60 Million Views Later... What This Viral AI Essay Means for Property Managers

5 (Useful) Takeaways From Matt Shumer’s Viral AI Essay

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Property Managers,

An essay titled “Something Big Is Happening” just exploded across the internet.

Tens of millions of views. Shared in group chats.  Forwarded to leadership teams.  Responded to by every AI thought leader trying to go viral too… (*AHEM*).  

The TLDR?

We’re in a February 2020 moment with AI. It feels overblown. Until suddenly, it isn’t.

The author- an AI founder deep inside the industry- says something crossed a line this month. AI didn’t just improve. It stopped being a tool and started doing the job. Writing software. Testing it. Improving it. With judgment.

His claim is blunt:

The people in tech aren’t predicting disruption.
It already happened to them.
And everyone else who uses a computer is next.

Maybe he’s right.  Maybe he’s wrong.

There are reasonable counterarguments, but my two favorites are:

• Adoption takes time- people and companies move slow.
• Disruptive technologies don’t destroy jobs, they create them (and we’ve been through this many many times)

But here’s what struck me-

When the essay shifts from prediction to advice, it sounds… familiar.  Very familiar.  In fact, it sounds like an updated version of the advice given by 3 CEOs with 3 very different AI outlooks last year.

Just updated to AI’s current capabilities.

So instead of debating whether 50% of jobs disappear, let’s look at the advice, and apply a property management industry lens to it.

Because the last time we broke down this type of advice has been what’s helped people the most.

5 (Useful) Takeaways From Matt Shumer’s Viral AI Essay

These are the results  Vendoroo’s agents are producing for our clients :

If you haven’t checked out  Vendoroo recently, it’s time for you to see our clients’ latest receipts.  Book a call with our team what an AI teammate could do on your team.

1. “Start Using AI Seriously.”

The author says:
Stop treating AI like Google. Use the paid version.  Push it into your real work.  Try to automate the thing that takes you the most time.

The 3 CEOs all said this, verbatim.  The lesson there was, “You can’t wait to figure it out to do it- you have to do it to figure it out.”

Translated for property managers:

Saying you use AI because you write emails with it is not enough anymore.

The people I see in property management taking AI seriously are building AI-first processes.  They usually have a broken department they are trying to fix, are in growth mode and see they can avoid growing headcount, or have an A player that is clearly overburdened and doing what they can to help them win.

I could be overindexing towards the type of client that uses Vendoroo, but I’m pretty certain we serve the majority of this market.

If you're someone who has built an agentic process in your company I’d love to hear what it is.  

Shoot me an email with it.  A voice note or loom video would do too.  I’m trying to get a sense of what’s out there I don't know.

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2. “Be Early. The Advantage Window Is Small.”

The essay says the person who walks into a meeting and says:

“I did this in one hour with AI instead of three days.”

…becomes the most valuable person in the room.

Again, something the 3 CEO’s agreed unanimously agreed upon.

In property management?

The PM who goes

• From calling people back to answering every call
• From only chasing prospects to time for meeting with clients
• Combines “boutique service” with economies of scale

Becomes the most valuable PM in their market.  

The funny thing is those are all “more human” improvements. This is why I think the most AI advanced property management company will show up in their market as the most human touch company.

This is, after all, a relationship business.

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3. “Get Financially Resilient.”

The author advises building savings and flexibility because disruption could move faster than expected.  This is new to the discussion.

For property managers, adding doors owned to your doors is something I love to evangelize, and somehow, I’ve been underrating it.

If you haven’t heard about how you- because you’re a property manager- can purchase rental homes at 10-20% off (beyond accounting for your access to off market deals), then you need to talk to Tracy Streich about bonus depreciation.

Basically- because you’re a PM- you can take a massive write off against your active income by depreciating the entire value of a rental home on year one.

This saves tens of thousands of dollars on your taxes that year.

Given that we all accept the world will likely change in some way, what could feel more secure than investing in a core need like housing, with insider knowledge of the asset?

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4. “Lean Into What’s Hard to Replace.”

He says:

Relationships.
Trust.
Physical presence.
Licensed accountability.

This one “rhymes” with the advice from the CEO’s: “What’s hard will become easy, and what’s now impossible will be the new hard.”

But it has a more “human” feel to it.

When this is the advice I can’t help but continue to think the AI revolution was built for property managers.  In fact, I often feel incredibly fortunate to be working in this space and investing in rental properties.

If ever there is a sector of the economy that feels relatively safe, it’s the need to provide housing right now.

There’s also that “solving for the biggest problem” is core to our ethos at Vendoroo.  That’s why we started with maintenance.  

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5. “Build the Habit of Adapting.”

He suggests one hour a day experimenting with AI.  Not reading about it.  Tinkering with it.

It’s for the same reason the CEO’s all said “You can’t wait to figure it out to do it- you have to do it to figure it out.”

I’ll be honest.  I don’t have an hour a day to experiment with it.  I use it all day long, but I’d say I experiment maybe once a week.

But I’m also super jealous of our clients that are in there building stuff into their ROO agents every day.

The role of an AI team lead is the most obvious thing ever to predict becomes ubiquitous.

So whether you are learning that role to be it, or to manage it, learning what training, supervising, and leveraging an agent looks like is the new “college degree” that will guarantee you have value in the market.

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While the World Is Worried About Job Losses…

I’ll be honest: I don’t know how fast this all moves, or exactly how it plays out. Anyone who claims certainty here is selling something.

But I’m increasingly convinced of one thing:

Property management is better insulated than most careers, and more positioned to benefit from AI than people realize.

Because at the end of the day, housing is physical. Maintenance is physical. Trust is relational. Accountability is real. And the best property managers aren’t paid for typing.

They’re paid for judgment, leadership, and outcomes.

So when AI takes the repetitive operational layer off your plate, it doesn’t commoditize you.

It concentrates you.

That’s why I believe that while the rest of the world worries about job losses, we’re different in property management.

For us, AI will give us the jobs we always hoped to have.

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Pablo Gonzalez

Chief Evangelist at Vendoroo

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P.S. Curious how Vendoroo actually works? Here’s my best attempt at making it simple.

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