Episode 194: The Attendant - Unleashing Pool Automation's Potential with Bob, Jennifer, and Stan of Poolside Tech
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Episode Summary
Today, we speak with Poolside Tech’s Founder and CEO Bob Doan, Chief Revenue Officer Jennifer Doan, and Chief Technology Officer Stan Reznik.
Poolside Tech provides smart pool automation technology. Their flagship product, The Attendant, actively monitors and maintains all equipment on the pad. It makes operational decisions, improving water quality and sending real time notifications when equipment malfunctions.
Running on the belief that smart pool tech needs to be easy for the homeowner to use first and foremost, The Attendant was developed to hide all “the complexity behind something that is easy to use.”
They also explain how Poolside Tech as a whole provides user-friendly solutions to pool pros and distributors in addition to pool owners and how their product is different from all others on the market today.
Topics Discussed
01:20 - An introduction to Bob, Jennifer, Stan, and Poolside Tech
09:20 - Transitioning from F&B into the pool industry
13:06 - Developing The Attendant
20:46 - Our guests’ frustrations with their personal pools before starting Poolside Tech
31:43 - Bob’s first interaction with a “real pool guy”
34:05 - Ensuring the application has all the features a pool owner would want and need
41:59 - How many iterations it took to achieve the finished product
46:33 - Hiding the complexity behind something that is easy to use
53:49 - All about The Attendant
59:56 - Solutions Poolside Tech brings to homeowners, pool pros, and distributors
1:09:15 - How kids inspired some of The Attendant’s features
1:11:47 - Major functionality differences between The Attendant and other products on the market
1:21:48 - The Attendant warranty and being open to feedback
Key Quotes From Episode
Simplicity: You don’t need a tutorial when you use Uber. You just figure it out. ~Jennifer
One of the things that makes us different is trying to learn as much as possible from pool professionals. We’ve gotten so many great ideas just from talking to pool professionals every day and listening to their pain points. ~Stan
That’s the hard part: hiding the complexity behind something that is easy to use. ~Bob
One of our original design goals is to be able to treat every single piece of pool equipment out there as a true first-class citizen without forcing you to pick and choose bundles or families of things that only work together. ~Bob
