Building ResiDesk

I build software that helps teams listen to customers and fix what keeps going wrong.

Most of my time goes into ResiDesk. We help property teams answer residents, keep the history straight, and notice when the same problem is happening across a building or portfolio.

Before ResiDesk, I built advisor software at BlackRock and ran product and engineering at Climb Credit. In both places, the useful work started by sitting with the people doing the job, measuring what changed, and fixing what fell apart on a normal Tuesday.

Arjun Kannan
I live in New York. Most days I am thinking about housing, software, or both.

Renting is expensive enough. Everything around it should be easier.

Property teams hear from residents all day, in texts, reviews, tickets, surveys, calls, and renewal notes. The hard part is keeping the history together, finding the right policy, and getting the next step to someone who can help.

We started ResiDesk because that work was scattered across too many places. I spend most of my time on the data and product, plus customers, sales, hiring, and whatever else the company needs that day.

Visit ResiDesk
01

Hear what happened

Start with the resident's own words. Scores and categories can wait.

02

Bring the context

Add the lease, policy, unit, earlier messages, and what the team has already tried.

03

Decide what happens next

Answer, repair, escalate, explain, or change the policy. Give the decision an owner.

04

Learn what repeats

When the same problem keeps coming back, make it visible to the people who can fix it.

I learned to build software in a physics lab. Finance and housing made the lesson stick.

I grew up around research and studied applied physics at Cornell. Software became real to me in an electron microscopy lab. A small tool I wrote saved hours on a magnetic-noise experiment. That was when software stopped feeling like coursework and became a way to help.

Physics

My first useful program saved a researcher hours.

It taught me a standard I still use. Did the work get easier?

BlackRock

The spreadsheet still won the next morning.

At BlackRock, I worked across product and engineering on advisor tools. A prototype could win the room and still lose to the spreadsheet people trusted the next morning.

Climb Credit

The outcome belonged in the product.

As CTO and CPO, I helped bring graduate earnings into Climb's product, data, and underwriting instead of treating a borrower's credit score as the entire story.

ResiDesk

Customer conversations are where the work starts.

At ResiDesk, I listen to the conversation, follow the work it creates, and look for the problems that keep coming back.

7%

One ResiDesk program reported this lift after a property team acted on resident feedback sooner. Law360

$1M → $300M

Climb Credit's annual loan volume grew across this range while outcomes moved into the product. TechCrunch

$40M ARR

I helped take an advisor analytics product from zero to this run rate in my first year at BlackRock.

Give me the work, the stakes, and the person who has to live with the decision.

01

Start with what someone is trying to finish.

Until you know that, the model debate is usually a distraction.

02

Be direct without making people feel small.

I believe the pain. Then I want to know what happened, why it happened, and what we can change.

03

A demo is not adoption.

I care about what happens when the queue is full, the edge case is real, and nobody is around to rescue it.

I write to figure out what I actually think.

I write when an idea still feels fuzzy. The test is simple: did this help someone do the work, or did it just make the demo easier to sell?

Read the Substack

Tell me what you are trying to fix.

I like talking with people working on housing operations, AI that has to survive real users, product decisions, and the ordinary mess of building a company.

A useful note usually has a customer problem, some context, and a decision you are trying to make.

I am less helpful with a broad AI inspiration call when there is no specific work attached.