Making Customer Communities Your Strongest Moat Ft. StarRez

Ravi Darbha:

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Zinnov Podcast. I’m your host Ravi Darbha Partner, Zinnov. I have with me today Jason Day, CEO, StarRez, and David Meale, President, StarRez. Welcome both. Thanks for joining me today.

Jason Day:

Thanks for having us.

Ravi Darbha:

To set context for our listeners, Jason, many of whom may not know what StarRez is and what they do, can you briefly explain what the company does?

Jason Day:

Sure. Absolutely. StarRez is the leading provider of student housing software worldwide, focused on helping universities and colleges manage the student’s journey through the housing process. Over the last 30 years, working with higher education institutions, we’ve learned that, similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, housing is critical to the success of students on campus. Their experience in housing impacts their GPA, their mental health, their retention and graduation rate, as well as how they engage as alumni. Our focus is ensuring that institutions are delivering a world-class experience for their students on and off campus so that they can achieve the outcomes they’re after.

Ravi Darbha:

So from your perspective, how do you describe StarRez to someone encountering it for the first time?

David Meale:

The easiest way to describe StarRez, when I do that 30-second elevator pitch, is that it’s like a hotel system for student beds, although we focus on the student experience. Our mantra and mission is all around building thriving residential communities. Over the past 30 years, we’ve been working in collaboration with our community around the world to build a world-class system to manage student accommodations. Executive leaders at higher education institutions have a couple of top-line priorities that keep them up at night, student wellness, student success, and retention. These all fuel financial stability for the institutions.

Jason Day:

The one thing I’d add is that one of those concerns is the wellbeing and health of their staff. It is a massive undertaking to manage thousands of students coming through campus into housing and building that community. That creates a really complex environment for staff. So not only are we focused on helping students succeed, but we’re also focused on helping the staff do that efficiently, so they can spend the majority of their time focused on the student, which is the reason they really got into the role.

Ravi Darbha:

Absolutely. You are providing the mental wellbeing and the setting for them to do really well in their academics.

David Meale:

That’s exactly right. There are studies that say if the student is happy and successful, they stay, they tell their friends, they spend more money on campus, and at some point they become donors for their institutions.

Jason Day:

We do an annual study on the state of student housing. One of the statistics we found is that GPAs are actually higher based on students’ housing experience. You can’t ask for a better outcome for the institution.

Ravi Darbha:

Correct. And I think it contributes to the collective success of society.

Ravi Darbha:

So you stepped into the role of CEO after holding senior leadership positions. What changed most for you from how you were operating earlier?

Jason Day:

For the last 10 years of my career prior to becoming CEO at StarRez, I predominantly held go-to-market, sales-oriented roles, focused on growth and revenue acquisition for SaaS software companies, covering marketing, pipeline build, sales execution, and customer success. The shift as I stepped into the CEO role was really the opportunity to take a broader view of the cross-functional areas within StarRez and partner with what I believe to be an exceptional executive leadership team.

Ravi Darbha:

Sort of like integrator in chief.

Jason Day:

Yeah, exactly.

Ravi Darbha:

So you’ve seen the company evolve over time. What are the most meaningful changes you’ve witnessed at StarRez?

David Meale:

When I started back almost 23 years ago, the majority of our customers were in Australia and New Zealand. We had a small handful of teammates who managed all of that. We always had a process, culture, and customer success orientation. But the biggest change came when we brought on Vista. They brought a different rigour to that process and cultural orientation. They have a consulting practice that helped us take what we had to a whole other level through best practices.

Ravi Darbha:

StarRez has gone through multiple phases of growth. What has been the most important shift in how the company thinks about the future?

Jason Day:

For us over the last four years, one of the big changes was this idea of go slow to go fast. That seems very counterintuitive in a hypergrowth SaaS company. But by going slow — analysing our processes, redefining them so they could perform at scale, even unwinding some of the ways we had done things and rebuilding them — we were able to operate at a pace we had never operated before. The same applied to roles and responsibilities. In early-stage companies, everyone wears multiple hats. But as you build for scale, you have to get really clear about roles and responsibilities — because once you do that, you can turn those teams loose to be exceptional at what they do. When we started with Vista in 2022, our account managers were doing everything — selling, doing renewals, providing customer support. When you asked how they spent their time, 20% was on selling and 80% was everything else. Once we created an account manager role focused purely on creating value within our customer base, we got real clarity and the ability to scale at a much faster pace.

Ravi Darbha:

What you’ve been able to do is build the moat — what truly differentiates you from the competition as you scale pragmatically. That positions you as the market leader you are today.

Jason Day:

The moat is so critical. Not just in software today — if you think about the value and potential that AI has on that software, the data we capture as part of our platform creates a real moat in our ability to service our customers.

Ravi Darbha:

As the organisation has scaled, what has StarRez become better at that it wasn’t as strong at earlier?

David Meale:

Rigour is what we’ve done really well. Once we split apart the roles and responsibilities of our team, we were able to offer much better service to our community — taking customer service and team orientation to another level. And integrating acquired companies into the StarRez family became another specialty we became very good at.

Ravi Darbha:

Jason, what’s the most underestimated aspect of building technology that people truly depend upon?

Jason Day:

Folks underestimate the amount of cybersecurity, data security, redundancy, and protection you have to build into mission-critical software. It’s often an unsung item — you don’t get credit for it in the court of public opinion. But it’s a tremendous focus for technology companies. Given how much data is created in this world, and how much is needed to manage the student housing process, that level of data protection is just underestimated.

Ravi Darbha:

It’s not just the product that drives the organisation, but the ecosystem that powers the product. Often they are the unsung heroes.

Ravi Darbha:

David, what leadership challenges only emerge once a company reaches a certain scale of maturity?

David Meale:

We hit that intersection four years ago when we brought on an outside investor. We had been in the market for 30 years at that point — we didn’t know what we didn’t know. With Vista, one of the mantras we live by is that culture is king. I’m a big believer that our team, community, and customers come to us and stay with us because of our culture. That was a big concern when we brought in an outside party. But we realised you can keep your culture — you just have to be super intentional. Executive leadership has to intentionally make moves, spend money, and take action to protect it.

Ravi Darbha:

One thing that unites academic institutions across the world is a unified sense of purpose and culture. That being the cornerstone of your growth strategy is really spot on.

Jason Day:

Our customer community is really our differentiator. The higher education space is very unique in its DNA — it’s not highly competitive. Universities are not competing with each other the way corporations are. It’s a very collaborative community. They’re willing to come together, talk about best practices, and say ‘this is how we do it at our university — replicate it.’ We have a user conference every year called Global Connect. Last year we reached over a thousand attendees, and that speaks to the collaborative nature of this community.

Ravi Darbha:

StarRez operates in a private equity environment. How has that shaped the way you think about long-term decision making?

Jason Day:

Private equity in itself hasn’t really changed the way I think about long-term decision making. We’ve always been focused on our customer and the value we deliver. That hasn’t changed from when we were founder-owned to the PE world. What’s been key is partnering closely with our PE stakeholders to make sure we’re aligned on how we’re growing the business and nurturing our customer base. Customers are the key to long-term success — the more you nurture that, the more it drives retention and increases customer spend.

Ravi Darbha:

How has that long-term mindset influenced the way the organisation shows up, both internally and with customers?

David Meale:

We’ve always had a long-term mentality around growing the company. The rigour we put in, with the funding and resources that Vista brought, has now materialised. We were able to invest in the resources to fulfil that dream — communication, rigour around data and security. All of it is just coming true now.

Ravi Darbha:

What’s exciting for StarRez for the next five years? What keeps you up at night?

Jason Day:

The growth opportunities in front of StarRez today as a true global student housing platform are almost unlimited. We have tremendous opportunity to acquire new customers. We’re excited about geographic expansion — we were originally an Australian-based company that expanded into North America and then Europe, and we’re excited to continue into broader mainland Europe and Asia Pacific. The area that excites me most is continuing to build out the student journey, both on campus and off campus. For 30 years we’ve been focused on the on-campus journey. With an acquisition last year focused on off-campus housing, we’re now bringing that student journey into the off-campus opportunity as well.

Ravi Darbha:

As StarRez expands globally, how do you think about leading teams across geographies and cultures?

Jason Day:

The key to global leadership is good, solid local leadership — ensuring you build very strong teams in the local market that can execute effectively. That only works with really good communication and alignment. The number one key is how you communicate and create alignment with local leaders to ensure you’re executing consistently across the globe. And it’s key for leaders to be in those geographies. It’s important for our Hyderabad leaders to be in Denver or Australia, and for our North American and EMEA leaders to be here. That type of cross-pollination is key to success.

Ravi Darbha:

What are your key learnings in building resilience and strength in a distributed model?

David Meale:

I always lean on culture. Communication and bringing in strong local leaders is the way we approach growth. We’re not looking to transplant someone from the UK into Hyderabad — we want local people who know the culture and how to work with the local community. How we ramp up our talent and bring them into the StarRez culture matters. Our Hyderabad office is our latest example of this. We have executive leadership committed to a regular cadence of travel here, immersing ourselves into the team and building the culture that will help us scale. You want to be excited about what you do when you wake up every morning.

Ravi Darbha:

India has become an important part of StarRez’s global vision. How do you see the role of Global Capability Centres evolving for technology organisations?

Jason Day:

GCCs are going to continue to be critical for technology companies like ours. But what companies should expect of those GCCs should and will change. Historically, people think of GCCs as technology-only focus areas. For us, we’re passionate about them being very cross-functional. Our Hyderabad team covers not just product and technology, but customer operations, implementation, go-to-market resources, Salesforce administrators, and finance. We treat the GCC as a StarRez office — no different from our UK, Melbourne, or Denver offices. The one shift that will occur is how GCCs begin to leverage AI in their work. It’s not AI that’s going to take your job — it’s somebody using AI that’s going to take your job. The same principles of AI adoption have to be applied here as in any other office.

Ravi Darbha:

How do you personally define success today compared to early on in your career?

Jason Day:

Early in my career, success was personal progression — was I moving up in an organisation, taking on roles of greater responsibility? In the last 10 to 15 years, success for me has been much more about the growth of the people working with me. I’m most proud of sales people who’ve grown into sales leaders, directors who’ve grown into vice presidents, people I’ve coached who’ve gone on to influence and grow others. I’m now much more interested in the development of teams and the health of those teams.

Ravi Darbha:

What does doing the right thing look like for a technology company as it grows in influence and responsibility?

David Meale:

Doing the right thing is something you do at every stage of maturity. It’s a good way to measure whether you’ve got a good cultural fit. It’s about being honest, hardworking, and trustworthy — owning your output and owning your mistakes. At StarRez, you can just be yourself and contribute as a human, with colleagues who share the same mission: to serve our team and our community.

Ravi Darbha:

What mindset do you believe will matter most for leaders building technology companies over the next decade?

Jason Day:

It’s about an AI-driven mindset. Jeff Woods’ book describes an AI-driven leader probably the best — where you think about AI not just as an automation tool, but as a collaborator in your thought process. Something that helps you validate ideas and identify areas you aren’t thinking about. Using AI as a supporter in that process is going to be critical for leaders going forward.

David Meale:

AI is your teammate now. It’s your partner who’s going to help you further your position. The old mindset is to take what you did yesterday and incrementally improve it. But now it’s all about rapid change and adaptability. You can significantly change how you did something yesterday and move on to a whole new frame of mind for growth.

Ravi Darbha:

Okay. So with that we get into the fun part — the rapid fire round. Jason, one leadership habit you had to consciously develop?

Jason Day:

I’m not done developing this habit. For me it’s listen more and talk less. I always have something to say. As a leader — especially among a high-performing leadership team — I have to consciously remind myself not to speak. When you speak as a CEO, it takes the oxygen out of the room. It can remove collaboration, it can stop idea sharing. I have to consciously work on listening more and talking less, making space for my senior leaders to do what they do. And it will never stop. I will be working on that till the cows come home. My wife says the same thing.

Ravi Darbha:

David, one leadership habit you’ve had to consciously unlearn.

David Meale:

The habit of trying to iterate on what you did the day before — that’s over now. We try to reinvent, look openly at all the problems we’re trying to solve, and move on to the next step.

Ravi Darbha:

Jason, what’s harder — today’s speed or alignment?

Jason Day:

Alignment is harder than speed. In the F1 movie, Brad Pitt’s character goes around the crew saying ‘I need you to take a tenth of a second off.’ Over 70 laps, that’s the difference between last and first. On the surface it seems like speed — but it’s actually about alignment. Once the crew was aligned, the speed happened naturally in the pit stop. Once you have alignment, speed follows — because you are 100% focused on the outcome you’re aligned around.

David Meale:

I love that movie. You could go around your dev operations, your customer operations, and use that exact language with every department.

Ravi Darbha:

David, what’s harder to maintain at scale — culture or clarity?

David Meale:

Culture. I’ve mentioned it many times here. If you get your culture right, clarity is much easier to get right.

Ravi Darbha:

Jason, one lesson from earlier in your career that still guides your decisions today.

Jason Day:

Ego will get you into trouble — especially in leadership. We should always be in a constant state of learning, regardless of the role we’re in. Just having a mindset of continuous learning and making sure your ego doesn’t get in the way of that, no matter the success you’re having — that’s critical. I have many scars from where I did not get that right early in my career.

Ravi Darbha:

David, one principle that has stayed constant for you, even as the company evolved.

David Meale:

Culture. I’ve believed in it all my life. I feel like I landed in the right industry because of this mindset. It serves our team, our community, and our investors the right way.

Jason Day:

Geez. How about a new answer?

Ravi Darbha:

Jason, one word you hope people use to describe your leadership style.

Jason Day:

I’m not going to say culture. For me, it’s approachability. I value people within our organisation feeling comfortable coming to me at any point. It’s hard in a remote work environment to have an open-door policy, but I want to create an environment where, regardless of role or seniority, people feel they can speak up and be heard. At my all-hands meetings, I’m almost insisting that people ask questions. This should be a safe environment. Even in hierarchical organisations, breaking down those barriers by being as approachable as possible is critical.

David Meale:

I think you’ve conquered approachability. Everyone puts their guard down when they talk to you — they know they can be honest and forthright, and it really helps.

Ravi Darbha:

That sort of approachability creates openness with your customers as well — they start feeling that this is someone they can partner with and trust.

Ravi Darbha:

David, last question — one word you hope people associate with StarRez in the long run.

David Meale:

Trustworthy. I want people to trust us — with the same kind of transparency and openness. Trustworthy is my word.

Ravi Darbha:

Awesome. Thanks a lot for joining me today and really sharing your insights. Two things stood out for me. First, strong culture as the cornerstone of StarRez’s success — culture is king, and it’s clearly working because you are the market leader in your segment, and it truly resonates with the problems you’re solving for your customers. Second, I really like your point about AI — how it should be seen as a collaborator rather than just an automation solution. That’s a very pragmatic way of leveraging AI to drive organisational strategy. Thanks a lot, Jason and David, for sharing those insights.

Jason Day:

You bet, Ravi. We appreciate the time.

Ravi Darbha:

To our audience, thank you for tuning in and I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Zinnov Podcast. Stay tuned for more interesting episodes. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or any of your favourite streaming platforms.