Manage to Outcomes, Not Obstacles: The Foundation-First Approach to Property Management Software

Grant Drzyzga didn’t follow the typical founder playbook.

Starting Revela in 2014 with no real estate experience and $50,000, he spent the next nine and a half years bootstrapping before raising a $9 million Series A. That unconventional path gave him something most property management software founders lack: time to observe how companies get trapped in patchwork systems—acquiring software piece by piece to solve isolated problems while never addressing their complete business needs.

After 11 years of building infrastructure from the ground up, Drzyzga still believes in the possibility of a single software platform to manage all property technology needs. With the right blueprints, the dream of an all-in-one system is possible.

Over the years, the industry has swung like a pendulum tied to real estate market cycles: during growth periods like the recent bull run, “best-of-breed” stacks become fashionable as operators chase expansion; when markets slow and margins tighten, “all-in-one” solutions come back into vogue. The same pattern played out in the mid-2010s. Revela’s foundation-first philosophy is different — it’s about breaking out of that cycle entirely.

His approach? Stop adding tools. Start building foundations.

Death by a Thousand Tools

The property management industry operates with massive tech stacks out of necessity, not preference. Stacks were survival tools when “all-in-one” platforms fell short — but survival tools become liabilities when you’re trying to scale.

The dream of a true all-in-one has failed too many property managers to be trusted blindly. Previous platforms turned out to be glorified contact managers with basic features that couldn’t handle the complexity of real operations. So companies patched together specialized tools, each solving one piece of the puzzle.

This creates a classic Goldilocks problem. On one end, you have walled gardens like Yardi and AppFolio — too controlled, too expensive, and charging partners for the privilege of one-way data access. On the other, you have platforms boasting “open APIs” that really mean nothing, creating chaos with no standards or support.

The result is the same: operators juggle 5–10 systems for maintenance, accounting, leasing, screening, payments, and reporting. In an already low-margin business, every additional system cuts directly into profitability. Complexity multiplies, and teams spend more time reconciling data than analyzing the business.

Integrations can work if they’re well-defined, but too often they resemble a messy relay race — unclear handoffs, dropped batons, and errors multiplying at every leg. Each handoff becomes another failure point in a long game of data telephone, where clarity is lost and complexity compounds.

Drzyzga’s insight: before adopting any tool, define your business process and the outcome you expect. Then be ruthless — if it doesn’t deliver clean data and measurable ROI, it’s a liability in disguise.

The Quick-Fix Quicksand

Most property management companies start with basic software, then bolt on additional tools as problems arise. Need better maintenance tracking? Add a work order app. Want sharper reporting? Buy a dashboard. Looking for tenant screening? There’s another subscription.

It’s a familiar playbook — and for good reason. Each add-on feels like a logical solution at the moment. But without clearly defined business processes, this turns into whack-a-mole: fix one leak and another pops up downstream. The accumulated complexity soon becomes its own problem.

Every subscription adds cost per unit — and in a low-margin business, those costs cut directly into profitability. Every new system requires more training, maintenance, and troubleshooting.

The outcome is predictable: instead of acting as strategic advisors, property managers end up as system administrators — managing software stacks instead of managing growth.

Revela’s Foundation-First Philosophy

Building a comprehensive solution requires more than stitching together best-of-breed tools. It demands starting with a solid foundation. Instead of treating software as a loose collection of integrations, Drzyzga views it as an extension of a business’s core truth, with selective integrations only where they create real, measurable value.

This “Foundation-First” philosophy transforms how property managers build, scale, and compete. It starts with the books, then builds outward, integrating thoughtfully rather than excessively.

The Core Truth Principle

For property management, the core truth is accounting—the financial reality that determines whether you can pay vendors, when owners need capital, and how portfolios perform. For other industries, this foundation might be customer relationships, inventory flow, or operational capacity. The key insight isn't identifying which foundation to build on, but recognizing that everything else must emerge from and reinforce this core truth.

The Integration Test 

This philosophy transforms how you evaluate opportunities. When a new challenge emerges, the question isn’t “what tool can solve this?” but “how does this integrate with our foundation — and does it deliver clean data with measurable ROI?” The answer often requires more upfront investment but prevents the technical debt that eventually strangles growth.

"Your enterprise software should be leading the charge on building a tech stack within itself as opposed to you having to go to market to find random solutions."_{— grant DRZYZGA, CEO AT REVELA}

The Scale Advantage 

This approach requires deeper upfront investment in backend architecture before rolling out new features. Rather than rushing capabilities to market, foundation-first development means extensive user testing with longtime customers to understand exactly what they need as they grow.

The payoff comes at scale. While traditional tech stacks become more fragile with each addition, foundation-based architecture becomes more robust. Each new capability is built to work seamlessly with existing functions, creating compound value rather than compound complexity. When you plan to grow alongside your customers by building what they actually need, every enhancement strengthens your core platform instead of fragmenting it.

The Proof in Practice

This philosophy has real-world impact. 

Consider Shamrock Acquisitions, one of our earliest clients. They started with a 42-unit building but quickly expanded to include single-family rentals, land contracts, commercial properties, and a 260-unit multifamily complex.

Under the traditional approach, Shamrock would need different systems for each asset type. Trust accounting for single-family rentals. Traditional accounting for multifamily. Specialized tools for land contracts. Instead, they run everything through one unified platform.

"They wanted one place to do all that. Not a square peg in a round hole."_{— grant DRZYZGA}

With unified data, property managers can finally see patterns and opportunities across entire portfolios. They can identify which owners are ready to refinance, which properties need preventive maintenance, and where market conditions create expansion opportunities.

The impact was immediate: Shamrock shortened their month-end close, eliminated the need for manual reconciliations, and gave staff one system to master instead of juggling three or four. As their portfolio grew, they were able to onboard new properties and asset classes without adding new platforms or forcing their team to learn multiple tools.

More importantly, they can act on insights immediately. No data exports. No manual reconciliation. No 45-day delays while information moves between systems.

For owners, this translated into clearer, more timely statements and faster answers to capital and cash-flow questions. For Shamrock’s leadership, it meant confidence they could keep scaling without the overhead of a patchwork stack.

The Three Foundation-First Principles

Building a foundation-first architecture requires discipline and strategic clarity. These principles, as shared by Drzyzga, guide the approach:

Solve Problems at Their Source

Don’t apply temporary fixes that create future complexity.

“Most of the decisions that we make, especially around these bigger infrastructure projects — would it have been easier for us to just not do it? Absolutely. But then it wouldn’t be right.”_{— grant DRZYZGA}

Evaluate Through Business Processes

New tools will always be tempting. Define your business process and desired outcome first, then evaluate whether a solution delivers clean data with measurable ROI. And don’t stop at today’s problems — ask whether this choice will still make sense when your business has more doors under management.

"Start with the end in mind. Every tool you add should fit cleanly into your process, produce reliable data, and deliver measurable ROI."_{— grant DRZYZGA}

Invest in Long-Term Infrastructure

While the market rewards quick wins and new revenue streams, sustainable growth demands solving foundational problems even when the payoff isn’t immediate. The right infrastructure should serve as a stepping stone on your path to scale, not a speed bump you’ll need to replace later.

“I don’t think [getting more revenue] is the right paradigm to make decisions through. You can solve a lot of problems with new revenue. But if you don’t solve the source problem, you’ll have a pretty tough time scaling.”_{— grant DRZYZGA}

Breaking the Cycle

The industry has been slow to embrace technological change, not by choice but by necessity. When available solutions don’t match operational reality, companies patch together what works and hope the integrations hold.

But once financial accuracy became the foundational truth, the possibility of a truly unified platform came into focus. Property managers no longer need to accept fragmentation as inevitable or swing between market extremes. With the right foundation, built from the books out, comprehensive solutions are not just possible, they are practical.

The key is thoughtfulness over reactivity. When technology decisions are guided by clarity and long-term business outcomes rather than short-term fixes, operators build the discipline that allows them to get really good at what they do and keep growing their business with confidence.