What you are doing at Badi

I’m in charge of creating content for our social media platforms and transforming data into appealing design creatives.

What is it like for you to work at Badi?

Badi for me is a challenge. You really don’t know how your day is going to be until you open your computer. Everyday is different, you never get bored!

Badi has helped me grow personally and professionally during my career. It’s the best school for learning by doing. I’ve done crazy things that I’ve never learned in college!

Something you’re really passionate about?

Healthy lifestyle! I crave for healthy desserts! I can’t imagine my life without a sweet bite after every meal.

A day in your life

Morning

• I like to start my day early (6:30) with a stretching session and a nutritious breakfast.
• I check my emails and private messages to organize my agenda for the day.
• I take advantage of the energy I have in the mornings to develop all the graphic design assets we need.

Afternoon

• We have marketing weekly meetings to organise priorities and do brainstorming sessions to create new ideas.
• Check our social media channels to bring and suggest improvement.

Evening

• I go to the gym to do an hour session of strength training.
• My husband and I cook dinner together and watch an episode of a funny TV serie.

Your favourite task

Transforming simple data into graphics that communicate information in a condensed and highly visual way so it’s easier to understand.

How would you describe your team?

A very talented team always eager to find the best solution for any challenge.

Something crazy you did at Badi?

A rebranding to do in only 1 month with the team. It was stressful but an exciting challenge to take on! I’ve been working at Badi for over 5 years now and I know that other challenges are coming ahead :)

Badi is the best school for learning by doing was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are a multicultural team coming from different parts of the world with a lot of patience, empathy and desire to provide a 5 star service.

What you are doing at Badi

I coordinate the customer support team, making sure that we provide fast, accurate and reliable support to all our users.

What is it like for you to work at Badi?

Working at Badi is an enriching experience full of challenges and learnings. In the past 2 ½ years I have worked within different departments. From being part of the UK Sales team, to presently leading the Customer Support team, I’ve gained a lot of knowledge in the Real Estate industry. As we are still a start-up, I feel that I’m able to share my ideas and most importantly that they will be taken into consideration in our product developments. I really feel and embrace the Badi mission to become the new generation rental marketplace.

Something you’re really passionate about?

Football ! More specifically everything related to FC Barcelona. Secretly, I think it’s one if not the main reason why I am living in Barcelona.

A day in your life

Morning

· I Wake up at 7:30, stretch a little bit and take the dog out for a walk.
· I check the volume of customer support tickets generated overnight in order to identify and address possible bugs and/or issues with the platform.

· I help our team clean the list of tickets we have (mornings tend to be very hectic for our team)

Afternoon

· I have meetings with the head of CX and other departments involved with the Support Team. We discuss strategies, actions plans and any other relevant topics.

· I work towards improving our customer support team efficiency. The goal is to one day have 0 tickets to handle

Evening

· Doing Crossfit! Its my new preferable sport activity

· Having dinner or hanging out with my wife and dog

· Watching series, movies or of course football games

Your favourite task

Having meetings with my team. Now that we are mostly working from home it is the best time to see each other, share news, concerns, discuss different cases and overall share ideas that will help improve our service.

How would you describe your team?

We are a multicultural team coming from different parts of the world with a lot of patience, empathy and desire to provide a 5 star service.

Meet our Badi Team was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Big cities are often loud, fast-moving, anonymous and lonely if you don’t know anyone. According to data from the British Red Cross and Co-Op, nine million people in the UK reported that they often felt lonely, and struggled to make lasting connections with others. This sentiment has exacerbated in lockdown, with people being confined to the company (or lack thereof) of those in our own homes.

Living conditions are one of the main contributors to the feeling of loneliness, and in the pandemic, people have become increasingly reliant on their housemates for social interaction and entertainment, highlighting the rising trend of co-living.

What does co-living look like?

Co-living suggests a new, “hip” term for the well-known shared apartment. But there is more to its meaning than that: living and working with like-minded people with the least possible organisational effort. For those interested, you can move in from the time of booking, and the rooms are usually rented fully furnished, which helps to simplify the moving process.

Co-living can be seen as an “all inclusive” model for the tenant, whereby the provider usually takes care of incidents, repair costs and the internet. A regular cleaning service is also included in many co-living apartments, allowing tenants to focus on getting to know their new flatmates without worrying about the day-to-day issues that they could easily fall out over.

An ever-increasing demand for new rental solutions in urban areas

The demands of young professionals, the self-employed or remote workers are transforming the global real estate market and the way we live together. Many flat-share or co-living providers now offer a platform for people who want to live their own life, but still value community as an essential contributor to personal well-being.

In hectic everyday life, few people manage to find the time to socialise regularly, with a quarter of people saying they find it difficult to make new friends. Co-living provides the perfect solution, striking the balance between socialising and remaining independent.

In addition to economic uncertainty, the additional pressure caused by working from home is a major contributor to psychological stress. This is compounded further by social distancing measures which can lead to social isolation. It is striking that almost all population groups, regardless of age, reported a comparable increase in loneliness.

According to a survey carried out by the Mental Health Foundation, feelings of loneliness increased by 14% during lockdown among adults in the UK, making the need for co-living more vital than ever before in order to counteract the impact of long-term loneliness on mental health.

Better together: why co-living is needed to combat loneliness

Co-living enables tenants to build a friendship with others with whom they share a home. In fact, those who live with others reported being happier during lockdown.

Nearly three-quarters (73%) of Badi users found that sharing a flat drastically improved their experience during lockdown, while more than half (55%) of Badi users decided to stay with their flatmates during the pandemic. Building a community at home is a key component that many tenants are looking for today when renting — and co-living is the solution.

Written by Ezequiel Cura, VP of Engineering at Badi.

Engineering your start-up for success in lockdown — and beyond

The ‘new normal’ is now ubiquitous with the changing world that we live and work in. Many start-ups in particular have experienced significant challenges.

Economic uncertainty has caused some investors to be more cautious, which has meant some start-ups found it difficult to secure resources at the start of lockdown. In a bid to offer greater support, the government recently announced a new £500 million fund for start-ups.

Now more than ever, it’s critical for start-ups to future proof against the uncertain and likely challenging business climate to come over the next few months, and possibly years.

In the start-up circuit, we’ve had to make adjustments and changes at incredible pace to how we operate our business and the ways that we work together remotely.

From an engineering perspective, many projects have been scrapped or revamped to reflect both a drop in demand and the current business climate. We’ve been looking at some of the practical steps that engineering and product teams could be taking to help to set their start-up for success in today’s ‘new normal’, but also in the future.

Applying lessons learned from the past to engineer a better future

When thinking about this, we reflect on the lessons learned during the economic crisis in the early 2000s.

Entrepreneur Peter Thiel’s iconic work, ‘From Zero to One’ provides an informative look into our tech industry and also a roadmap that can help engineering and tech teams determine where to focus their efforts to make a positive impact on the business. .

According to the book, the four characteristics that any dominant company should have, include economies of scale, intellectual property, network effects and branding. The crisis has crippled if not fundamentally levelled these characteristics.

Economies of scale have vanished for most industries. Businesses that are dependent or software-based have been less impacted. Conversely, the effects on established companies like Uber and Airbnb have been immense as people are restricting their movements during lockdown, meaning that travel demand has dropped off a cliff.

If efficiency used to be your company’s competitive advantage, lockdown totally changed the fundamental rules of engagement. Your business structure is now your biggest liability, as it is a fixed cost.

How can this be mitigated? While the ‘new normal’ certainly has impacted projects and plans for a majority of businesses, there are still opportunities for engineering and tech teams to make a lasting impact on products and services that are needed now, but that also will be critical after the pandemic.

Our team has implemented a three-step process to overcome challenges posed by the pandemic — wait and perfect, embrace and change course. Wait and perfect, as well as embrace can be adopted quite quickly, but changing course requires a total shift in the business, not just across a handful of tech teams.

Deploying phase one — wait and perfect

The most immediate reaction across teams is to wait and see how the situation will evolve, given that “this is rare and will go away”. However, the decision to keep some part of your teams working across product excellence or continue with their usual projects could be a mistake.

This is a pitfall that could lead to an ostrich algorithm approach, meaning that teams avoid problems that could occur in super unlikely scenarios. If you asked me six months ago, I would have said a global pandemic would have been one such scenario.

This approach should shift slightly to wait and perfect. You are likely missing opportunities to explore new solutions and products. And, if the situation remains the same for longer than anticipated, the business could experience serious challenges in a couple of months.

Think about the key parts of your platform or business that are needed now more than ever. Let your users and customers help you determine how you can best support their changing needs. At Badi, we evaluated the parts of our platform that were vital to users during lockdown and we focused on improving their user experience.

At the same time, we listened to our users and began to anticipate what features they’ll need most once lockdown is lifted — for example, Badi’s search engine and platform curation. After three months of lockdown, more users will likely be looking to move — so we want to optimise their search to show them the best listings. At the same time, we want the booking process to be seamless — ensuring users can quickly, securely and easily book a room on Badi.

We actually invested more time in both of these areas so that we can provide the best experience to our users, even though we wouldn’t see a measurable impact anytime soon. For us, the key question we asked ourselves was — who is going to still need our help the most after lockdown?

By asking ourselves this question as we were progressing new features and projects. It helped our team to focus on what will matter most to our users and most importantly, ultimately have the biggest positive impact for our business long-term.

Embrace the ‘new reality’ — it will help to guide new innovations and solutions

Arguably, embrace is actually the most challenging strategy to adopt as a business. It’s critical to let go of all pre-Covid 19 preconceptions and to focus on a new reality.

For experienced engineers, in particular, this is a step forward from usual practice, thinking of scalability and maintainability. Usually when planning a long term project engineers consider potential issues, changes in technology, new requirements, different global policies and features, among others.

As a result, they usually propose engineering designs that aren’t necessarily optimal in the short term, but they’re reliable in the long run. With this in mind, it’s critical to pose the questions to the team: what will our users need now? And how will these products or features also make sense in a post-lockdown world?

Changing course — provides new challenges, but also opportunities

While this is certainly easier said than done, now is the time to assume sunken costs due to unforeseen circumstances. Many projects will need to be shelved or completely abandoned at this time. When considering what projects to prioritise, we asked our engineering team — ‘Would we ever come back to this project?’

If the answer was ‘when things are back to normal’, it’s likely time to table this initiative. It’s incredibly difficult to predict when normalcy will resume for businesses and consumers and what that normalcy will look like.

What’s next? A focus on embracing and channeling your start-up’s purpose

Lockdown has been an opportunity for many of us to strengthen connections with our communities — at work and at home. Our focus is on building a community of global citizens who believe that finding their place in life is just as important as finding their place to live.

When thinking about how to re-centre and drive momentum for your start-up, consider what your business’s purpose is and how you can re-energise efforts to deliver on your start-up’s purpose.

Ask the business ‘how can we harness this opportunity?’. For Badi, we’re focusing on shared experiences. As a room rental start-up, we believe that experiences are more valuable when shared with others. Our users echo this sentiment as nearly two-thirds (60%) found living together with others during lockdown to be positive.

This focus is enabling us to deliver new products and services at pace that will make a positive impact for our users now but also in the future. While what’s to come is uncertain, channeling your start-up’s purpose will enable you to engineer new solutions and products that will positively impact the business.

Reengineering teams requires a total mindset shift. Our job is to take on new challenges and identify opportunities as a business. One of my favourite books, Trillion Dollar Coach sums up this approach perfectly — it’s “not about what happened and who’s to blame, but what are we going to do about it?”

Written by Ezequiel Cura, VP of Engineering at Badi.

Roughly two months ago, our lives were collectively turned upside down. What was initially described as “just another type of flu” quickly became a global enemy we greatly fear and know little about. Our collective response to the global pandemic has gone through many stages, from disbelief, to alarm, resistance, and ultimately exhaustion. We started off determined to stay productive in the face of adversity, but as time goes by, we’re getting tired, and we realise that this is bigger than we thought.

What does this mean for our psyche? Leticia Castro, a certified psychologist and current VP of People at Badi, answers some of the questions we have probably asked ourselves over the course of the past few months. The hope is that a raw look at what troubles us and an honest conversation about it can bring us one step closer to a place of emotional rest and growth.

We’ll be discussing a feeling of grief we may be experiencing, how to find room for joy and dreams amidst uncertainty and threat, and why developing psychological resilience may be the answer to many of our present doubts and fears.

At the beginning of all of this, when we entered the lockdown, there seemed to be a certain widespread determination to be hyper-productive and make the most of this newfound time on our hands. Home exercise routines, healthy recipes, online learning… The internet is replete with advice on “how to do confinement the right way”. Is this the right way? Or rather, is there a right way?

The only “right way” to cope with any uncertain times is your way. This is such an exceptional experience for everybody, no one could possibly prepare for it.

We couldn’t even imagine something like this would ever happen. So when we found ourselves in this new and unfamiliar situation, we felt the need to control our emotional response to it by controlling our time, the only thing within our area of influence.But it is important to remember that there is no one right way to spend your time, especially not during a crisis.

You’re not worse at coping if you don’t try every recipe in your grandma’s cookbook or you don’t develop that sixpack promised by the free fitness programme you signed up for.

The right way is whatever it is that allows you to maintain a balanced state of mind, whether it is taking a nap or writing a book.

So rather than looking outside at what others are doing, we should try to listen to our body and our mind for what they need. That’s where we will find the right way.

As confinement measures are slowly lifted and we start to venture outside, the new social pressure seems to be on getting up before dawn, going for a run, and admiring the sunrise from a nearby park. But what if we’re not feeling the “carpe diem”? What if going outside into the world equipped with a surgical mask is still too strong of a reminder that it is not, and perhaps never will be, the world we knew only a few months ago?

There’s bound to be a lot of mixed feelings as we enter this new phase of slowly getting back to “normal”. But as much as we want it to, we know that life won’t actually be “normal” for quite some time. There won’t be a day when we just go out, have a drink with a bunch of friends, laugh and hug, and celebrate that it’s all over. That’s not going to happen, things will look different for a while, so we need to adapt to this new normal. And this is, once again, where we all differ in terms of how we do that.

The anxiety and stress we may feel when going out for the first time after a long period of confinement are perfectly normal. Over the past two months we have learnt that home means safety, so naturally, now that we venture outside again, fears arise, especially as we feel that the situation out there hasn’t really changed much, the virus has not disappeared.

But I think it’s important to learn to reconnect with the outdoors. There is a healthy and safe environment out there, but we first need to accept that it’s going to be a new experience. Similarly to when you move to a new city and find yourself in an unfamiliar neighbourhood surrounded by people you don’t know. If you compare it to your hometown and expect it to be the same, you will suffer anxiety and disappointment. But if you take it as a totally new experience (which it is), you will be able to discover it, learn about it, adapt to it, and maybe eventually get to really enjoy it.

So don’t feel pressured to go outside because that’s “what we do now”, but do give yourself the opportunity to explore the new world out there, at your own pace. Don’t compare it to how it was before the confinement, practise curiosity and compassion — towards the world, and towards yourself.

Is it an exaggeration to say that some of the feelings we’re experiencing are very similar to grief? Grief over a life that no longer is, at least not for the foreseeable future.

Absolutely not. Grief is a feeling we experience in more ways than we’re aware of, and this is certainly one of them. We know that “the new normal” will be a lot different to how we lived only two months ago. How we interact with other people, the new routines we’ll have to incorporate into our daily lives, new ways of working… Nothing is going to be the same, at least not for the foreseeable future, so it’s only natural that we feel that sense of loss. It is important to acknowledge this reality and this feeling in order to be able to process them and move on.

But what’s exceptional in this situation is that we’re not experiencing this sense of loss and grief alone. Literally all of humanity is going through the same thing, and this feeling of a shared experience can help us. Just knowing that we’re not alone is sometimes all we need.

What do we do about this uncomfortable feeling? Especially if it’s accompanied by guilt for having the feeling in the first place (the mental script usually goes along the lines of “I have a roof over my head, my family is safe and healthy, I shouldn’t feel sad!”).

First of all, accept that it’s absolutely normal to feel sadness in this extraordinary situation. For most of us, being faced with this global health crisis has meant shifting our focus from the top of Maslow’s pyramid of needs to the very bottom. Where a few months ago our problems and challenges revolved around self-actualisation or love and belonging, we’re now concerned about some of the more basic needs, such as security and safety. This is a big shift, no one is prepared to lose their sense of wellbeing overnight. So even when our basic needs (such as food and shelter) are met, we’ll still feel this sense of loss, and this is where your uncomfortable feelings stem from.

So my advice here is to turn the guilt into gratitude. Gratitude will help you focus on what you already have, rather than what you’ll need to rebuild or regain.

Allow yourself to feel sad for the loss, but also be grateful for what’s still there, and be ready to recover what you’ve lost.

A sense of threat, danger, and uncertainty are the most likely causes of anxiety and stress right now. How can we best deal with them? Not necessarily resist them, but find a way not to be consumed by them?

That is a great question, and although I’m nowhere near an expert on the complex subject of anxiety, I find that some of these tips may help:

• Try to recognise where the anxiety comes from. This can be very difficult, but if we take the time to observe ourselves and our thoughts and feelings, we could start to spot patterns. We could notice that anxiety tends to arise from specific things, like watching TV, talking to a particular person, wondering what will happen with our jobs… Just recognising each source of anxiety is a crucial first step to overcoming it.
• Once you know what causes your anxiety, evaluate whether this is something you can control or not. Letting go of situations we cannot control and focusing our efforts on behaviours that can make a difference will help us feel safer and calmer. For example, you can’t control the content of the news, but you are in control of how much of it you consume, so that’s where you should act.
• It is also important to put our fears and anxieties into words. We fear the unknown, and there’s plenty of it around us at the moment. These are unprecedented times so we’re afraid because we don’t know what to expect. But we should try to articulate our fears — what is it that I am afraid of? Getting infected by the virus? Losing my job? When we name our fears, we take away some of their power, because we start to get to know them. And then we can start to think of what to do to either prevent those things from happening or how to deal with them if they do. This gives us a sense of control, and consequently eases the anxiety caused by the fear.
• And lastly, take some time just for yourself. Even if you’re a parent or you care for another family member — put your oxygen mask first. Remember or learn what small pleasures you enjoy, and allow yourself the space and the time to experience them. This is a conscious effort, but a very important one if we want to maintain our wellbeing and also be able to help others.

When the world around us changes so drastically and so quickly, and it leaves this big question mark about when and if “things are going to go back to normal”, it’s easy to feel stuck. It’s as if somebody has pressed “pause” on our lives and we’re waiting for them to click the “resume” button. But this is our job, isn’t it? How do we do that?

This is what we call psychological resilience. It’s the ability to adapt well to adversity or threat, and to bounce back from challenging experiences. Every individual has the power to develop resilience that will help them recover from difficult situations, both physically and mentally.

Building resilience is a result of intentional practise, just like exercising your muscles — the more you practise, the stronger you become.

Focusing on connections with other people, prioritising your wellness, developing healthy thinking habits, and finding a sense of purpose and meaning are some of the core elements of building psychological resilience. I invite you to learn more about it, it’s a very powerful tool to possess.

Focusing on the present and taking it one day at a time is a good coping strategy, it helps us avoid unproductive worrying or even panicking about the future which is still very uncertain. But an important part of what makes us human is the ability to dream and look ahead into the future. How can we still dream while facing so much uncertainty and an inevitable sense of threat?

As humans, we are motivated and pulled forward by a sense of purpose. It’s what gives meaning to our existence and what consequently leads to what we call happiness. We’ve just seen how aligning our thoughts and actions with a purposeful goal helps us build psychological resilience, a powerful tool to have in the face of adversity.

So we shouldn’t give up or hit “pause” on our dreams, hopes, and plans right now. But to avoid a feeling of frustration, we do need to adapt them to the new reality. If we adjust our expectations and desired outcomes, we’ll still be able to make progress and reach milestones, which is what gives us that invigorating sense of accomplishment.

Let’s discuss confinement a bit more, because we’re bound to continue spending more time at home than what we’re used to. It can become challenging if you’re confined with somebody whose way of coping is widely opposite to yours, especially if it’s a partner who’s inevitably an intimate part of your life as well. Frictions can occur. How can we best colive in such situations?

I think that the key to any healthy relationship, regardless of external circumstances, is mutual respect and personal space. So allowing everybody in your household, yourself included, a space and a time to be on their own, is very important. When we respect each other’s needs and the different pace at which we deal with difficulties, we often find that the bond we build when we do spend time together is much stronger. Respecting each other’s needs without judgement is crucial for successful coliving at any time, and especially now.

Some studies show that responding to a crisis collectively helps us process stress more successfully and come out stronger. How can we “tend and befriend” at a time where social distancing is what’s keeping us safe?

Staying connected to others in a crisis helps foster empathy and compassion, so it is important to keep this connection with other people. Luckily, we’re as prepared as ever to stay in touch with our friends and family regardless of where they are, thanks to our technology and how accessible it is. Some people may find that they’re even socialising more than ever. Yes, it’s not the same as seeing your best friend in person and giving them a big hug, but this is similar to what we discussed earlier, about not comparing things to how they used to be.

Building your connections to others is another crucial element to developing psychological resilience, as well. So don’t succumb to isolation, use technology to your advantage, find online activities and groups of people that keep you most engaged, and work on maintaining those relationships.

Sharing our thoughts and feelings with others in the same circumstances helps us see things from a different perspective and reminds us that we’re not alone.

Any final advice?

We are all in this together, but the paths we use to navigate this situation are highly personal and unique. So use this time to learn about yourself and how you respond to stress. Resilience is forged through exposure to challenging circumstances, so take all learnings from this exceptional time as an invaluable investment into a stronger and happier you.

Dealing with uncertainty in the face of a global pandemic was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My adventure as a Head of Customer Experience at Badi started back in April 2018.

The opportunity to join this thrilling project came together with the exciting and challenging task of building a team from scratch, which meant hiring and training employees, selecting the software to use, and establishing performance metrics. All of it among many other tasks that I was doing for the very first time.

Two years later, I can safely say that Badi boasts a highly successful Customer Experience department. Building it wasn’t an easy thing to do, but it was one of the most pleasurable moments of my career, and one I’m most proud of.

What I’m sharing here is what I learned during that time, including the ideas and best practices that helped me build that great team.

Plan ahead

Before jumping into hiring, it is important to understand the needs of the business and plan your team strategy accordingly:

• Understand where your team stands within the organisation and how it relates to other departments. Think of how your team can support other teams, where your team would depend on others, and what expectations others will have from your people. That way, you will always be prepared to deliver what is needed, and more.
• Decide on the core roles you will need to fill in order to start your team. The ability to multitask would be a must-have skill for your first hires, as the roles won’t necessarily be specialised until the team or volumes of work are large enough.
• Always have a clear idea of where you want your team to go and what you want to achieve, and start thinking from the very beginning what you need in order to take it there. Sketch out an ideal team structure, identifying whether each position would be essential or a nice-to-have, and keep this structure always in mind (or in Google docs). This will help you be clear on the most immediate tasks to perform.
• As for the tools, start with spreadsheets and software other teams are already using. This will allow you to identify and fully understand your team’s needs before you start looking for the perfect piece of software. When you choose a tool, make sure it’s something you can use for at least a few years. It is important to think ahead and avoid wasting time implementing new tools too often and investing time in training your team to use them.

Hire the right candidates

There are many different things to take in consideration when building a team and choosing the right candidates, and the following would be some of the most important ones.

• Write a clear job description, outlining the main responsibilities and minimum requirements for the role, so that you have a very clear understanding of which skills you’re looking for. I have found that asking candidates to record short videos of themselves as part of their application works really well for positions with many applicants. Just like group interviews, it helps you filter out candidates much faster.
• Trust your gut feeling, but be careful with bias. It is highly recommended that you choose people for their skills, knowledge, team fit, and motivation, and not only because they match with your own personality or interests.
• Hire people who show potential and who are motivated by the project. It doesn’t matter if they aren’t always experts in the field, the enthusiasm for the project is a must-have. Passion and determination are sometimes the best qualities for certain roles.
• Build a team of mixed personalities and different skills, so that people can share ideas and learn from each other. Everybody should be a good fit for the team, of course, but avoid building a team of people who work and think in a very similar way.

Develop team members

While growing the team, it is essential to focus on the people, their career growth and well-being within the company.

• Establish clear objectives or other ways of measuring their performance, as this will give them achievable goals to work towards. Share these numbers with each member of the team weekly, monthly, and quarterly, for greater visibility. Use this time to have individual coaching sessions with them as well.
• Take what people are most interested in and allow them to become experts in those areas. Use your regular one-to-ones to listen to your people and discover what they are good at and what they don’t like. Then slowly start to assign them tasks based on that and gradually turn them into specialists who focus 100% on what they’re good at and interested in.
• Put together a development plan to help them reach their career goals and develop within the organisation. You will need to be on top of it and continually guide them on the skills and competencies they need to develop in order to reach the next step.
• Believe in them. Trust their suggestions and ideas, let them put them into practice, and they will surprise you!
• Challenge them whenever you get the chance. This will motivate your people and it will help you figure out what they are good at.

Continue growing

Both as a leader of a team and as a professional, I have identified certain things that are very important to bear in mind when growing a team successfully.

• In the beginning, you will have to be responsible for almost everything, but this is not how things are going to be forever, and they shouldn’t. Delegate a part of your responsibilities to other members of your team — you will gain a new point of view and will even learn a better way of doing things!
• Lead by example. Always. If you want them to do something, you have to do it first. And yes, this includes your behaviour.
• Be in control but don’t micromanage. One of your responsibilities is to know everything that is going on in your department, but this does not mean you should be overbearing. Give them space to also learn from their mistakes.
• Count on your team for constructive feedback, and work on improving and getting better. It is never easy for us to hear what we are not good at, but it is definitely worth it! Your team knows your weak points better than anyone, so they are the ones who can help you grow together in the same direction.

In summary, building a team is no mean feat, and I would be lying if I told you that there aren’t many ups and downs and many difficult decisions to make in order to improve and continue growing. But at least in my case, it has been a unique opportunity to learn from my mistakes and it continues to push me to be better in my role every single day.

Written by Mamen Fernandez Albaladejo, Head of Customer Experience at Badi.

The journey from a Project Manager to a Product Manager

I will always remember my first interview at Badi. The Management team told me “We aren’t sure about the difference between a Project Manager and a Product Manager but all we need is a person that helps us get things done.” And this is when I came in.

Badi was at an early stage with a workforce of around 20 people, 10 of them developers, 3 designers, a couple of data scientists and the founders.

Back then, the stakeholders were super involved in the product definition and pushing hard to deliver complete features. Since the functionalities were predefined and designed according to what we thought was “the right thing to do”, there was no “need” to validate them and all company energy was focused on shipping.

THE CONCEPT OF PRODUCT

At that time, the concept of “Product” was understood as an execution and process improvement profile. All of the tech team, including me, spent several months defining and iterating the full development lifecycle, from the branching and releasing strategy to what Agile development meant to us. Those months were all about setting up our playground rules while developing what stakeholders thought were our key features, designing, defining and testing user stories and trying to have more than a couple of days of visibility on what’s coming next.

As crazy as it might sound, the Product Roadmap was a black hole at that time. We were pivoting between what was needed/what was broken with almost no data apart for the number of users that was (amazingly for us) constantly growing. Functionalities were prioritised based on the latest requests and user needs identified and literally taken from user reviews. We didn’t have the time to analyse, research or iterate. We needed to move super fast.

One year later, the development and data team expanded, about 15 people joined the boat. We realised that we couldn’t continue to work all together in the same functionalities, so we decided to transition to a squad structure and this is when we entered in an area of “big evolution”.

With two full autonomous squads, brand new data profiles and PO’s, we were ready to transition from a feature squad to the much wanted “Product squads”.

Although our first 3 months roadmap was still based on stakeholder’s requests — the solution of these was no longer predefined. Developers, UI/ UX designers, and data experts now had the last call on the “How”. (spoiler: tracking came into place).

Although the push for a fast development still came up some time, we succeeded in putting the required tracking in place and MVP’s started to sound familiar and well perceived internally. We were no longer blind! After all, the first data visualizations came into place and as PO’s, it became easier to set up priorities. We were backed up by metrics and quantitative insights that allowed us to spread the word on how our users were acting.

Furthermore, this helped us start thinking in terms ROI, impact, effort… thinking about the goals we wanted to achieve rather than the functionalities we used to be requested to ship. This is how the product mindset started spreading around, slow but steady.

LEARNINGS AND IMPLEMENTATION

Six more months had passed but we had defined the 3 KPI’s we wanted to impact, set OKR’s as company goals and even defined our North Star Metric.

We developed a product methodology and started following the so called Product lifecycle.

1. Prioritize

With the experience of 3 more PO’s coming into stage, a brand new User Research, and clear definition of what we wanted to achieve based on our brand new OKR’s, we were ready to set priorities based on impact analysis. The product team was not only responsible for the deliveries but mainly for the value delivered.

1. Validate

Product focused on getting valuable insights from our users and stakeholders, validating them with the corresponding data and early and leaner implementations. MVP’s mindset was set as part of our DNA and with the corresponding A/B test setup, we never again considered a hypothesis that has not been proved.

Once we are certain we have understood our users, squads are the owners of the solution.

1. Iterate

Once the early validation shows us the light, we take the learnings, we iterate on them and we improve the solution further.

And this is how, after two years of adventure, I’ve transitioned from being a Project Manager (getting things done) to a Product Manager (getting the right things done). I can see we are now one step closer to a product-centered organization, with a clearer idea of what product management means and the real value of a Product Manager.

However, each day is still a challenge and as moving fast implies breaking things, Badi and I will keep on trying, breaking, learning and iterating further. I’ll keep you posted!

Btw, To answer these and other challenges, we want to build an audacious team of Product members with the grit to put our users first, join us!

Written by Elena Gonzalez

FLASHBACK TO OCTOBER 2017 was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Urbanization on The Rise

The cities of the future will be bigger, smarter, and more sustainable. It’s no surprise they’ll be bigger, as today, there are over 4 billion people around the world and more than half the global population lives in major cities. In June, the latest projections of world population growth the planet will add another 2 billion people over the next 30 years across the world and the U.N. predicts the world will have 10 new megacities by 2030. Our global economic engine relies on urban living, too — as more than 80% of the global GDP is generated in cities. Naturally we tend to romanticize the past and future, as in the 1950’s it was predicted that we’d have nuclear reactors in our homes and flying cars to zip us around town. Yet as we’ve moved from an agrarian society to industrial and now informational, we’ve seen the strains that change put on society. The next 20 years will see more growth, which means more strain, and thus sustainability will become a cornerstone of future urban development.

Sustainability: The most important pillar for city living in the future

Urbanization can contribute to sustainable growth if managed well by increasing productivity, allowing innovation and new ideas to emerge. What does that mean? Not so much a radical rethinking of how we use resources, but a more efficient deployment of resources overall. It will take government, business, and citizens working together to achieve these efficiencies. The fact remains that to sustain 3 billion new lives, food and energy production will need to increase dramatically — sustainability will be the single most important pillar that the future of cities will be built upon. So what does this look like?

In 2040, new buildings will be made of sustainable, easily degradable materials and likely built with the assistance of a variety of robots. More buildings will become hybrid work+live as remote work becomes more mainstream. As energy needs will increase, solar panels will be a standard part of all future buildings, and added in other spaces like parks in creative ways. More efficient buildings and living spaces will likely also produce more green spaces, reservations, parks, outdoor recreation areas, like New York’s Highline, a repurposed train line that is now a greenspace within the city.

Continued urbanization should be seen as a challenge and an opportunity for innovation. With urbanization on the rise, it puts extra pressure on our climate, health, and infrastructure. Yet it is truly a major opportunity for change that could sustain growth well beyond 2040. For example, food supplies are expected to be strained with additional populations and the logistics of feeding the world’s megacities are increasingly complex. Future buildings can incorporate small farms and greenspaces within them, reducing pollution and costs while providing necessary supply for the increased demand. It won’t be the death of rural farming, but a necessary complement.

Connected Living

Another trend that’s expected to get better: Smart homes. Currently, the smart home market is highly fragmented. It’s not dissimilar to the condition of the computer industry in the mid-to-late 70’s, when each manufacturer had its proprietary operating system and language. A startup called Microsoft realized that a common system would increase efficiency, and it successfully sold DOS to a number of clients. Even Apple licensed a version of BASIC for its Apple II series computers. BASIC worked across systems like the Commodore 64, TRS-80, and others. What’s needed today will be standard tomorrow, and that’s a standard across smart home devices. Google and Apple and other industry giants have agreed that there needs to be a commonality between systems or customers will simply give up over time, or switch ecosystems entirely.

By 2040, the smart home market will hit the mainstream because these wrinkles will largely be ironed out and the “connected home” will be as standard as a home with electricity. Smart locks, temperature control, automatic lighting, and smart refrigerators become the new UI for food purchasing. Automatic cleaning systems will be more common, and you won’t have to manually initiate your robotic vacuums. However, space will also be at a premium. Rooms will get smaller as spaces become more scarce, this could reimagine how we utilize and define “space,” “personal space,” and “communal space.” The need to fit more people in a given area will require innovations in architecture and design, likely shifting personal spaces to smaller form factors and increasing the size of communal spaces.

Hyper Transportation

Once you leave your “space” you’ll find numerous transportation options that should be faster than what we routinely see today. Cars, planes, even trains will seem slow by comparison if governments invest in the infrastructure for “hyperloops,” moving people between cities in pods or capsules traveling on magnetized tracks in vacuum tubes running above or below ground. These are more affordable, much more convenient and far less stressful than many forms of existing travel. They would also bring jobs and economic benefits to linked cities, perhaps even altering when and why people travel. Someone could more easily live in one city and work in another, for example. Because hyperloop vehicles will travel in tubes, weather delays would be avoided, increasing productivity even more.

Cars are expected to change dramatically in the next 20 years, and we’re just now seeing the beginning of some important trends. In particular, fossil fuel-based vehicles will be phased out for electric vehicles. Roads may even become charging pads and serve the same purpose as train tracks, with special lanes dedicated to self-driving cars that link up like a train and use LIDAR and other technologies to keep passengers safe. In fact, people may not even own a car or drive it as public transportation will also become obsolete once autonomous public transportation becomes a cheaper and more pleasant option. This will result in less congestion, reduced fumes, more sidewalks, bike lanes or hover pads, plus more green space as fewer cars could be on the roads. It’s possible that only self-driving, zero-emissions vehicles will be allowed to drive on the main roads, especially in densely populated urban centers.

Co-Living and Communal spaces

Because of population growth co-living and communal spaces are expected to grow in popularity. We’re seeing this trend ramping up in earnest recently, as in Los Angeles and San Francisco residents can rent a pod with Podshare which gives them a bed in a bunk, a locker, access to Wi-Fi and some staple foods and toiletries. There are several models of communal compounds developing, however, ranging from the “boarding house” model from the late 19th century to these micro-living pods. Communal living goes back to before recorded history, as American Indian tribes frequently shared a large building for meetings, food preparation, and other activities that could be done by the community. We’re already seeing communal spaces pop up in major cities, sometimes built around affinity groups like recent college graduates or new citizens to the city.

Property technology, or prop-tech, will further streamline a variety of real estate functions like buying and selling homes, or finding roommates and rentals. Blockchain, a universal digital ledger, may also play an important role in real estate innovation. Ethereum blockchain could work as the base of a platform that acts as a single digital location for buyers, sellers, and their agents to transfer properties via smart contracts. Virtual reality would allow residents to tour spaces without actually visiting them. And artificial intelligence could help match people with properties based on a wide variety of factors beyond mere credit scores.

Big data will create opportunities for deeper knowledge. Commercial real estate developers and owners need information on how their properties are performing on a variety of levels. What if rental rates were tied to energy efficiency, for example? This would only be possible when utility meters have an API, and that data becomes accessible. In the future, this data will be gathered, tabulated, and turned into actionable insights. Buildings can also use data gathered through smart technology to automatically adjust to the number of people in the building, the weather, and other factors that maximize tenant comfort while minimizing energy costs. The combination of technologies that can talk to each other, like HVAC units and elevators, to data-driven decisions powered by AI will utterly transform the day-to-day experiences of those living in “smart spaces.”

Smart-er Cities

Meanwhile, cities are getting smarter as well. Tech we see in homes and buildings are spreading into public life, with smarter street lights using efficient LED lights and intelligent traffic light systems that can talk to cars and other elements of infrastructure, like trash trucks and emergency services. Many companies are starting this new way of life as we move into 2020, with giants like Siemens and GE and others selling cities on connected solutions. Conveniences will abound, like tap-and-pay systems that are likely to become ubiquitous. Public WiFI and 5G technologies will provide connections to citizens throughout the city, although planners are already bracing for the scaling that will be required as populations increase. The idea of a “smart city” isn’t new, but it’s only now that the tech is catching up to the vision. Self-driving cars will rely on this infrastructure, so it’s not surprising that companies like Toyota are leading the way in innovation. With its Woven City, the company is building a 175-acre smart city at the base of Japan’s Mount Fuji, about 62 miles from Tokyo. The company announced earlier this month at CES, the biggest tech trade show of the year, and says 2,000 Toyota employees and their families, retired couples, retailers, and scientists will live there in the beginning.

Trends that we’ve seen over the past 30 years will become more pervasive and effective in the next 20. Those include: simplicity, personalization, and convenience. Better user design will make complex systems seem easy to manage. Big data will inform systems and provide personalization on a level we’re only now beginning to see with virtual assistants on our phones. And of course convenience will remain a factor, as we lessen our work burdens with robots for chores and shared resources like transportation and even living spaces. Urban efficiency shines the light on the possibilities of our major cities to solve the current challenges of major cities into new opportunities for the future. We’re just now seeing the beginning of several pioneering technologies, like Roombas on our floors, smart thermostats, programmable lights, and low-latency 5G wireless. Sustainability and infrastructure concerns notwithstanding, we expect demand for these areas to apply pressure to public and private sectors for better results. With the evolution of new technologies, we will have what it takes to harvest the benefits of urbanization.

Major City Living Around the Globe in 2040 was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The future of urban living: co-living

While more people come into the world every day, the size of the earth remains exactly the same. Today, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and the European Commision expects this to increase to 68% by 2050. A growing demand to create space combined with our increasingly refined lifestyle is creating an issue, where can we put all the people? The answer is co-living.

But our interpretation of this word and the connotations attached to it are in need of some alteration. Co-living does not need to be five generations living under one roof, nor does it need to be plush student hall style apartments with gyms, bars and swimming pools. Co-living can quite simply be turning your spare-room, into a home. Creating homes is more important than ever given that Generation Rent are leaving their support networks for jobs in the city and renting for significantly longer periods of time than their parents — potentially even renting for life.

The connotations of co-living

Groups such as The Collective are the latest to hijack the word co-living, but these complexes aren’t necessarily practical or sustainable as a permanent home and they are extremely expensive. Spending £1,500 on a studio flat is a little out of reach for the vast majority of graduates and young professionals moving to London on entry-level salaries. Even if it was within reach financially, is it sustainable to force people into tiny spaces?

We often talk about “Rabbit Hutch” Britain, not an undeserving nickname, given that the UK has the smallest average living spaces in the EU, according to The Guardian. We are renting for longer periods of time and while a box room might have been manageable for a few years at uni, it’s not a realistic long-term option.

While a standard house share is something most of us have muddled through for a couple of years at some stage, how do we make this a viable option for Generation Rent, who will likely need to stay in house shares much longer term.

There are roughly 730,000 under-occupied properties in London, according to the English Housing Survey, and roughly 220,000 people moved into the city in 2015, as reported by Trust for London. In theory, there are more than enough rooms, however, the numbers simply don’t add up. That’s because 85% of those under-occupied homes are owned homes — only 8% of under-occupied homes sit in the rental sector. Co-living can be as simple as unlocking those free rooms and converting them into co-living spaces. The question is, how do we convince the owners of the 85% of under-occupied spaces to consider the idea of allowing those spaces to become occupied?

Some key things that might put someone off renting out a spare bedroom, or renting one, is the possibility of signing a lease which will trap you with people you don’t want to live with. We all want to live our lives with meaning at the core. Whatever purpose means to you, for some it might be coming home and cooking a new recipe together, for another it might be sharing a takeaway — regardless, being around people who make you feel comfortable and valued is essential to living a life with meaning. You shouldn’t have to wait until the next visit to your family to feel that.

What tech can bring to the housing crisis

Tech and AI can solve a big problem here, as AI can take house sharing beyond scrolling through an endless list of bedrooms, signing tenancy agreements based on hope and crossing your fingers for friendly flatmates. The AI used by Badi, for example, pairs people to house shares based on lifestyle preferences and personality to create house shares that become long term, functional homes. For a landlord, this creates a stable ship with consistent returns, while for renters this provides the opportunity to have a home, rather than a room.

While some of us are more social than others, we are ultimately social creatures that need interactions and care to feel happy. For people moving from further afield, a lonely house share can lead to unhappiness which impacts our mental health and our productivity amongst a multitude of other things. On the flip side, a house share full of friends offers a stable foundation for us to build happy lives in, whether we were born in the city or came from further away. Badi is on a mission to finish the days of spare rooms by providing a hassle-free, secure and reliable rental service. With this refreshed approach, we can bring like minded people together rather than just allocating people to spaces.

We urgently need to create more co-living options for people living in the UK, to suit all budgets and lifestyles, and tech is the only way to make supply meet demand. The supply of urban housing is scarce worldwide: 54% of the world’s population of 7.2 billion live in cities, and by 2050, this is expected to increase to 66% of a predicted world population 9.6 billion — according to data taken from the United Nations global urbanisation report.

One of the solutions we are working on at Badi is developing ways to create properties specifically for functional, practical and homely co-living, where the perks of your home are the people you live with, rather than having your bedding changed once a week by ghost cleaner. People are the most crucial part of any economy and attracting talent to the UK is essential to the country’s development. London is one of the most unaffordable cities in the world — co-living is an indispensable part of making living here an achievable goal for the next generation of talent, and sustainable for ever-increasing urban populations.

The future of urban living: co-living was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As more tenants choose ‘lifestyle renting’, what’s needed to make the online room rental experience both seamless and secure?

Renting is increasingly becoming the norm for many young tenants.

Data reveals that 60% of home occupiers in London will be renters by 2025 and a ‘Generation Rent’ study found that two out of five believe they’ll be renting for life.

This is driven by a generation who want more flexibility around how and where they work and live and are putting greater emphasis on striking a balance between the two.

Secure renting

In the property world, this translates to more people wanting to rent rather than be tied to a mortgage and a physical ‘base’. But to support Generation Rent, room rental marketplaces must be secure.

For example, Airbnb recently announced it was working to verify the more than seven million properties listed on its platform. By next December, Airbnb aims to have all its properties verified.

It’s the responsibility of these platforms to identify and remove fraudulent listings to improve the experience for tenants and landlords alike. Authentic recommendations go an incredibly long way to build trust in the online rental process.

For example, we take several steps to protect both landlords and renters on our platform.

Verified listings

This includes verified listings, wherein a Badi representative visits the property to take photos and confirm amenities included in the listing. If fraudulent activity is spotted, Badi’s Trust and Safety team is notified, enabling them to resolve any issues quickly. These steps help tenants to have greater confidence when booking a room online.

Proptech can also help to take the hassle out of flat hunting, like finding flatmates, seeing potential rooms and sorting the paperwork. Online room rental marketplaces allow potential tenants to learn more about who they could be living with. Some platforms take this even further.

For example, Badi uses AI to match flatmates. On top of this, we enable those looking for a room to see photos and videos of the space. Once a house hunters finds a flat that meets their needs, and their right flatmate — booking is quick online — cutting out the mountains of paperwork that’s usually required.

The future

For Generation Rent the benefits of online bookings are many. They can quickly access verified listings and find the right flatmate without the need for costly visits to a new city or country where they’re looking to find a home.

As it’s likely that people will be renting for longer, it’s critical that platforms support the new lifestyle that Generation Rent has embraced.

Building trust in room renting platforms was originally published in badiapp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.