Show HN: Tenence – Making Renting Easier
tenence.com
tenence.com
Oh, and change 'Our business model explained'. That language makes sense for startup junkies and business folk. But, has no place on your landing page, something like 'How we'll help you find a renter' is much more relevant to your audience.
This. I didn't proceed through site because I can't stand scroll-jacking.
You know those carousels everybody hates that everybody puts on their websites... this startup made their entire website a carousel :(
These kinds of decisions make zero sense to me. It's not only easier to implement a static page without all this stuff, it's more pleasant to the people you want looking at the page.
You have grammatical mistakes and poor design choices (thin white text which runs over a woman's blonde hair).
The page weighs in at 38.1 MB and took my browser 20 seconds to load.
Even if the scroll-jacking wasn't a bother, it performs horribly and takes seconds to move between pages.
Sorry to be harsh, but I can't believe any reasonable person took a look at this and gave it an okay.
The messaging is bad, it took me a while to work that part out
> <html ng-app=JetSmarter>
Definitely not a good look at all.
"Rent your Home through Tenence"
reads more like
"Rent [out] your home [to other people] through Tenence"
than
"Rent your [new] home [from any landlord] through Tenence"
You can read a lot of the following pages through that same lens without any red flags (just what seems like awkward phrasing in a few spots, like "You become a member. And we then do everything on our books (as a company) to rent out the place you want."). It wasn't until I got all the way to the "Membership Benefits" page that everything became clear, At that point, I had to go back and reread everything from a renter's perspective to figure out what the business even was.
I gave this a hell of a lot more focused attention because it was presented on HN. If I'd stumbled on this page some other way, I would have written it off in 10 seconds. "I don't own a home. I'm not the target audience here."
What is your business? Who is involved in it? Is it an REIT that manages its holdings for renters? Are you a marketplace? What specific services do you provide? Who are your customers?
Also if the renters don't have to pay a deposit, isn't it likely that some (maybe many) tenants will move out of the flat without even telling you (not to mention taking the TV and other valuable stuff with them)? Finally £99 per month after a year is more than a deposit, except renters have no way to get back this money. I don't mean to criticise but I honestly don't understand how it can work.
Why is this part of the service? Seems really strange to offer that.
Also, the business model seems weird. Why would someone pay $100/month for, hopefully, years in order to cut down on one-time costs and hassles around the initial renting? Regardless of whether it ends up being cost-beneficial, it just seemed like a weird match to me. You're "subscribing" to a service that does a bunch for you in month 1 and then nothing in later months.
Maybe that's what the concierge part of the service is meant to address, but I'm very dubious of that portion of the business.
Once the member has finalized a place, we take over. We deal with onboarding, the security deposit, and rent the flat for the member... After the member moves in, we provide him/her with a host of services ranging from helping them when they are home and sick, to coordinating repairs.
As mentioned by others, the whole site is making a heavy weather out of simple (and seems like a useful) concept.
1. I don't think that coordinating repairs is a big deal. I mean, maybe I've just been lucky with landlords, but I feel like generally when I've needed repairs, I've called my landlord, or emailed them, and then that's that. And repairs are a far-from-constant problem -- most months, my need for someone to coordinate my repairs is zero.
2. The concierge service is... well, I don't know. I mean, we could certainly imagine a concierge service that provided $100 in value per month. But it feels like staffing a concierge service company is totally different from staffing a renter's agreement arbitrage company, and that there's no particular synergy between the two, and also I kind of doubt the ability of a small startup that's clearly focusing on the "renter's agreement arbitrage" business to provide a really useful concierge service.
But I agree whatever is the value proposition to customers it needs to be articulated well and in simple terms. The site's content is a mess.
[Edit]
> But it feels like staffing a concierge service company is totally different from staffing a renter's agreement arbitrage company.
Somewhat agree to this. There would be two kind of customers, one who would be just interested in renter's agreement arbitrage and after that they are self sufficient to take care of day to day issues around the rental; and the other one would be in for hassle free rental experience from the day 1 to the day they go away.
It is kind of obvious that founders are targeting the later ones, and as I said it could be a niche segment but seems like an interesting area nevertheless. And who knows if they do well then they maybe able to convert customers from one to other.
The main difference I see here is using clout as a company to reduce or remove the rent deposit, and as other comments have mentioned some additional concierge services, is that worth an extra fee on top of my rent?
I have rented in the UK before, I am currently a landlord in the UK. Filling in paperwork, providing references etc. isn't particularly difficult or time consuming and I wouldn't pay £99/month myself personally to have that done for me. Maybe a one off fee.
I read the logo as renence.
I have literally never heard the phrase 'onboarding' used outside of a business organization. If I was explaining this to my mom as "yeah, it lets you skip onboarding when you're renting a new place" she would look at me funny.
The URL for this site ends in a .com but the price is listed in pounds. Where is this service offered?
I can't scroll back up; I can only move down the page. Make it so that the mouse scroll bar can trigger transitions?
I feel like 'services' and 'business model' should be swapped.
All in all, I really the business model.
1. You find a place
2. We rent it
3. We manage it
What I mean is to offer the step 3 as optional; charge for the step 2 a % (I believe standard for real state agencies is 1 month, just A/B test it) and change the step 3:
- Keep it as is but optional.
- Set it up so there are services the user can get and pay as they go.
- Make the rent payment through your platform and get a small % of that.
AFAIK the real problem is setting up initially, the management month-to-month for a long term stay is more of an occasional thing and making it 99L/month mandatory would limit the use a lot.
P.s. The user interface needs work for both web and mobile. Just keep it simple.
Edit: turns out it loads, just unusable on mobile.
What is the incentive for me to use your service by renting to what is essentially a middleman tenant management company? I understand that you are currently in the UK and may possibly be operating in other areas or have plans to do so. What advantages are there for a landlord to deal indirectly with tenants? What value does the middleman add on my end?
I currently screen tenants (been working on that today in fact) so that I can understand who they are, where they are in life and how they view the world. I interview each prospective tenant to help me understand the things about my property that may be problematic for them to use or maintain. At the end of the day I really just want to have tenants who appreciate the work that I put into preparing my property for them to use as a home during their tenancy. I need to have people that I can trust to help me maintain it and to keep it clean for the next guy.
Where does your service add value to my operation other than possibly in pre-screening tenants for me or in guaranteeing that I am paid on time? If you are functioning as a middleman involved in placing corporate personnel in suitable housing at company expense while they are on temporary assignment where do I benefit? What incentive does a tenant using your service have to use the rental property responsibly, avoiding damages and reporting maintenance issues in a timely manner so that the property owner can address small issues before they become major repair problems?
Assuming that the tenant reports a maintenance issue to your service - do you handle service and repair? Do you contact repair person? Do you describe the problem and schedule repair? Do you keep tenant in the loop concerning ingress and egress for repairs? Do you ensure that contractors and service personnel are paid so that there can be no liens placed on my property by unhappy contractors? Do you use your own vetted contractors and tradesmen or do you use mine? In my case, I use people who are very familiar with the property since they have been helping me maintain it for more than a decade.
I'd be interested in hearing your reply.
Also on a different note - I read all the text on the site that I could find. Like others I was initially confused by the phrasing in that I thought you may be offering some sort of tenant locator or screening process service for landlords. I figured it out though. I did find one thing that you should change that I haven't seen mentioned. On the "Our Services" page under the "Documentation" section there is a grammatical error that you should fix. The second line currently says: "Your provide: nothing." You should change that to read "You provide: nothing."
Good luck to you in your endeavors!