Founding Story: Community Tech - How Frustration at the Gate Sparked an Idea
Journey to Innovation: The Foundation of Community Tech
If you ever drive around the sunlit, bustling streets of South Florida, a common theme that you will notice is the ridiculous long lines stretching out from almost every residential community. It's surprising that, even in our technologically advanced age, this “simple” problem persists. This very frustration is what led our founder, Richard Dale, to do something about it. Richard, like many residents, experienced firsthand the inconvenience of having friends stuck in lengthy lines just to visit him.
Imagine this: you're excited to visit a friend or family member, only to be held up in a snaking queue of cars. On some days, these lines extended onto main roads, with over 40 cars idling, each waiting for their turn. The need for change was glaringly apparent.
Richard, a software engineer and a long-time resident of the Nautica community (Line pictured above), saw an opportunity. He wondered, could the technology that nearly everyone carries — their smartphones — be leveraged to solve this problem? The common painpoints of visitor lines became obvious:
Residents don’t always answer their phones
Visitors don’t always know the correct information at the guard gate
Language barriers can cause confusion
With these painpoints in mind, it became obvious what to build.
Richard partnered with his engineering friends to design a solution specifically for guard gated communities. The outcome was a user-friendly app based around QR codes—simple, secure, and effective. This app enables residents to generate digital "Keys" that can be sent to visitors to pre-authorize their entry. Guests simply scan their QR code at the gate, significantly reducing entry processing time.
Stepping Back to Leap Forward
Community Tech officially took off in 2019 with the development of our first Minimum Viable Product (MVP). However, as we all advanced in our careers, our attention was diverted from actively developing and marketing the Community Tech platform. Interestingly, this hiatus turned out to be a blessing in disguise. In 2019 we knew how to build a product, but we didn’t know how to launch and support a full enterprise business around it.
The break from active development allowed our team to become patented engineers, develop applications for Fortune 500 companies, implement and train over 100,000 users, all while expanding our expertise in the Homeowners Association (HOA) and Property Management space. This wealth of experience has been instrumental in preparing us to build a full-scale business around Community Tech.
Now, with deeper industry insights and far more advanced technical skills, we're more equipped than ever to offer a visitor management solution that not only meets but exceeds expectations. Building trust with users requires scalable software, well-defined implementation and training plans, and robust business operations.
Community Tech has also expanded past just our initial focus of easing visitor lines; it's a full blown suite of Visitor Management tools. With access control, incident management, user data bases, and analytics, this versatile tool can be used for 55+ communities with caregivers, office buildings, events, student housing and more.
As we continue to grow and adapt, our commitment to improving community living through technology remains steadfast.
The journey of Community Tech reflects a common entrepreneurial theme: sometimes, stepping back gives you the best perspective for a giant leap forward. Stay tuned as we reinvent community access and visitor management solutions, one QR code at a time.
