What's New at Rezzi! - October 2023
Since beginning product development, we have worked within The Engine Accelerator - a Boston-based incubator that offers startups access to specialized equipment and labs. Up to this point, we have been residents in The Engine’s main building, but we recently moved to an annex a couple blocks down the road. Here, we’ll have a much larger space to operate in.
The Engine has the stated goal of “mak[ing] it easier for Tough Tech to change the world.” To do so, they offer startups like ours a workspace with easy access to industrial production machines and labs. This eliminates the need for us to invest our hard-earned capital on advanced tools that will only be used in a limited capacity. Without the facilities of The Engine, production of the SmartCan prototype would be far more expensive, cumbersome, and time consuming.
Working at the Engine has also benefitted us by putting us in close proximity to our peers - other Boston-based startups. The atmosphere in The Engine is unique, and quite palpable upon entering. Roaming the halls of The Engine, you’ll encounter intelligent, hardworking young professionals at every turn. This is an environment which is defined by the people who work in it - the challenges they face, the victories they celebrate, and the hard work they do on a daily basis. In other words, its the perfect place to develop SmartCan.
The Engine’s main building is filled to capacity, with dozens of startups calling it home. Fortunately, we recently moved to another property owned by The Engine, just a couple blocks down the road. Although this building is much smaller, we occupy a much larger space in it - which you can see in the attached photos.
We’re pleased to announce that Eric Meccariello has joined the Rezzi team as our new VP of Engineering. He is leading the development of SmartCan, and his job is to bring our concepts to life - in the most efficient, resilient, and reliable way possible. Through his efforts, we will work out any flaws in our design, so that we can create a truly exceptional product.
Eric graduated from Wentworth Institute of Technology in 2014, with a dual bachelor’s degree in electrical and mechanical engineering. Over the course of the next decade, Eric spent time in a number of engineering roles, picking up skills that eventually led to a five-year long tenure working for Piaggio Fast Forward. Over the course of his career he has developed strong skills in mechanical engineering, robotics, and most crucially - product development.
Our two co-founders have known Eric since he worked at Piaggio, and hand-selected him based on his quality as an engineer. He embodies many of the qualities that we at Rezzi hold in high esteem - including inquisitiveness, resourcefulness, and pure drive to get the job done. All of these traits will help him to develop SmartCan to the highest possible standards, and we’re looking forward to seeing his work manifested in the coming months!
Alongside SmartCan, we’re hard at work developing our analytics platform. What you may not know is that we’re designing it with the whole waste industry in mind - not just SmartCan. That means that we will be providing our platform as standalone software that both haulers and their customers can benefit from. We anticipate the release of this software will widen our customer base, and increase our revenue.
Having spent quite a bit of time in the waste collection industry, we’re acutely aware of the problems faced by haulers and their customers. One issue in particular stood out to us - communication between the two parties. In the waste industry, data is often shared with the customer in a disorganized fashion - typically using spreadsheets and emails. With the Rezzi platform, we hope to make the sharing of data user-friendly and above all, useful.
The Rezzi platform will provide the customer a detailed analysis of their waste data. Reports with useful, actionable insights can be easily generated, and present the data for the customer in a way that is easy to understand. In addition, it provides a simple way for customers to communicate other information to the hauler - like instructions for pickup at certain houses, for instance. All this information will be displayed in a clean, modern user interface that has been carefully designed to suit the needs of both haulers and their customers.
Haulers will benefit significantly, because the platform will be compatible with existing methods of weighing trash that haulers already use. In these cases, the software still holds value, because it makes it far easier to share and analyze the data that is already being generated. We believe that the Rezzi platform has strong potential as a tool for strengthening customer relationships, by making communication as easy and smooth as possible.
For us, this platform will provide us with additional revenue at a crucial time. As the development of SmartCan carries on, we need to look forward to the future, and plan our finances accordingly. The money generated by our platform will help to support our development activities in the time leading up to SmartCan’s release. We believe that strengthening the relationship between haulers and customers is a worthy task, and that our software will be a critical step towards realizing that goal.
For direct inquiries about Rezzi or SmartCan, please contact us using this form.