Reimagining Property Oversight

In the fast-paced world of vacation rentals, property managers consistently face a challenge: the continuous arrival of guests. When managing an abundance of properties, knowing the exact state of a home between check-out and check-in is extremely difficult. Recognizing this gap, Samuel Parks, a junior in business administration, and Rohan Nagabhirava, a MS student in electrical and computer engineering, developed RapidEye, a startup that turns standard inspection photos into a high-tech defense against property damage.

The core problem RapidEye addresses is the lack of oversight inherent in management. As Parks explains, "One of the problems that owners face is that they have so many guests coming in and out. They're trying to figure out what's happening in the house, especially when they're remote and can't visit every single house." While many companies have cleaners take photos or hire manual inspectors, the process is often slow and prone to human error. 

RapidEye streamlines this by integrating with existing workflows. "What we do is we link up to the photos that they're already taking, and we use AI to detect any damages or any changes for them in the background," Parks says. 

The inspiration for the startup hit close to home. Nagabhirava saw these issues first-hand with his family’s rental business. He noticed the problem scale from a single property to the massive operations of companies managing 500 or more units, realizing that manual inspection couldn’t keep up.

Building a vision model for real-world homes presented significant technical hurdles, particularly regarding environmental factors like lighting and camera angles. However, the team has turned these challenges into a competitive advantage. The difficulty of the task actually reinforced their belief in the product.

For Parks and Nagabhirava, much of their progress is attributed to the entrepreneurial ecosystem at Project Olympus. Parks notes that the founder's journey can be isolating, but the program provides a structured community where founders can connect and collaborate. The program created a space for these like-minded peers to bounce ideas off each other, making the entire experience more effective and enjoyable.

The reach of RapidEye has already surpassed the team's initial expectations, expanding from the U.S. into international markets like Dubai. Looking forward, the team doesn't plan to stop at vacation homes. 

"We really don't want to just be damage detection for short-term rentals," Parks shares. "There's so many things in the world that need constant upkeep and constant understanding of their past state." 

For other young entrepreneurs at CMU and beyond, their advice is simple: stop planning and start doing. "I never regretted just trying things," Parks says. "It always gave me new insight. You never know until you do it."