MyNewPlace Adds New Department, Names Ken Cluff as Chief Technology Officer

August 7th, 2009 by Matt DiChiara| Posted in About Us | No Comments »

Earlier this week, we posted about how the continued growth of our company required us to go out and get a penthouse suite of a collocation area for our servers. Today, we are happy to announce two new developments on the personnel side of our business.

First, our Sales team has some very exciting announcements. MyNewPlace plans to devote a substantial amount of resources to account management. Our Sales team will now be supported by our Relationship Management group, whose chief duties will be to help our existing clients get the most out of their MyNewPlace accounts.

We were able to get a hold of Relationship Manager Damon Gacicia, who explained that “the goal of our group is t provide more proactive support for our clients to ensure that they are maximizing their results from MyNewPlace.” This includes hosting welcome calls and providing training for new clients and providing monthly and quarterly reviews for each property.

Mr. Gacicia believed that having a dedicated group of Relationship Specialists will help apartments get better results and help them drive down their advertising costs. This group of MyNewPlace employees will be like in-house leasing consultants for our clients. With the expansion of the Sales team, we have a variety of MyNewPlace Jobs now available, ranging from National Sales Director to Relationship Managers and Specialists.

Second, Co-Founder Ken Cluff has been promoted from Vice President of Technology to Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Engineering. We were able to get a hold of Mr. Cluff despite his hectic schedule.

MD: Mr. Cluff, first of all let me just extend my thanks for agreeing to do this interview.

KC: Thank you; I’m honored to be appearing on the show tonight.

MD: Let me also congratulate you on your recent promotion from VP of Technology to Chief Technology Officer and VP of Engineering. In what ways will your responsibilities change?

KC: As MyNewPlace has grown and the Technology team has expanded and matured, my role has already been shifting. When we first started the company I was very hands-on in the push to get MyNewPlace.com built and launched. Now that we have built out a top notch development and web operations team, my focus is moving outwards to a more industry-wide perspective on how MyNewPlace can best meet our client’s needs either directly through new technology initiatives, or in partnership with other companies in the multifamily space. It’s an exciting and challenging shift.

MD: Are there any responsibilities associated with being VP of Tech that will be passed along to others?

KC: Not overnight, but my directors and mangers have already taken on a lot the things I used to do, and I imagine that process will continue. One thing that will never go away is the MyNewPlace passion for digging in the data. That’s part of our corporate DNA. We encourage everyone from our entry level developers to the corner office holders to roll up their sleeves and dive into the data we collect and find ways to improve the apartment search experience and the value we drive to our clients. I may not have Java IDE on my laptop anymore, but my SQL client is never going away.

MD: When people ask you what you do, is it going to be way cooler to say “CTO” rather than the cumbersome multi-word polysyllabic Vice President of Technology?

KC: You bet! I’m not sure they’ll have any more of a clue about what I actually do, but it sounds much cooler.

MD: That’s awesome, Ken. Congratulations!