#521 From Brokerage to PropTech: How Chad Link & Rob Brower Are Reinventing Home Buying

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mead today. I'm very pleased joining me this time, not one, but two guests from the us, Chad and Rob. You know, I, I don't like to spend time introducing people because I have a theory. No one can introduce [00:01:00] someone else better than themselves. So Chad and Rob, I don't know who want to start.

I will keep that to you. Uh, but tell us a little bit more about you, you know, your journey and what you're currently up to. Of course, we're gonna talk about. Tech in real estate, which is, I'm based in Dubai, so maybe some people would be also interested 'cause it's a hot market currently. So, 

ah, without further 

ado, I will leave that to you guys.

Chad: Well my name is Chad and I am the co-founder and, uh, CEO of Swyvvl. Uh, over the last 18 years, I've owned three real estate brokerages. I've trained, uh, hundreds of real estate agents and I've helped over a thousand clients successfully buy and sell homes. On my end, my team's helped about another thousand clients successfully buy and sell homes, and then my.

Traditional side of the agency, probably another thousand plus there. So it's my, my experience over the last 18 years, and I got into it just before the great recession hit here in the United States. But it's that experience that has served as the foundation for building Swyvvl and really building one of the first real estate platforms that is built from the ground up.[00:02:00] 

For real estate agents and home buyers and home sellers, rather than, in all honesty, by tech guys from the top down. So that serves as the inspiration for it. And sitting next to me is my CTO, Rob Brower. 

Rob: And like you said, I'm Rob, uh, the CTO and uh, I'm the tech nerd. And so, uh, I. I started as a tech nerd really early.

I've always been an early adopter. Uh, in a past life. I've worked as a coder for some major, uh, corporations, and I got tired of sitting in a cubicle just slinging code. So I went the entrepreneurial route and dipped my toe to that and then became a serial entrepreneur. But most of my time has been spent in either information technology or in the digital media space.

And so, uh, that's kind of where, where our paths crossed. 

Mehmet: Cool. And thank you again. I, it's very late at the time of this recording. It's 11:00 PM there. So thank you very much for doing it. Um, impressive background. [00:03:00] And you know, you, you said Rob, about how you crossed roads with, with, uh, with Chad now. Why real estate?

Like what was special about, you know, starting in, in, there are some verticals, I call them the hard verticals to enter from technology perspective, like healthcare is something that always come to my mind. You know, real estate is another one because it's like, you know. Very old, one of the oldest businesses in the world.

Yeah. And, you know, doing any, you know, disruption there is, is a challenge. So, and this question for both of you, feel free, who want to, to answer, you know, the question first? Well, yeah. So yeah, 

Rob: I'll, I'll start this time. Uh, I would say that, uh, I didn't have plans to, to get involved in real estate. I didn't have plans to become a prop tech, CTO, uh, but what happened was, uh.

Chad came to me as a client first. That was our first relationship, and he said basically, I have this idea for a website that I want to build. [00:04:00] And after we signed some NDAs and whatnot, uh, he shared the idea with me. And, uh, a lot of people don't know this, but we actually built a first version of the website for him.

And, uh, it wasn't branded Swyvvl back then. It, it was a different name. I was not a co-founder, uh, but I love the simplicity of his idea. And so after we had spent years working together on the previous version, uh, there came a moment where we were able to talk, frankly and honestly, and, uh, just talked about the idea of, Hey, listen, I really think if, if this thing's gonna fly, it needs a rebrand.

And so we sat down, we had that conversation, and I shared with him that I really believed in the simplicity of his idea. And actually, I mean, I don't know if this is smart business acumen or not, but I went from getting paid. To develop a website for him to basically buying into the company and becoming a co-founder.

There is 

Chad: my genius. There is my genius. It, 

Rob: it is genius, [00:05:00] right? And so he got himself, uh, a co-founder and a CTO and, uh. Uh, man, we just, we just went from there. Um, it was, it was really interesting and, and we learned a lot of lessons along the way. 

Chad: Well, I mean, when you're a startup, of course, resources are thin, right?

There's not enough time, there's not enough money, and there's not enough people. That's just how it goes. And you have to be able to bring on people who believe in your idea. Because you're not getting paid. You're not getting, and and that's what like any business, right? Whether you're doing a, a local real estate brokerage or if you're running a convenience store or whatever you're doing, you're not gonna get paid.

You're the last person who gets paid. You know, I, I tell a story of when I was, uh, you know, growing my real estate brokerage. I had went through a divorce and I could not afford to pay my personal bills. While keeping the business open, as I was just starting to grow it, so, mm-hmm. At that time, I had to make a decision.

I was like, okay, or what are you gonna do? Which one are you gonna give up? Are you gonna give up the business? Are you gonna give up your [00:06:00] personal life? So what I did is, is basically I lived outta my car and I lived out of my office. In order to be able to provide that year or two, that was really needed to have that income to be able to keep the business open.

'cause I knew it was gonna be forever, but I knew that if I walked away from the business, that would be forever. So you, I had to make that sacrifice of, you know, quote unquote being homeless. To be able to have that drive and determination, the resources to build my real. Brokerage. So I knew that when I was bringing on and starting this PropTech startup, that I had to have people that believed in me and believed in the idea a lot more than, Hey, I'm just there for stock options, or I'm just there for the pay.

Because guess what? Those things are, those things are thin and they're also very fleeting, especially at the very beginning. So it, it was a blessing to be able to, uh, bring Rob on and to be able to say, Hey, here's my ideas. You bring 'em to life. Because my, my, my background, of course is not majorly technological, uh, technology on that side of things.

So it, uh, he gets all of my demands and then he tells me, [00:07:00] number one, whether it's doable is the first question. And number two, is it doable in the timeframe that I want it done in with all of it? And those are, those are the two questions that, uh, come outta my mouth with everything I'd like him to do.

Mehmet: And I'm sure when he ask you, what do you want that you tell him yesterday? 

Chad: Absolutely, yes. It's never fa right? It's never fast enough. And we have this list, right, just like everyone else, but we have this list of about 50 things that we want to do. Of course, as the platform grows, as we get more resources, as the investment grows, you know, the traction grows.

You know, we have this list of all these things that we wish we could have done yesterday, uh, going into version 2.0, et cetera. But, you know, you, you have to have that patience as uh, and that grind as you move forward. 

Mehmet: I love hearing these stories. Um, you know, because it inspires other people who comes from any sector, any vertical they are in, to think how we can change things for the better.

Of course. Yeah. Like [00:08:00] you, you start from a pain point and you know, I always repeat this on, on, on the podcast when I talk to any founder or founders like yourself. Uh, gens now. I'm interested to know the pain, I mean the problem that you have spotted. Uh, and maybe this is for you Shad more first, and then I would hear Rob's opinion on this.

What, what was wrong? I mean, maybe it's still wrong and sometimes this happens also, um, very rare people can spot that this can be done in a better way because if you ask anyone. Uh, I found people doing it this way, so why I need to change. Yeah. But for you, there must be something like you said, no man, like this can't be done in a better way.

What was that? 

Chad: Well, you know, and I think this is where the benefit comes from with us, is that I've worked. You know, on the retail level, I've worked on the customer level of things. So I look at real estate from that viewpoint of a real estate agent of a home buyer or home seller. [00:09:00] While people who are running these, you know, these big tech platforms for that are real estate platforms like Redfin, realtor and Zillow don't, they've never had to take a client lead that's coming from their platform.

They've never had to do all the nurturing, the developing of the relationship, the going out and showing homes that having contracts fall through. Finally getting through inspection, appraisal, et cetera, and maybe three, six months or even three years later, finally get a check. So they don't look at the process from the same viewpoint and perception that I do.

So, you know, all these platforms really came into play just as I was beginning my real estate career. So I started in 2007 in the United States and much of the world we knew the Great recession hit for a lot of different countries, right. Banks were looking at failing and everyone didn't know what the heck was going on.

We had foreclosure rates that were just through the roof. Um, you know, equity, uh, and uh, on homes was dropping by like 40, 50% over basically a year, year and a half time period. So all these things were occurring, but as these things were occurring, there were platforms like truly in Zillow and [00:10:00] Redfin that were just starting.

So I grew up with them in my real estate career. I grew up with them. And they, they initially provided, you know, the service of bringing everything into a centralized location as far as all the home search and all the home information where a home buyer, home seller could get onto the platform, but also where they could find, you know, a real estate agent.

So I joined, you know, I joined as one of their, you know, premier refer real estate agents. So I would get clients that would be referred to me mm-hmm. By, for example, like truly, or Zillow. And then I would go work with this client, this home buyer or home seller. And then once I closed on a house. I then paid like Trulia or Redfin or Zillow.

I pay them a referral fee of 30, 40, 50% of their total commission or more. Wow. And as I did this over and over again, I would look at my clients and I would say, number one, they don't know this is happening. They don't know that I'm paying this referral fee back to these middlemen. They have no idea that it's occurring, and I can't tell them.

Number two, even though it's their [00:11:00] business that's being sold, they don't get to share in any of that money. That didn't seem right and then also number three, I knew that these exorbitant marketing and client referral fees were serving to artificially increase the cost of buying or selling a home. And of course, who are those costs passed on to?

They're passed on to home buyers and home sellers. And in the United States, we just hit the tipping point where the average salary will no longer allow someone to buy the average house in the United States. Mm-hmm. So we're really creating this, this economy of haves and have nots. And as this, as this has occurred over the last 14 years, 15 years since these platforms have been in play, I'm like, there's gotta be a better way.

We're already spending these billions of dollars and between these, you know, kind of the four or five major platforms in the United States, there's over probably about $10 billion a year that's going out that they're, that, that they're collecting. And I'm like, okay, how do we give this money back to real estate agents and home buyers and home sellers so they can decide what to do with it?

There has to be a way to be able to do that connection and give that money back to the players in the industry and to be able to [00:12:00] change the cost of buying a home rather than giving it to a middleman like Truly, or Redfin or Zillow. And then that money just goes away and you see nothing of it. So we develop Swyvvl, and Swyvvl allows home buyers or home sellers to come onto the platform and create what's called a client profile.

That client profile, they declare what type of home they're looking to purchase or what time or home they're looking to sell. And then real estate agents who are members of Swyvvl are able to see those client profiles and then they're able to compete against each other by declaring how much of the commission that they're going to make, that they're willing to share with the home buyer, home seller upon the successful closing of a home.

And then at the end of that time period, what we call a share experience. The real estate agent who has agreed to share the largest percentage of the commission with the home buyer, home seller, secures that individual as their client moving forward, and then upon the successful closing of a home, they then provide that commission share with the home buyer, home seller, and the home buyer.

Home seller now gets to use that for their down payments, their closing costs, their moving expenses, appraisals, inspections, the myriad of things [00:13:00] that come along with buying a house. So it makes a home buyer and home selling process more equitable and puts that dream within reach of more of home buyers and home sellers than the current process that we have.

And you know, I know I'm going long-winded, but this is the other thing that people don't know about in the United States is that over the last 20 years I've watched the, uh, the industry really get absorbed by about four or five players. And what people don't know is that the majority of the franchises that we have here on the real estate brokerage side, they're all owned by the same, like two or three companies.

They don't know that Zillow owns Trulia. They don't know that Redfin was just bought by Rocket Homes for over $1.75 billion. They don't know that Mr. Cooper, which is one of the biggest loan companies in the United States, was just bought by Rocket Homes. So there, there, there's very, very little actual choice.

There is the illusion of choice, but that has been taken away from our industry and we wanna put that back in because without competition, nothing changes. 

Mehmet: I have follow up [00:14:00] questions, but before doing so, because it's very interesting, I want to ask Rob from technology perspective, you know, um, what kind of challenges, because if I want to break down what Chad just mentioned, maybe at the bring it looks easy, but there are a lot of moving points in that.

Yeah. Uh, I'm interested to know how you broke down. So, because you mentioned like when you first met you, you did just as a website and then, you know, the idea developed further and became what Swyvvl is today. So. How, like how hard was it to, to translate this into kind of tech stack that you need to build this business model?

Rob: You, you are asking the right questions, uh, easy, right, simple. From Chad's point of view, he says, Hey, I want a website that does this. So we sit down, I talk with my, uh, developer, [00:15:00] and we start planning out the website. Now. Now Chad had already kind of envisioned what he wanted it to look like. So we weren't doing a lot of ui ux design.

We were really just providing the backend. So we figured out what type of tech stacker we're gonna need. And at first it was, it was kind of simple. I mean, the first iteration of the site was simply, uh, it had to have a, um. Basically a, a membership, uh, application where people could come in and create their accounts.

Mm-hmm. And then, uh, from there they would be able to see what, uh. What client profiles were existing, what types of homes were people looking to to buy or sell? Buyers and sellers had to be able to come in and create their account and then, uh, basically say, Hey, this is what I'm looking to buy. This is what I'm looking to sell.

Or where. Uh, but one of the first challenges was, uh, I'm not a real estate guy. And so, uh, we started building the, the product and then we would get new information from [00:16:00] Chad. Uh, we would get to a point where we would ask a question, a very simple question like, Hey, wait a minute. How do we do this? And he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, in real estate.

And he'd give us the answer and we're like, oh, crap. The way that we're designing it, that's not gonna work. Uh, we also came up a against some limitations because, uh, there were some states in which we were not allowed to, uh. Share any of the, the commission back with the client. Uh, but in the middle of all this, the next big challenge that we hit, potential challenge was the big NAR ruling because, uh, you know, Chad started explaining to me like, uh, what the, the coupled commissions and decoupling commissions look like.

And, and then we had to, I was like, are we gonna have to just start accounting for all of this stuff? Yeah. Uh, and, and there was a moment. There was kind, it was kind of hairy, right? Where we thought, depending on how this nar ruling goes, man, this could be the end of us. But, uh, man, by the grace of God, it, it went our way because, uh, here in Washington, and Chad can speak more to that, uh, we were already doing, uh, [00:17:00] commissions decoupled the way that NAR was saying, Hey, this is how we have to do it moving forward.

And so that helped us out. But, uh, then we would have these conversations and, uh, we would feel like we're getting about 80% done with our build. And, uh, we had one conversation where I asked a stupid question. I said, Hey, Chad. So, so basically, uh, people are going to. Have a house that they wanna buy, but where are they gonna find that house?

They're gonna go to like our competitor, like Zillow, and do a home search, and then they're gonna come back here, and then the agents are gonna bid on how much commission they're gonna bid. Why wouldn't they just stay on Zillow? If they're on Zillow? And he was like, you're right, we have to add a home search portal to our website.

And I was like, oh, yeah, that's, that's easy. I've never done that before. But I started looking into it and oh my gosh, if you've never added an IDX feed to a website. Oh man, it, it completely changed everything. 

Chad: Well, one that's national too. 'cause how it works in the United States here, local MLSs [00:18:00] control the information.

Yes. So those were 600 MLSs in the United States. Wow. So to be able to access a nationwide home search, I mean there's really, in the United States, there's probably maybe a handful or two handfuls of independent third party nationwide real estate platforms. There's a reason for that. 'cause it's virtually impossible to be able to get access to nationwide.

Information stream, right? To be able to put those 600 plus MLSs together. So here we're sitting here as a challenge, and there's reason why we didn't include it in the first iteration of the platform was because I knew how hard it was and how difficult it was. And I knew also how expensive it was, you know, for, yeah, for a startup with limited resources, limited funds, limited developing, et cetera.

Um, but we did manage to, uh, push through with all of it. We did manage to partner with someone who then was able to. Give us access to that nationwide stream. So we now have a nationwide platform that has as many homes and has much information or more than any of our competitors have. And uh, we were [00:19:00] able to add that aspect to really, you know, bring us up from a second or third tier real estate web platform to a top tier real estate platform.

Rob: But I gotta tell you my man, that, just getting to the data that we have now, there was an intermediate step that WA made us change our tech stack twice, right? So, so the only other way to get it is to go to the people that have the data and they have what's called syndication. And so with syndication, they have access to the data, but each of the groups of MLSs get to vote whether they wanna let you have it or not.

So unfortunately, our rollout plan had to change because one of the groups said, no, we don't wanna give 'em our, our, our MLS info. And we're like, what the heck? Like we, we meet all the criteria. They just. I don't know if, if they were being influenced by, by some of the competitors or what, but, uh, they said no.

But luckily, Chad being the, the real estate guru, uh, and knowing real estate contracts, he got us an out and he basically said, okay, give us 90 days and let us play with the data. We had to hire, [00:20:00] uh, uh, a new guy to the tech team because the way the syndication does it. They hold all the data and you have to pull it from them and store it.

So then I was like, well, now we got it. We're talking about Azure servers and things like that. And so we had to hire an Azure developer, and so that increased the cost. And now we're paying for all this expensive data, this Azure developer, we have to pull the data twice a day and, and it's not fast. And then I'm asking questions like, Hey, wait a minute.

What's up with all the photos? He says, well, we have to pull all the photo data and we have to pull it twice 'cause we have a low res photo for display. And then when they click into it, we have a higher res one. And I'm like, are you sir? We can't just get that on demand. I said, with everybody with HighSpeed internet these days, we should be able to pull those photos on demand.

Come on man. He goes, no, according to the contract, they say you have to pull the entire database, store it, and then update it twice a day. And it was, it was just crazy. Well, luckily we went to, uh, one of the, uh, conventions in Las Vegas, and it was just very [00:21:00] serendipitous. We met the CEO of a data provider and, uh, he said, uh.

He said, Hey, I think we should work together. And, and you know how it is when you meet some guy at a trade show, you're like, yeah, yeah, whatever. I'll, I'll be kind and I'll listen to this spiel. As a matter of fact, at first, Chad was supposed to be meeting with a vc and this guy was at our booth and he was like, Hey Rob, go talk to this guy.

Chad: Like, like, get him outta here. He was so walking me. I was like, I do not. Time to talk with this guy. He needs to go away. I'm trying to secure funding. Just, just, I was like, Rob, just take him. Just get him outta my face. But to be fair, we did have 

Rob: a lot of tire kickers that were coming over and just asking us a bunch of questions.

'cause it's new. Yeah, they had never heard of it and they're like, wait a minute. So what are you guys doing and how are you doing it? Yeah. So I start to this guy. Yeah. And, and turns out he is the CEO of a a data company. And he goes, yeah, we're, we're working with Nationwide MLS data and I think we should work together.

'cause I can get you that same data. Faster and cheaper. And I was like, that's worth the conversation. So, turned out it was, it was the best connection that we could have made. I [00:22:00] mean, it was amazing. De 

Chad: definitely, you know, I, I tell my agents, even as they're building their businesses, I said, Hey, you can work hard.

You can grind. That's the part you have to put into it. But every business, when it's successful has to have a little bit of luck, you know, and you can position yourself to get a greater chance of, of getting that lucky break. But you have to have a little bit of luck. Like, for example, when I was starting in real estate.

I was about six months into it, I hadn't sold anything, but the market was tanking, foreclosures were happening, and I just said, Hey, who has all the properties? I'm like, it's banks. So I started going after financial institutions and just calling them up and I would call 'em up. I called 'em up for months and I just heard no and no, and no, and no.

And finally, I, I called the same number that I've been calling for months, and a new girl was on the other end of the line. She had just gotten switched over and she's like, Hey, you know, what area do you cover? I'm like, I, I cover Seattle. And she's like, well, I got six homes that we need to have managed and marketed and sold.

She goes, you know what you're doing. And I lied. And I said, yep, I know exactly what I'm doing. And then I literally went from not selling anything to selling 20, [00:23:00] 30 homes every month. Wow. And that was my, that was my lucky break. But. Behind that lucky break was the grind, right? It was the grind of being going, identifying your plan, working your plan, and then going out there and meeting people and, and developing those relationships.

And it's no different. Even though it's on a bigger scale, you know, doing a PropTech startup, it's still the same basics that, that you learn. 

Mehmet: Ab Absolutely. A, a lot of things on the technical side, Rob, which I can relate to. Mm-hmm. Uh, maybe many people, they don't know this, but around like maybe 10 years ago I was doing some freelance work.

So, uh, one guy came to me and he said, so we have like specific portals. They call them the CRMs, which is the Yeah. Similar to the MLS, what you have there. So he said, I want. To build a website that pulls the same information that I put into the CRM there. And I was asking him why he explained something to me.

I'm [00:24:00] not a property guy. I said, okay, whatever you want. Because he wanted to do kind of customization, which the portals usually they don't allow you to. And one part of, you know, the thing that was challenging for me. It's pulling the data and especially the images because the images that are the ones that takes most of the time.

Mm-hmm. Because they are like, especially like if they are high quality or something like this and yeah, like he was telling me why it's slow. I said, yeah, I can't be faceted than the, you know, the line between your CRM provider and you. This hosting, we Don't laugh at me. I hosted, uh, that as a WordPress plugin for him at that time.

Chad: Even I know what that is. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, brother. 

Mehmet: Yeah. And this is, you know, the first time I saw like, because the plugin is of course, like, uh, someone in the US developed it. So he had the words MLS and all these things. I was like, what the heck is this? I never seen. These terms before and I had to go and learn a lot of things, so, yeah.

Yeah, I can relate. Now [00:25:00] I want to ask something to both of you, but maybe Chad you can, uh, highlight this more when you were explaining the business model. So I think maybe as one of the showstoppers, let's call it this way, is if I am an agent. You are taking me from. My day to day routine going to these other platforms and bringing me to your platforms, and maybe they would tell you, Hey, like, how do we know that we have, uh, someone who who would be able to match with.

Um, because any marketplace have this challenge, like who's first. So how was your trick to solve this out? 

Chad: Well, you know, this is the thing and, and, and when Rob talks about, and it was very interesting, is education. [00:26:00] And, and educating home buyers and home sellers, and even real estate agents, how the industry works.

Especially when, for example, a home buyer, home seller may buy a house once or twice in their lifetime, and that is really the biggest hurdle and the biggest challenge, as you said, you know, Hey, there's this way of doing things. People understand truly in in Redfin and Zi, and they understand this process with all that, but they don't understand what's going on behind the scenes.

So it's really this education process of where I had to educate Rob about how real estate works and how we're solving things. And it's the same with real estate agents on their end. But I'll say this, 87% of all real estates in the United Real Estate agents in the United States are outta the business in less than five years.

So that's pretty darn close to a hundred percent, right? We know that over 50% of our real estate agents don't do a deal in a year. That means they don't close one contract. And we also know that on average a real estate agent will close any routine about four to five deals in a year. That's just such a minute amount, right?

So the vast majority of real estate agents are not [00:27:00] doing very much. So we teach our real estate agents within my brokerage is that you have to have multiple streams of client sources feeding into your business. On that side. So real estate agents actually are very open to the fact of bringing in more business and more streams of, of clients into their businesses.

So they are very open to trying things. Uh, that's not against it. But what they really want to know is they want to say, Hey, you know, this money that I'm already gonna invest in client acquisition costs. Can I have a better way of getting more control over how that money is used? And number two, outside of what we charge on our monthly membership fee at Swyvvl.

Agents don't pay that agreed amount. They've agreed to share with the home buyer or home seller until they successfully close on a home. So that means instead of paying a lot of money upfront, for example, for Trulia or Zillow, you may pay $72,000 a year to get anywhere between about 80 to about a hundred a hundred.

Client leads, most of those client leads won't turn out because we have a conversion ratio about one to 3%, [00:28:00] the numbers don't match. So it was very important on my end that we said, Hey, outside of that initial small investment, we wanna make sure that real estate agents don't have to pay a more significant amount until they're successful.

That means the money's already in the account. They're not fronting that money with no guarantee of a return. So we wanted to put as many things in in, in play. And put them in favor of the real estate agents in order to encourage them to be able to come over to our platform. But like you said, it is the, the biggest, the biggest challenge with any business is educating your clientele.

And in our business, our clientele are home buyers, their home sellers, and their real estate agents. 

Mehmet: Um, and this question for both of you from, from scaling the business perspective, so maybe I'll start with, with the tech stack, uh, first, uh, Rob, um, I'm sure, and you mentioned like you had to change things down the road and, and all this, but, uh, how also like this new.[00:29:00] 

Tech Stacks played a role in accelerating, for example, adoption of some features that Chad came and said, Hey, like we want to do this. Um, so I'm, I'm not sure, like also like how much AI is, is being used, you know, in the tech stack today, um, and what role it can play because, you know, I'm, I'm pretty much against of using AI for the sake of using it.

Yeah. I'm more interested to know. I'm more interested to understand like. How AI solve the problem, or let's say, uh, streamlined any operation related to to, to the tech stack. And to the business. Of course. 

Rob: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm, uh, I'm 50 years old now, so I was half my age when I was a professional coder, and so a lot of the technologies have changed.

Now. The basic coding principles have not changed. And so what's been interesting is, is, uh, AI has actually helped us to solve some of the, uh, unknowns, for example, [00:30:00] uh, in our tech stack. We've got, you know. Four or five different pieces of technology that have to talk to each other. And so, uh, I will talk to my developer and say, Hey, listen, this is what we gotta do.

We've gotta, we've gotta make this talk to this and we've gotta get this information across. And, uh, he'd say, I've never done that before. And I said, well figure it out. So, uh, he actually, uh, went to some of the, uh, different coding ais and basically said. Here's my problem. I've gotta make this talk to this and I've gotta make this API key work over here and it's not receiving the data.

And it actually several times came back with, uh, well the level of encryption is, is mismatched and so it's not gonna be able to talk. You have to get them both on the same level of encryption. And it was like, oh yeah, that's pretty simple. We can do that. And uh, so the things that we didn't know that we didn't know, AI was able to help us out, but no, we're not.

Putting AI in the software itself just for doing it. Um, in this first iteration, uh, in our final beta [00:31:00] release, we actually don't have AI intrinsically built into the software, but we do have plans for using AI as we move forward. And I don't wanna give away all the RD and the plans so that competitors can get the jump on us, but I will say that, uh, yeah, we are in the same frame of mind as you.

We don't wanna just throw AI in to have AI in there, but the question that we're asking, we're going back to basics. What is a pain point that AI can help us, uh, make our software better for the user's experience, uh, either a buyer or seller or the real estate agents. And then we also have a third level that we haven't even talked about yet, but we also have lenders on our platform that are members of Swyvvl.

And so what that allows us to do is. Basically when a home buyer or seller comes onto our platform and they, let's say they've never bought a home before, it's kind of a scary process and it's a big deal. So what this allows 'em to do is fill out their profile and as they fill out their client profile, it basically says, Hey, are you pre-approved?

If they're not pre-approved for a loan, then uh, their information [00:32:00] gets sent to one of our lender partners If they request it and they start. Reaching out to them and holding their hand through that entire loan process. And so the cool thing is, is that once the agents have interacted with them, um, then they already know that, hey, these guys are good to go.

They've got their preapprovals down. We know exactly the price range that they're, they're qualified for. And so it takes the, the guesswork out of it. The home buyer and seller doesn't have to leave the platform and go somewhere else. But we keep asking the question, um, how can we make this experience better for the home buyer or seller or for the agent?

And we just keep pushing forward from there. And so the technology on the back end. I mean, I wish I had a team of 20 developers that I could just say, Hey, do this and, and they can make it happen. But, but the truth is, is we have to spend a lot of time prioritizing. So we've got this, like Chad said, this, this, uh, checklist of features that we wanna incorporate.

And we've got some that are, uh. We've definitely marked, Hey, this is for 2.0 and beyond, and, [00:33:00] uh, some of them are being rolled into what we're calling, you know, 1.5. And so, uh, with 1.5 we're strengthening up the backend and making the dashboards more robust, uh, for the real estate agents. Um, and we've got some other ideas that we're bringing into the property details pages to, to make it a better experience for.

People that are doing a home search. Mm-hmm. But, uh, but yeah, definitely we're very interested in not only, uh, what AI can do, but using blockchain technology as we move forward to version 2.0. Um, as you know, smart contracts are Yep. Uh, becoming a huge thing. And, uh, I'm really interested also in like, uh, you know, uh.

Using the blockchain for, you know, identification purposes. Because if somebody has a secure id, then they don't have to enter all that information or worry about it getting lost or hacked or, you know, whatever. And that also helps us out because then we don't have to store as much data, um, on our servers or anything like that.

And it, [00:34:00] it makes me feel a lot better knowing that that information is safe and secure. 'cause that's part of the reason why we started Swyvvl in the first place. 

Chad: You know, I'll say I agree with you fully. Mm-hmm. At a certain point, I think AI and their, their usage or the word of ai mm-hmm. I think people just throw it around.

I gotta be honest with it. It's, I, I, we've already seen a, uh, you know, several AI companies Right. Be very successful, but we've also seen a lot of 'em already go under. Right. Huge VCs. You know, a hundred million, two, a hundred million and, and they're gone. And I think that you have to use it very strategically.

And I think the two things that it's worked for us, and I'm not gonna give out too much, but number one, it allows, it allows developers, it allows us startups to be able to do more than they could have done five, 10 years ago. Like Rob said, it allows us to solve problems with the building of our platform that we wouldn't be able to solve without having, you know, a development team of 20, 30 people.

Number one, it allows us to identify the problem. Then it gives us the, the easy answer of, Hey, here's how [00:35:00] you fix it. Here's how you add it, here's how you take care. So it really, it really is a force multiplier, number one. But number two on the, the retail end of things. The, this is the problem that we run into as real estate agents.

You will get a home buyer or home seller, excuse, excuse me, a home buyer who will tell you, Hey, guess what? This is what I want in a home. I want this many bedrooms and I want, you know, the, the, you know this big of a lot and I want to be this, you know, close to water, et cetera. I had a client who told me, Hey, here's my specifics of what I want for a home, and I have to have a lot that either has a pond or a lake that runs through it or a river, because I want to be near the water.

I wanna be able to have water. So I spent six months looking for this property for them. And at the end of the day, they ended up buying a property that was exactly opposite of what they had asked me for. It was not the same in bedrooms. It was wi not within 10 miles of water that they said was a, a, a non-negotiable for them.

And that's when I realized is that we as human beings have the logical mind and then we have the emotional mind. And the problem with real estate websites right now is they only [00:36:00] allow input from the logical mind. It's the, the, the buyer looking there and saying, Hey, this is the area I'm looking in. This is the type of home I think I want.

But the reality is it doesn't take into play their emotional responses with things. So we wanna incorporate AI into our platform of saying this. Okay. We already know the logical inputs that are occurring. How do we incorporate the emotional inputs that the individual probably cognitively is not realizing is coming into play whatsoever?

So for example, we may be looking at kitchens and they may really be liking kitchens that have dark granite or dark courts, but they don't even realize they're doing. By, by AI analyzing their search criteria and saying, Hey, they're spending a lot more time looking at these kitchens that have Viking appliances in them.

They're really looking at a lot more of them that have gas appliances sitting in there, or they're really looking at this that has this aspect of an eating bar, whatever it is, as they're doing their search of ai, identifying these emotional touchpoints that are not going into the logical mind, [00:37:00] and then putting those properties in front of the home buyer so that instead of waiting six months.

And trying to figure out what our clients actually want and waste time for the real estate agent, but also for the home buyer, that AI is able to learn what the emotional, uh, inputs are as that person is searching for homes, and then put those properties in front of them in a much faster fashion. 

Mehmet: Yeah, it's like accelerating the whole cycle.

Chad: Uhhuh. Yeah. 100%. So that's just an example of AI being useful versus just throwing AI in there to say, Hey, we got AI in our, on our platform, and great. Yeah. We wanna make sure that it really is able to add an aspect that logically cannot be added into that home. Because as we know, a home buying thing is while it's really logical of, Hey, here's my down payment and here's where I wanna live and here's where, you know, I want my timeframe to move in.

It's really an emotional decision. Yeah, connecting with that house. We know that when someone goes into a house that within probably the first 20 seconds they decide whether they like it or not. We need to add that element into the platform in order for that home search to be able to be more [00:38:00] efficient.

Rob: And of course, ette, you realize that on the back end, this is gonna require us to use fuzzy logic and develop subsets of data for the preexisting data that's come across our data feeds. Um, for example, um. The, the, the finite things that, that we're talking about picking out, uh, from the imagery or whatever.

Uh, that data doesn't exist. Like you don't go to the MLS listing and it doesn't say, oh, by the way, this is this color quartz versus this color course. Right? Yeah. You know, a window facing, a southern exposure versus northern exposure. And so, uh, what we have to do is develop a way to. Take the existing data, marry it with this, this new data that the AI will be coming up with.

And then who knows, we may even create the new standard for MLS data moving forward. 

Mehmet: Why not? Um, question two, Chad, regarding scaling this time from business perspective, um, your value proposition. Although, like I don't live in the US but I have a lot of friends [00:39:00] and you know, I used to be surprised about the costs, uh, before even finishing the deal, right?

So, yeah. Uh, uh, so have you figured out. You know, you said like now you have subscription, you have kind of sharing model also as well. Is this enough on the long run or do you feel that you need to have like some additional, um, revenue streams into the business? For example, now Rob, just get the idea of providing the data, let's say.

Right? So, uh, another one might be. You know, you know, utilizing some kind of, um, technology, which again, Rob, you mentioned about the, uh, blockchain. So are you seeing, you know, additional possibilities to scale the business outside just these two, you know, business models that you have today? 

Chad: Yeah, exactly.

'cause like right now, you know, in [00:40:00] version 1.0, we have basically three revenue streams that are coming into the business. We have the, uh, subscription memberships that are coming from real estate agents. We have the, um, we have. Through share our share experiences. We have that instant Agent Connect product that also brings in additional revenue.

And then we have the instant Lender connect that brings in revenue. But the reality is, is that building out our ecosystem, there are gonna be, and probably more, even more significant forms of revenue, such as bringing in the blockchain. On that end of things, beginning in the crypto for the payments, we have things with lenders where nationwide, uh, mortgage companies would like to partner with us because they recognize that being able to have control or be able to have a, a significant say or partnership with, uh, a, a major third party nationwide real estate website is invaluable.

Like I talked about earlier, you know, Redfin was just acquired by Rocket Homes. Well, Redfin has, you know, and they were. Acquired for just under $2 billion. Now, Redfin has never actually turned a profit in the lifetime of [00:41:00] their company, so you know, I just wanna let that sink in. They've never actually turned a profit in the lifetime of their company yet they're acquired for almost $2 billion.

And the reason why is. Is that a mortgage company, such as Rocket has decided that in order to maintain their market share and also grow their market share, they need to have access to all these home buyers and home sellers and also their real estate agents that are using these platforms with all of it.

So yeah, our revenue stream as far as our model, you know, this is what we're starting out with, and, and, and you have to start like relatively small, right? You, you have to, even though we're a nationwide and, and you're right, the United States is huge. Right. I mean, it, it's massive. There's millions of real estate agents, there's hundreds of millions of people over, you know, I mean, just coast to coast it's like, you know, 3000 plus miles, uh, you know, with it.

So, so when you're starting a company, even though we're a nationwide real estate site, as far as our marketing and our marketing has to be that educational aspect, like we said, absolutely. Really letting people know of this is how the market [00:42:00] works. Like I had to teach Rob. Right. And then also saying, Hey, here's how we're different than what's going on.

And I also had to teach Rob that, but it was very eye-opening. 'cause the things that I think are normal and understandable are not normal and understandable. So we've had to learn how to deliver our message to people, but we've also had to learn that, hey, you have to start, even though we're a nationwide site, we have to start basically regional and then start expanding our reach as the resources and stuff come in.

Mehmet: Do you see, of course not maybe now, but in the future, expansion to some adjacent areas like rentals, for example. 

Chad: Yeah, you know, we've seen things, everything from commercial because on the commercial side of things. 

Mehmet: Oh 

Chad: yeah, yeah. Uh, to be to the rental side. We've also determined as far as being able to expand just internationally, while every country has a different way of handling real estate, you know, we've already been contacted, you know, from people in Australia, Canada, et cetera, uh, even the UK as far as, hey, how can we adapt [00:43:00] Swyvvl in order to be able to.

Fit our current market and how things are done that way. So there's, there's not just the national side of things. We have the ability to be able to expand Swyvvl to many international countries and just adapt it to how those real estate, you know, how their real estate systems work. But let's be honest, there's weaknesses in all of them, right?

There's definitely ways to improve every single one of them. And Swyvvl can be that, that, that, uh, that, that, that instrument moving forward with that. 

Mehmet: That's look very promising. Now, I want to ask Rob again because you mentioned blockchain, and I want to have your opinion on this. There's something that's happening currently, uh, in, in Dubai and you know, because blockchain is, you know, uh, on the rise, right?

And I know also in the states, don't get me wrong, so we started to see. You know, tokenization, what they call it, like real world asset tokenization. [00:44:00] Um. In general, you know, being now in, in PropTech, whether you, whether you like it or not, I'm sure you like it just joking. Um, so being in PropTech, you know, are you seeing signals in the US of adapting this, uh, um, you know, to this new norm of everything gonna be like tokenized, like even like the home ownership would be tokenized because, you know, I think this is will.

Be part of what Chad was explaining about the whole cycle. From the moment I decide that I want to buy a home till I go and finish the D and I get the keys in my hand, um, because there are like a lot of, I would say like, I'm not call them obstacles, but moving parts. Let's call them this way. Mm-hmm. Uh.

So are you seeing the, or do you expect these to, to be also like playing role, uh, in the property market in general from technology perspective? 

Rob: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, there, there's a lot of advancement [00:45:00] happening in the technologies. I think, uh, one of the things though that we've gotta be very careful of is.

Putting all of our eggs in one basket, no matter what that is, because we do run up against hurdles here, uh, and even the, the government. And if they come down and they start, uh, making mandates and changing laws now, uh, like we saw with the potential of that nar ruling, it has a potential to completely derail us.

And so one of the things that we wanna be careful to do is, uh, to not put everything, uh, uh. And, and depend on a specific technology. And so we're constantly asking questions like, okay, uh, Chad says, Hey, I think we should move in this direction, or look at doing this. And we say, okay. Uh, like he said, uh, is it possible to do right now with the technology that we have?

And if not, what technologies do we have to introduce? And then we have to start going down this rabbit trail of researching, well, what are the real pros and cons of that? And not just for the immediate, but for, for the long term. And so even though we're developing right now. We [00:46:00] gotta start looking at this technology and say, okay, is this technology proven?

Is it safe? Is it a true benefit? And we don't wanna just jump on something because it's a buzzword. We don't wanna say, oh, let's incorporate that because I heard these guys over here and this tech space are doing it well. That tech space and our tech space. Operate very differently. And so, uh, we wanna be careful that we don't jump into something that gets overly regulated and then we have to then completely change how we're doing things again.

Uh, but I think, uh, one of the, one of the safe bets for us is we don't wanna be a one trick pony in this, uh, space. Uh, we realize that there are a lot of pain points in the real estate industry. I think there's a huge marketplace out there for us to develop, not only Swyvvl even further using current and future technologies, but to also, uh, look at ancillary products that we can, uh, introduce alongside Swyvvl that can help, uh, real estate agents, home buyers and sellers in different markets as well.[00:47:00] 

Mehmet: Cool. Uh, Chad, question for you, uh, because you mentioned about, you know, uh, you mentioned the word investors multiple times, uh, how investors in the US looks at PropTech currently. 

Chad: You know, it's, there's a lot of good opportunities on there, but we, we have found out on our end of things, 'cause we're basically in our seed round, right?

We, we, we've, we've released our beta version with it. Uh, we're, we're gaining traction. We actually have, you know, we, we actually have, you know, income coming in from their thing. But it's, it takes time for things to grow. And I'll be honest, you know, we, we've, we've, we have continuing relationship with the.

Bunch of VCs and companies that are like, Hey, you know, when you're ready for the, you know, that the 20, 50, a hundred million we're ready to jump in. But that, that seed round is always a difficult round. You know, we've, we've self-funded Swyvvl. I've been fortunate enough that the brokerage has made enough money to be [00:48:00] able to self.

Funds Swyvvl up to this point. Um, but like I said, they're very open to it. Um, and one of our big things, like I said, is really partnering with, you know, nationwide lenders on that side. But we're also looking in, in preliminary discussions with some nationwide brokerages, and I won't say their names, uh, but they are interested in being able to partner with us and to play a major role and have influence, uh, with it so that they can benefit not only their franchises.

Okay. On that side, but also to be able to have, uh, another platform, uh, where we're able to do things like we talked about using crypto, blockchain, et cetera, to be able to close deals. Uh, that, that, that, that's a whole new way of doing things, but we have the ability to be able to do that because of the stage that we're in.

Uh, where're able to incorporate something like that as we grow forward with that input from them. 

Mehmet: Got it. Uh, as you are almost coming to, to the end, just final thing from you both, and of [00:49:00] course I'm expecting Chad to talk about the business side and Europe about the, uh, technology side. I like to take your advice for, um, fellow entrepreneurs in, in, in the.

PropTech space. Uh, we have a lot of ambitious, uh, you know, entrepreneurs in, in this part of the world, uh, because the property market is booming. Maybe you follow the news. Yeah. Um, but of course they have their own other problems, let's call them or hassles. But in general, to be in this business, um, what, what they should know ahead to be successful.

Chad: You know, I, it's, you know, we, we run into it with real estate agents on a much smaller microcosm, right? Where it's like, oh, just work part-time and you're gonna make, you know this great salary and you'll be able to have control over your day and you'll have all this flexibility, et cetera, you know? All that stuff comes later, you know, regardless of the business you're in, but especially on the PropTech side of [00:50:00] things, uh, it's a wonderful business to be in, but you're, you better be ready to grind.

You better be ready to be hungry, and you also better be able to, uh, to, to basically to. You know, seven days a week, 24 hours a day as you're building things and there's no guarantees whatsoever. So you better love what you're doing. You know, I talked about at the very beginning that, especially with the startup, how important it is bringing people on who believe in what you're doing versus, Hey, what am I getting?

Out of this situation, what am I getting out of being part of this company? And that's why I've been very fortunate to be able to bring people onto this company who believe in what we're doing because the rewards are not gonna be financial for many, many years. Right. The it's, the rewards is, hey.

Watching your baby grow, the changes that occur. Every small success that you have, you know, whether it's being able to successfully put an IDX feed in, whether it's your first real estate agent who signs up on your platform, your first home buyer, home seller that uses your platform all watching your metrics go up month after [00:51:00] month after month.

Those are your successes, right? So you have to have somebody that is really, really driven on those aspects of things in order to to, to bring them on and be a part of it. 

Mehmet: Rob. 

Rob: Yeah, I would say, uh, for people on the tech side, um, there's no room for egos. You gotta leave your ego at the door. Um, what happens with a lot of coders, and you may have experienced this yourself, is when you come up with a solution, you are so dead set on this is the right solution, and you start getting this mindset like, this is the only solution.

And so you run across a roadblock and rather than question the solution, you go, how do I make my solution work? And then you keep changing things and changing things to make that solution work. But sometimes you gotta stop and ask the question, is that even the right solution anymore? Because as we had to change tech stacks, we found that, and we had to learn things the hard way.

Um, you know, we coded up a backend and then, uh, Chad says, [00:52:00] Hey, listen, I want the ability to do this. We go, okay, we've gotta integrate a third party software. Now as we're integrating that third party software, we realize, oh man, the way that we wrote all of our variables, we have to change everything because, uh, this one is case sensitive.

And so like we've got one variable labeled one way here and another way there, and it's gonna see it as two different variables, and that's not gonna work. And so, uh, just and being willing to abandon something. For something better, even if it means more work. And, uh, I agree with everything Chad said about the grind.

I mean, you've gotta be willing to grind and, uh, you can't expect an easy payday. Uh, this is a little embarrassing, but the very first iteration of the site, uh, we were close to delivery and Chad says, Hey, how does it look on mobile? So I asked my developer, how does it look on mobile? And he goes, we were developing it for mobile.

Mehmet: Oh. And I was like, are 

Rob: you serious? So two weeks from delivery, I spent every waking [00:53:00] hour here. I said, you keep working on your stuff. And then I just went back, uh, to the beginning and just started redeveloping it for mobile and so, wow. I handed Chad a mobile version of the site and he knew there were times I've got a couch in my office.

There are times where I, I looked at the clock and I go, well, it's uh, if I drive home and back right now, I'm gonna lose 40 minutes of sleep, so I'm just gonna crash on the couch instead and get an extra 40 minutes so that I could be up first thing in the morning and just keep cranking away. Yeah. And you gotta be willing to sacrifice like that.

Chad: Now, that conversation happened about two in the morning. When I got a phone call and he said, Hey, I have something to tell you. And, uh, you know, it's, we laugh about it now. We laugh about it now, of course, talk about, yeah. But it was not a laughing moment by any stretch of the imagination. I can imagine. No, I mean, I, I, I won't say all of the, the, the swear words I used at that moment about stupidity and ignorance and lack of foresight and everything else like that.

Uh, [00:54:00] how is this even possible? You know, all of these things. It was a 

Rob: learning and growing opportunity for everyone all, you know, 

Chad: again, like I said, you know, you better be hungry. You better be willing to go hungry if you're gonna start a business. Otherwise, stay out of it. And uh, you know, the great ideas are wonderful.

You know, everybody has 'em right. But getting the fruition requires a lot of hard work. And it will be years of sacrifice, most likely before you'll see any success with it. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. And you know, to. For the audience, like, this is the moment that you want to reach. At some stage you are grinding maybe for six months, one year, and then you're gonna get on the show and you're gonna laugh like Chad as robot laughing now remembering, you know, all, all the hard times.

But you know, like really, uh, one of the things, and I, I keep repeating this. Uh, the best way to learn about something is to live it. The best way to learn is actually to face these [00:55:00] challenges, to fail to, to, to, you know, feel like the world is ending. And then, you know, you. Stand up again and you continue what you were doing and then you keep moving.

So, absolutely. For me, for, for me, like this is, you know, it's, it's a, it's kind of, uh, the podcast is a motivation for me 'cause I speak to, to folks like yourself, guys and, you know, really, uh, you know, enjoyed a lot. The story behind, you know, all the moments you shared where we can find you guys. 

Chad: So the website is@Swyvvl.com and that's spelled S-W-Y-V-V l.com.

So SW vl.com. Uh, you can also, 'cause we're, we're very open, especially at this stage 'cause we love being able to hear the feedback. We love to be able to talk with people that are using the platform. You can check me out@chatatSwyvvl.com. You can get ahold of rob@robatSwyvvl.com. And if you're a real estate agent you can uh, go to Swyvvl.com and then.

Forward slash onboarding in order to be able to get on the platform. We are allowing real estate agents to use the [00:56:00] platform for free for a certain amount of time. And for home buyers and home sellers, it's always free. So there's never a cost for them to be able to use the platform on their end of things.

Like we said, we would love to hear the feedback. Uh, we would love to, uh, we love when people reach out to us and tell us their success stories and how, uh. Swyvvl has worked for them. And uh, I really, like we talked about, it's one of those, you know, those multitude of small successes that you have to hang your hat on as you build.

And, uh, so that's how you get ahold of us. And of course, we're also available on all the, uh, different social media platforms, Instagram and YouTube and Facebook and all those other good things. 

Mehmet: Great to all my audience in the US go check the website. I will put the links that. Chad just mentioned in in the show notes.

If you're listening on your favorite podcasting app, go and check the website, and if you're watching this, of course, I'll put these on YouTube description, gents. Really, I really appreciate it. I know it's so late for you now, today, although, like you just mentioned, you had this. Discussion at 2:00 AM so I feel now more comfortable.

[00:57:00] So, uh, I, I don't feel like guilty anymore, but no, no, 

Chad: no, no. Guilt my friend. If you're gonna get into your own business, you better not be able to watch the clock. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. Absolutely. And really, I enjoyed, I learned a lot and of course now I gonna go and tell my. Brands who lives in the US to go and check also the website.

So well, 

Chad: thank you for having us. 

Mehmet: No, it's my pleasure. And as I say always, this is how I end my episode. This is for the audience. If you just discovered this podcast by luck or by chance, thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, so give me a small favor, share it with your friends and colleagues.

As you can see, we get real stories from the real world about people who are building something that matters. So. Encourage people to listen or to watch. We are available on all podcasting apps and platforms. We are available also on YouTube, and if you are one of the people who keep coming again and again, thank you for all your support for the feedbacks, thank you for this is a record like now we are in.

[00:58:00] September and the podcast since Jan never lost position in the top 200 charts in multiple countries. Sometimes we go from a country, but we come back. This cannot happen without you. And thank you very much also for all people who are supporting me by getting their copy of the book from Nowhere to Next, which was released beginning of September.

So thank you very much for this. And as I say, always stay tuned for in the episode very soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.