Why I built HearthlyOS

I sit on our condo board, and for years running the building felt disjointed. We fired trash companies that tried to lock us into bad contracts. We went through a couple of management companies whose staff were stretched thin.

Good condo managers rarely stay managers for long. They move up or move on. Sometimes we had someone great, but when they went on vacation the handover was poor, and suddenly nobody knew who to call about the plumbing. We never had a reliable list of contractors we could call when something broke.

We often did not know what maintenance was due or what it cost, and our books were hard to find. A lot was managed on our behalf, and too often it was managed poorly.

For me it came down to forgotten tasks. Our front gate needed fixing, and the request kept slipping. Eventually a board member would remember and raise it with the management company, and they would get to it when they could. We had no way to see whether anyone had called a contractor, or whether the contractor had called back.

I think a board can run most of this itself with the right tool in the middle: one place that shows what is due, who is handling it and what it cost. That is what HearthlyOS is for. Over time it will also use AI where it helps, such as reading documents and drafting communications, with the board making every decision.

Robert, founder