HomeZada is an online and mobile digital home platform that manages information during the entire homeowner cycle, including owning, selling, and buying a home. Pulse 2.0 interviewed HomeZada co-founder John Bodrozic to learn more.
Formation Of HomeZada
How did the idea for HomeZada come together? Bodrozic said:
“It turns out that necessity really is the mother of invention. Our Co-Founder Elizabeth Dodson was a frustrated homeowner with data and information about her home scattered everywhere. Everyone tells you, ‘Your home is your largest financial asset and biggest expense,’ but no one has provided a single software platform to manage your home. Like most other homeowners, all three co-founders had mortgage and insurance documents buried in a desk drawer, owner’s manuals in a closet, multiple spreadsheets trying to manage remodel projects, post-it notes about maintenance tasks, and scattered photos of our homes on multiple devices, and different cloud storage accounts.”
“As a result, we didn’t know the real cost of owning a home or its current asset value or equity visibility, and we were more likely to overspend on remodel projects and countless fix-it and repair costs. We had already grown a commercial construction software company, so we decided to create HomeZada to give other homeowners like us access to their own information so they could save money and maximize the value of their home.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for HomeZada so far? Bodrozic reflected:
“We were accepted into AARP’s Innovation Program, which consisted of a consumer marketing firm interviewing homeowners about their experiences with HomeZada, which was a great experience receiving widespread consumer feedback. We were amazed (and delighted!) to hear that homeowners really appreciated our digital platform and were actually relieved that someone had been frustrated enough to create a solution like HomeZada in the first place. They also loved the fact that HomeZada was an all-in-one platform that, instead of ‘app-overload,’ made it easy for them to manage everything important about their home in one place. All of this confirmed that we were absolutely on the right path.”
Challenges Faced
What are some of the challenges Bodrozic faced in building the company and has the current macroeconomic climate affected the company? Bodrozic acknowledged:
“The biggest challenge is the combination of investment to build a platform and the scale necessary to reach homeowners, our end-users. Our initial focus was on building and proving out the platform, and we are now concentrating on scaling it to more homeowners and through strategic partnership opportunities.”
Core Products
What are HomeZada’s core products and features? Bodrozic explained:
“HomeZada combines multiple applications into an integrated platform that takes on many forms. It is a digital library that serves as an easy-to-access inventory of all the photos, videos, and documents that make up your home. It is a reoccurring home maintenance schedule to remind you of the specific tasks that can reduce your repair costs and monthly energy savings. It is a home project feature that provides templates to empower you to create budgets, track costs, and archive photos of your remodels and renovations. It’s a home finance app that tracks the latest estimated value of your home, your mortgage costs, and your home equity – as well as day-to-day home expenses such as property taxes, insurance, utility costs, and services. And it all comes together as a digital dashboard with customized reports and scorecards to give you financial insight and alerts and push notifications so you can be proactive managing your single-largest asset.”
Launching Of Zada AI Assistant
In June, HomeZada added an AI chat assistant specifically to help homeowners monitor and maximize the equity in their homes. As a fully integrated version of ChatGPT, HomeZada’s new “Zada” AI Assistant also offers backend sales and customer-growth benefits for real estate, insurance, mortgage, banking, financial services, home improvement, and other specialists targeting homeowners. Plus, it has the unique power to transform real estate businesses looking for differentiation into a trusted brand ally that cares about its client’s ability to manage their largest financial asset and most considerable expense.
For B2B professionals serving the homeowner, the result is more straightforward, seamless ways to dazzle existing customers, grow repeat, renewal, and referral business, and capture new clients. Now, any business committed to helping homeowners can tap into the fast-growing AI trend to differentiate their business and increase client value through the power of information.
So how did the idea for the Zada AI assistant come together and what has been the feedback so far? Bodrozic shared:
“We know that homeowners have seemingly endless questions about managing their homes. What products should I consider for a remodel, and how much should I budget for the project? Which maintenance tasks are DIY, and which require a professional? What insurance do I need? Should I choose a HELOC or a home loan for financing? What costs of owning a home am I forgetting?”
“We also knew that generative AI chat technology embedded in HomeZada would give our subscribers the answers to these and other questions to help them make better decisions. So we created the Zada AI Home Chat Assistant and integrated it into HomeZada’s remodel and maintenance templates and recommendations to make it easy for homeowners. It’s like giving homeowners access to all the best, most diverse home experts and then letting them engage with them in long-form dialog to get all of their questions answered!”
“Because we save each subscriber’s chat history for continual learning, the feedback and usage trends have been off the charts. Every answer is searchable and retrievable in the future. Zada AI not only answers your initial question but it also provides suggested follow-up questions to go deeper to allow the homeowner to accumulate knowledge. We especially see this pattern with longer chat threads.”
Evolution Of HomeZada’s Technology
How has HomeZada’s technology evolved since launching? Bodrozic noted:
“Our ‘everything-about-your-home-on-one-platform’ mission sounds simple. But this involves the ongoing integration of A LOT of diverse data and information ranging from maintenance schedules and remodel spreadsheets to asset values, mortgages, insurance policies, utilities, a home inventory for insurance purposes, and endless legal and financial documents.”
“We had to build out the platform over time as this was a very large software development effort. And we continue to rely on customer feedback to evolve the system and make improvements such as integration with online banking apps, the ability to download actual home expenses, and the recent launch of the Zada AI chat feature.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of HomeZada’s most significant milestones? Bodrozic highlighted:
“Successfully building out an all-in-one platform that is powerful yet simple and easy to use and accessible via any device is a big milestone. Proving with a limited consumer marketing budget that homeowners would not only sign-up and use HomeZada, but pay a subscription fee for premium and deluxe features was another major achievement.”
“Our subscribers have told us they appreciate the cost-effective pricing versus the value of our platform coupled with our privacy policy of not selling customer data. Another milestone was realizing large-company validation of our innovation by winning an open Wells Fargo Innovation program. HomeZada won because our platform serves consumers throughout the continuous homeowner lifecycle and has the potential to impact various financial services businesses focused on consumers.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Bodrozic cited:
“Our customer base represents every generation of homeowner in all 50 states and at every price and value point. This allows HomeZada to be a ‘Main Street’ application for all homeowners. We have first-time homeowners who love the maintenance schedule and need to be gently told what they need to do. We have people tell us they saved hundreds of dollars after HomeZada reminded them to pay their property taxes on time, avoiding late fees. We have customers who were very thankful they documented their home inventory before the storm hit so they could file a claim.”
“Many customers appreciate the ability to manage multiple homes in one account because they have a rental property, or a vacation home, or even caring for their elderly parents’ home.”
Funding
In terms of funding, HomeZada previously raised a $2.4 million seed round. Bodrozic added:
“Our operating model has been to be very capital-efficient in building out the platform and proving it with consumers and a pipeline of potential partners. We accomplished our goals and are now scaling the platform through both strategic partnerships in the financial services, insurance, real estate, and home improvement sectors, and also raising our first institutional investment with a Series A round.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates HomeZada from its competition? Bodrozic affirmed:
“Delivering a complete “all-in-one” digital home management for consumer platform is a big differentiator. This is combining multiple apps, content, data and AI in a powerful yet easy-to-use platform to help homeowners manage maintenance, finances, projects, inventory, and documents. We also designed our platform to be branded by mortgage, insurance, real estate, and other businesses to allow them to stay engaged with the customer after the initial transaction, which can lead to increased revenue, renewals, and referrals.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of HomeZada’s future company goals? Bodrozic concluded:
“Our goals are to build homeowner awareness about our unique ability to simplify homeownership. We also want to partner with businesses providing financial, insurance, and home improvement products to empower them to engage with their home-owning clients in a more value-added way and generate repeat business opportunities.”
