Capitalizing on Tech Convergence: REBA's Role in the Multifamily Industry Revolution

Everyone in tech knows the story of how Steve Wozniak was the tech genius behind the development of the Apple computer. But I remember years ago reading about how, while deserving of the credit, “Woz” was also the beneficiary of being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

Many macro-trends in tech converged at the same time enabling Woz to create his epoch-defining invention

• Microprocessors became affordable and capable enough for personal use

• DRAM prices collapsed through the mid-70s, making enough RAM for a real OS feasible

• CRT displays miniaturized and became affordable as consumer TV manufacturing scaled
• Floppy disks replaced paper tape and cassettes just in time to give users a practical storage medium
• Xerox PARC gave Jobs and Woz the GUI

Simply put, the price/performance curve hit consumer territory at exactly the right moment. The Apple II launched at $1,298 in 1977. That was painful but possible for a serious hobbyist or small business. By 1984, $2,495 for a Mac was expensive but not absurd for a business machine. Five years earlier, you couldn't build it. Five years later, competitors would have commoditized the opportunity.

A genius with the same skills in 1968 builds nothing. The same skills in 1990 builds one of a hundred also-rans.

I feel like we’re in another such moment, and REBA is ready to capitalize on this for the benefit of all of us in the rental housing industry. Specifically, three key macro-trends have developed to the point where, like in the late 70s/early 80s hardware world, there’s game-changing opportunities in software.

• The Cloud has been around long enough that businesses are comfortable with security protocols (I still remember how most companies feared security issues in the early days of the Cloud)
• Practical AI (useful deep learning models) has been around for about 15 years and really hit its stride with the LLM revolution just 3-4 years ago
• Microsoft’s Fabric infrastructure advances the “Data Lakehouse” concept unshackling data from stricter confines of traditional data warehouses

The confluence of these three things alters the half-century (plus?) paradigm of “buy vs build.” Now companies have the option to buy AND build. This is a fundamentally different approach and is perfectly suited to our industry. Rental housing companies have much more limited resources to invest in IT and data science, yet there are compelling needs for the costly plumbing and process to ensure clean, governed data along with a strong desire to bring “special sauce” to each company’s own data resources and operations.

The solution? Buy the foundation. Build your advantage. REBA’s platform delivers 1600+ metrics and 1600+ dimensions along with specialized predictive analytics applications like Budget and Rent.

As a customer, you can leverage that foundation, avoiding the tech debt and maintenance costs (not just money, but time/effort) allowing you to use the internal resources you have to build on top of, and adjacent to, this massive data platform. Even just two years ago, no one could offer that to you. Five years from now, someone trying to offer it will be hard-pressed to catch up to what we already have.

Now is the time to act! Think about how your strategy can leverage the platform you already have with REBA. And call or email me your thoughts on this. Things are changing so quickly, this perspective will continue to evolve. Let’s keep partnering together on that!