From Father's Real Estate Business to Multi-Family Marketing Platform: Building the "Anti-Apartments.com" Solution
Grady Newman spent 12 years building Resi from a garage startup to a $2 million multi-family marketing platform serving apartment complexes nationwide. Starting with manual website builds for 50 properties, he transformed a service business into a SaaS platform with 20 employees, all while refusing external funding.
Through perfectionism challenges, market timing lessons, and strategic team building, he created an alternative to traditional rental listing sites that helps properties build direct relationships with renters.
Follow Grady: LinkedIn | Resi Platform
Grady Newman's approach to building Resi defies conventional startup wisdom. After 12 years of grinding, he's built a $2 million business without taking a single dollar of external funding. His reasoning is deeply personal and strategic.
"I've been in this for over 10 years. No way I've given up a piece of this business to somebody else for the price of just a few dollars. I've sacrificed way too many late nights and way too much sweat equity that no one else could ever match. I'm much more inclined to be giving that to my team for their dedication than I would ever be to somebody that just brings money to the table."
This wasn't just stubbornness. Grady recognized that external funding should only accelerate time to market, but comes at a significant cost. After building something from nothing for over a decade, he views his equity as too valuable to trade for capital that only saves time.
Before building any software, Grady spent years manually creating and managing websites for 50+ apartment properties. Most founders would have built a platform immediately, but this manual approach became his secret weapon for understanding the market.
"I was taking the drone out and flying it around an empty lot to showcase what the views of every window would look like. I was DJing opening parties. I was interviewing local business owners to put together blog content for their websites, anything that I could."
By 2018, managing 50 websites became impossible: "I don't want to have to log into the back end of 50 different websites to make tiny tweaks anymore." This pain point led to building Resi's centralized platform, but only after years of understanding exactly what property managers needed.
Grady admits perfectionism nearly killed his business growth. He spent months crafting perfect business plans and beautiful branding while customers waited for solutions. His breakthrough came when he shifted focus from planning to paying customers.
"Perfect planning doesn't mean anything. In the end, real business comes down to somebody willing to pay you to do something." After his first energy efficiency business failed despite perfect planning, he pivoted to websites because "I found it a heck of a lot easier to sell somebody a website than guaranteed energy savings."
His advice to other founders: "Get out of my own head and get out of my own way. If you've spent some time trying to solve the problem, somebody else probably needs it to be solved too. You just need to find a way to get in front of them."
The Challenge: Building products without truly understanding customer needs leads to expensive pivots and failed launches.
Grady's Solution:
How to Apply: Instead of immediately building software, offer your solution as a service first. Handle 10-50 customers manually to understand their real needs, pain points, and workflows before investing in technology.
The Challenge: Raising external funding too early can dilute ownership when you haven't yet proven the full value of your business.
Grady's Solution:
How to Apply: Before seeking funding, calculate what percentage of your company you'd give up and multiply that by your potential exit value. Ask yourself if the capital truly accelerates growth enough to justify that cost.
Grady shared five battle-tested frameworks from his 12-year bootstrap journey. Get immediate access to the remaining frameworks:
✅ The Service-to-SaaS Transformation System
✅ The Market Timing Patience Strategy
✅ The Documentation-First Scaling Process
✅ The Founder-Led Sales Transition Method
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