Getting to Hell Yes! with Reshma Block
There are some conversations where you feel your mind shifting while you’re still in the chair. My talk with Reshma was absolutely one of them.
Former CTO of Tricon Residential, Intel alum, Silicon Valley technologist, systems thinker, architect of one of the most impressive operational scale-ups our industry has ever seen and yet, somehow, still disarmingly grounded.
I’ve spoken to hundreds of operators and technologists across multifamily and SFR, Reshma is different. Reshma isn’t just fluent in technology. She’s fluent in change, how it breaks things, how it scares people, and how to rebuild around it.
And when she started talking about how technology drives balance sheet outcomes, not just operational outcomes,I realized we were about to have a conversation that our industry isn’t having nearly enough of at this moment in time. I realized very few have the opportunity to talk valuation outcomes & even fewer deliver on it.
“I didn’t think I’d go back to real estate. But this one felt different.”
Before Tricon, Reshma spent years running digital transformation programs inside complex Fortune 100 organizations. When she joined Tricon, the company was 27,000 homes, mid-COVID, and on the verge of an IPO.
Then she said something that stuck with me: “I look for friction or a blue-water opportunity. And SFR was both.”
No exaggeration. Nine months after joining, she was leading through a U.S. IPO, SOX readiness, systems consolidation, internal audits, security fortification, and a multi-year roadmap to scale the entire enterprise.
Most people experience one of those in a career. She got all of them in one fiscal year. And she laughed about it. Awesome.
The Problem: You Can’t Scale Chaos
Tricon had ambitious growth plans but growth exposes everything you’ve ignored.
Duplicated systems. Closed APIs. Inconsistent workflows across markets. Human processes doing the work that machines should have done years ago.
Reshma saw it immediately.
The business wanted to quadruple. The tech stack couldn’t double.
So she started where most people don’t: With the asset because in an asset-driven business, stability isn’t an IT objective, it’s a financial one.
Her first step wasn’t to bring in shiny tools. It was to build an Innovation Playbook – a philosophy and operating system for how the company would make tech decisions.
Open architecture. Total cost of ownership. Design thinking. A real innovation funnel. A phase-gated process.
Not the glamorous stuff. The necessary stuff.
And then came the harder work, selling it internally.
“Tech for tech’s sake is useless. We solve real problems or we don’t build it.”
What impresses isn’t the systems she deployed, it was how she made decisions. It’s a lot about what she didn’t do!
Reshma is one of the strongest advocates of buy, don’t build I’ve ever met. Not because vendors are perfect, but because:
- You get speed to market.
- You get scalability you don’t have to pay for alone.
- You get partners who evolve with you.
But she also said something that only someone who has done this at scale says out loud:
“You don’t get to customize everything. Customizations are debt.”
Most companies learn that lesson too late.
Her approach was pragmatic. Pilot fast. Gather feedback. Identify the fit-gap. Force-rank what matters and don’t let ‘unique market nuance’ become an excuse for reinventing the wheel.
You could feel the discipline in her voice. You could also feel the battle scars.
The Outcome That Nobody Talks About Enough
I knew Tricon had transformed operationally. I didn’t realize the scale until she said it casually on the call:
The tech modernization contributed to a $1.5B uplift in securitization value.
Let me say that again: Technology drove a 1.5 billion-dollar balance sheet impact.
In a legacy industry.
In a public company.
During hyper-growth.
Most technologists never get close to a board deck. Reshma helped rewrite the company’s financial story.
And she did it by understanding something most of us forget:
You cannot separate resident experience, employee experience, and financial performance. They rise and fall together.
What Reshma Sees Coming Next (And Why It Matters)
This part was fun.
When I asked her what operators are missing, she didn’t hesitate: “Margins are tightening. Customer experience is about to matter more than ever.”
We’re entering the phase every mature recurring-revenue business eventually hits:
You can’t raise rents forever.
You can’t cut costs forever.
You can’t grow your way out of operational inefficiency.
So what becomes the differentiator?
The experience of being your customer.
The experience of being your employee.
Your ability to retain both.
She pointed to airlines, hotels, subscription businesses, industries where churn, LTV, and loyalty drive valuation.
“Do we even know the lifetime value of a resident? Because other industries do and they obsess over it.”
Right. What do the buyers/ owners want? Why is real estate special? Because you get to leverage up with recurring revenue. So we should obsess over that.
If you don’t know lifetime value, churn risk, payback period, or share of wallet then you are not running a modern recurring-revenue business.
You’re gambling.
And in a tightening cycle, gambling gets punished.
“There is no silver bullet. Innovation is people, process, and technology in that order.”
Operators ask Reshma all the time: What’s the new tool that will solve my problems?
Her answer is refreshingly honest: Tools don’t solve problems. People do especially when equipped with the right processes and supported by the right technology.
AI won’t fix broken workflows.
Automation won’t fix bad decisions.
Software won’t fix cultural inertia.
The companies that win the next decade are the ones who:
- Stop chasing shiny objects
- Start documenting and reinventing their workflows
- Use vendors as true partners
- Treat residents like long-term customers
- Build architectures that scale
- Invest in employee experience the same way they invest in resident experience
And maybe most importantly:
Give their teams the psychological safety to tell the truth about what’s broken.
My Lessons from Reshma:
Here are the questions I’m holding onto after this conversation:
🔹 Are we solving real problems or just installing tools?
If the business doesn’t change, the tech doesn’t matter.
🔹 Do we know our residents’ lifetime value and do we act like it?
Retention is revenue. Churn is a cost center.
🔹 Are our vendor partnerships true partnerships, or transactions?
Growth requires allies, not platforms.
🔹 Do we treat employees as the frontline of customer experience?
Because they are.
🔹 Are we designing systems built for scale or duct-taping our way there?
Architecture is destiny.
