How knoknok Is Transforming Renting Into a Smart, Scalable, and Human-Centered Experience
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Show Notes:
In this episode of Mission Matters, host Adam Torres interviews Dan Zhu, CEO of knoknok, on his innovative approach to solving long-standing issues in residential property management. By combining 24/7 AI responsiveness with on-demand real estate agents, Dan shares how knoknok is building a new way to rent—efficient, trustworthy, and frictionless. Recorded live at the Newport Beach Investor Conference.
About knoknok
AI platform for landlords, powered with a marketplace for landlords to schedule agents for rental tours, solving in-person operations in a way no other solutions can.
Watch Full Interview:
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I am in Newport, California and I’m at the Newport Beach Investor Conference.
And let me tell you, this is one of my favorite yearly conferences, and I have Dan from Knock, knock as an as a guest. So Dan, first off, welcome. Thank you for having me. Alright, so what, what brings you to the conference today? So I wanted to just check out what other people are working on. It’s always fun seeing different companies.
And then yeah, wanted to play around with my idea as well. So Knock, knock, that’s your company? Yeah. Tell me a little bit about how you got started. So, I’ve been in the real estate industry for several years now. Before that I was in tech and I’ve also worked at some startups too. Mm-hmm. But in the real estate industry I did a lot around.
Property management and a lot of other things with residential real estate. Mm-hmm. And I saw there’s this big problem with property managers. It’s hard to do staffing because, you know, sometimes in peak season, whoever you have is not enough. Yeah. And then when it’s slow, it’s just way too expensive.
Mm-hmm. And, but ultimately the thing with property managers, it’s the incentives aren’t really aligned with. Either the landlord or the tenant, right? Like landlords want someone super reliable in their homes and some property managers are really good at delivering that. But then there’s also others who just pick the first person that comes in and applies.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That’s not really beneficial for the landlord. On the renter side sometimes property managers are slow at communicating. Yeah. And like the maintenance gets to like is just like no one knows what’s happening. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so that’s a really complicated thing too. And so actually, if we were to think, take a step back and think like, Hey, we, let’s try to solve property managers.
Let’s try to fix this for everyone involved. How are we gonna do this? We’re not gonna have a person that does everything. Can’t do it. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a complicated job. It’s too much Course. You and to the problem manager’s credit someone work really hard to make it work, but it’s really hard. Yeah. And so a better solution’s actually, like, well, let’s just think like there’s two types of tasks.
There’s these digital tasks and then these in-person tasks. Mm-hmm. And like the digital tasks, like listing management, listing preparation application processing, maintenance request. Mm-hmm. Those communications and paperwork that can be done largely online. And that can be done with an AI bot.
Yeah. Some sort of AI service. But then there’s still a lot of in-person things that’s really important. So like, for example, with listing preparation, like you still need a human touch to make sure everything looks good. Yeah. Get the right photos. Mm-hmm. Make sure all the, like the cleanliness is good for the tours.
You need to conduct the tours. Yeah. You do the walkthroughs. In the walkthroughs you need to test out to make sure everything’s working properly and any other inspections. So these things you still need a person involved in. I think what a lot of, well, what I’ve seen is landlords, they really need everything because the biggest thing more so than cost that landlords care about is just, Hey, I just don’t wanna worry about my home.
Yeah. I just wanna make sure it’s being responsibly taken care of. And so for that, what what we’re building is we’re building a solution that combines the AI agents that can do all the digital tasks really well. Mm-hmm. Be 24 7 responsiveness and make sure everything’s being handled with as much data and care as possible.
Yeah. And then also have a network of real estate agents who can come on demand to your home any, any time. Mm-hmm. That will allow things like short turnaround for getting an agent on site. Yeah. Good For tours, the agent will be able to do all the responsibilities around making sure the home is secure.
Mm-hmm. And like information transfer between renter and landlord. Hmm. Do some qualitative analysis as well, making sure, you know, as most languages lost, they just wanna make sure their tenant’s just like kind of normal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just, just that everything makes sense there. Hmm. Where are you at with the project right now?
Like, tell us where the company’s at. Yeah. Very new very early, but we’re live and we’ve been working with How does that feel? Be live. Oh, it’s it’s exciting. Yeah. I, I think this is the best part where it’s like everything’s moving so fast. And how long have you, was it in the development to like, launch to like, gave me a little bit of a flavor for the, from conception of idea to present day.
Yeah. So I started thinking about this just a few months ago, thinking like when working on my own business Yeah. Thinking like this this solution around staffing’s really difficult because of the bandwidth issues with a single person. Yeah. And also the. What we need with sending a person around in so many different places.
Mm-hmm. So started playing around with this business model of like having a distributed network of agents. Mm-hmm. I find some high, trusted, really quality agents pay them per tour. Yeah. And they’ve been doing great. Like, they, they do a great job. They’re very detailed, attentive. That’s great. They give me good analysis on every single every single renter group.
Mm-hmm. And so like you, I kind of, I know who I’m working with, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so it’s, it’s really valuable insights there. So I was able to find that and it’s like, okay, well this is actually a much more efficient labor solution for everyone involved. Mm. And so what we should do is we should.
Like bring this to as many landlords as possible. Mm-hmm. Allow as many landlords to tap into this, create a, so built out an AI solution that can do a lot of the digital management. Yeah. And then also have a team of agents that can do all the in person. Hmm. So this is interesting to me because many times there’s this debate and I know people at home, I hear it all the time and it’s.
Is AI gonna take over? Is it gonna like, replace people? And this is a great example of how AI is complimenting Yeah. And humans are, AI and humans are in technology in general. Are, and humans are working together to provide a better solution for everyone. In this case, the, the landlords and the tenants.
Yeah. Make it a better for everyone. It’s a great example. Yeah. It’s like ultimately what AI can do well and what a human can do well are just like very different things. Like Yeah. Like as good as I am at chess, like my phone can beat me if I put it up a. Even close to the hardest level. Yeah. Yeah. But then, you know, there’s a lot of things that I can do that my phone can’t, like, obviously like anything in person, but also any like it’s easier for my phone to beat me in chest than it is for it to identify if a cat is a cat.
Yeah. And so it’s similarly with ai, AI can be really good. Like it’s 24 7 responsiveness. Yeah. And so like, it’s not gonna have to be on sleep or on weekends or vacations or anything like that. And like that needs it very reliable. If someone’s coming in, it can like a maintenance request comes in.
It’s like, Hey, the hot water’s not working. Mm-hmm. That’s a pretty big problem. That is but then it can immediately respond, like if it’s in middle night, everyone else is asleep. But it can mean response. Like, is it one fixture or is it across the entire building? Yeah. If it is it. No hot waters coming out at all, or is it just coming out cold?
Yeah. And then it can maybe give you like, alright, let’s see if we can quickly fix this. Like, have you tried just check to see how it’s working in the rest of the home. If that’s not working still, then okay, let’s look at. See if maybe we restart the water heater. Right? Yeah. And like if, if that works, then we’re done.
And the, but then it doesn’t work. And a percentage and a percentage of things that will solve Yeah, it so many and whatever the percentage is. Yeah. That becomes interesting. Yeah. Like for saving time, for saving money, like what would’ve cost if. Every single thing. If you get any of those percentage that are, that are solved by that, and over time it learns, knows what to do better, and now you’re, you’re in a good spot.
Yeah. So a AI is really good for that because it can solve a lot of these problems really quickly. Like Yeah. And then can also escalate to a person as necessary. So it’s like, okay, like, hey, we need to get. After talking to the renter about this situation, yeah. Okay. I know we need to get this person with these qualifications to get a the job, and that can be done instantly.
Whereas, like in comparison, like if it’s a, if it’s a human dependency. You just need to wait for the humans to reply back and forth and also to get up to wake up. ’cause your example’s the middle of the night. So if it’s a 24 hour response type thing and maybe, maybe they look at it and now there’s some water disaster and there’s water leaking outta the water heater, or who knows?
And now Yeah, exactly. You’re saving money because it’s quicker. You’re quicker now instead of waking up and there’s a huge problem tomorrow. Maybe it’s a little bit love, a less problem. Yeah. ’cause it’s more timely in terms of how it’s being handled. Yeah, exactly. So on that side. Wow. And then the other side of this, so let me, let’s play this out further, Dan.
The other side in this emergency water issue is that now the 24 hour emergency service. They also have it in my mind. They also have their own ai, whatever it is, answering it. So the two ais are getting it done and eventually the plumber gets woken up. Yeah. Because somebody’s gotta go fix it. Yeah. So all the ais are, are plotting on waking that guy out of, or girl out of bed.
But it’s great that we don’t have to wake someone up if they’re not necessary as well. That’s true. That’s true. Think that’s, I love it. I just like, I just wish that the AI could laugh a little. Like we about to get him awake. Yeah. Think about it like, you know. For all these things, we just wanna be able to relax and enjoy time.
Yeah, yeah. Like landlord doesn’t have to wanna worry about the home, renter, doesn’t wanna worry about the home, all of it. There’s a bunch of ways. We just wanna make sure things, everything’s taken care of smoothly. And then like the human element is really useful too. Getting back to that. Mm-hmm. Like we still need an agent.
Like, I don’t think people would trust a full AI service that doesn’t actually physically interact with the person. Sure, sure. The retro, right, because. You know, we’ve all heard the horror stories. Mm-hmm. And every, every landlord has faced their own horror stories of like a bad renter. Mm-hmm. And so as much as possible, we would want some, like an agent we can trust to just Yeah.
Yeah. That the person just understand them, like have the tour be like a. Quasi interview. Yeah. And just just make sure that for sure everyone’s aligned. Yeah. So what, what are your next steps with the company? Like, talk, talk to me about next steps. Yeah. Are you raising money? I know we’re at the Newport Beach Investor Conference.
Are you raising money or how are you rolling this out? Like, in general? What’s the next steps? Yeah. So right now we are launching in a few target cities. We’re launching in the SF Bay Area, New York City and in Los Angeles area. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So we’re focusing on these markets. First, and then we’re also gonna be raising money in the next few weeks.
Mm. All right, man. Love, love to hear that. Let’s talk about the investor side of this, like what you can share. What, any, any details you care to share on this. A lot of business owners, a lot of investors that watch this show. Yeah. And tell me about the investment opportunity. Yeah, so we’re trying to build a company that is just gonna change how renting is done in the residential side forever.
That’s a big dream. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a big one. If we were. We have all the technology in place in the world. Now, if we were to rebuild the renting experience, it would not look like anything that it does right now. Yeah. Like we would not have this system. And so we’re, we’re building that future out. We’re on to sell directly to the landlords and work with them and.
And build out a great solution. Yeah. And so like renting the property management industry is huge. It’s like a hundred billion dollar industry. Mm-hmm. And they take 10% of, of rent from the, from, from the parties involved. And so I think this is an arbitrage that is not necessary. I think we can build something better and we can make everyone live with less friction around these payments as well as not have to worry about any of the, the things in their homes.
That’s awesome. Last thing I want you to do, Dan, look into the camera. If somebody wants to follow up, if they wanna learn more about the opportunity or about the, or about it, let me know how. Yeah. If you’re a landlord looking to rent your home in a more or reliable way, or if you’re an agent looking to help join.
Come find [email protected] and come sign up. Fantastic. Freddy watching at home, just so you know. We’ll definitely put the links in the show notes so you can just click on the link and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas. And hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Dan, thanks again for coming out, man. Appreciate you. Thanks for having me.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I am in Newport, California and I’m at the Newport Beach Investor Conference.
And let me tell you, this is one of my favorite yearly conferences, and I have Dan from Knock, knock as an as a guest. So Dan, first off, welcome. Thank you for having me. Alright, so what, what brings you to the conference today? So I wanted to just check out what other people are working on. It’s always fun seeing different companies.
And then yeah, wanted to play around with my idea as well. So Knock, knock, that’s your company? Yeah. Tell me a little bit about how you got started. So, I’ve been in the real estate industry for several years now. Before that I was in tech and I’ve also worked at some startups too. Mm-hmm. But in the real estate industry I did a lot around.
Property management and a lot of other things with residential real estate. Mm-hmm. And I saw there’s this big problem with property managers. It’s hard to do staffing because, you know, sometimes in peak season, whoever you have is not enough. Yeah. And then when it’s slow, it’s just way too expensive.
Mm-hmm. And, but ultimately the thing with property managers, it’s the incentives aren’t really aligned with. Either the landlord or the tenant, right? Like landlords want someone super reliable in their homes and some property managers are really good at delivering that. But then there’s also others who just pick the first person that comes in and applies.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That’s not really beneficial for the landlord. On the renter side sometimes property managers are slow at communicating. Yeah. And like the maintenance gets to like is just like no one knows what’s happening. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so that’s a really complicated thing too. And so actually, if we were to think, take a step back and think like, Hey, we, let’s try to solve property managers.
Let’s try to fix this for everyone involved. How are we gonna do this? We’re not gonna have a person that does everything. Can’t do it. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a complicated job. It’s too much Course. You and to the problem manager’s credit someone work really hard to make it work, but it’s really hard. Yeah. And so a better solution’s actually, like, well, let’s just think like there’s two types of tasks.
There’s these digital tasks and then these in-person tasks. Mm-hmm. And like the digital tasks, like listing management, listing preparation application processing, maintenance request. Mm-hmm. Those communications and paperwork that can be done largely online. And that can be done with an AI bot.
Yeah. Some sort of AI service. But then there’s still a lot of in-person things that’s really important. So like, for example, with listing preparation, like you still need a human touch to make sure everything looks good. Yeah. Get the right photos. Mm-hmm. Make sure all the, like the cleanliness is good for the tours.
You need to conduct the tours. Yeah. You do the walkthroughs. In the walkthroughs you need to test out to make sure everything’s working properly and any other inspections. So these things you still need a person involved in. I think what a lot of, well, what I’ve seen is landlords, they really need everything because the biggest thing more so than cost that landlords care about is just, Hey, I just don’t wanna worry about my home.
Yeah. I just wanna make sure it’s being responsibly taken care of. And so for that, what what we’re building is we’re building a solution that combines the AI agents that can do all the digital tasks really well. Mm-hmm. Be 24 7 responsiveness and make sure everything’s being handled with as much data and care as possible.
Yeah. And then also have a network of real estate agents who can come on demand to your home any, any time. Mm-hmm. That will allow things like short turnaround for getting an agent on site. Yeah. Good For tours, the agent will be able to do all the responsibilities around making sure the home is secure.
Mm-hmm. And like information transfer between renter and landlord. Hmm. Do some qualitative analysis as well, making sure, you know, as most languages lost, they just wanna make sure their tenant’s just like kind of normal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just, just that everything makes sense there. Hmm. Where are you at with the project right now?
Like, tell us where the company’s at. Yeah. Very new very early, but we’re live and we’ve been working with How does that feel? Be live. Oh, it’s it’s exciting. Yeah. I, I think this is the best part where it’s like everything’s moving so fast. And how long have you, was it in the development to like, launch to like, gave me a little bit of a flavor for the, from conception of idea to present day.
Yeah. So I started thinking about this just a few months ago, thinking like when working on my own business Yeah. Thinking like this this solution around staffing’s really difficult because of the bandwidth issues with a single person. Yeah. And also the. What we need with sending a person around in so many different places.
Mm-hmm. So started playing around with this business model of like having a distributed network of agents. Mm-hmm. I find some high, trusted, really quality agents pay them per tour. Yeah. And they’ve been doing great. Like, they, they do a great job. They’re very detailed, attentive. That’s great. They give me good analysis on every single every single renter group.
Mm-hmm. And so like you, I kind of, I know who I’m working with, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so it’s, it’s really valuable insights there. So I was able to find that and it’s like, okay, well this is actually a much more efficient labor solution for everyone involved. Mm. And so what we should do is we should.
Like bring this to as many landlords as possible. Mm-hmm. Allow as many landlords to tap into this, create a, so built out an AI solution that can do a lot of the digital management. Yeah. And then also have a team of agents that can do all the in person. Hmm. So this is interesting to me because many times there’s this debate and I know people at home, I hear it all the time and it’s.
Is AI gonna take over? Is it gonna like, replace people? And this is a great example of how AI is complimenting Yeah. And humans are, AI and humans are in technology in general. Are, and humans are working together to provide a better solution for everyone. In this case, the, the landlords and the tenants.
Yeah. Make it a better for everyone. It’s a great example. Yeah. It’s like ultimately what AI can do well and what a human can do well are just like very different things. Like Yeah. Like as good as I am at chess, like my phone can beat me if I put it up a. Even close to the hardest level. Yeah. Yeah. But then, you know, there’s a lot of things that I can do that my phone can’t, like, obviously like anything in person, but also any like it’s easier for my phone to beat me in chest than it is for it to identify if a cat is a cat.
Yeah. And so it’s similarly with ai, AI can be really good. Like it’s 24 7 responsiveness. Yeah. And so like, it’s not gonna have to be on sleep or on weekends or vacations or anything like that. And like that needs it very reliable. If someone’s coming in, it can like a maintenance request comes in.
It’s like, Hey, the hot water’s not working. Mm-hmm. That’s a pretty big problem. That is but then it can immediately respond, like if it’s in middle night, everyone else is asleep. But it can mean response. Like, is it one fixture or is it across the entire building? Yeah. If it is it. No hot waters coming out at all, or is it just coming out cold?
Yeah. And then it can maybe give you like, alright, let’s see if we can quickly fix this. Like, have you tried just check to see how it’s working in the rest of the home. If that’s not working still, then okay, let’s look at. See if maybe we restart the water heater. Right? Yeah. And like if, if that works, then we’re done.
And the, but then it doesn’t work. And a percentage and a percentage of things that will solve Yeah, it so many and whatever the percentage is. Yeah. That becomes interesting. Yeah. Like for saving time, for saving money, like what would’ve cost if. Every single thing. If you get any of those percentage that are, that are solved by that, and over time it learns, knows what to do better, and now you’re, you’re in a good spot.
Yeah. So a AI is really good for that because it can solve a lot of these problems really quickly. Like Yeah. And then can also escalate to a person as necessary. So it’s like, okay, like, hey, we need to get. After talking to the renter about this situation, yeah. Okay. I know we need to get this person with these qualifications to get a the job, and that can be done instantly.
Whereas, like in comparison, like if it’s a, if it’s a human dependency. You just need to wait for the humans to reply back and forth and also to get up to wake up. ’cause your example’s the middle of the night. So if it’s a 24 hour response type thing and maybe, maybe they look at it and now there’s some water disaster and there’s water leaking outta the water heater, or who knows?
And now Yeah, exactly. You’re saving money because it’s quicker. You’re quicker now instead of waking up and there’s a huge problem tomorrow. Maybe it’s a little bit love, a less problem. Yeah. ’cause it’s more timely in terms of how it’s being handled. Yeah, exactly. So on that side. Wow. And then the other side of this, so let me, let’s play this out further, Dan.
The other side in this emergency water issue is that now the 24 hour emergency service. They also have it in my mind. They also have their own ai, whatever it is, answering it. So the two ais are getting it done and eventually the plumber gets woken up. Yeah. Because somebody’s gotta go fix it. Yeah. So all the ais are, are plotting on waking that guy out of, or girl out of bed.
But it’s great that we don’t have to wake someone up if they’re not necessary as well. That’s true. That’s true. Think that’s, I love it. I just like, I just wish that the AI could laugh a little. Like we about to get him awake. Yeah. Think about it like, you know. For all these things, we just wanna be able to relax and enjoy time.
Yeah, yeah. Like landlord doesn’t have to wanna worry about the home, renter, doesn’t wanna worry about the home, all of it. There’s a bunch of ways. We just wanna make sure things, everything’s taken care of smoothly. And then like the human element is really useful too. Getting back to that. Mm-hmm. Like we still need an agent.
Like, I don’t think people would trust a full AI service that doesn’t actually physically interact with the person. Sure, sure. The retro, right, because. You know, we’ve all heard the horror stories. Mm-hmm. And every, every landlord has faced their own horror stories of like a bad renter. Mm-hmm. And so as much as possible, we would want some, like an agent we can trust to just Yeah.
Yeah. That the person just understand them, like have the tour be like a. Quasi interview. Yeah. And just just make sure that for sure everyone’s aligned. Yeah. So what, what are your next steps with the company? Like, talk, talk to me about next steps. Yeah. Are you raising money? I know we’re at the Newport Beach Investor Conference.
Are you raising money or how are you rolling this out? Like, in general? What’s the next steps? Yeah. So right now we are launching in a few target cities. We’re launching in the SF Bay Area, New York City and in Los Angeles area. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So we’re focusing on these markets. First, and then we’re also gonna be raising money in the next few weeks.
Mm. All right, man. Love, love to hear that. Let’s talk about the investor side of this, like what you can share. What, any, any details you care to share on this. A lot of business owners, a lot of investors that watch this show. Yeah. And tell me about the investment opportunity. Yeah, so we’re trying to build a company that is just gonna change how renting is done in the residential side forever.
That’s a big dream. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a big one. If we were. We have all the technology in place in the world. Now, if we were to rebuild the renting experience, it would not look like anything that it does right now. Yeah. Like we would not have this system. And so we’re, we’re building that future out. We’re on to sell directly to the landlords and work with them and.
And build out a great solution. Yeah. And so like renting the property management industry is huge. It’s like a hundred billion dollar industry. Mm-hmm. And they take 10% of, of rent from the, from, from the parties involved. And so I think this is an arbitrage that is not necessary. I think we can build something better and we can make everyone live with less friction around these payments as well as not have to worry about any of the, the things in their homes.
That’s awesome. Last thing I want you to do, Dan, look into the camera. If somebody wants to follow up, if they wanna learn more about the opportunity or about the, or about it, let me know how. Yeah. If you’re a landlord looking to rent your home in a more or reliable way, or if you’re an agent looking to help join.
Come find [email protected] and come sign up. Fantastic. Freddy watching at home, just so you know. We’ll definitely put the links in the show notes so you can just click on the link and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas. And hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Dan, thanks again for coming out, man. Appreciate you. Thanks for having me.
