Across from Barley’s Taproom in Knoxville’s historic Old City rests 121 Tech Hub, a coworking space for those with the entrepreneurial spirit to plant their roots and watch the seeds of success grow. Two of its newest members, Rob Monday and Josh Wright are attacking a venture known all too well to Knoxvillians whether they’ve called the city home for six months or 60 years. The former real estate experts are now looking into the intricacies of residential housing, and how to make that experience better for all parties involved.
For now, they’ve put their heads down and begun to crank out ideas on something they call TenantText. The service combines both of their areas of expertise into forming an all-in-one solutions platform for renters to use for their apartments or rented properties. Have a lightbulb out, but the maintenance man is sending you to voicemail? Or, need a quick question answered that doesn’t warrant a twenty-minute hold on a phone call? These guys and their services have got you covered. When working together, and in spaces with like-minded people, there’s no problem too small for entrepreneurs on any level.
The two are Knoxville natives and Bearden High School alumni, with experience in industries on both the micro and macro levels. A graduate of Clemson University and Georgia Tech, Monday went into commercial real estate and the corporate world before his dreams of starting a business would eventually move him back home. Wright’s path was similar, graduating from Cornell University in New York and working in investment sales in Washington D.C. where he specialized in hotel sales before ending up back home in 2009. Wright’s portfolio of student housing remained successful, though one problem kept arising: the influx of maintenance requests with a lack of manpower to fulfill them all promptly. From there, he would turn to his colleague and get to work on their next big project.
“We got into the work with the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center, and they have helped us in connecting to the entrepreneurial community here in Knoxville,” Monday said. “Which is really vibrant and very much a ‘pay it forward’ community. People want to see you succeed and they want to help.”
The two are relatively new to the coworking space in town, both stating that their journey began with ideas being bounced across the kitchen table or in home offices before they decided to move downtown. Nestled in a space between other creatives and forward-thinking problem solvers, the two are grateful to be in a place to help and be helped by like-minded individuals in an array of different professions.
“The number of times that someone walked into the place that we’re working and had a question for us, or asked ‘how did you guys solve this,’ or ‘what do you think about this that I’m working on,’ it’s something that as a new entrepreneur you die for.”
The two say it helps not only foster community but also helps them think outside the box. Rather than completely being a two-man show, Monday and Wright can exit their own creative vacuum by getting to interact with coworkers who work in similar or completely different industries. That diversity has maybe been able to breed some of their newest successes better than they ever thought possible. After months of perusing through possible office spaces, the duo recognized a good thing almost immediately in seeing the cohesiveness in drive and mindset that displayed itself on East Jackson Avenue. The key for the two now is finding that fit with their new co-working partners.
“We always need connections, I think every entrepreneur needs connections,” Monday said. “You need to know who knows who and who they’re willing to introduce us to. Sometimes people know us, and not what we do, or we know about what people do and not their background. So, it would be great to know more about everyone’s backgrounds to figure out what specific things we could ask from them.”
Their endeavor in particular feels like a good fit for the space. With Knoxville growing at an exponential rate, the demand for facility maintenance has shot up with the supply of it remaining stagnant. Their solution, which will start being pitched to potential customers in the coming weeks, hopes to streamline those solutions and hopefully cut down on the time and costs of unnecessary check-ins. A lot of the calls maintenance specialists receive are simple fixes, with their new product hoping to provide those simple answers to tenants before they have to resort to picking up the phone. For a city with an ever-growing crop of university housing, this sort of solution could be a massive improvement on their current systems.
Thankfully, they’ve surrounded themselves with a tight-knit community that has a vast range both in experience and industries worked in. By coworking in Knoxville, they’ve been able to bounce ideas off of those ten steps ahead of them and dispense advice to those who are ten steps behind. Wherever someone is in their startup process, there seems to be no lack of resources when it comes to congregating with this tribe of go-getters in closed quarters. Monday and Wright bring the unique value of years of corporate experience to a place that’s packed with fresh college graduates and seasoned veterans, bringing their unique perspectives day in and day out. As Knoxville’s coworking community and the city as a whole continue to grow, so does the number of potential accomplishments for self-starters who call Knoxville home.
