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: It's amazing how, how often the pivot has to happen within companies as they grow and have to maneuver and adapt to the market. Maybe the, the product they created isn't fitting what they thought it would serve. Uh and the timeline it takes to actually do a pivot, it's... there's really not a playbook that we've seen. Maybe there is, but we haven't seen one where it walks you through the pivot and the timelines and the process. Uh they're all very unique. Um two years is a fair amount of time and investment and, and you kind of hope you get to the end goal where it actually is proving itself out. So today when you're out with your sales team selling and you're at these conferences, is it to the big property owners, the, the big companies that own portfolios of real estate?

Adam Pittenger: Yep, that's exactly right. We're selling to those folks um you know on the benefits of what we do. And then we've been thankfully doing that very successfully, scaling the numbers of, of properties and units that we're in across the country. And then when we do that, well, we implement the software and have all of their residents coming through the software right. So we don't really have to pitch a consumer directly anymore. They're required to come through our software to move into their property. And then it's up to us to do a really good job um sort of you know building software and creating value for them along the way in, to further monetize and sort of earn some of that wallet share um by making those purchases and those transactions really easy for them on the way in.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. How big is the company today? You've been in business for some time now. How, what's the, what's the company size look like?

Adam Pittenger: Uh we are about 25 people uh across the company, lean and mean. Uh and you know we're, we're now in from um sort of [a] customer perspective, a little over 500,000 units. And we've been in market with this product for about two, two and a half years, so uh we've been growing here pretty quickly.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: How big is the market?

Adam Pittenger: It's huge. Um you know the, the multi-family market, which is frankly just um our entry point here right. So we've, we focused on renters... I mean moving is a problem for everybody, we focused on renters uh which is, which is a big portion of the population. But also within the renter segment, we focused on multi-family properties. The reason we like renters is the frequency and the predictability of the move right. And you have these big property management companies that are dealing with thousands of moves, and we can come in and provide value very, very quickly. Uh but even within the renter segment you have single family rentals, which is something we're, we're starting to get into now and we have some customers around. Um that doesn't even account for all the homeowners out there right. Uh which I am one as well. And I experienced the pain after years of being a renter, of buying a home and having to move into that home. The pain is still there, the task list and the different things I have to do is what's different right.

And so um we're lucky enough to have, have built the product and our architecture, kudos to our, our great engineering team, in a way that extends itself very easily to those other use cases. The single family, uh homeowner, uh student housing, senior housing, it's just really sort of those Lego pieces within our product that or these tasks that you have to get done, that's really what's going to differ. So um while you know, to your question around market size, we really focus on the multi-family renters today, we, we frankly view all um you know all asset classes, anyone who's living in a, in a residential space as ultimately our customer in the long run.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: You know, COVID changed how people work, oftentimes not having to go into the office anymore. But it really didn't change where we live. We have to live in a house or a condo or a rental. Did COVID change your business in any way?

Adam Pittenger: It did. Um I think organizationally it really allowed us to focus, right. So that was, we talked earlier about sort of the pivot and the shift within our, within our company. Um kind of stripped everything away and said "What's important? Where do we need to focus?" Uh and, and I think for that reason we were really effective at building the first version of the product, getting it out there. We launched our first communities in, in Q3 of 2020 so we're kind of right in the thick of it. I think there was also some really interesting trends um that had an impact on our business. One, there was a ton of moving. People were moving like crazy in, in 2020 and 2021. Um and that certainly was, was a good thing for the business. Nobody roots for a pandemic, but uh we, we also went fully remote um, which has its pros and cons, but has certainly allowed us to um recruit and attract talent from all over, over the country, all over the world at this point. Um we have some folks overseas as well.

We also were able to build things in pretty quickly. We have a very um strong and agile team from a product and engineering perspective, where we were able to meet the demands of our new customers with things like contactless key pickup, right. So historically you're picking up keys for your new apartment community, I'm meeting Jake at the office at 10:00 a.m. and Jake says, "Here are your keys," right. We've been, we were able to sort of leverage infrastructure in things like smart lockers and package rooms at these facilities where Jake could drop those keys in a locker, and then we send Adam a code that says, "Hey Adam, go pick this up within a three-day period." So I think that helped us to um you know in just listening to our clients and sort of understanding where things were trending, we could work quickly to you know deliver value and say, um "Here, you know now you can deploy this across your portfolio uh and it's something that's really top of mind given what was happening you know in 2020." So uh there were impacts in the business like that, but um I think really the biggest thing as I reflect on it was the focus, allowing us to really strip away everything that wasn't important, all that noise, and really, really focus in on building this product and uh getting it to market.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: I want to go back to something you mentioned about remote and recruiting. Um for those out there that have had to hire uh in, in today's world, it's a totally different world than 6, 12, 18, 24 months ago. You know, you can build a first company and that's been happening for a while. But um you know, there's some challenges to understanding you know your recruitment process, making sure everyone's on the same page when you're pitching who you are, what you do, the role in particular and what that role will be doing for the company. What's been some of the insights or some of the things that have worked for you as you continue to build out your company remotely?

Adam Pittenger: It's challenging. I mean I, I won't sugarcoat it, it's very challenging. I, I mentioned there's pros and cons. You know, I think there's pros and, and cons to everything in this world, not to get philosophical, but the uh the remote culture thing is amazing, it provides incredible flexibility. It allows us to recruit from anywhere. But I think in-person time is, is really valuable. It's hard to, to build meaningful relationships. I think it comes down to shared experience really. It comes down to being next to each other and you know going through something or you know seeing something happen in the office or going out for drinks afterwards. You lose that, right? So, so you're not necessarily going to replace that. But how do you, how do you try and um you know create experiences, create culture that can substitute a little bit for it?

So we've, we've placed an emphasis on you know where possible having team get togethers, right. You always want to be protective of everybody's time, but having time dedicated where everybody's getting on... we're a small enough company where we can get on, we have an all-hands meeting, we can do things like play games. We've done things like Airbnb experiences where we all make tacos together. A member of our team had cocktail recipes she was putting together and showing everybody how to do it. Parties and things like that, right. It's not the same as, as in-person but I think those you know, I certainly remember those, those experiences fondly. So I think doing that and letting people know there's a community but you know interpersonally that isn't just work related, right? And, and isn't just based around "hey, we have this deliverable and we have to do XYZ."

And then on top of that we've, we've always tried to sort of leverage conferences and personal travel to get together with our team in person. So it's something we, we really encourage. Um we also have stipends for like a work from home setup and things like that. We want people to feel comfortable in their space. Um and then you know, when we do have folks that are traveling or we have a conference, dedicating some time before or after that event to just like spend meaningful time together. Because it is rare. Um and it's something people have, have shared with us that uh that they [enjoy].

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Sounds really cool. Um Adam, you, you communicate well, you seem like a good guy. What makes it great to work for your company? What makes it great to work for you?

Adam Pittenger: Well I'm flattered, I don't know if everybody would agree with that. But uh I hope they do! Makes it good to work for us... um you know we have, we have a really incredible group of people. I think it always comes back to um core values. And you know to me, building a great culture um and this is just how I think about management in general so to your point about working for me. There's sort of three pillars to it. First is purpose right, sort of like do you believe in what we're doing? Do you believe in why we're here? The "why," the mission, the vision. That is, that's a prerequisite to any good culture, any good success. Otherwise you're just punching in and out. Which, which is fine, there's, there's nothing wrong with, with punching in and punching out. But I think a really strong culture is grounded in purpose, almost this religion of like, "Wow, we believe we're making a difference here."

On top, sort of layering on top of that is two other pillars: autonomy and mastery. If you're going to bring in really talented people and tell them they're really talented, you need to let them go do their thing. You cannot hover over them and say, "Okay let me like... " Sure there's a training and ramping period, but otherwise like give them slack, let them go, let them run. Um and I think I'm very much somebody who just lets people go run and do, and like sure I can reel you back if we need to. But I'd, I'd rather you go run and fail and make a mistake and then we can sort of pick it up from there than try to hover over you. That's not a good use of my time, it's not a good use of your time and you're not going to be happy doing it.

I think as part of that you have the mastery component. You have the ability for people to develop and feel ownership over what they do at the company, their skill set, and their career trajectory. I think those three pillars are really important. And then sort of zeroing in on Moved, we have a set of the core values that spell ABODE, which was you know, that's the legal entity name of the company, it's where we started before we were Moved. And my favorite of them, of our, of our core values is the last one, the E, which is Ego-less. And we have a subtext there, which is "we is greater than me." And to me, that, what is the foundation for the way I operate, the way that our, our culture is set is: the collective is bigger and more important than the individual. And with that, plus those three pillars of you know really believing in what we're doing and allowing people to go run and do and own, I think you create an environment where there's, there's safety, there's trust, there's growth. Um and people are happy and uh stay that way hopefully.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, really well said. There's a, a lot to the culture of a company, and we think a lot of it comes from the leaders, you know, how you think and how you operate it kind of trickles down from there. But how you presented it sounds like a, a great place to be. And you know, we interact with 100,000 engineers a year, whether it's through campaigns or interviews or messaging, and engineers out there might hear about your company and like what they hear, and they may apply directly. Who knows, you never know. Um great, in terms of the company, where does it go from here? You've been in business now for a while. Uh anything on the horizon that's exciting, or is it just hunker down, build revenue, continue to model out what you're creating?

Adam Pittenger: Yeah, um we got some exciting things in the offing. So you know I think it's a combination of we definitely have um more than an MVP at this point. We have a very you know robust, full feature product that has product-m-, product-market fit, is growing, and we want to continue to grow that. So that's you know, growing and selling is, is a big focus for us of course. My background is in product so that's immediately sort of where my brain goes, is, is "what are we doing there and where do we take things? What is that vision?" You know, the way we're sort of thinking about it today is um our portfolio of, of investments on our roadmap is, is bucketed in a couple categories. Um really the highest level buckets are: continuing to do what we do really well, and that would be operational efficiency. And right now a big focus for us is integrating more of these partnerships around helping residents with the things that they need right. So that's you know, purchasing things for their move, getting things set up, products and services that are relevant to this life moment, and having those be easily um purchased in a really nice way through our product. So sort of continuing to get really good at what we do is I'd say probably 80% of what we're focused on right now. And we have some really exciting partnerships that we're going to be integrating into, into the product soon, we'll do some press around as well, that I think really differentiate us from anything else on the market.

The 20% bucket is big swings, right? Like we don't want to get complacent. "Cool, we found product-market fit, let's just really get you know tight on all these things that we do." It's important obviously, we're dedicating a lot of time to that. But we can't get complacent, we need to keep making big swings. And um you know, I think... I don't want to misquote Mr. Bezos, but there's one of his shareholder letters that was something like you know, "we're still at Day One, and the moment we get to Day Two is, is stasis. Right, like we're, we're not going to move anywhere if we just keep doing that, that first bucket." So we have some new products in development that we're, we're testing with our clients that we're pretty excited about that aren't just the move-in and the move-out. Um and so I think it's a, it's a combination of those two: the big swings and, and continuing to fine-tune what we do today.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Amazing journey you're on. Looks like there's a lot of growth ahead and uh excited to kind of see how things go. It'd be great to check in with, with you down the road here. If people want to get in touch with you or find Moved, where do they go?

Adam Pittenger: Pretty simple, moved.com, m-o-v-e-d.com. And I am Adam, a-d-a-m, adam@moved.com.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Adam, I guess as we wrap up here, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate you taking some time on your Friday to spend with us. And to our, all of our listeners, thanks for spending your time with us as well. It means the world to us. And uh excited to continue down this path and journey with you as well. Until the next episode, we will catch up with you then. Adam have a great weekend. Everyone else, talk to you soon.

Adam Pittenger: Thanks Jake.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Before we wrap up, I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that have joined to make this podcast possible. And for all the listeners for listening, it means the world to me that you chose to spend your time with us today. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now. We can't wait to connect with you all soon on the next episode. Take care.

This show is sponsored by Match Relevant, a company that helps venture-backed startups find the best people in the market and they do it in three simple steps. First, they sit down with founders to understand their story. Second, they tell their story into multiple candidate channels. And third, they schedule interviews within 48 hours. Find us at matchrelevant.com to learn more about how we do it.

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