Interview With Allison Atsiknoudas, CEO of Investment Instruments Corporation

(www.bizchicksrule.com) — Over the summer, I had the pleasure of speaking with Allison Atsiknoudas, the 42-year-old co-founder and CEO of Investment Instruments Corporation (IIC), while she was on a carriage ride with her then-8-month-old son, Teddy, near their Boston-area home (which she and her husband share with a weimaraner, who, sadly, was not on our call). Here’s what she had to say about business and life.

Kristen, Biz Chicks Rule: Allison, tell me about your company. How did you get started?

Allison Atsiknoudas: We started the ball rolling in 2004 and incorporated in 2006. I had formed a business incubator with a couple of other folks and that was actually how the idea for our company came about. So unlike other companies, where you really have to find the best people, we started out with the best people before we hatched the business concept. I really believe that people are either going to be the success or the barrier, and if you have the best people…

I was interested in really recruiting the best partners possible, so I asked both of my partners to start a business incubator with me and that’s how we came up with the idea to start out company. The nice thing about that is that we had three people who are equally invested in the idea.

Under the umbrella of IIC, you have Rentomatic which focuses on landlords, and Rentometer, which focuses on tenants. How did you come up with a business model that captured both sides of the market?

Allison Atsiknoudas: Our goal is really to create transparency in the marketplace. When we started with the idea, we all had experience with creating web-based software. We all had that in common and we all had some connection and experience with real estate. Both [of my] partners had owned real estate, we’d all rented, one partner is a real estate broker, I had managed properties in actually a very large portfolio for the US government in Europe. I was used to building lifecycle and understood what it meant for a manager using software to have visibility for all their assets.

Really, there were no tools out there for people like us: small portfolio owners… people who just have a few units. Nothing that was a standard for small people. And most investment properties are not owned by the big guys but owned by people like us. We were familiar with the pains of being a small portfolio owner or landlord and set out to solve those pains. We had been tenants as well, so we could see both sites of the equation.

You have both a baby and a fairly new company. What is an average day like for you?

Allison Atsiknoudas: To tell you the truth, it’s a really long one, but it’s fun. I don’t typically sleep at night. I can’t remember the last time I slept at night. I usually sleep for a few hours in the morning. Not because the baby is keeping me up, but because the nighttime is a good time for me to work and have uninterrupted time to myself.

My day starts around 7:30, I go to bed between 1 am and 2 am, and then I do it again. I typically work 50/50 in my home office and Newton [Massachusetts] office. I may not be in either place. I could be in New York or San Francisco for a meeting. Teddy usually stays at home. Actually, my investors had a forum last January and the baby wasn’t even 2 months old yet and they really encouraged me to bring him along. I declined. I think when you’re a first-time mom, you’re really hesitant about taking your baby out in the world.

Who cares for Teddy when you’re traveling or have meetings?

Allison Atsiknoudas: My husband stays home at least one day during the week. He runs his own company as well, so that give him some flexibility. He makes up for it on the weekends. It gives him [and Teddy] some quality time during the day instead of just in the evenings. Also, we’re a big fat Greek family. We’re both Greek-American. My husband grew up in the town we live in and I grew up in the neighboring town.

You have a bachelor’s and a master’s, a more than 10-year military career, and experience managing a billion-dollar property portfolio for the US government in Europe. Did you know everything going into this business?

Allison Atsiknoudas: Most of the things I did, no one has ever done before either, so I just had to figure out how do we make this work. When you’re managing $1B in assets or a $150M project, or something that’s never done before, there’s usually other people involved. My past experience and any success that I’ve had has been to the credit of the team.

It is a market that no one else has been able to aggregate before because most of the people in it are not in the business of real estate full time, people like you and me who have day jobs who manage their real estate on the side. [It’s] a very fragmented market. Being able to aggregate that market is a real challenge, and also a great deal of fun in solving business problems to achieve success in the company. A long of what we do administratively is what I have done before in my past life.

What’s next for the business?

Allison Atsiknoudas: We’re definitely going to be expanding services on Rentomatic. I would say very rapidly, going to be offering different levels of plans. We’re also going to be offering a larger suite of tools for tenants as well. Everything we offer is really aimed at enhancing the relationships.

If you had it all to do over again, is there anything you would do differently?

Allison Atsiknoudas: At this point, I don’t think so. I would always like to hire more people to be able to roll the plan out a little bit quicker. You know, I have to say that I couldn’t be happier with the partners that I chose and I really couldn’t be happier about the way that the products are developing. Even our investors are very high quality partners that up to now have worked out really well and we’re really excited about moving the business forward.

What advice do you have for women who want to take their career to the next level, or maybe start their own company?

Allison Atsiknoudas: It was a real mystery for me because I have quite a bit of business experience, but I really hadn’t started my own company by myself. I knew I could bring quite a bit to the table, but I had a bit to learn just in terms of creating a new company. I spent a lot of time raising financing, but different financing from forming a private company.

There are a lot of great resources out there for women or anybody who wants to start their own company. Tap into your own network. Talk to as many people as you can who have done it before and started something form scratch. A big help for me was being able to tap into my alumni resources as well [at MIT] to educate us into bringing the business along.

For more information about tools for landlords and tenants, visit Rentomatic and Rentometer.

Contents Copyright © 2008 Kristen King

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