Steve Nylund, CEO, Odevo U.S.
Why did you choose to join Odevo?
When I first met the people from Odevo, what stood out to me was the culture. We accept that nobody has all the answers, we want to keep learning and are willing to question how things have always been done. Everyone is generous with their time and knowledge and genuinely invested in helping others succeed.
Also, I’m drawn to the operating model. Having spent my career building decentralized organizations, I believe that’s the strongest way to operate a services business, especially one where people meet clients locally. Balancing real ownership for operating companies with finding what’s better done together. Get that balance right, and it beats a centralized model every time.
What’s your philosophy on leadership?
Servant leadership. In a business like ours, the frontline is everyone who deals directly with clients and residents: our property and community managers, our sales, client accounting, maintenance, concierge and other onsite teams. Everyone else exists to serve them, not the other way around.
I think of it as an inverted pyramid. Most org charts put the frontline at the bottom. That’s backward. They belong at the top, and the rest of us are here to support them with education, coaching, tools, information, and technology that take repetitive work off their plate so they can spend their time serving clients and residents.
Serving people well means understanding them, which takes curiosity and enough humility to admit you don’t have it all figured out. I’ve met plenty of leaders at Odevo who work this way, so I’m not alone in this leadership style.
How does technology fit into the equation?
Every industry gets reshaped by technology eventually. Odevo is serious about leading that change rather than reacting to it, and that matters to me. For me, the real value of technology is what it frees up, automating the repetitive, mundane parts of the job so our frontline can spend more time actually engaging with clients.
We are also changing what property management can be by adding new services, for example in insurance, procurement, and maintenance, all of which are information technology enabled.
That takes scale, which is why an independent firm often struggles to invest properly on its own. Odevo can make those investments happen and apply technology within a decentralized structure, strengthening local teams. Not replacing their judgment.
Why should an operating company in the US consider joining Odevo?
If you’re running an independent, perhaps family-owned property management firm, you’re likely up against the same three walls: not enough scale to invest in digital transformation, limited career paths to offer your people, and not enough capital to grow through acquisitions. You’re also working in isolation; you only know what you know.
Joining Odevo removes those walls: tools, capital, a bigger career ladder inside the wider group, and access to best practices, solutions and know-how from a global family of similar businesses. What’s genuinely different from others is the operating model. We invest in your business to help it grow. We don’t fold you into a shared service center and strip out what made you good. We protect the frontline, wherever it sits.
What makes the journey ahead exciting for you?
Odevo entered the US in 2022 and has already built a strong foundation, with lots of room for further growth. I’ve built businesses before, so I have a good sense of where we can be in five years: growing organically ahead of the market because of how the operating model shares best practice, and, given how large and fragmented this market still is, continuing to grow by partnering with the best companies in the industry.
If we lead digital transformation, and invest in our frontline, we can offer a level of service competitors can’t match, and that’s ultimately what retains and wins customers. It also means real career growth for everyone already here. The market opportunity, the operating model, and the culture, that’s what makes this an exciting place to be.
