We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nathan Miller a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Nathan, thanks for joining us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

Since Rentec Direct’s founding almost two decades ago, we’ve experienced substantial growth. In the beginning, revenue wasn’t a priority or concern of mine—I started Rentec Direct as a side project and a way to give back to the landlord community I was a part of. For the first two years, the platform was free and we generated no revenue, even though nearly 500 landlords and property managers were using our software. My measure of success in those early days was how many people I could help.

Eventually, I began monetizing the platform, and since then we’ve significantly expanded both our customer base and revenue. This was no overnight feat, but rather a consistent and sustainable effort over the past 16 years.

Our journey to generating revenue started with improving our visibility on Google and other search engines to ensure that prospective customers could find us. My experience running an Internet Service Provider (ISP) gave me substantial knowledge of how search engines worked, and I was able to quickly secure the number one spot in Google’s organic search results for keywords like “landlord software” and “property management software”. In 2009 when organic search results held significant power, this high ranking drove substantial traffic and awareness for Rentec Direct.

Our early growth was challenging because the majority of landlords signing up were managing small portfolios of under five properties. This significantly limited our growth potential, as our software was capable of supporting portfolios of hundreds or even thousands of properties. Additionally, a natural course of action for many landlords expanding their portfolios is to eventually hire a property management company. Every time a landlord would turn to a property manager, we would lose a customer.

However, a turning point came as these property managers began inheriting properties from Rentec Direct users. They were often given access to the software to recover property records and tenant data, and we soon started to receive recurring requests as to whether or not our platform could support property management workflows. This demand led to the second iteration of our product, designed specifically to meet the needs of customers managing hundreds of properties. Expanding access to customers with larger, more complex portfolios propelled our growth trajectory and Rentec Direct began expanding faster than ever.

Over the years, we’ve continued to identify the features our customers need and integrate those into our product. These improvements and upgrades have not only helped with customer retention but, in some cases, have also helped create new revenue streams.

None of these steps was the single “magic bullet” that drove us to exponential growth—a combination of consistent innovation, customer-driven improvements and a commitment to delivering value has kept new account signups high and customer retention steady. I believe this approach has fueled our sustained success and we’re still effectively scaling today. Rentec Direct has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the country for eight consecutive years on the Inc. 5000.

Nathan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Even in my preteen years, I knew I was interested in pursuing a career in technology. While I was growing up, it was all about games and entertainment, but as I progressed through life, I learned that the true value of technology lies in its ability to save time and improve efficiency.

When I bought my first old, beat-up condominium, I also discovered a new passion for real estate. As I began slowly expanding my real estate portfolio while still working full-time in tech, I saw an opportunity for my two passions to merge. A landlord by choice and a software developer by trade, the idea for Rentec Direct was born out of my own necessity to balance my responsibilities as a landlord with my career and growing family.

While I initially created Rentec Direct to save myself time, I quickly realized how many others like me faced similar challenges. In the simplest of terms, Rentec Direct is a property management software company that provides solutions to help real estate professionals save time and money. Our clients are landlords and property managers across the country managing anywhere from one to thousands of rental properties. Some of our key features include online rent payments, a mobile app and tenant portal, rental vacancy listing syndication and accounting tools.

What I believe sets us apart and what I’m most proud of is a combination of innovation, efficiency and consistent growth. First, we started and continue to thrive as a company with no outside funding. We are the only software platform in our sector to accomplish this, and we’ve continuously outperformed our much larger competitors in new account signups, customer retention and client support. This independent approach resonates with our customers, most of whom operate their property management businesses without substantial funding.

Our customer support is a giant part of what sets us apart. Too many software companies offer limited support options or outsource their customer service overseas, so we made an intentional decision to keep our support team based out of our U.S. headquarters. This gives us full control over our support capabilities, empowering us to provide the best customer service in our industry.

In order to provide the best support possible, we heavily invest in the ongoing training and education of our staff. Each member of our Client Success Team has deep expertise in both our software platform and the topics and trends that impact our client’s operations. Our team has received notable recognition for our customer support through awards like the Best in Biz Most Customer Friendly Company of the Year and the American Business Awards Customer Service Department of the Year.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I love sharing this piece of our origin story because it’s short, sweet and a testament to what makes Rentec Direct so unique. We started with zero capital—just a single $300 out-of-pocket expense to purchase our first server. It’s certainly unconventional to start a tech company without funding, but that’s exactly what sets us apart. While most of our competitors have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, we’ve achieved comparable—and often better—results entirely self-funded.

Even without outside funding, Rentec Direct has outperformed our competitors in profitability, customer satisfaction and industry recognition. Being self-funded gives us the freedom to focus on what truly matters to our team and our customers, rather than answering to the demands of shareholders. I often see funded companies start to prioritize profit and shareholder returns at the expense of customer experience. We’ve been able to stay true to our values and set our own priorities: delivering exceptional customer service and creating features that help our clients operate more efficiently and successfully.

Have you ever had to pivot?

As I mentioned earlier, we quickly realized that focusing solely on landlords wouldn’t sustain meaningful growth for our company. With smaller property portfolios and high turnover rates, the projections were pretty bleak for Rentec Direct to remain viable without exploring other markets. Fortunately, the next market found us: property managers.

Supporting landlords like myself will always be the motivation behind Rentec Direct, but I learned that this wouldn’t be possible unless we expanded our user base to include property managers. By developing new features like owner management and trust accounting tools tailored to property managers with larger portfolios, we not only opened the door to a new market but also enhanced the landlord-specific features of our software.

It’s important to mention that this shift meant we also had to pivot our marketing strategy. As we watched paid search ads begin to overpower organic search results, we shifted our marketing efforts to focus on becoming long-term thought leaders in the industry. Instead of continuing to prioritize organic search or pouring resources into PPC campaigns, we invested our time and budget in positioning Rentec Direct as the go-to resource for landlords and property managers.

Our company blog has become one of the most comprehensive and informative property management resources available, and it is completely ad and paywall-free. These days it seems unheard of to access valuable content without being bombarded by ads, videos or mandatory sign-up forms—we provide accessible information for all landlords and property managers, whether they are using our software or not. Over time, this commitment has generated thousands of leads and new customers, helping us recover the traffic we lost to paid search burying organic results.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rentecdirect.com
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/rentecdirect
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-miller-9087458
• Twitter: https://x.com/rentec
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/rentecdirect