[Editor’s Note: HomeZada is sponsoring Geek Estate this month, and this is a sponsored post.]

The story behind how a tech company gets its start often intrigues people. The three founders at HomeZada are passionate and driven second time entrepreneurs and believe that many good ideas come from personal experience.

HomeZada is no different.

The Previous Company

Prior to HomeZada, Elizabeth, David and I worked for a software company called Meridian Systems, where in 1993 I started this company with another co-founder. Meridian was started from a personal experience that entailed the need to manage building large scale buildings, like the largest skyscraper in downtown LA and a complex hospital project. In 1993, there was no project management software to manage this large scale orchestra of different companies that come together to build a building.

Meridian was started with the mission to be a commercial construction project management software platform. I know, it is quite a mouthful, but it essentially managed budgets, contracts, changes, field data, drawings, and other documents for any commercial building. Over the next 14 years, the company grew by supporting customers like Target, Walt Disney, AT&T, the General Services Administration, Fluor Corp, Turner Construction, and tens of thousands of other construction, government and Fortune 500 companies.

Meridian’s software helps clients manage projects like The Dallas Cowboys Stadium, the Venetian Hotel, the Buri Tower in Dubai and other major buildings around the world. All in a collaborative internet based platform where data was shared with various stakeholders.

The Inspiration

One day, a frustration hit Elizabeth when she blurted out, “How come Meridian’s software can manage a billion dollar casino or a stadium online but I can’t even manage my own home?” This frustration turned into a spark, which lit a fuse that burned slowly at first, but then actually turned into a full blown vision for what is now HomeZada.

Elizabeth’s frustration was further expressed in phrases like, “how come a car comes with a maintenance schedule, and even alerts you when and what to do, but my brand new home tells me nothing. I get no alerts on when and what I need to do, so my hot water heater breaks because I forgot to drain it once a year.” Who knew?

And then other stories like trying to stay on budget and juggle multiple home improvement and design projects became a paper, spreadsheet, brochure, and photo nightmare A friend also turned on her dishwasher one day, went to the mall, and came home with her house burned to the ground because of faulty dishwasher wiring. She spent the next year arguing with her insurance company over reimbursement because she didn’t have a home inventory of what was in the home.

These frustrations and stories continued with friends around the world losing homes or possessions to a variety of situations; and friends and family continuing to misplace data about their home when they needed it.

The Launch

So, HomeZada launched and built a cloud software platform to manage your digital home. A single secure place to proactively manage your largest asset. But the vision did not stop there. Back when the three co-founders were working together at Meridian, two key software innovations were pioneered.

The first was that buildings go through a lifecycle of planning, building and operating them, and then they get renovated and the cycle starts again. The second is that service providers like architects and general contractors work for their client, the building owner, but all parties can collaboratively work on the same platform, yet maintain their own data sets as well.

The Homeowner Lifecycle

Consumers go through a lifecycle with their homes. They own them, then sell them, then buy a new one. And the process happens a number of times in their lifetime. So a consumer with a digital home of its photos, documents and the history could use that information to help market the home history, and buyers would appreciate evaluating that, and get their own copy if they buy the house.

And just like construction, agents and brokers are service providers that help consumers buy and sell their largest asset. So the HomeZada platform could also have a professional version that was used by agents and brokers in the course of their service engagement with their clients.

Like with any analogies, some parts fit and others do not. Of course the Barclay Center in Brooklyn is way different than a suburban home in Chicago. But a big reason why the founding team of HomeZada is passionate, is because we can bring together our previous experiences that include growing a software company, bringing teams together that need to work together, and helping homeowners find value in managing their home digitally.

It is often times people who approach an industry problem from a different perspective that develop a new technology and business model approach to try to solve it. No one can predict the future of HomeZada, but we are experienced business people who are passionate about homeownership, the real estate industry, and providing valuable solutions to all our customers.

[Editor’s Note: HomeZada is sponsoring Geek Estate this month, and this is a sponsored post.]