Busy week! There was a mix of technical and business tasks on the agenda.

Technical Updates

I started the week by focusing on website analytics. The goal here is to gather insights on user behavior, allowing us to understand what you like and what you don't. This data helps us refine our message and improve our services to deliver the most value to you, our users.

While collecting this data is crucial, it also comes with responsibilities. Every action you take on the website generates data, and it’s our job to manage that data correctly. Different countries have various regulations on how data should be collected and handled. Although Google Analytics handles much of the technical work, the responsibility for obtaining consent lies with us. That’s why you’ll now see a cookie banner on the site. Without your consent, no data—beyond what’s strictly necessary to make the website function, like keeping you logged in as you navigate—will be collected.

One key takeaway from this experience, despite the challenges of setting it up, is that Google Analytics takes data privacy seriously. If your site doesn’t properly handle user consent, you get zero data from users in countries with strict data consent laws. This is reassuring as a consumer, knowing that consent is truly being respected.

Marketing Updates

On the marketing side, we’ve commissioned the creation of the official Reboard mascot! I’m excited to unveil it on the website once it’s ready. I’ll also share the process behind its creation in an upcoming post.

Business Updates

On the business front, we’ve begun exploring partnerships with banking data providers. This is a critical step towards linking bank accounts to Reboard for automatic tenant payment verification. Initially, the world of open banking seemed simple and cost-effective on paper, but in practice, it’s neither straightforward nor cheap.

As a developer, you could theoretically connect to each bank individually, which would be free but could take hundreds of hours just to cover one country. Alternatively, you can work with bank data providers (or aggregators) who have already done the legwork, offering a unified solution. However, these services come at a significant cost, particularly for a start-up.

We’re still exploring our options, but integrating account linking into Reboard is non-negotiable. This is just one of the many challenges we need to overcome in our journey to create value and build the business we want and you deserve.