Allia Mohamed is the CEO & Co-Founder of openigloo, NYC’s first review platform for tenants. Since launching in 2020, openigloo has grown to a community of 100,000 NYC renters who are leveraging the platform to find highly-rated landlords. She is on a mission to bring transparency to rental markets and recently closed a round of funding from investors such as David Siegel (CEO of Meetup) and Index Ventures. Prior to starting openigloo, Allia worked in venture capital and investment banking.

Allia’s mantra

Go with the flow. I don't really have a morning routine, I like to go with the flow. My days can start around 7am, sometimes 8am if my meetings start later in the day. My consistent habit in the morning is checking my phone. Many people would interpret that as being a bad habit, but when I wake up, the first thing I want to do is see what happened overnight with openigloo. I want to see if anybody left any tenant reviews, if there were any bugs on the app, or if there's someone on my team that needs something. I don't want to waste a second getting to those things. 

On her meditation practices

I am an on and off meditator. I've gone through periods in my life where I’ve been very disciplined about it, meaning meditating for two or three hours a day. Now, I make time to meditate in smaller bits, whether that be a 5 to 10 minute guided meditation before my day starts, or in between meetings. My meditation practice has transformed from being very intentional to meditating when inspiration strikes, which I’ve found to be most helpful in my current workflow.

Day in the life of a startup founder

My days have changed a lot in the past year. In the beginning, the focus was designing and building a product. Then, it evolved to bringing people into the process, getting external feedback, and listening to what users wanted to see in the product. My focus recently has shifted away from product development and more towards fundraising, marketing, business development, user acquisition, and all other things related to scaling a business. I'm wearing a few different hats with the overarching theme shaping my days being: to understand everything there is to know about my user and about the space that I'm working in. Our team uses Notion and Slack to stay organized. Being organized is not something that comes naturally to me, so I try and stay on top of my Google Calendar and Notion by putting deadlines and reminders on every task.

Best part about her job

Getting to talk to my users. The greatest takeaways I have are from the conversations with NYC tenants, especially if they’ve had a bad experience using openigloo - that’s where I learn the most. I really enjoy being able to listen to someone’s story and explore ways openigloo can support them in their renter journey. Talking to renters has helped us build a community-based platform. 

Essentials she wants to invest more in  

My art—I have been a musician and a singer by training since I was a kid. I have a guitar that I pick up very occasionally, and by very occasionally I mean maybe 5 times a year. It’s one of those skills that I plateaued with a decade ago and I haven't invested any time in getting better at it. I would like to change that because it's something I really enjoy and find to be therapeutic. 

Unanticipated use-cases driving product dev

A lot of our product evolution has been driven by our users and the comments they have on the app. But we’ve also learned about some unanticipated use-cases, for example, real estate agents using the app for due diligence on properties they’re representing, or apartments that they want to show potential clients. I was really focused on the renter, because I'm a renter, and that was the audience that I was trying to serve—so learning about these different use cases has been exciting.

On curating culture at openigloo

Culture is not something that you can build retroactively. So that’s something that I’ve kept at the front of my mind, as I’ve been building openigloo. You need to know the culture you want to create as you're scaling your business, and bring in people that are going to help you bring that culture to life. It's one of those things that has to come organically, it has to feel effortless, because you can't force a culture onto a group of people.

Personality and lived experiences are influential, which is why I’m way less concerned with hiring people that have the most polished resumes. Rather, I want to find people who are curious and that I enjoy spending time with. I didn’t know anything about starting a company when I started openigloo, but somehow eight months later I’m doing it. Ultimately, I want to build an environment that’s open, transparent, that’s conducive for creativity, innovation, and learning. The key to achieving that is bringing in the right people that also care about those values.

Safekeeping moments of inspiration

Although we are very focused on achieving certain KPIs and making improvements to the product, we don’t want to lose those moments of inspiration of what openigloo can grow to be. It’s important that we have a space where everyone at the company can voice their ideas. It could be a feature or design element, a whole new product, or a way that we can support renters in the future. We have an Ideas Slack channel so that when inspiration strikes one of our team members they can pop it into the chat. When we brainstorm plans for the future, we can reference back to that channel and pull the things that we think are worth pursuing. 

On leaning into the founder community

It’s been a great experience to see how open the founder community is, especially about their challenges, what they’ve learned from their mistakes, and what advice they have. I’ve met some really supportive entrepreneurs. They understand how difficult it is to start something of your own...along with the emotional rollercoaster or hiccups that come with it. The conversations I’ve had with some founders have helped me stay focused on who we are trying to serve, because there are so many stakeholders that could benefit from our platform. It's very easy to get distracted. 

Before launching openigloo, I met with Georges Clement of Justfix.nyc, a non-profit organization that has become a pillar of tenant advocacy in NYC. He shared a comment that stuck with me, which is that anything related to real-estate in NYC is political. You have to take a side. His words encouraged us to be very vocal about our “side” - we are here to support renters. Period. 

Her Northstar

One of my guiding principles is to feel like I’m moving forward. Whenever I’m in a situation that I am unsure about, I try to reassess my environment andask myself, am I learning?

Am I moving forward? 

Or, do I feel like I'm standing still? 

In moments that I felt stagnant, I knew I needed to make a change. For example, after years of working in banking, I was really eager to learn about different subjects, to meet a new network of people, so I decided to go to grad school. That was a fantastic change for me, where I learned a lot and actually ultimately met my co-founder for openigloo. So it was a great decision. 

Something fun she’s done recently

Creative outlets are super important for me. I did a clay sculpting class last night that my friend hosted. She's a ceramicist in Canada, and she did a virtual class which was a great way to unplug. My sculptures weren’t the prettiest (see pics), but I had fun! You can check out her stuff here.