Overview

Abunda, an Australian-based company, is reshaping the concept of homeownership through fractional home buying. Their innovative product idea aims to provide homeowners with the opportunity to unlock the value of their property by creating a marketplace for buying and selling home equity.

The Challenge

Abunda faced the challenge of validating their business idea through an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that could securely and transparently facilitate the selling experience for homeowners. They aimed to accomplish this efficiently by quickly launching a working product to test their concept. While they had already developed most of the front-end experience, they sought low-code solutions to implement the back-end. Recognizing the potential benefits, Jon Abitz, the CTO, turned to Fl0, a trusted low-code backend hosting platform. Aware that experience was crucial, Jon sought a partner and discovered Crowdlinker, a recommended Fl0 partner.

Pain Points

Jon understood that creating an internal development team would have required a tremendous amount of effort in hiring, onboarding & training. Drawing from his previous experience at Fusion Labs (a similar company based in Australia), he realized that there is more value in working with a product studio. He recognized that working with experienced professionals reduces mistakes and accelerates progress, stating, "There’s no point in making mistakes when you can be talking to people who have done it ten or twenty times; the number of mistakes is drastically reduced, and the speed is going to be there."

Fl0 suggested Crowdlinker as a potential digital partner, initiating their collaboration with a product manager, back-end developer, and senior lead developer. Having acted as a technical product manager in the past Jon felt he was ready to take on this role himself and was initially skeptical about bringing on a Crowdlinker PM. He hesitantly accepted this additional team member but quickly realized the value when he began to get pulled away from the day-to-day duties of app development to focus his attention on strategic planning. Having a focused product manager proved invaluable, allowing Jon to trust the team and appreciate their forward-thinking approach. He remarked, "What always surprises me is that they are thinking about our business in two years' time. And that's unbelievable. Most contractors and agencies are trying to get the job done for now, and that's it. But to be thinking of what we're trying to do in a year's time, that's enormous."