Chapter One

Tell us about how Doorport was founded. What inspired you to create it?

I came across the idea for Doorport in a random "lightbulb" moment: while doing laundry in my apartment a few weeks after moving in, I noticed the intercom on the wall and thought "why can't I just let visitors in from my smartphone?". My apartment building was a fairly new building with modern amenities, yet it had an intercom system that was frustrating to use and was based on technology from the 1980s. I did a ton of research later that week and found that apartment intercom systems cost $6,000-$8,000 for the hardware alone (and thousands more for installation) and have remained virtually unchanged for decades, which was mind-blowing for me. I had built my first iOS app that summer and knew that I could build an iPad app that could do more than these systems for 1/10th of the price, so that week I started building Doorport.

Fast-forwarding to today, Doorport is a two-way video intercom that lets you conveniently and securely give guests entry from anywhere in the world. Beyond being a better intercom, Doorport also displays interactive property information and serves as a 24/7 lead capture system - anytime a potential resident stops by, they can view up-to-date information about the property and unit availability, and property staff is instantly notified about their visit.

Who is your primary audience? Where geographical regions have you reached out to so far?

The current product is best suited for Class A luxury properties that have leasing offices and staff on-site - the features that are presently built out complement these properties well and supplement property managers’ duties when they’re on-site and off the clock. I just moved back to Nashville, TN after living in Wisconsin for the past 2 years, so my main focus has been on reaching real estate firms in these areas (I have a pilot customer in Wisconsin who’s had the intercom live at their property for 7 months now). I definitely plan to reach out to “hyper-urban” areas like NYC/Boston at some point, but for now I’m focusing on areas with apartments that don’t have doormen but prioritize luxury amenities.

What is Doorport’s tech architecture? Is it only available on apple products?

The software stack that I work with is Objective-C for the iPad intercom app and companion smartphone apps and NodeJS/MongoDB for the cloud backend of the platform. I heavily utilize Socket.IO for synchronization of the intercom devices; I instantly know if a device loses power or goes offline and can fix issues quickly without inconveniencing the property’s staff. The hardware stack is super simple, consisting of an iPad and a microcontroller for the required hardware I/O.

In the spirit of prioritizing quality over quantity, I haven’t built out any Android apps for Doorport yet - but I surely will once I sign on a few more customers.

Describe to us an example of your typical workday.

For the first months of building Doorport I focused on development 24/7. After I installed the first Doorport intercom, I went to the property 4-5 nights a week and stayed there for hours tweaking the system and resolving every issue I could find. I somewhat recently reached the stage of having a stabilized product, so now I spend much of my time searching for the right contacts to reach out to in an effort to secure a few large initial customers. Ever since I started working on Doorport full-time, I don’t have a concept of weekdays or weekends; every day is a day that I work on Doorport and focus on what’s needed to push it forward. I’ve had a few days in the past 5 months where I didn’t work on Doorport at all, and they each felt very unnatural.

What are some of your biggest challenges while working on Doorport (both the company and the product)?

If I had to distill my biggest challenges down to a few tangible points, I would say that they’ve been 1) knowing what to focus on, 2) putting too much faith into external possibilities, and 3) being truly resourceful.

As an engineer, it’s a ton of fun to build the product: you’re challenged constantly in a domain that you’re comfortable with, and you have constant, instant gratification in creating something and seeing real progress. The catch is that building the product is only one part of the complex puzzle that is building a successful company. Sending cold emails, collecting feedback from your users, and pitching strangers on your product and company is much less fun, and it’s incredibly easy to keep building the product and give yourself the illusion of progress in order to procrastinate doing the more difficult and uncomfortable things. I’ve battled this throughout the time I’ve been working on Doorport, and I’ve had to continuously refocus myself on what I know I have to prioritize in order to make Doorport successful.

I’ve had a few potential investment deals and incubator offers that have all fallen through in some way or another: some that I turned down because they would have taken the company in the wrong direction (from my perspective), a few that I got to the final rounds for but didn’t end up getting, and most recently a program that was cancelled after I was accepted into it. Throughout all of these experiences I’ve had one lesson reinforced: stay focused on the things that you can directly control and stay grounded in your current reality instead of the reality you want or the reality of future possibilities.

Finally, I’ve made the repeated mistake of underutilizing the resources that are available to me. The best example of this is how I went months without reaching out to alumni from my university (Vanderbilt) who are in tech and real estate. In December I realized that I had this resource available to me all along, and the incredible help, advice, and introductions that alumni gave me soon after was a turning point for me and my company. I’ve since been pushing myself to persistently explore every single resource available to me and notice resources that I already have but don’t use.

What stage are you in your capital investing phase? Are you currently looking for more funding? Also, how will Doorport generate net revenue?

I haven’t taken in any outside funding yet, but I’m at a pre-seed stage where a small check would go a long way in giving me a reliable runway through the next 6 months or so (when I’ll ideally be raising an actual seed round). I’m working through personal connections to see if I can secure this relatively soon.

Doorport is a very low-cost operation: the hardware is inexpensive, the intercom is simple to install, and once installed the system requires virtually no maintenance beyond remote software updates. This allows me to sell the system at an extremely competitive price and offer big discounts to large firms who install Doorport at multiple properties. The long-term business plan is to use the unique position of Doorport’s software and hardware as a starting point for many tangential software services and a comprehensive access control suite (Bluetooth keyless entry).

This hits two primary industries: Virtual Viewing and Property Management. How do you distinguish your product among your competitors within these industries?

To be perfectly honest, I have much more of a “macro” focus with Doorport than a micro focus. Real estate tech is very, very early right now - I would say that the lack of competition in the “smart intercom” market is a tangible example of how early it is presently. A major portion of apartment renters still hand in paper checks each month for rent, and the “mobile” resident experience (encompassing the primary ways that residents interact with their building and property management) hasn’t been nailed down by any single company yet. I believe that this tech landscape will continue to shift and change as other technologies (wearables, VR, AR) permeate the average consumer’s life, and many upstart companies who bet their future on one particular product or flashy new category will rise and fall. My long-term bet with Doorport is that after we gain appreciable market share over the next few years with our intercom system we will be uniquely positioned to offer fantastic, valuable products and services on top of our existing platform at an unmatchable price and without needing costly installation or revamping of existing buildings’ infrastructure. A few potential outcomes of this include allowing potential residents to tour demo units of apartments without requiring a property manager to be present as well as automating much of the move-in and move-out process (issuing keys, resident’s inspection of their new apartment, etc), and I firmly believe that there are many other possibilities for what Doorport can do that won’t be realized for a while.

What do you think about the current housing industry? What do you think the future is going to be?

On a very broad scale, I believe that home ownership as the primary escalator to long-term wealth for most Americans is a rather broken system without a presently viable fix. While I’m a diehard proponent of multi-family housing, I recognize the reality of the massive financial advantages of home ownership over rentership, and I hope that in my lifetime we find other viable ways to democratize wealth without needing home ownership.

With respect to apartments and multi-family housing, I believe that apartment renting may very much follow the path that car ownership is currently on. AirBnB is leading the charge in transforming the housing industry into a very flexible, accommodating, and competitive landscape. I think that this change will take much more time than car ownership will, particularly because of long-standing realty trusts and local governments being stubborn to change, but in a decade or so I imagine that in major cities leases may become obsolete in favor of an AirBnB-esque month-to-month renting paradigm that makes renting very transparent and holds both landlords and residents accountable. Much like AirBnb, this will also make renting and multi-family housing much more community-focused and prioritize the living experience. Founder House is successfully delivering this concept today, and I believe that their potential success and AirBnB’s future success will push the industry in this direction.

What is your end goal for your startup? How do you plan to disrupt the housing industry with Doorport?

My North Star right now is building Doorport into a company that offers numerous meaningful products & services beyond (but including) intercoms and is known in the commercial real estate industry as the tech company that prioritizes delivering serious value for customers over everything else. This vision will change once we reach that point, but until then that’s exactly what the end goal is.

The biggest opportunity that I see with Doorport isn’t any single product, but instead building a truly “loved” real estate tech company. The leading commercial real estate hardware companies have multiple degrees of separation between themselves and their end users: they sell their products to vendors, who sell security “bundles” of these hardware products to construction firms, with these devices and systems being used and maintained by property management. Doorport aims to instead sell to and work directly with property management, such that we are always aware of the best and worst aspects of our products and ensure that property management has a fantastic experience with every Doorport product and service.

Right now I’m focusing on delivering the best building intercom on the market and working directly with a few real estate firms to perfectly match their needs with this product, with the goal of leveraging their immense satisfaction with Doorport to sell our product to other major real estate firms and build the best brand within commercial real estate tech.

Any advice for our future entrepreneurs?

Be stupidly, irrationally optimistic, every single day. This doesn’t mean that you believe that good things will magically happen or come to you, but instead that good things can happen and are fully possible every day. It means that you are constantly encouraged to send that cold email or walk up to that potential customer, because one “yes” matters infinitely more than a thousand “no”s. As an entrepreneur you have to have this level of optimism in order to truly give your company your all and to know at the end of the day that you’re doing everything you possibly can to make it succeed. You can’t afford anything less.

If you want your startup to be interviewed, please reach out to me at contact@taehongmin.com Thanks!.