Why we need Internet Archives + Property Tech

Episode Transcript (computer-generated)

Paul Spain:
Hey folks, greetings and welcome along to the New Zealand Tech podcast. I’m your host Paul Spain and fantastic to have Logan Ransley joining us. Logan is the co founder of Landlord Studio, tech startup based in Auckland. How are you Logan?

Logan Ransley:
Doing very well, thank you Paul and nice to be on the show again.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, great to have you back. Maybe you can remind listeners where you fit into this big wide world of tech. You know, what you do and so on.

Logan Ransley:
Yeah. So I’m Logan Rensley, co founder of Landlords Studio. We’re a technology SaaS business out of Auckland and we focus on providing tools for the DIY landlord vertical in space mainly in the US and the uk, focusing on the accounting and also end to end property management for self managing landlords.

Paul Spain:
Fantastic. Well definitely looking forward to delving into a little bit, little bit more of the Landlord Studio story later on the show. I know there’s some, there’s a role there for artificial intelligence and you’re going to sort of share some of your expertise on that front that I think folks will find interesting. But we’ll come back to that. First of all, big thank you to our show partners of course One NZ, 2degrees Spark, HP and Gorilla Technology. So yeah, a big, a big thank you to our show partners and yeah, let’s jump in I think to start with looking into some of the things that are happening with I guess a New Zealand perspective. First up, we’ve heard that Auckland, an Auckland startup that use AI as part of what they do, List Assist have secured a multi year contract with Howard Hannah and this I believe is the largest independent real estate broker in the United states with over 15,000 agents and more than a million listings across the the 13 states they operate in. And yeah, list assists AI tool, allows users to search for property using natural language.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, this sounds quite, quite interesting. What are you, what are your thoughts Logan on this startup? I hadn’t come across them previously.

Logan Ransley:
Yeah, it’s the first time I’ve heard about them as well. Quite interesting because one they’re a New Zealand firm playing in the us. We also play in the us it’s our main market. But good to see another Kiwi business sort of tackling the real estate problem in the United States. It’s a huge problem. There’s millions and millions of properties that are listed on very few sites such as Zillow, Zumper et cetera and they typically have the majority of the market. So good to seeing some good Kiwi tech coming in and disrupting the market, especially using AI as A way to do that. And I think the second most interesting part there is the use of AI in the space.

Logan Ransley:
We are seeing more and more tech companies, including ourselves, starting to embrace AI to really help tenants find properties and particularly help them easily find exactly what they’re looking for in terms of amenities, using things like natural language. And we’ve played in the space to help landlords create listings with AI easily. And it’s, yeah, definitely becoming more and more prevalent as we see the expansion and sort of progression of AI generally.

Paul Spain:
Now, look, one of the things that we, we do often sort of, you know, talk about is the shortcomings of AI versus the benefits of AI. You know, there’s, there’s been this, a big hype cycle, a lot of excitement around AI. But, you know, for a lot of organisations, you know, they’re looking and going, this isn’t actually helpful. But I guess where I often, yeah, will highlight sort of where AI is. A really good fit is often within specific sectors, specific use cases, and it seems like you’re using it. You know, we’ve got list assist that are, that are using AI. I mean, where you’ve got a tool that’s very specific to, you know, to your sector or the work that an individual or a sector does, you can make that effort and build that sort of custom thing. I think often where the challenge is is that, you know, you know, there’s the capability, but unless you get something customized to your, you know, your specific workflows and what you do, then, yeah, often you’re not really able to see much of a, much of an uplift.

Paul Spain:
They’re jumping in and out of the likes of Copilot and ChatGPT and so on out, you know, outside of a kind of automation or outside of a nice, tidy, you know, workflow, it can actually be quite frustrating.

Logan Ransley:
Yeah, definitely. And I think, I mean, this is what we’re seeing in the industry is there’s just been this sort of massive bell curve of adoption of AI generally through ChatGPT, which is probably considered quite a generalized tool, can do a lot of things, but it can’t do things very specifically in the sort of context of a specific workflow. And so now you’re seeing companies sort of adopt the GPT model inside their own products to help certain workflows and help improve the value out of those workflows. But I think we’re still on this crux of, you know, where is AI actually providing the most value in terms of tools specifically? And this is something we’re experimenting with as well. And it’s still something that I think we’re quite early on in the journey and most people are quite early on in the journey just trying to figure out where the actual value is coming from when it comes to AI and whether it takes control of tasks overall or it supplements sort of effort into those tasks to help sort of cut down on time overall.

Paul Spain:
Good, good. Interesting to hear your thoughts there. Also, on the, on the New Zealand front, there are ongoing issues when it comes to scam, when it comes to cybersecurity. You know, we keep, you know, we see this kind of continual uptick in issues and in both areas and it’s good just to keep ourselves aware of what the issues are so we can help and you know, educate well first and foremost ourselves. But you know, it tends to be that listeners to show like the New Zealand Tech Podcast are reasonably switched on and aware of these sorts of things and are probably at the lower end of the likelihood to get scammed. But look, any, you know, anybody is susceptible, you know, hit, hit a person at a, at the, you know, the wrong time. But often it’s a matter of educating family members and, and those in our, in our workforces and, and, and, and so on as well. So yeah, I thought it was, it was interesting that we saw one and it was Auckland man who yeah, got, got hit with a pretty convincing scam that was involving New Zealand post and, and a text message.

Paul Spain:
And of course at this time of year, you know, a lot of packages can be floating around, Christmas gifts and, and the like. So yeah, in, in this case, he’d sent off a parcel to a friend in, in Tauranga, received a text saying he got the wrong address, he’d need to correct it or he’d be charged for the expense of the parcel being sent back and you know, basically was, was getting, getting asked for, for a payment to sort of resolve this, this issue. And so yeah, there’s, there’s just going to be more and more of these sorts of things coming. AI itself, you know, unfortunately is something that helps both, you know, the good folks and the bad folks. So we look at those sort of past issues with spelling mistakes and grammar and so on. You know, bad folks can use AI to really, really personalize things. You know, they can pull data in from a whole lot of sources. AI can generate and write an email, you know, on a, on a, on a pretty personalized level or a text message or whatever method that, that, you know, that this, that the scam, you know, hits, you from so just a good reminder to be, you know, to be really cautious and to let family members sort of know, to be aware of these things and you know, gift card tax related scams, invoice scams.

Paul Spain:
You know there are, there are so, so many issues but you know, they do need to be on our radar and, and talked about but this was a new one to me. I, I hadn’t, hadn’t heard of it. But yeah, this idea of, you know, lots of text messages going out asking people to pay a bit more for a package to get to the destination because the address is wrong, you’re going to get a percentage of people that are going to pay and you know. Yeah, that’s not ideal and depending on, you know, how they do it, maybe they get hold of your credit card number, maybe they just take an individual payment. You know, there are a range of possibilities that can happen. You don’t want, you know, yourself or a family member or someone within your organisation being hit with this stuff. So yeah, good to bring it to the forefront as we head towards Christmas.

Logan Ransley:
Yeah. I think the scariest part is that we sort of look at the likes of AI as being, you know, it came in two years ago, really hot and we think that the adoption of it has been quite high but we sort of have to remember that we sit within the tech community and I think whilst AI has been embraced within the tech community, those that sit outside the tech community still don’t really know what it’s about and don’t really know the capability and the power of AI generally. So when scammers start to use these tools to scam people who are not so tech savvy and more. Yeah. Susceptible to these types of attacks then it can really have quite a negative impact. And I think the real opportunity here is for somebody to start looking at scams and start to use the AI for good to, to combat it for those who aren’t, I guess as tech savvy and, and start to integrate it into everyday sort of people’s workflows etc just to try. Yeah. Prevent a lot of this from happening.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah, look, and this is where I find it quite interesting that we, you know, we are seeing progress from, you know, Apple, Microsoft, others who, you know, who have access to a cape, you know, I guess a broader access to our systems than a lot of other vendors and the Apple Intelligence Preview I guess has really kind of caught my attention from that perspective because you can imagine if you’re allowing an AI to read your text messages and to Read if that’s happening en masse and so you can get some learning from that. There’s a flip side from a privacy perspective and I’m sure we will see continued moves across these big players, Google, Microsoft, Apple Meta and so on. But Apple seemed to be really making some pretty strong moves. And because your investment when you’re an Apple customer in terms of the hardware, you know, this is all, so it’s all high margin stuff, there’s subscriptions. You know, this is something that certainly at this point in time Apple seems, you know, more than happy yet just to include. Right. It’s there out of the box. You’re not paying say, you know, a co pilot, certainly a professional co pilot subscription, you know, Was it roughly $600 a year? So you think of that over the lifespan of say you keep your phone for three years before you upgrade for an iPhone.

Paul Spain:
If we’re able to say match Copilot and it was like oh, versus Copilot, actually no, I’ll spend three years with the Copilot funds on an $1,800 iPhone. There’s going to be some interesting thinking and challenges as we see these big players really battle it out and start competing. But the way that Apple are working on Apple intelligence, some of that is actually quite encouraging because of the way it’s kind of baked in into your mobile device, into Apple at an operating system level. Not necessarily every app is going to be able to leverage and take advantage of that. But yeah, I can, I can see this, this will be a very, a very fascinating area I think over the, over the years ahead. Once, once, you know, once the kind of key players really step up a little bit more and you’ve obviously got a lot of smaller players also who are trying to cover those general areas. Right. You know, where the tools that we, that we all use every day, our standard productivity tools, sending messages through varying platforms, emails, et cetera.

Paul Spain:
And that’s where you know, Apple does have quite a strong position because they, they run the operating system and you know, a lot of people will use an Apple browser, Apple for their, their messaging and, and email and so on. So we are in some ways, you know, quite, quite early days but it’s great to see that there is, there is some competition and I think that’s you know, always so critical and you know, in some ways has, has become a little bit of a, an issue in some areas today. I think that there isn’t enough competition.

Logan Ransley:
Yeah, I think, I actually think there’s an opportunity for Apple here To build more trust within their consumer base because they can actually start to offer more value added AI services that overset things to help, you know, combat things like scams and you know, help the average Joe with their workflows, etc, all based on, you know, just sitting on the operating system of any Apple device. Yeah, so I actually think there’s some massive amounts of value they could add which could reduce, you know, churn of their products into the competition and it could extend all the way through the value chain, all the way through to payments, subscriptions, apps, everything. So yeah, I actually think it’s good to see that they’ve started to embrace it and bring out new products. I was talking to somebody the other day about their Siri product and how Siri sort of came out years ago. It’s been on the products for a long, long time and it’s almost like they, they were too early. They, the AI sort of revolution didn’t start until much later and they sort of had this product that never really got a lot of traction and then it didn’t really adapt with this new AI sort of revolution with the GPT, etc. So it’s good to see that they’re starting to actually overhaul their AI stuff and hopefully we’ll see that through some of the, yeah, the voice recognition type features they have.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. Look, important to remember that there is a, there is a flip side as well. And of course when you put that into somebody’s personal device, what crossover does that mean in a business context? Right. And you know, we, you know, we’ve had some discussions on the podcast people, you know, bringing varying devices into the workplace that can, you know, maybe record phone calls or record meetings and conversations. And this is where, you know, we don’t always have the best delineation between, you know, workplace technologies and the consumer technologies. And they can bring some significant risks as well. So you know, that’s, we won’t, let’s not delve into that one. That’s probably a big, that’s a big rabbit hole in itself but you know, just, it’s definitely worth, worth mentioning it and you know, reminding on this because there are, yeah, there are some quite significant fish hooks.

Paul Spain:
Now another topic and this one is equally relevant, you know, to New Zealand as it is to the rest of the world. The Internet Archive went offline after a cyber attack. And look, it really got me thinking, you know, how important is it that we have the Wayback Machine, that we have a place that holds an archive of information that’s been on the Internet. And actually, is it, is even what they’ve been doing good enough? How is it funded? What are the kind of, the political kind of, you know, challenges? And if they’ve been knocked offline by one cyber attack, what does the future look like for, you know, for the Internet Archive? And I guess stepping back a little bit further, is the Internet Archive, you know, are they the right, the right people to be archiving the Internet? You know, everything I’ve heard, heard about them in the past, you know, as a, as a non profit, you know, entity in the U.S. i think they’ve been around 28, 28 years now. They, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s largely been, you know, been pretty positive, but they operate on, largely on the smell of an oily rag. The numbers I found online said that, you know, annual annual revenue something like US$30 million and you know, in terms of their resiliency and, you know, all sorts of other things, there, there are a bunch of risks there. And I know they got hit, their headquarters in San Francisco got hit with a, with a fire one point, going back about 11 years.

Paul Spain:
You know, there’s a, there’s a whole lot of aspects to sort of, you know, maybe delve into and, and think about, you know, are they the right entity? Is the, is the data that they hold sort of, you know, robust enough? But I guess, you know, when you delve into it, it’s like, well, we, we rely on them for, you know, historical preservation of information. Being able to go back to, to the way the Internet was, you know, a decade or two ago and seeing, you know, early, early iterations of websites, there’s an accountability and a transparency aspect to it in terms of, you know, holding, holding governments to account. You know, media, most media, if they change a news article, they’re going to say that. But that doesn’t always happen when somebody publishes something onto a, a social media platform or, you know, maybe a, a government regime or, or a, a less trustworthy media entity sort of, you know, changes some, some information and not that the Internet Archive handles all of those situations perfectly because I don’t, you know, I don’t think it does. But as I started thinking more and more about it, it’s like, hold on. There’s a, you know, there’s actually a whole lot of, you know, really, really important considerations. And of course, each country and industry will tend to have different resources available, maybe alternatives to the Internet Archive. You know, in New Zealand, you know, we’ve had, you know, the Government archives for, you know, for a long, long time.

Paul Spain:
Archives New Zealand archives.gov.nz There’s the National Library of New Zealand where they’ve archived a whole bunch of stuff. But just in the last few months, we heard about Archives New Zealand shutting down their digitisation program. And I think it might have been under Archives New Zealand, where, I’m not sure how far we go back, maybe, you know, five years or so. You know, there was an entity there that was, that was archiving a lot of digital information and they were asking permission to archive off copies of the New Zealand tech podcast, the New Zealand Business podcast, some, you know, some of the other podcasts we were producing. And yeah, that in itself could, could be really, really important. A lot of podcasts already are completely inaccessible. You know, past podcasts, they’re gone. They were freely available, but, you know, very, very hard to find today.

Paul Spain:
So I think that, you know, there’s, there’s, there’s actually a fair bit in there when we, when we think about the, the need to hold on to these things and I guess, you know, yeah, there’s a whole lot of kind of cultural artifacts that are, that, that are in a digital form. One of the other areas is, you know, is Census Europe. So keeping, you know, keeping archives as varying pressures kind of come to, you know, to change things. Being able to look at, look back at what was online in a past time. And there’s all sorts of other, you know, aspects, I guess from a legal perspective, a journalistic perspective, maybe even training AI systems. Right. You know, they’ve got to have access to, you know, to data. Although that, that in itself has, has, has some, some challenges.

Paul Spain:
So, you know, there’s, there’s a number of other, other aspects to delve into there. What, what are your thoughts, Logan, in terms of, you know, the importance of, of having these, these digital digital archives? And is it actually something that, as a, as society we’ve, we’ve maybe just kind of taken for granted that there’s a few entities that look after it, but, but maybe we, you know, we need to take it a bit more seriously.

Logan Ransley:
Yeah. The cyber attack almost reminds me of the loss of information during, like, the Iron Age, right, where there was destruction of, you know, knowledge and history and learnings back in the day. It’s kind of like that, which is not a great thing at all. Yeah, I think that sort of oily rag metaphor you were giving before is a little bit worrying. It sort of sits on a knife edge. And I actually personally think the archive is Quite important for obviously preserving a lot of information that’s happened. And perhaps there’s some people that want that information gone and that may be information about them personally or about political figures or anything, and perhaps that’s some motivation behind the cyber attacks, is to take that sort of information down so that people can’t go reference. Reference it in their journalism and citation, et cetera.

Logan Ransley:
And that’s a little bit worrying because you want transparency and you want people to know truth, in fact. So I think having a sort of single source of truth is a really good idea, but it also is an issue because it is susceptible. If there is a single source of truth that can be taken down, then it means that it is more susceptible to losing that information long term. And I guess the Internet itself is inherently has a lot of redundancy. Right. You know, you can’t just take the Internet down from one source. And so if there’s a way to build that sort of same structure into a source of truth where information can exist and. Or particularly historical information can exist in lots of places, that’s probably the most ideal outcome.

Paul Spain:
But I can hear some people in my head shouting, the blockchain. The blockchain. The blockchain.

Logan Ransley:
The blockchain. Yeah. I mean, that’s a great use case for us. Right?

Paul Spain:
Yeah. So you can see there could be an element in there, but there’s also a flip side to the blockchain is there’s a cost to run all these, you know, all these sorts of things. And blockchain isn’t necessarily the most efficient, but in terms of, I think, you know, that. That element of consistency. Right. And of being able to stop people to mess with it, which is probably one of the concerns. Yeah. A blockchain approach could be super helpful.

Logan Ransley:
Yeah. Having information shared across multiple sources is probably the most ideal outcome. I can’t remember which movie it is, but there’s this scene where information shared across every single person’s personal device, fragmented, almost like a raid drive, where information is across multiple different sources, but ultimately can be viewed and accessed from a single location through a browser, etc. And maybe that’s the sort of future that we’re going towards. But I guess coming back to sort of the importance of having that information from a historical perspective, I think. I think it is important and I think we need to. Yeah, we need to maintain that sort of integrity so that people can always go back and see the learnings from the past, see truth in fact, so that they can, you know, reference it and fact Check as well.

Paul Spain:
So yeah, I guess there’s an element of crossover here into sort of, you know, free speech type discussions and so on which, you know, obviously can, you know, can get complicated because there are scenarios in which, you know, information shouldn’t necessarily be, you know, be shared and so on. And you know, we have that when there’s a court case going on and you know, in order to avoid sort of bias and you know, and what have you, you know, sometimes names we kept out of the media for that sort of reason or for other reasons and so on. So yeah, again, some of these things bring some, bring some complications. But yeah, largely I think this is an area that probably needs more, more attention and more thought. Obviously there are a chunk of people, a bunch of people that, that, that think about this stuff a lot more than I do and, and why we’ve got things like this, you know, New Zealand web archive and the like. But yeah, we, we probably need to be doing more of it, not less. And yeah, there’s there, I think there are, you know, potentially some significant challenges in terms of, I know, yeah, getting the right level or the appropriate approach from a political perspective that can, that can be kind of sound and solid and consistent because, you know, you land on something and then, you know, different countries flip their, you know, their viewpoints as, as governments change and so on and you know, you can be back in the same boat where some legislation comes in and a whole lot of history gets gets kicked to the curb, you know, and we can, you know, we can think of controversial, you know, things around, around the world. Tiananmen Square is probably, you know, one of the ones that often, you know, often often comes up, you know, in discussions and yeah, you can, you know, you can imagine that that that’s an area that what some countries would be happy having archived and, and, and available free for all that’s probably not gonna, you know, pass, pass the test, you know, and, or that example in, in China, for instance.

Paul Spain:
So, you know, these, these things do have complexities once you, once you start putting sort of politics and different ideologies into play. But yeah, I think important that we’re, that we, we keep these things on the radar, you know, and, and you know, we, we fight for, you know, really, really good outcomes because yeah, the loss of, of of knowledge can be, you know, can be pretty, pretty devastating at times. And it’s more than just probably a lot more than just a nice nice to have certainly in some parts of the world in some situations.

Logan Ransley:
Yeah.

Paul Spain:
Now other topics, Apple They I understand, are expanding their satellite services with Global Star. Now we have been a little bit limited with access to Apple’s, I guess this full kind of satellite capabilities in New Zealand. I did have a little bit of a play while I was in the US where you can send, you know, text messages when you’re outside of coverage in the US and yeah, Apple have invested, it was US$1.1 billion into Global Star. So they’ve taken a 20% stake there and they’re expanding that partnership. So this one is, this is interesting to see because I guess the difference between say what we’re getting coming in from our local telecommunications providers through the partnerships that they have. So you know, the likes of Starlink and Lynx, which are the two services across our New Zealand telcos. So Lynx being used by 2 degrees and spark and, or Lync and then Starlink, you know, being used for mobile to satellite comms by, by one nz at least initially an exclusive partnership there. But my understanding is the range that these types of services operate in is kind of kept, you know, kept open and is largely free.

Paul Spain:
So you do have a potential certainly for some comms for this to kind of I guess operate a little bit like you know, WI Fi and you don’t necessarily need to as far as I’m aware, have a carrier with, you know, with a dedicated spectrum that they’ve purchased, you know, in this type of scenario anyway actually I probably should look that up and actually check that I’m correct on that one. But the fact that Apple are offering these services in a whole range of countries would suggest me to think that that is largely the case that you know, between them and Global Star they haven’t gone out and bought spectrum like our mobile carriers do. Now that creates some limitations. So if you just want to do a call on your normal network or a text and so on, yeah, that’s not necessarily going to 100% work. But of course if you’re doing, trying to send an emergency message and there are a range of Things say using iOS messaging or Apple’s messaging capabilities with imessage or you know, trigger certain sorts of services, there are ways that they can, they can, you know, technically make all that work without you connecting into your full carrier. But it probably does trigger some people’s thinking around the oh, are we, are we coming to a day that you’ll be able to do a satellite based communication or the satellite communications will be so good that, that they, they are able to compete, you know, directly as an, as a completely Alternative offering, you know, compared to what we would buy from, from our local telcos today. And I can imagine for, for some people the way Global Star operates could maybe fall into that, that category. Yeah.

Paul Spain:
What are your thoughts on this sort of expansion? Is it something that sort of interests you much? Because I guess 99.9% of the time for most of us we’re inside a region that’s got good mobile coverage. Our plans are pretty reasonable, reasonably and competitive in many ways. We’ve got good performance and a really, you know, full set of services, fast broadband and so on, which, you know, none of these providers can, can offer to customers today. And they’re certainly not, you know, doing a direct compete with our, you know, the mobile communications carriers.

Logan Ransley:
Yeah, not yet anyways. This is kind of like when Starlink first sort of came out and they, you know, conveyed that, you know, they were quite small when they first came out that their pitch wasn’t sort of world domination in the Internet space. And over time as they’ve deployed more and more satellites now they’re marketing in every single place and in New Zealand they’re heavily spending a heavy, well, a lot of money and marketing towards so those farm type customers where access is limited. But I have a suspicion that Apple’s seen the rollout of Starlink and just how successful it’s been and sort of given them almost a strategic insight to say we actually might be able to play in this space where we can actually operate and compete with local telcos in all these different countries because ultimately it could be a huge potential revenue span for them. And although they’ve sort of rolled it out initially as I guess a way to do things like the emergency SOS feature and you know, cater for lacking in cellular coverage just to extend some of their functionality. I do think long term there is a, there is a potential strategic play here and actually a way for them to generate a lot of revenue by expanding into, you know, offering a full carrier service essentially. So you don’t need to rely on the likes of other, other local telcos but we, we will see. I guess that’s just a, yeah, just a, a possibility at the moment.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, I’ve just did a little bit of, you know, quick look up and in the US Global Star does hold licenses for some spectrum and the 1600 megahertz and sort of 2500 megahertz range. So you know, one for uplink, the other for, for downlink. So it’s the L band and the S band as, as it’s referred to and, and this is specifically. Yeah, for mobile satellite services including voice and, and data communications. And yeah, the Federal Communications Commission, you know, has authorized them to use their, their S band, you know, spectrum, you know, for, for this, for this purpose. I’m not seeing anything around Global Star having any, any terrestrial spectrum rights in New Zealand. So there’s probably a lot more info here, you know, for the, there’ll be someone that’s delved into a lot more. This might have been.

Paul Spain:
Well, we’ve talked about this with Bill Bennett before. He’s usually well across the telecommunications thing so might have to delve in and ask him a few sort of harder and further questions on this topic. But it will be really interesting to see how it’s, how it’s evolving. But yeah, I guess, you know, what I’m seeing from that quick look is yeah, it’s, there probably is a reasonable amount of complexity to it but you can imagine if Apple’s investing in this, you know, they’re very keen to make their, the satellite communications capabilities something of a, of a differentiator and you know, because of the margins that they make on, on selling their devices, it’s a bit, bit of a different scenario for the likes of Google and Samsung in terms of margins. So this could be an area where really Apple pushed to differentiate themselves compared to others and it could well just be another thing that helps make their overall ecosystem pretty sticky for customers.

Logan Ransley:
Right, yeah. And another thing is. Well, a sort of an interesting play is the, the One and Starlink partnership that happened earlier, I think it was last year and I know they’re playing in the sort of IOT space but they’re, I think what we’re seeing as a trend overall is this sort of satellite based technology starting to become more and more prevalent, particularly with the telcos. And so I guess over time as we sort of see this whole thing roll out and develop, I suspect that it’s going to have an impact on sort of consumer behavior and the way that sort of telco type services are brought to our mobile phones. For instance, I know Elon Musk has sort of sort of indicated or said that he’d like to bring out his own mobile device with Tesla. And whether that is a just sort of side comment or an actual reality, who knows. But yeah, I guess the direct to cell services is something that is quite interesting and probably worth keeping an eye on.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah, well you know, on, on that basis I see a bunch of the, the One NZ team have been up, you know, visiting SpaceX after some success, successful trialing of the Starlink direct to sell, you know, for, for sending SMSs. And at this point, well that’s what they’ve, they’ve talked about publicly is using it for sms. New Zealand, I think it was. New Zealand and Japan are the two markets internationally where the Starlink satellite to mobile service, you know, has been given the tick from a testing perspective. So that has, has happened. And those that are the warriors fans might be familiar with up the wires as the terminology that is often often used to support the warriors and that was we are told, the very first text message. So of course One NZ being big supporters and sponsor of the Warriors. So if you’re, yeah, if you’re into your league there, you might find that, find that interesting.

Paul Spain:
So look, you know, good, good on you know, One NZ and Starlink working together and, and getting that moving along. You know, interestingly they’re, they’re not the first to have, you know, tested this sort of technology in New Zealand. But of course SpaceX are really moving at a, at a pace that, you know, Will, Will, you know, I, I think be. Be quite astonishing in terms of just, you know, the number of direct to cell cell sites that they’ve, they’ve, they’ve put up in orbit now, which I, you know, I think we’re, I don’t know, last count was maybe in the direction of 300, somewhere between you know, 2 and 300 I think. So that’s going very, very, very, very fast and you know, Will, will, you know, change the, the whole, you know, playing field I guess over the, over the year or two ahead. But yeah, and, and of course there are, there are other, other players and of course we’re watching to see what Sir Peter Beck and the Rocket Lab team will be will have up there sleeve. They’re very much talking around the future of Rocket Labs business having some similarities to that of SpaceX and of them potentially having their own satellite constellation or constellations that will, you know, target particular areas. So that is something that we will continue to watch.

Paul Spain:
And yeah, there’s been some very interesting, you know, content coming through recently around Rocket Lab as they, you know, work towards, you know, establishing the next phase of the business and you know, new launch vehicle and so on.

Logan Ransley:
Yeah, I’m excited to see their self landing rocket.

Paul Spain:
Oh yes, yes. Yeah, that stuff’s looking, looking pretty cool, isn’t it? Okay, so on to just our final topic before we get in and delve into what’s happening in the world of Landlord Studio. Really interesting to hear about these new solar panels that they’re calling hydro panels that take moisture out of the air and convert it to drinking water. So ABC News in Australia, we’re covering this and they’re basically saying these new panels can effectively create or retrieve water in areas where fresh drinking water is probably reasonably hard or expensive to come by. The hydro panels in use at, excuse my pronunciation, Gaduga Central School and New South Wales. So this is a school and they’re producing 50 liters of drinkable water daily by extracting moisture, you know, from the air using these panels. So they, they’re basically ending up with clean, safe, chilled water and taking it, taking it out of the air. So just thought that’s a cool innovation, some good, good use of technology.

Paul Spain:
And you can imagine, you know, there’s a bunch of places around the world where this sort of approach could be, could be really helpful. You know, I’m not sure in that location how much, 50 litres of, of drinking water, you know, a day, you know, does. But when you think of that across, across a year or even across a week, that’s, you know, it’s starting to be a reasonable chunk of water. So, yeah, really cool.

Logan Ransley:
Yeah, that’s interesting technology, actually. I think that’s very useful for, I mean, any, any sort, progressions in technology around, you know, basic human needs such as these is really promising and. Yeah, encouraging to hear.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. Now let’s delve in. I’m keen to sort of get an update. And for listeners that aren’t familiar with Landlord Studio, when did Landlord Studio sort of kick off and what’s kind of a, you know, a summary of, you know, your progress to date in terms of funding rounds and what you built.

Logan Ransley:
Yeah. So Landlord Studio, obviously property management software for, for DIY landlords, we focus on the accounting and bookkeeping financial piece and also the end to end management for landlords. We started in 2018 and we operate primarily across the US and the UK. Funding rounds for us have been pretty light, actually. We’ve been very conservative with the way that we spend money, so we haven’t actually hit, you know, raise a lot of cash, which has been good. And because we’re up against some very competitive businesses in the US that have lots of money, I actually think we’ve made some really significant progress in the way that we’ve raised versus the way that the US companies have raised and spent. And so our, yeah, funding round, our last funding round was about three years ago. We’re now profitable company, over 15 staff and expanding as well.

Paul Spain:
And what’s next. I know that there’s, you know, there’s some AI elements to where you’ve been going and some of the work you’ve been doing and there’s also the United Kingdom is becoming a pretty important market for you. So yeah, maybe you can walk us through that. And what are the changes ahead?

Logan Ransley:
Yeah, going into that sort of next scale up phase and looking at the UK next year, there’s quite a significant opportunity for us where we see our business. And this is all around the sort of digital tax compliance changes that the UK government are bringing in. So UK government is effectively overhauling their entire tax system, making it digital by default. Quite similar to actually New Zealand’s tax system. They’ve actually taken a lot of the learnings from New Zealand and applied it to the UK and the way that people do tax here, people record their financials and then submit it through government systems, etc. And so what they’re doing in the UK is effectively mandating digital tax returns for self employed sole traders and landlords earning over a certain threshold in their business. And it’s affecting, it’s going to affect millions of people actually. I mean in the landlord segment alone it’s going to affect up to 2.8 million landlords eventually.

Logan Ransley:
And yeah, so it’s a very significant change happening in the UK. The new government that’s in the UK has just done their budget announcement 31st of October and they’ve made a promise to basically push ahead with this taxation change, investing more into it actually and trying to fast track this with their sort of ambitions to hike taxes and sort of overhaul some of the public.

Paul Spain:
Services as well, does that mean potentially a big scale up for you? If landlords are really going to need to, you know, double down on having their own technology platforms for managing their property and the taxes?

Logan Ransley:
Yeah, it’s significant opportunity, probably one that doesn’t come around very often, especially for the software technology companies like ours. A government mandation is always a great sort of tailwind for anybody. But yeah, up to 2.85 million landlords are going to have to use digital tax solutions within the next sort of five years. In the first two years alone it’s about 50% of that. So about a million landlords coming on to digital tax accounting solutions in 2026. So next year is going to be a big year of selling through accountants and sort of all things financial and tax related. So yeah, it’s going to be a big year. We’re planning our expansion next year and we’ll Be essentially going after the.

Logan Ransley:
The landlord segment as well. Yeah, it’s very exciting.

Paul Spain:
Fantastic. Fantastic. So Wendy, when do you pack your bags and leave London or Birmingham or Glasgow, wherever you’re going to be based?

Logan Ransley:
Q1 is when we’re a expanding over there. I mean, we have a UK entity already, so it’s just a simple relocation of people, more so than the business itself. So yes, exciting. But we’ll basically be starting our activity from the new tax year starting April 1st and sort of extending all the way through to the following tax year.

Paul Spain:
Fantastic. Now, AI, we sort of, we teased a little bit this has been an area you’ve been working on. You know, what can you share from your learnings and experience and what you’ve been working on building.

Logan Ransley:
Yeah. So we’re trying to focus our AI in a value added way. So as I sort of mentioned before, there’s a lot of AI tools, but we’re really trying to figure out where the value add is in the AI rather than just having it for the sake of having it. The two areas we’ve found where we are going to start to explore and build upon is the accounting side. So AI value added services around accounting, particularly around the consultation part, where landlords particularly can figure out how to structure and make the most out of their portfolios, etc. But also in, you know, categorisation of expenses and things that are going to help their tax return at the end of the day. So there’s a lot of work we’re doing in that area, particularly from the AI front, but also analysis of portfolio benchmarking to basically give landlords more insight into how much they should be spending versus how much they are spending and sort of benchmarking based on, you know, portfolios that exist in certain geographical areas. For instance, you know, this is how much you should be earning, this is the vacancy rates, this is the types of expenses, this is, you know, all that, all that sort of financial insight where we’re starting to roll out and explore and then the property listing side as well.

Logan Ransley:
So some of those more sort of top level value added AI services. So helping generate listings, helping with the marketing aspect, helping sort of streamline some of the. Just manual efforts when it comes to writing marketing listings, for instance, for your. For your properties. So those are sort of the two areas that we’re playing in and we’re bringing it in a way that is more of like an AI assistant. So it fully interacts and integrates within our platform rather than sits as a separate sort of entity. Helps Them do tasks directly from inside the assistant. So yeah, that’s what we’re playing in.

Logan Ransley:
Quite exciting. I had some really great feedback so far and the. Yeah. Especially around the accounting and financial piece.

Paul Spain:
Well, I imagine you must get some incredibly useful data that, you know, if it’s, if it’s all kind of, you know, meshed. Meshed together in a, in anonymized way, which I guess is what you have to do with it. Yeah, it does give you some really strong insights and guidance that you can share, you know, with those that are using your platform. As you commented in terms of examples there. Yeah. That people can benchmark against and get a handle on. Now you mentioned, you know, DIY landlords. So what is the typical sort of, you know, DIY landlord type situations that, that you tend to cover?

Logan Ransley:
So DIY landlord as a term is effectively any real estate investor that has residential rental properties who are self managing those rental properties and that covers effectively anything in the workflow from marketing listings to compliance to accounting, to all things within the sort of value chain and jobs to be done, I guess end to end. So there’s a lot of different types of jobs that a real estate investor or landlord need to do and we provide the tools to help them do all those different things, whether it’s finding tenants to the accounting, to payments online, collecting rent, et cetera.

Paul Spain:
And is there a typical kind of scale for that type of landlord in terms of what they’ll own?

Logan Ransley:
Yeah, in the US particularly, landlords typically have between 5 and 20 units. That’s where our sweet spot is. That’s where we provide the most value. Five to 20 units is A, an investor that has become a little bit more sophisticated, a little bit more professional. They’re trying to build a business rather than own a passive income asset. And so they typically start to structure and build it upon, or build a business upon a tool like Landlord Studio which helps them out with all the different things. Yeah, so yeah, that’s who we, that’s who we sort of target instead of rather than the sort of mom and pop type investors who typically just have a side. Rental property.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, Yep. And, and you talked, you know, UK and us. Do you have a New Zealand customer base as well?

Logan Ransley:
Very small. Typically New Zealand investors will buy a rental property and then outsource it to a property manager. That’s the typical workflow. And just because of how expensive property is in New Zealand, most landlords here don’t have a big portfolio. Maybe two, maybe one or two would be my guess at the size of the port portfolio. I mean, you’re looking at sort of a million bucks in Auckland for a property. So quite hard to scale and build a big portfolio just with the sheer price of assets. Maybe in smaller towns outside of Auckland, it’s a little bit more feasible.

Logan Ransley:
But typically what we see here is most investors are looking for the capital gain rather than cash flow. Most investors are looking to hold on to properties and then sort of sell them after a period of time cash flowing. Rental property businesses in New Zealand are not as prevalent as they are in the UK or us.

Paul Spain:
Exciting. Oh well, all the best with that. And you know, for folks that are listening and wondering if you’ve got any roles that might suit them or that they should mention to others, any particular areas that you’re hiring and now or expect to be over the months ahead.

Logan Ransley:
Currently hiring for a product marketer. Anyone who has experience with product marketing and SaaS particularly. Yeah, feel free to reach out to myself on LinkedIn or my email, loganandlordstudio.com and then anyone who has sort of experience in the accountant space and potentially in the UK as well. Any help or feedback recommendations would be. Yeah, greatly appreciated.

Paul Spain:
Excellent. And what’s the best way for folks to get in touch? Logan?

Logan Ransley:
Check out our website, landlordstudio.com you can reach out to me directly on LinkedIn. It’s where I am mostly these days. And you can also reach out to me on my email as well. Loganandlordstudio.com so yeah, all social channels or my email be great.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah, okay. Oh, that’s great. Well, thanks for the. Thanks for the update. I really appreciate it. And of course, big thank you to our show Partners, Gorilla Technology, HP, 2degrees Spark, One NZ. Yeah, really great to have had you on the show again, Logan. Thanks for sharing your contact details and so on.

Paul Spain:
Thanks everyone for joining us on this episode. Of course, make sure you are following us across the social and the streaming platforms as well as your favorite audio app, be that Apple Podcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, et cetera. You should be able to find us through all those platforms. But of course a lot of weeks we do also have streaming content, so yeah, well worth following us on those platforms as well. Anything else you wanted to add, Logan, before we wrap up?

Logan Ransley:
I think we’ve covered a lot of ground today and really appreciate you bringing me on the podcast again. It’s always good to catch up. It’s been great.

Paul Spain:
All right, well, thanks everyone. We’ll catch you again on the next episode of the new Zealand tech podcast next week. Catch you then.