Hey, Bosses! Have you ever looked back on your life and noticed how random moments changed your future? For Nathan LeMesurier, co-founder of Community Boss, that was a Star Wars website, a condo board meeting, and a worldwide pandemic. Tune in to today’s episode to hear Nathan’s story and be inspired by the life-changing impact of multifamily software systems.
Let’s start with Star Wars. “I owe it all to Phantom Menace.” Nathan built his first website in high school—all about Star Wars. Flash forward to 2001 when he joined the Luminous team (presently known as Community Boss) fresh out of high school. At the time they were making dynamic websites that were “basically online brochures for people who actually wanted to have more interactivity.” Nathan has been building software systems ever since.
Next, is that life-changing condo board meeting. When Nathan and his wife bought their first condo, he was elected to the board and experienced a two-sided approach as both a resident and a manager. The biggest problem: parking. “We feel really disempowered. We hear the problems, we experience the problems, but we don't feel like we have any real power to solve them.” (Can you relate?!)
Meet Guest Parking Permits, the original form of Parking Boss! The primary thought was that it’s too much work to manually monitor parking lots, so why not make them tell us when they’re going to be there? And it worked! “It went from being something that we had to proactively monitor into something that we could sporadically audit…It became a sort of self reinforcing habit, and it was very effective.” It slowly grew into the product that many of you know and love today.
What about that pandemic? 2020 jump-started our Amenity Reservations suite since, well, everyone was literally staying at home! “It was the perfect product for the perfect time.” We also developed multifamily software solutions for payments and mapping, plus we’ve launched multiple integrations for gates and locks. “We’ve only scratched the surface of where these pieces are going.”
Beyond just parking. We’ve been so fortunate to build something that businesses want, and that actually helps communities thrive! Although money is often a metric of success, we grounded ourselves in the vision to craft a tight feedback loop of listening and fixing. That process is the driving force of our expansion beyond parking to community-wide solutions.
At Community Boss, our mission is to help multifamily and apartment communities manage shared spaces in a smart, automated, modern way. And our Boss Talks podcast is a platform for Bosses like you to have a voice and share your Boss stories. Contact us to be our next guest on the Boss Talks podcast, or share this episode with others to help them Manage Like a Boss!