The Official AppFolio Blog

Q. Can you tell us a little about your background?
JJ – I am originally from Denver and moved out to California to go to photography school. I am formally trained as a photographer and while I was in school, I took classes in graphic design.  When I graduated I landed a job doing web design and within 6 months realized I was more interested in whether the website was easy to use than the aesthetics of it. That is what launched my career into usability and user experience.

Kate – I used to be a technical writer and administrator and saw how often people got really frustrated with the technology in their office. I just wanted to make it easier for people to get their jobs done so I went to the University of Washington in Seattle and graduated with a degree in human centered design and engineering. That is a human computer interaction degree that focuses on user research and usability.

Q. Please tell us what you do at AppFolio.
Kate – As the interaction designer my role is to try and figure out what people actually need in the software and then use that information to inform the design choices that the teams are making and then test those features. The cool thing about AppFolio is that user research is integrated throughout the entire process.

JJ – I am a senior interaction designer and I work closely with the engineering team to collect feedback from customers on new features or functionality that we add to AppFolio to make sure that we optimize the user interface so it is really easy for our customers.  Sometimes we conduct interviews with customers before we start working on a new feature to learn how they would use it and what their expectations are in terms of how the feature works. Before we get into the prototype or development phase, we do usability tests.  During these tests we have quite a few customers who have allowed us to observe remotely as they use some of these new features in AppFolio.  We will ask them to perform a number of tasks and see how intuitive the user interface is and then use this information to continue to improve on the user experience.

Q. What is the AppFolio Usability Lab (other than a cool room with couches)?
JJ – We get everyone involved in these studies so that the engineers can actually see AppFolio customers using the software live through screen sharing. When we moved into the new office, we wanted to create a quiet environment to watch these studies. So we built out the “Usability Lab” which consists of 2 rooms: one is a very small room where we actually conduct the usability study and typically only the “facilitator” is in there. They are the ones who are walking the customer through these studies and telling them what the tasks are. The other room is the “Observation Room” where people can hang out and watch customers as they are using the software.  It can also be used as a napping room…with comfortable couches.

After the study, we talk about our observations and sometimes we can make changes to improve the design as quickly as that day.

Q. Do you have an example of something that the customers have helped design through these studies?
JJ – Yes! We did extensive usability testing on our guest cards and screening features. We were able to release something and then get incremental feedback and make improvements based on what we saw.

Q. What do you like about your job here at AppFolio?
Kate – I really like how the people at AppFolio are so bright and engaged with their work and really care about what they are doing and it encourages me to continue focus on doing my best every day. That fact that our customers love using AppFolio makes it a fun and exciting place to work.

There are a lot of companies, especially technology companies, that are really seeing the value of usability and more jobs in this field are being created and the field is starting to get a lot of recognition.

Q. What do you like to do outside of work?
Kate – I am pretty active and I love being outside. Now that I live in Santa Barbara, I have a garden for the first time. I do the Foundation workout at AppFolio during lunch too.

JJ – I trained for the marathon and do CrossFit but now I will be doing the Foundation workout with other AppFolians. One of our customers just opened a CrossFit gym in San Francisco and he told us that he is able to open this gym with all of the time he is saving using AppFolio to run his business because he is so much more efficient. We love that.

Q. What is your New Year’s resolution going to be?
JJ – I am a singer in a band and my goal is to finish our album. We have been recording an album for some time now and I wrote some of the songs.

Kate – Next year, I would like to cook more dinners at home and not eat out as much.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am originally from Norway and I came to the United States my second year in college as an exchange student. I met a professor here that I really liked and he basically convinced me to extend my stay. So, I finished up my Norwegian degree and then came to UCSB and completed a PhD in Computer Security. While I was at UCSB, I met my wife, and we made Santa Barbara our home. I finished up school and built a start-up company with one of my professors. We made a security hardware device that we tried to sell and it didn’t really take off but it was an interesting project.

What made that project interesting?
We were actually contacted directly by the Secretary of the State of California to see if we could hack into electronic voting machines, they wanted us to check the security of the machines and then write a report. We ended up making a virus that could spread from a USB stick and go into the voting machines and steal votes. The results were so good that the Secretary of the State of Ohio then hired us to do the same thing. In both cases, there were restrictions imposed on electronic voting machines after our findings.

What is your role at AppFolio?
I am the Chief Security Architect and I am responsible for making sure that the application and data centers are secure – focusing on both the physical security (computers are bolted down and locked) and information security (keeping the data encrypted). We make sure that all of the sensitive data is encrypted on disks and backed-up and we also make sure that the firewalls are configured correctly. We also look at the software code itself to make sure that it is perfect and free of security related bugs.

What should customers be doing to help with the security of their own passwords and physical computers? Do you have any suggestions?
Our systems take a lot of the heavy lifting of security away from the users because we run the servers and make sure that they are protected but there are a couple of things that AppFolio users can do for security.

1) AppFolio Passwords: we recommend that customers select a password that is secure and that they don’t use the same password across all applications. For example, it is a best practice to not use the same password for AppFolio that you use on your company Facebook Page or your email.

2) Keep your computer software updated: In general, The information that you put into AppFolio is important and sensitive so you want to make sure that your computer is up to-date and that you have installed all of the most current software updates. You want to run the latest version of your anti-virus software too.

A great example of one thing we do regularly to help reduce risk is we look at where people log in from and build a type of model that knows our users’ general login locations. So, if a user suddenly logs in from a completely different place, then we flag that account and look at the actions they are doing to make sure they seem reasonable. During Spring Break week for example, we could actually see our customers logging into AppFolio from the Caribbean and the Bahamas and they were checking high-level business statistics, which makes sense. That is actually the benefit of using web-based property management software in action!

What do you like to do for fun?
I like skiing and that is what I grew up doing in Norway so we try and go to the mountains about twice a year. We usually go to Mammoth Mountain because it is large and it doesn’t seem too crowded. I used to surf and I really like to do that. Honestly, we bought a house not too long ago and it needs some work so we end up doing some yard work and other small tasks most of the time.

Where are you from?
I was born and raised in Northern California. My sister was going to UC Santa Barbara and when I came to visit I was blown away at how amazing it was in Santa Barbara. I then went to college at UCSB and majored in Philosophy. Philosophy isn’t something that I directly use today but I really love it.

What is your role at AppFolio?
I am responsible for working with our customers to get them up and running with Tenant ACH. I work with our customers from their initial inquiry and provide training, manage the set-up process and get everyone ready to use ACH. We have a pretty efficient process so we get a lot of people up and running quickly!

How are people responding to Tenant ACH?
Our customers really love it. It saves them time and money and effort and so it is a huge win! The feature almost sells itself – I mean, it’s free. Honestly, almost everyone can benefit from using it.

More online rent payments means fewer checks to collect each month. So how quickly are customers seeing their residents use Tenant ACH? What is a typical adoption rate?
We actually have some customers who have a 100% adoption rate but many of them have a relatively smaller unit count. One of my favorite success stories is a company up in Minnesota and they have over 450 units with a 70% adoption rate. That’s over 300 rent checks that they don’t have to deal with every month. They used to spend 2-3 days of manpower to process all of the checks so the owner set a goal for his team – if they could get 60% of renters on Tenant ACH in 60 days, they would each get a $500 bonus. And it totally worked.

Most of our customers are seeing an adoption rate of over 25% (and growing every month). This is definitely higher than what is seen in the industry and I’m sure it is because the service is super easy to use and there aren’t additional fees.

What do you like best about your job here at AppFolio?
I love the people who I work with at AppFolio. I am lucky to be at a company where the people are so driven. It is great to be working with the best on a daily basis.

What do you do for fun?
I play a lot of soccer. I play about 3 or 4 times a week, in a couple of leagues, and then I probably spend additional time recovering physically from soccer as well. In one league I play goalie so there is a lot of diving and skinned elbows and knees.

What is your favorite soccer team?
I like to watch the English Premier League. I don’t have Cable TV but I watch as many games as I can. I am a huge Chelsea fan and I also like Tottenham.

Tell us about your background and how you co-founded AppFolio? Why did you choose to build software for Property Managers?
This is the 3rd company where I have been the CTO and the first two were successfully acquired — I just love the process of building a company, this is the fun part! As my last company was winding down, I had lunch with Klaus and we both saw that there was real opportunity to build web-based software for specific industries be because they need good and easy to use software and they didn’t have it at the time. We wanted to change that.

I was attracted to property management partly because I had a bit of experience dealing with rental homes in the past. I have to admit that back then, I would consider myself at the “elementary school” level of education in property management, and today I am well on my way to a graduate degree. Early on we also started talking to many property managers and realized that there was a need for a new web-based property management software. None of the property managers we spoke with said they loved their software! Our customers work really hard to provide a great service to their owners and that’s something that we can relate to.

How do you, as the leader of the engineering team, work with UCSB?
We have a really great internship program so every summer we bring in a new class of interns and they work on relevant projects – exciting stuff that our customers end up seeing! Last summer we focused on our search functionality and a prototype of the AppFolio iPhone application. We also sponsor some events on campus, especially related to the engineering department. There is a grad student coffee hour and we sponsor some of the research events as well.

Our team will also collaborate with students when they are working on research where we have some expertise. Klaus and I are sometimes guest speakers and we tell the students about what we are doing and what is going on in the industry. We give them some real-world information that relates to what they are studying academically.

Our engineering team works really fast – we have a new product release/ update every 28 days. How does the team do it?
It really takes a lot of work to make it happen, but it is definitely worth it! We hear so much positive feedback from our customers that they really appreciate how fast we develop, and this makes it very rewarding for all of us.

First of all, we can do this because we have a brilliant engineering team and they make a commitment to what they can accomplish in 4 weeks and they work hard to meet these commitments. We also have invested in technology to automate everything that we can. We have a huge suite of automated tests that ensures that when we do a release everything still works as well as it did before. We also have a large number of customers and when you are making releases every month, the actual process of the release is a very big task. We’ve automated quite a bit of this process as well. The third thing that really makes this work (and it is potentially the most important!) is that we rely on customer feedback. We release a version of a feature that might not have every bell and whistle and then we rely on our customers to tell us what to prioritize next.

Every AppFolian sees every customer request email and I think this is really important. It is amazing how willing our customers are to spend time with us on the phone and help tell us what they need.

What do you think is the future of SaaS – has it peaked or is there still a ways to go?
I think that this is really interesting because on the consumer side, it seems mainstream and you can see the most acceptance. There are a lot of people using Facebook, Hotmail, and Gmail and things like that. I just read the other day that there are a 100 million people in the U.S. using social networks.

From my perspective, there is still a lot of opportunity for businesses to develop and use web-based software. It is still early but people are starting to really see the benefits of it. To me, use of web-based software in business will come in like a tidal wave – it’s on the way.

You were a basketball player at Westmont (I can tell because you’re tall!) how did playing college basketball impact your approach to founding companies and managing engineers?
It’s funny because my coach from college is the VP of Player Personnel for the Miami Heat (Chet Kammerer). I was just out visiting him in Florida and I was telling him that most of what I learned about managing people and running a business is from him.

One of the things I learned from him was that every person is unique. I would see how he would treat each person on the team differently. Some people needed praise and some people needed him to be tough on them. This was interesting because I was used to the idea that you should treat everyone on a team the same. Now I try and recognize that certain people need different things. Another thing I learned from him was that people really want to be challenged to reach their full potential. Lastly, an important thing I learned from him was part of a story he shared with me. A friend of his was getting involved with coaching and went to talk to him for advice. His friend was expecting to hear all about the strategy and important coaching techniques he should learn first. But Chet told him to forget about all of that and that the most important thing to remember is to recruit great players. We try to do this 100% of the time at AppFolio and I’m really proud of all of the great people at AppFolio. I think we feel like a team here and I like the idea of succeeding as a team opposed to succeeding as an individual.

You are definitely an early adopter with technology – Have you used the Google Chrome OS Notebook? What do you think?
I always love using new technology! I had the MacBook Air the day it came out and then I got the Ipad and interestingly enough, I got a Google Chrome Notebook. You can’t actually buy it right now but the Google Chrome OS team asked us to Beta test one of those devices. It is a laptop (a little bit lighter) and it instantly powers on when you open it. It seems to wake up when it’s opened with no delay. The thought behind it is that it uses the standard browser that you are already used to but it doesn’t have a local file system on it. It just connects via wireless and will only allow you to access your data that lives in the cloud. So, what can you use with one of these laptops? You can use Gmail, Google, other websites, and AppFolio. That is why the Google Chrome folks wanted us to test it.

It is very exciting for our property managers. They could be “live” using Google Chrome from anywhere or have one in their rental office and give it to a prospective resident to fill out an online application etc. I really think this is the future of mobile devices – you will not have local storage on your devices because the reality is that your devices might die on you. When you have local storage you have to worry about back-up. What if you were to lose your laptop? Would you lose all of your data?

There was once a CEO at HP who lost his laptop with all of his corporate data on it and that was a huge risk! With the Chrome Notebook there is no data stored locally so if you lose it, all you have to do is change your password that is in the cloud and pull out a new Google Chrome and log in and be precisely where you were when you left off. I think this is very exciting! I think this device will be extremely successful in the future. Hopefully it will come out this year.

What is really happening with mobile devices is that they are not useful without the services through the Web. In this way, I think that Software as a Service (SaaS) is the future of computing because of the demand for mobile devices. People want to be able to have information at their fingertips for maintenance requests, driving directions, or even uploading property photos to their websites.

If you had to make predictions for the next couple of years, do you think cloud computing will still be such a hot topic or has it reached its peak?
The truth is that Cloud Computing and Software as a Service are still really in the early stages. It feels like there is a lot of buzz around it and a lot of people are talking about it but it is still in the early years. There are research analysts like IDC and Gardner and they calculate that currently worldwide companies are spending over $400 billion dollars each year on IT (information technology) and 95% of that is spent on premise-based technology. So really it is spent on solutions where companies run their own servers; they may run their own email server or file server. They might run their own property management software but they really run it on their own server. From the IT spending, only 5% currently is really spent on cloud computing or SaaS. So IDC is predicting that over the next 3-4 years that number will grow to 10%. But even if you take the 10%, that number may sound really huge ($40+ billion) but it is still so small because it’s only 10%. Think about that. So we are truly only at the very beginning.

If you were to use an analogy, a long time ago people used to use horses for transportation and at first only 5% were using cars. But then that transition happened very fast and everyone had cars. I think that is often what happens with these innovations in technology. Even today, I spoke recently to Michael Miller, a previous editor and chief of PC magazine, and he told me that there are still 5,000 mainframes that are being sold today at an average price of $1million each — so the market is still $5 billion. There are still at lot of banks and financial institutions that are running software on a mainframe so even that is still a big business.

There is a very nice book by Nicholas Carr called “The Big Switch: From Edison to Google” and essentially his observation is that most companies at the turn of the century in the US generated their own electricity and power. So they had their own coal fire power plants and the reason why they did that was that if they needed to manufacture something, they knew they needed power.

But then people realized that generating power was not their core competency. With the power grid becoming more reliable they could get power out of the outlet and focus on their manufacturing. That is same transition that is happening now with computing. People are running their own servers and it is very complex so they have to hire IT people to help them but doing that is not really the business person’s core competence. They shouldn’t have to know how to back-up a server and what to do if a server crashes, etc. You should give that to the experts. That is where there is a huge value proposition with Software as a Service and why cloud computing is so important.

Will you tell us a little about your background, where you’re from and how you landed in Santa Barbara?
I am originally from Germany and you can probably tell by my accent when you talk to me. I studied computer science as an under-graduate in Germany. I then got my PhD at UC Berkeley and fell in love with California. I became a Professor in Computer Science at UC Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara is like paradise to me. Especially since I grew up in Germany, I love the weather here because it never rains and you have so many outdoor activities to enjoy with the ocean and the mountains so close. I love it and now my kids grew up here and are true native Californians.

The other nice thing that I like about California is that it is at the forefront of computer science and computing in general. There is a tight relationship between academia and industry here. I think it is an amazing place to have a start up company doing highly relevant stuff with great people, great influence, and great impact.

How has cloud computing / Software as a Service changed since you started working on GoToMyPC years ago?
It has changed a lot. When we were working on GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting we were very early with this concept of Software as a Service. Back then there were premise-based solutions on the market and people had a lot of security questions and they weren’t willing to give up their software to a hosted infrastructure. These days you see people really understanding the benefits of not running their own IT infrastructure. They also see the benefits of other people taking care of security, which is usually much better than they can do themselves. Lots of people are now embracing Software as a Service – consumers have embraced the concept the most, and this is very interesting. Many people are using Gmail and Google and other services. Businesses have been a little slower to move to SaaS but this is the future – and the basis of AppFolio. The future trend of Software as a Service and Cloud Computing is going to happen big time and we want to be part of making that revolution a reality.

What do you like best about your current role at AppFolio?
I love having a great impact and working with the team to create products that customers love. I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction when AppFolio customers come up to me at a Meet Up and say “Wow, AppFolio has had such a great impact on our business and really makes our business smooth. Thank you for helping found AppFolio.”

Day to day I work with the team here, which is phenomenal. My role as Chief Strategist is to look out into the near future and work with the product team to determine what we should do next, what products we should make next and how to make our existing products even better. I love doing that.

Why do you think property managers are so interested / excited to use web-based software to run their business?
I am excited that property managers are “forward thinking” and they really see the value in it and understand that managing the IT is really not their core competence. I think that property managers are business savvy. Before we developed AppFolio Property Manager, we looked at other verticals where the folks that are running the businesses were not as business savvy and got hung up on the idea “I must run the software myself!”. We allow property managers to outsource the computing side of things and they get continuous updates, security, and easy to use software and they love having more time to focus on their own business.

What are some of the benefits you see from having a great University (UCSB) so close and connected to Santa Barbara entrepreneurs?
I still teach a class every 2 years. The last time I taught a graduate computer science class at UCSB on scalable Internet services, and it is great to teach to students who are eager to learn from a person with lots of industry experience. The advantage of that is that we also get a lot of great interns over the summer and many of them want to stay and work with us as an employee. Fortunately, we are a fast growing company and can afford to hire great people and a lot of those people come out of UCSB. It is great to be able to leverage such a strong academic program and those people are the ones who develop strong products and provide valuable service.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this Interview, Klaus shares a few technology predictions.

I ran my first marathon when I turned 40. The process of training and completing the marathon reminded me that we are capable of much more than we think we are. I also became aware of how we often limit ourselves unnecessarily. Here at AppFolio we refer to a quote by Henry Ford a lot: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right”. This quote is our way of breaking through those limiting thoughts and doing more than we thought we could.

This was the second year that AppFolio employees participated in the Santa Barbara Marathon. This year, we had 25 runners! 3 AppFolians ran the full marathon, 3 ran half marathons, and 20 were on 4 person teams. For many of this year’s runners, this was their first experience running in a real race.

I smiled at the finish line as my teammates celebrated and shared stories of how they got up early to train, quit smoking, ran faster than they thought they would. Crossing the finish line reminded our team that we can face those hard challenges and, with some training and teamwork, overcome them!

Here are some perspectives from the different runners:

Albert, Sales Team
I never thought I could do it. I’d never run more than a mile up until about 6 months ago.

When I did my first practice run, my friend asked me “how far did you run?” I told him. He asked, “How long did it take you?” I told him. He thought for a second and then said, “That’s not running, that’s walking.”

3 months later, I can say that this slow, slightly overweight, slightly over 40 former athlete in his own mind, RAN 12 miles at the SB Marathon in just over 2 hours. Score one for the older chubby guys!

Danielle, Services Team
I should start off by saying, I’m not a runner-or at least I never have been before and have always hated running. During the race, I told myself it was the worst decision I ever made and that I was never doing it again, but shortly after I crossed the finish line I decided that I was going to run a half marathon next.

I think one of the most satisfying aspects was accomplishing something I never thought I would do. In the end I really enjoyed it – it gave us all a sense of pride to be working together in something outside of the AppFolio walls.

So as Brian tells me now, I guess I am runner after all.

Chris, Sales Team
[EDITOR’S NOTE]: Chris arrived at the marathon wearing a full, yellow and black Bruce Lee suit…not designed for running. He was scheduled to run the first 9 miles but decided to just keep on running….Run Forrest Run. Don’t try this yourself!

I certainly wouldn’t consider myself a “runner”. Before the marathon I ran a total of 6 times – each about 5 miles. I saw everyone at the starting line donning their gear and racing attire – I showed up in my Halloween costume.

At first, I told myself I’d never run another marathon ever again, no matter what. A few days later, I find myself Googling other races in the area!

Aimee, Marketing Team
I never liked to run (and am still not sure if I like it now!) but I love the feeling of accomplishing something that seems beyond my reach. During the race it is so exciting and inspiring to see people running together, people cheering on the side of the road, to see my AppFolio teammates having so much fun outside of the office and to see my family waiting for me at the end of the race.

A year ago I would have told you I could never run longer than an hour, but now I know I can and I’m looking forward to 2011!

Jake, Services Team
I’ve always enjoyed running, but to be a part of something that brought the community together was exciting. Locals were lining the streets and their encouragement made every second enjoyable. I wore a UCSB Lacrosse shirt, and I had so many shout-outs to both my team and my alma mater that were also very encouraging.

I still get goose bumps remembering Albert cross the finish-line after the longest run he’s ever attempted, or when Chris trotted around the last 100 meters after completing the full 26.2, arms in the air wearing a bright yellow Bruce Lee jumpsuit.

Donnie, Engineering Team
I wasn’t a runner before – my farthest race was a 5K. This was an awesome experience and next time, I’m doing the full marathon, for sure!

When you’re training, you’re usually making special plans that interrupt other parts of your life and it’s a chore. But, when you’re running in the marathon, there are complete strangers cheering you on – that is awesome.

I’ve already signed up for a tough mudder in January (http://toughmudder.com/), and I’m planning on doing the full marathon next year, the SB triathlon, the pier to peak run, and maybe a mini-Ironman at some point. I think it’s safe to say that my interest has been “sparked”.

Ursula, Services Team
I always hated running and had never run more than the dreaded mile on “run-a-mile” day in High School. The adrenaline rush and the excitement of everyone around you really pushes you beyond what you think possible. Now, someday, I’d like to run a full marathon rather than just a relay, so I’ll work my way up… slowly…

Training is no fun, but the day of the marathon makes it so worth it.

Vince, Sales Team
For me, this was an amazing experience because of the number of people who ran farther than they ever thought they could. Alex ran 8+ miles (most ever). Marie ran to the start of the 4th leg, 18 miles (most ever and twice as much as she planned on running)! Scott ran 5 miles (about 2 minutes per mile faster than he trained). Oscar turned the first leg into the ENTIRE marathon! Albert ran a half marathon! Chris ran the whole thing when he was only supposed to run the first leg (by far his farthest run ever!).

This marathon experience reminded me of how great it feels to succeed after busting your tail, training for something.

Jeff, Engineering Team
I have been running for about 30 years, although rarely in formal runs. Usually it is a day or two a week during my lunch hour to clear my head for the afternoon. I got started when I had an ex-Navy Seal for a manager who “encouraged” us to join him on his noon-time runs.

The run, especially as a relay, contributed to the great bond we have as an AppFolio team.

Kent, Marketing Team
It was a great experience. The course was fun and full of motivational people on the sideline cheering you on much of the way. I plan to keep running to stay in shape.

“Yes we can.”

Regardless of your view on politics you have probably heard this phrase and been inspired by the emotion of someone repeating it. It’s been adopted by everyone from professional sports teams to those seeking to pass school bond measures. Why is it so powerful? I think it is because of the simple word “we” and our belief in the power of that word. For several decades our society has chosen to de-emphasize “we”. On the surface, we talk a lot about “I” or “me” but deep down all of us acknowledge that some of our greatest achievements and our most rewarding moments come about when “we” work together to accomplish a goal that could not have been accomplished individually.

Recently, the engineering team at AppFolio went on a retreat. We gathered up the team and headed a few miles up the coast to stay together in cabins, listen to technical talks, roast s’mores around a campfire and challenge ourselves with a high ropes course. AppFolio has grown significantly over the last couple of years and so has the engineering team, so it took a few months just to plan. We had to coordinate a large group of people, planning transportation, food and activities. We had to carefully consider how we could continue to provide the kind of support we strive to give our customers while we were taking time away from the office.

Why make the effort? Sure it was educational and fun, but AppFolio is a company. We have a business to run, right? The reason we did it is because we believe our business is the people. Building the relationships between those people builds the business. We believe it so strongly that it is included in our company values.

Great People Make A Great Company
We know that great people make a great team and great teams can overcome huge obstacles. We work hard to find the best team members to join our company and work equally hard to provide a challenging and rewarding environment to motivate and bring out the best in them.

I see this same value expressed in your businesses. When I am visiting one of your offices or get a chance to meet you at a conference, the first thing I hear is something along the lines of “You need to meet Cindy. She handles all of our payables and loves AppFolio.” This is one of the things I love about the property management industry. I see that you know your business is the people too.

I also know how easy it is to forget this. We all get lost in the busyness of our work – whether that is managing properties or building software – so I have a challenge for you. Do something this month to build your team. It doesn’t have to be something big, and it doesn’t matter whether your team is two or two hundred. Try, for example, ending your next meeting by going around the table and having each team member share something they appreciate about another team member or something that team member did. Take a few people from your team out to lunch and ask them what their personal goals are. If you want, think big, and plan a team retreat for next year.

For those of you I have not yet met, I played basketball in college which is hard to avoid when you are 6’9”. I am sure that some of my appreciation for teams comes from the experience I had in college athletics. Not surprisingly, there are many great quotes about teams from the world of sports. Here are some words describing what you should be building for your team:

Build for your team a feeling of oneness, of dependence
on one another and of strength to be derived by unity.
- Vince Lombardi

Vince Lombardi was so respected in his sport (football), that they renamed the Super Bowl trophy after him in 1971. Although he was a great individual player, almost no one remembers that today. He is remembered for being one of the greatest team builders in sports history as a coach with the Green Bay Packers over 40 years ago.

If you take up the challenge, tell me what you did to build your business into a team by posting in the comments below. Even better, tell me in person the next time you see me. If you haven’t met me, be on the lookout for the guy who hit his head on the door jamb coming into the room. Hopefully, it was because I was too busy listening to one of my teammates to remember to duck.

Tell us a little about yourself and your family.
I’ve been married to Daalia for five years. We have 2 sons, Laith, who is about to turn 3 years old, and Oliver who was born in April this year. Life is busy!

Where were you born and raised?
I was born in a small town about 40 miles north of London, England. I grew up in the same area, went to a University in the south of England and moved to London after that. My parents now live in Greece and the rest of my family is in Scotland and England.

What brought you to Santa Barbara and when?
My wife bought me here, literally. She’s a US citizen – they wouldn’t have let me in otherwise! Daalia went to UC Santa Barbara and I met her in London while she was working abroad for a few years. We came out to California on vacation in 2004 and figured there could be worse places in the world to live.

What is your favorite activity to do in Santa Barbara?
Its tough not to be a big fan of the beach, my son has such a great time when we go. There is some amazing coastline here so we try to take advantage as much as we can.

What are your hobbies?
Hobbies have kind of taken a back seat in the past 2 years! I used to love playing golf and snowboarding in the winter. Now I build train tracks and Lego towers.

What is the best part of your job at AppFolio?
Getting feedback from clients who are successfully improving their business processes with AppFolio. The feedback doesn’t always have to be sugar coated, change is tough, doesn’t matter who you are. But if the overall direction is positive I have a high level of confidence we’ll have a great long-term partnership.

What are some of the most creative things you’ve seen customers do with AppFolio?
I am always surprised at our customers’ creativity. We have a great customer in San Francisco who is particularly good at making AppFolio work for him. He has devised a tracking system for all the rent control measures required in the city, he keeps meticulous records and uses the ability to attach files to any page of AppFolio to store those records in the relevant places in the database. Government regulations can make life tough for property managers but this customer has found a simple way to roll with them.

What is on your favorite iPod playlist?
Right now I have The Strokes, The Who, Run DMC, Coldplay, David Gray, U2 and Amy Winehouse. It’s a mess. I am sure I’m not cool.

Flip Flops or Shoes?
Flip-flops, I’m a Californian now.

Tell us a little about yourself and your family.
I grew up in Santa Barbara, CA. During college I did some traveling and studied abroad in England and New Zealand and finished my education in San Diego. It was there that I met my wife and we’ve now been married for 14 years. We moved back up to Santa Barbara and have 3 daughters, ages 7, 9, and 12.

What do you do for fun?
My wife and I like to do fun outdoor activities with the girls. As a family we like to go to the beach or hike in the mountains. Everyone gets in the water and we all paddle or surf together. Other times we pile in the car and I’m the soccer dad. It’s a lot of fun for us to share in these activities together.

What do you love about Santa Barbara?
Apart from the natural beauty, Santa Barbara is an awesome community. We are fortunate to have strong universities like UCSB and Westmont and great companies here for the size of city we are. It’s evident that the people in Santa Barbara want to be here. The large number of non-profits and charity groups add to the sense of community as well.

What is the best thing about working at AppFolio?
The best thing is knowing that we’re really making a difference in our customers’ business and in their lives. On the customer services side of the company you really feel that and it’s very fulfilling.

What motivates you at work?
We are a fast growing company and it’s ever changing. We are on the forefront of the next generation of business tools and that’s exciting. On the services side, we are offering the best service and differentiating ourselves in this industry. As a growing company, to be able to make that impact is definitely motivating.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Garbage TruckAs a little kid I wanted to be a garbage man because I thought that would be pretty cool. As I grew older, I think my expectations and priorities shifted!

What is on your favorite iPod playlist?
My daughters recently hijacked my iPod and put Justin Bieber on it! Personally, I like a wide range of music that goes the full spectrum. We are also lucky to have great music venues here in Santa Barbara and my favorite place to listen to music is the Santa Barbara Bowl.

A Few More Questions…
1. Coffee or Tea? Coffee
2. PC or MAC? MAC
3. T-shirt or Dress shirt? T-shirt
4. Ski or Snowboard? Snowboard
5. Post-It or Gmail Task List? Post-It
6. Laptop or iPad? Laptop…but I need an iPad too!