Search ResiDesk, work history, writing, talks, and small tools.
Founder, builder, resident work
[SURFACE 01]
Texts, reviews, tickets, calls
Arjun Kannan
I build software for teams where customers are already telling us what is broken. The real job is turning that into work people actually use.
At ResiDesk, that means turning resident texts, reviews, calls, and support threads into answers, history, and follow-up a property team can use.
Talking to customers is still business 101. The hard part is hearing the same problem in three places and realizing it is the same problem.
ResiDesk is most of my week. Before that, I worked on outcome-based lending at Climb Credit and advisor tools at BlackRock. Different rooms, same lesson: when the product loses the thread, the whole thing gets brittle.
I care less about the polished demo than the next day. The queue is full, the edge cases are real, and the person using the product has the final say.
ResiDesk takes most of my week. Before that: Climb Credit and BlackRock. I like work where the customer is already giving you the clue.
Most teams hear plenty from customers. It gets stuck in inboxes, tickets, calls, and support threads before it changes rent, renewals, maintenance, staffing, or the product itself.
The next day tells you what was real
I care about what survives after the meeting ends: the queue is full, the team is moving, and someone still needs an answer they can trust.
Do not make the team guess twice
A good tool helps the team move faster without becoming reckless. It shows policy, history, tone, uncertainty, and who owns the next step.
The test is simple
Useful software helps the person doing the work see the customer, what happened, and the next decision before the process buries it.
Start here
[PATHS 03]
Start with the question you have
You probably came here with one question. Start there. The rest can wait.
We help property teams see the problem while there is still time to fix it.
Residents are already telling you what is broken. The job is to answer them, spot what keeps repeating, and get the issue to the right person without rereading the whole history.
Looking for
Teams that do not need one more inbox.
The best operators already care about retention, NOI, workload, maintenance, and resident trust. The hard part is volume, repetition, and who owns the follow-up.
Writing about
What happens after the answer.
AI can write a decent answer fast. I still care who owns the next step, what they know, and whether the resident has to repeat themselves.
Where I start getting skeptical
Answers are not the finish line.
If the answer goes out and nothing changes, I do not trust the product yet. That is not a finished job. It is just a cleaner inbox.
Before ResiDesk
[WORK 04]
A few jobs that shaped how I think
CompanyWhat I didWhat changedMore
Climb CreditI was CTO and CPO. We pushed student outcomes into product, data, and underwriting.Annual loan volume grew from $1M to $300M while the product moved closer to student outcomes.TechCrunch
BlackRockI worked on product and engineering for advisor tools where interface quality mattered because real money sat behind every decision.The advisor analytics product reached $40M ARR in year one.Work history
ResiDeskI co-founded ResiDesk and spend a lot of my energy on data and product, plus the ordinary founder work of making the company run.Law360 covered a reported 7% lift tied to acting on resident feedback sooner.Law360
Working rules
[MODULE 04]
How I work on products
My default is simple: talk to the customer, make the work visible, and see what gets used on a busy day.
01 / Customer
Talk to the customer before the model gets a job.
If you have customers, understanding them is business 101. In housing, the hard part is hearing enough residents without asking the operator to read every thread.
02 / Context
Show me the actual job.
Abstractions do not move teams. Give me the stakes, the weird cases, and the person who has to live with what the product does.
03 / Adoption
Demos are not adoption. Repeat use tells the truth.
I learned this early at BlackRock: a prototype can win the room and still lose to the spreadsheet people already trust. The test is what they open when the meeting is over.
04 / AI
Shorten the distance to an answer people can use.
I do not need AI to do everything. I need it to move something from stuck to almost done while a person still owns the judgment.
05 / Candor
Be direct without making it personal.
The best teams can say what broke without blaming the person who found it. Believe the pain first, then separate what happened from what caused it.
06 / Team
Hire people who can carry the room without making it heavier.
The best people I have worked with can walk into a messy situation, find the few facts that matter, and move without waiting for a perfect script. They make the room clearer by keeping the work simple.
AI in use
[MODULE 05]
What still works after launch?
AI made it easier to produce a good answer. It did not make it easy to change the work. I care about policy, risk, handoff, trust, and what happens after the answer leaves the box.
Field note
The real product starts after launch.
I am most useful when a team has a real rollout problem: the launch worked, and the actual day still fights back.
01Watch the actual work
Sit with the people doing the job. Watch what they do when the tool is slow, weird, or just one more thing to manage.
02Say what changes
Check whether it saves time, reduces risk, protects retention, frees capacity, or earns trust. If nothing changes, the product is not done.
03Design around the work
Pick the model later. First decide what history it gets, what it can do, who checks it, and where the task goes next.
04Test the cases that break it
Run the cases that make it miss. Show the misses without drama. Then measure whether the work moved faster, got safer, or reached the right person.
05Bring the rollout back into product
Sales credibility comes from what actually happened: the objection, the before state, the number that moved, and the sentence the buyer can repeat without cleaning it up.
$40M ARRBlackRock advisor analytics, year one
$300MAnnual loan volume at Climb Credit
100+Startup investments and founder work
AI work in use
[MODULE 06]
The demo is only the beginning
Capability is only the first question. The buyer, user, reviewer, and executive sponsor usually worry about different things at once.
Field note
Find the work. Show the help. Name the owner.
Great demos can still lose to a spreadsheet. Information becomes useful only when the person making the decision can act without decoding it first.
01
Discovery that starts with the work
Find the narrow place where AI changes the day, not just the story. Talk to the buyer, the user, and the person stuck when it breaks.
02
Rollouts you can run again
Make rollouts repeatable: know the job, staff the messy parts, test the risk, and put what you learn back into the product.
03
Sales from what actually happened
Help GTM say the true thing: what changed, why the buyer cared, what broke, and what still worked later.
04
Keep the simple version honest
Make it simple without making it fake. I care about the number, the risk, the owner, and what happens next.
Resident messages
[MODULE 07]
How resident messages turn into work someone owns
[STEP 01 / LISTEN]
Start with what the resident actually said.
A useful product starts with ordinary apartment pain: a broken washer, a pet-policy question, Wi-Fi complaints, package-room issues, and the early signs someone may not renew.
Texts every dayActual complaints
ResiDesk
[LOOP 08]
Why housing is worth the work
Before
Resident feedback is everywhere and still hard to use.
Texts, reviews, tickets, surveys, renewal notes, and maintenance complaints live in different places. By the time the owner sees the number, the problem is usually old.
After
The right person sees the issue earlier.
The product brings enough history together to answer, route, report, and show what the building should change while it still can.
01Message
Resident text, review, ticket, call, survey, or renewal note comes in.
02History
Lease, policy, unit, prior messages, tone, and what happened already.
03Owner
The person or team that can change what happens.
04Action
Answer, escalate, repair, explain, or change the rule.
05Report
What owners need to see about retention, NOI, workload, and risk while there is still time to fix it.
About
[MODULE 08]
I did not start with apartments
I grew up around research, so the route looked academic at first. I studied applied physics at Cornell because it sounded hard, interesting, and close to experiments.
Software came in sideways. I was in an electron microscopy lab and wrote code to speed up a magnetic-noise setup. It saved hours quickly, and software stopped feeling theoretical.
The industries changed. The habit did not. At BlackRock, it meant making institutional tools usable for advisors. At Climb Credit, it meant underwriting against outcomes. At ResiDesk, it means helping housing teams hear residents clearly enough to do something.
Physics
Software clicked when it saved real time.
I wrote a tool in an electron microscopy lab to speed up a magnetic-noise setup. It saved enough time that software stopped feeling like coursework and started feeling useful.
BlackRock
Real stakes make the interface matter.
I did not get the job the first time. Six months later I re-interviewed, moved to New York, and learned that interface quality matters when real money is behind the decision.
Climb Credit
Outcomes changed the question.
Instead of asking who looked safest on paper, we asked what happened to earnings after the program. That pushed outcomes into underwriting, product, and data as annual loan volume moved from $1 million to $300 million.
ResiDesk
Housing should listen better.
Residents tell buildings what is working and what is not every day. The work is making that clear to owners, usable for operators, and less annoying for the resident.
Work history
[MODULE 09]
How I got here
The settings changed, but the habit stayed similar: understand what the customer is saying inside a messy process, then build the simplest responsible way to do something about it.
Resident feedback result
7%
That number comes from getting resident feedback into decisions sooner. Law360 wrote up the outside version.
Climb Credit
$1M → $300M
Annual loan volume growth while outcomes moved into product, data, and underwriting work.
Advisor tools
$40M ARR
Advisor-facing analytics product I helped take from zero to $40M ARR in its first year.
Co-founder, data and product side, plus the ordinary company-building work
We help rental-property owners and operators understand what residents ask for across renewals, rent, maintenance, and staffing. The product earns its keep when the right person knows what to do before the next thread appears.
We underwrote against a different question: not who looked safest on paper, but what happened to a graduate's earnings. That forced outcomes into the product, data, and underwriting.
The job was turning institutional infrastructure into a product advisors could use in real conversations. Same information underneath, but useful when someone had to explain, compare, and decide.
More detail
[MODULE 10]
More detail, if useful
What changed
I have worked on products where the number had to matter.
BlackRock advisor analytics reached $40M ARR in the first year. At Climb, annual loan volume grew from $1M to $300M as outcomes moved into product and data.
If you want the longer version, start with the links.
TechCrunch covered Climb. Law360, HackerNoon, TechTimes, TechBullion, BuiltWorlds, and 20for20 fill in more of ResiDesk, applied AI, talks, and property-operations work.
I write when I am trying to make a thought less fuzzy. Most pieces come back to the same test: does this help someone finish the work, or did we just make the demo easier to sell?
If a tool does not help someone finish a real task sooner, with less dropped context, it is hard for me to care about it.
Understand the job first.
If you do not know what someone is actually trying to do, you are probably just rearranging the screen.
Build around the work.
The model is one part. The surrounding tools, guardrails, evaluation, and handoff into someone's day decide whether anything changes.
Demos lie by omission.
What matters is whether people still reach for it mid-work, with nobody watching.
FAQ
[MODULE 14]
Fast answers
What kind of AI do I build?
I build AI around work people already have to do. At ResiDesk, that means helping property teams answer residents, understand what is happening in the building, and get the right issue to someone who can act.
What did I do before ResiDesk?
Before ResiDesk, I worked at Climb Credit and BlackRock. At Climb, I helped annual loan volume grow from $1M to $300M. At BlackRock, I worked on a retail analytics product that reached $40M ARR in its first year.
What do I usually write and talk about?
I usually come back to the same things: agents, evals, product loops, and the gap between a strong demo and something people still reach for on a busy day. Housing makes this concrete because residents are already telling you what broke.
How do I think about AI?
I care less about whether something looks impressive and more about whether it helps someone make a better call. That usually means getting the sequence right, testing what good looks like, and keeping a person close enough to stop the product from doing the wrong thing.
Investing
[MODULE 15]
Investing, when useful
I have invested in more than 100 startups and mentored through Techstars. I tend to back founders who are close to the problem, close to the customer, and honest about what they do not know yet.
Generic advice is everywhere now. The useful version is specific: here is the customer, here is the constraint, here is the ask, here is the next decision.
You have real customer pain and need it to change product, GTM, or operations.
You are putting AI into work where evals, handoff, and trust are not optional.
You are a housing operator trying to spot resident issues before they become churn, cost, or owner surprises.
Probably not the fit
You want generic AI inspiration without a real customer or real job attached.
You need someone to bless a demo with no owner, no metric, or no next step.
You want a broad advisory call without a specific problem to sharpen.
Small tools
[MODULE 17]
Small tools if useful
01 / Page map
Local views ready
Map the work.
Pick a view. The graphic runs anywhere. If the browser has a local model, it can add a sharper read.
02 / Ask this site
Checking browser AI
Ask a real question.
The answer uses the copy, talks, writing, links, and tools already on this page. Try: "why ResiDesk?", "what works after launch?", "where should I start?"
Try asking about ResiDesk, founder advice, BlackRock, Climb, writing, or what happens after launch.
03 / Conversation map
Start with the question.
04 / Find what matters
Skip to the parts that matter.
05 / Talk lens
Pull the point from one conversation.
06 / Useful AI check
Paste an AI idea. Check the job.
07 / Tuesday test
Put a demo through a normal Tuesday.
Pick a demo promise and where it has to run. The tool shows what has to be true before it works on a normal day.
Run the test to see what the demo is likely to miss on a real day.
08 / Resident messages
Build a small owner readout.
09 / Pattern check
Show repeated words.
Highlights the words I use a lot here: customer, measurement, handoff, follow-through, trust, and demo.
10 / Page check
Check whether the page is clear.
This checks whether the page is clear, useful, and honest about the work.
11 / Next fix
Pick the next rough spot.
Pick the part that feels roughest and get one concrete next fix.
