John Bodrozic of HomeZada
HomeZada is a Digital Home Management Platform for consumers to manage, maintain, protect, and improve their largest asset and biggest expense, their home.
Co-Founder: John Bodrozic - HomeZada
“Problem” your company solves
For most people, the home is their largest financial asset and biggest expense yet the financial and physical information about their home is incomplete, in paper format, and scattered everywhere. As a result, homeowners spend too much on fix and repair costs because they don’t keep up with simple preventative maintenance. Homeowners do various remodel projects and end up over budget and in a bad relationship with a contractor. Most homeowners are under-insured and not prepared to make a claim if a fire or natural disaster were to destroy their home. In addition, most homeowners lose track of their home equity and don’t really know the total cost to own their home with all the utility, insurance, property tax and various services they have for their home.
The problem for real estate, mortgage and insurance businesses is after the initial transaction with the homeowner, they lose track of the relationship and don’t have a meaningful way to engage with homeowner clients over the long run. This turns into very low renewal and repeat business from those existing customers as the homeowner is more likely to switch to a different provider for their next transaction.
Talk a bit about your path to entrepreneurship. Were you hustling lemonade in the neighborhood in elementary school or did your passion follow an intellectual interest?
My path to entrepreneurship came from my first job after college in the commercial construction industry. I was frustrated with the lack of a comprehensive yet easy-to-use project management database to manage large-scale construction projects. I knew how the software should work and then a colleague approached me with the passion to start a software company and we were off. We turned that frustration into a global software company with over 250 employees that eventually sold to a public company.
If your company had a “Why we exist” statement what would it be?
HomeZada exists to empower homeowners to save money and better manage their largest financial asset and biggest expense. The founding team is driven to create great technology that is easy to use for all different types of homeowners and to pioneer the concept of “digital home management.” We also want to create value with amazing customer engagement for companies that service the homeowner in the mortgage, insurance and real estate markets.
Was HomeZada a result of a key insight from you or a cofounder or did it come from a lot of trial and error?
The insight for HomeZada came from Elizabeth Dodson, one of our co-founders, who was frustrated with the lack of a single comprehensive consumer app to manage her home including a home inventory, a home maintenance schedule, remodel projects, home documents and all the home finances. She worked at the previous construction management software company and came to the realization that there was software to manage all the details of a $1 billion dollar sports stadium but nothing for a homeowner to manage their own home.
After the previous company was sold, the founders realized they were passionate entrepreneurs and wanted to build another business helping all homeowners manage their home based on the insights Elizabeth had as well as research on how most homeowners didn’t have an easy way to manage the data about their homes. We are excited that HomeZada is now in the marketplace being used by homeowners all across the country and in all age groups to manage their maintenance schedules, remodel projects, home inventory and home finances including estimated home values, mortgage balance, home equity and all their household expenses.
If you could start this company again what would you go back and tell yourself not to do and what would you recommend doing more of?
HomeZada has an amazing user interface today that supports any device including mobile, tablet and desktop. We should have spent more time in user interface design from the very beginning as we could have avoided some rework that we had to do. In addition, we should have spent more time and money in building out the consumer brand given the huge nature of the market opportunity.
A favorite book and band, with one sentence why…
A favorite book is Blue Ocean Strategy because it focuses on creating an uncontested new market space and capturing new demand where you can make the competition irrelevant. A favorite band is Van Halen because of the amazing sounds that 4 individuals working uniquely together could create so much positive energy and bring the house down in a true rock n roll fashion.
To me / our company, aging is ________
To HomeZada, aging is a huge part of our opportunity because homeownership rates are extremely high with seniors. There are so many facets of aging and the home that come together such as aging in place and modifications made to a house for seniors to live out their lives in their home. There is also the financial planning over how to use home equity as part of your retirement plan and to have an estate plan over how the home and your personal property gets distributed to various heirs. Aging and homeownership are tightly linked and HomeZada is excited to be a part of it by creating valuable software to help people manage through it.
What’s one thing you hope the AgeTech Collaborative will help you achieve?
Our goal with the AgeTech Collaborative is to gain exposure to different stakeholders to how HomeZada plays an important role in this market. We are looking for strategic partner opportunities that can help scale the business to more homeowners as well as with investors who see the huge opportunity both in the US and internationally.
Predictions: Looking out 10 years what do you think might be a common experience or behavior or accepted product / practice that people are fearful or skeptical of today?
Many consumers today have a fear of lack of privacy and ownership of their data with the internet. We believe the pendulum is already swinging back into the direction of companies who protect the consumers data and who don’t sell or monetize the consumers data. Subscription models where consumers get value in using a software platform and they are in control over their own data will be the norm in 10 years. Consumers can choose to share subsets of that data to service providers they choose to do business with in exchange for some financial incentives will be a popular business model that creates a better relationship between the consumer and the companies they choose to do business with.
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