Andrew Luong | Doorvest
ANDREW LUONG
Co-Founder & CEO of Doorvest, a modern, frictionless way to own income generating homes entirely online.
What Is Doorvest? Tell Us All About Your Company And Mission.
90% of the world's millionaires have attributed their wealth to real estate investing, yet homeownership rates have declined to all-time lows. This unfortunate reality is due to the time commitment and friction of the traditional process and the capital barrier due to rising home values, stagnant wages, and mounting student loan debt. Similar to other high-quality assets, everyday investors have been locked out of the #1 most favored investment asset class, real estate. This is why we built Doorvest.
Doorvest is the first end-to-end real estate investment platform with a mission to advance financial security for all via ownership of out-of-state rental properties.
Doorvest lives at the intersection between technology and real estate by providing an all-in-one solution, eliminating the most painful steps for the end customer. We mitigate risk from the customer's perspective by providing extensive renovations to deliver a new home. In addition, we've aligned our pricing with our customers to ensure we're both working towards the same goal: a long-term and successful investment property with a series of guarantees that fosters a stress-free and happy customer.
In traditional real estate investing, the end-to-end timeline is 6 months with at least 26 steps for a customer to comb through. Doorvest does it in 12 steps, half the time. We also emphasize pricing transparency. This means home prices are set to effectively remove the traditional bidding wars and simplify the process overall for old and new homeowners.
In the end, a customer receives a completely renovated home with a first-year rental and maintenance guarantee, an average cash-on-cash return of 6% while still capturing tax and equity advantages that generate passive income from day 1.
What Is Your Background? What Led You To Starting Your Own Company, And How Did You End Up In This Space.
Doorvest is an organic embodiment of many of our team's backgrounds. Personally, I grew up middle class. Never truly financially secure, I saw firsthand the downside of financial instability and how it jeopardized my family unit. As I grew up, those memories stuck with me and shaped my path working in sales and partnerships. This led me to real estate investing as an avenue to generate passive income and build a long-term nest egg. I was fortunate enough to build a small portfolio with a small starting capital, and friends around me began to take notice. There was never a singular platform that I could point them towards to make it easier for friends to get started, so Doorvest became the embodiment of that.
The name Doorvest derives from the idea of investors investing in front doors. I do remember a funny story about our name – When I first secured the domain for doorvest.com, someone offered me $500 to buy the domain. At the time, we had no traction and no customers, so I thought this was a funny way to make some extra bucks if the name didn't stick.
What Was The Fundraising Process Like For You? Tell Us About Your Investors And How You Use The Funds You’ve Raised.
Funding varies by round. We've raised close to $18M in equity to date and $25M in debt to fund the real estate part of the business. Most recently, we had our Series A round and that was focused on market expansion and bringing on more awesome team members to support the increased scope of the business. Ultimately, driving growth in the business and growth in new customers/ homeowners.
Who Are Your Co-Founders Or People Who You Work Very Closely With? How Do Their Skills Supplement Yours?
In the traditional sense, Justin Kasad is my Co-Founder and CTO of Doorvest. The company, however, went through multiple iterations, and every time was a new founding moment. As such, I see all of the team members as co-founders as they played a pivotal role in those times. Moving forward, I imagine having more founding moments as we track down the road to advancing financial security for all.
What Have Been Both Your Favorite And Least-liked Parts Of Your Entrepreneurial Journey? What Have Been Your Most Challenging And Most Exciting Moments For You And The Company?
This journey - with Doorvest - is the most rewarding thing I've ever attempted in my life. The ability to serve lots and lots of customers and build an excellent work culture that has folks excited to work every day are some of the things I find most rewarding. Seeing our progress so far gives me a lot of optimism for the future ahead. From a challenge standpoint, it depends on the chapter and what's happening worldwide. One of the biggest challenges I dealt with was our 1st round of funding, getting enough cash to get the business off the ground, and it took us 5 months fighting tooth and nail for every dollar. Many times, we didn't think we could get enough cash to get Doorvest off the ground. Recently, one of the most challenging times was ensuring the company is rowing in the same direction, and alignment takes a lot of work.
How Has Recent Housing Supply Shortages Impacted Business For Doorvest? How Has COVID-19 Impacted Doorvest Both In Terms Of Growth Plans As Well As Day-to-day Operations?
In short, this made all of our jobs harder. With the lack of supply, there will be more competition and rising home values that compress customer yield, which ultimately leads to fewer homes that attract customers than before. Such conditions pressed us to be more creative in acquiring homes that would guarantee attraction. We have lots of optimism ahead because the real estate market will soften at some point - meaning less competition and allowing us to offer our customers increasingly higher yields and investments. Our team has managed to combat these challenges by carrying out quick and consistent sprints that are sustainable for the long run.
How Has Growth Been Over The Last Year? Any New And Exciting Products Launching Soon?
In 2022 alone, we introduced a home matching algorithm called Doormatch. Doormatch takes customers' investment criteria and automatically matches their preferences to the ideal investment home. We also revamped the path to access Doorvest home profiles and how to easily reserve homes of interest. Most importantly, we expanded into 3 new markets: Atlanta, San Antonio, and recently, Oklahoma City. Be on the lookout for more expansions as we don't plan on stopping anytime soon.
Tell Us About Your Typical Workday Schedule. What Are Your Morning And Evening Routines? What Are Some Tips You Have For Staying Productive?
My day starts around 7 in the morning. Get up, meditate, drink some coffee or work out, hit the shower, and get ready for the work day. Work begins around 8:30-9 am and runs until 6:30 pm. Then I log off, grab dinner and rinse and repeat. This schedule varies by day as sometimes I'll do another hour or two in the evenings. But ultimately, my schedule is the same every day for 5 workdays. Fridays and Saturdays are my off days where I intentionally stay away from email and Slack. Initially, I deleted the email app on my phone because I found myself constantly opening emails and scrolling, and there's a mental stimulation that goes on even when I wasn't replying to those emails. On Sundays, I'll work another 2-4 hours to clean up my inbox and give myself a soft start to the week ahead. This routine has given me the right balance to stay energetic, and I believe energy is essential to perform at the highest levels for the long run consistently.
What Are The Top Qualities or Skills You Believe Entrepreneurs Need In Order To Be Successful? Also, What Advice Do You Have For Entrepreneurs Who Are Just Starting Out?
It's essential to have a strong understanding of your purpose and your "why." There are many ups and downs in startup environments, so having a clear Northstar that you are working towards is critical, especially in downtimes. Also, it's vital to ensure that you and your team are resilient and can handle questions like: How do we, as a team/ as a company, withstand outside conditions? How do we ensure we can consistently build despite changing, uncontrollable circumstances?
What Is One Thing About Building A Business You Did Not Know That You’ve Learned So Far Since Launching Doorvest?
It's very, very hard to build a business. There are tactical and psychological learnings, but when outside conditions constantly evolve, and you are working to bring a platform into existence that's never done before, it's inevitably really hard. Many team members would agree. The upside is the magnitude of how rewarding it feels to have brought something to life.
If You Can Have A One-Hour Meeting With Someone Famous Who Is Alive, Who Would It Be?
Tim Ferriss is the first that comes to mind. Tim Ferriss' books have fundamentally shaped how I view life, work, personal finances, and lifestyle design.
What Is Your Favorite Quote And Why Does It Resonate With You?
"Your problems never cease, they just change."
At first glance, the quote sounds morbid with your life having problems consistently. But if you take a step back, challenges/ struggles/ problems are inevitability human life. The disconnect here is people tend to think they live an unhappy life until they get a new shiny car, get a new job, make X amount of money, marry a beautiful spouse, etc., and all of their problems will go away. The reality is as soon as you arrive at those milestones, you will want and face new challenges, and enough will never be enough. The goal is to enjoy the journey vs. the destination.
Any Other Thoughts You Want To Share Relating To Current Events, The Economy, Political Climate, Or Any Other Topic?
We are very optimistic about the future despite turbulent market conditions. As mentioned earlier, we have successfully made progress despite many headwinds within a competitive housing market. As the market softens, it’s Doorvest’s chance to play offense and provide customers with more stability in their investments and income streams. And ultimately, build an increasingly bigger business.
What Does Success Mean To You?
Success means three things for me:
Success means driving the most meaningful impact for as many people as possible - how can Doorvest create more homeowners and increase the speed of homeownership? How can we partner with our customers as they build their investment portfolios, go on their financial journey to freedom, enter retirement, and live off these income streams?
Success is our team. How can Doorvest, as a company, also cultivate an environment where members can feel supported and grow?
Success is building a meaningful business that drives a solid financial return for all of our stakeholders (as we have quite a few investors in the company, and it was intentionally designed as such).
Andrew Luong’s Favorites Stack:
Books:
1. 4-Hour Week by Tim Ferriss. Topics mentioned in this book has shaped by life
2. Thinking In Bets by Annie Duke. Annie was a professional poker player, and she talks about the psychology of non-binary decisions. What this means is you can make the wrong decision and have the right outcome or you can make the right decision and make the right outcome. The importance here is being able to determine whether or not the decision made at the time was right or not.
3. Radical Candor by Kim Scott. This book talks about the importance of feedback loops and how to build trusts and deep relationships. Knowledge here can be taken into the workplace and be utilized in life as well.
Health & Fitness:
1. Ooler Chilipad. I invested a bit in this product- it’s a heating and cooling topper for my bed. It uses heat to help put you to sleep and cools down to bring your body temperature to an ideal temperature for an optimal sleep quality. Then it uses heat again to wake you up in the morning.
2. WHOOP. It tracks my sleep and daily HRV (heart rate variability), particularly what stress does to my HRV over time. It’s really interesting to learn what inputs led to these outputs. For example, don’t drink before you go to bed because they’ll mess up your recover and sleep quality.
3. Barry's Bootcamp. I do it once a week. It’s fun to do a high intensity interval training, especially when doing with our group at work.
Products:
1. Top of mind is Athletic Greens. I don’t usually like to eat a lot of vegetables so this is a great way to check off my daily vitamins and greens intake.
Newsletters & Podcasts:
2. The All-In Podcast (covers everything from politics to economy, startups to venture, etc.)
Upcoming Vacation Spots:
1. Up next, I would like to go back to Vietnam. I’ve been there before but it would be great to return with my girlfriend as both of our parents are from there. It’ll be really exciting to have this immersive experience together.
2. Perhaps sometime next year, I would like to visit Italy. There’s something about the country that feels so idyllic. Renting a convertible and driving the Southern Coast, or renting a boat and enjoy a beautiful day on the lake.
