MetaProp的动态

Transcript

You get asked probably a lot about what are what are the things an entrepreneur in Proptech should be most focused on in starting their company? I???m sure you get asked this a lot. What's like the three key lessons that you would give or you would tell to any entrepreneur out there that has a proptech idea who wants to start it but is nervous? Yeah, I think it depends where it depends where they're coming from. I think if they have neither worked in real estate nor startup tech. I would usually tell them that they should get a job in one of those categories before starting one of these companies. Build the domain expertise, build the domain expertise. However, I'll caveat that. I think the truly disruptive ideas that that have a chance to absolutely change what we do and make a ton of impact and a ton of money, those might come from completely out of left field. And so I remain open to taking those pitches. I think the best entrepreneurs in the category I've seen not necessarily embodied in one person, but the founding team has domain expertise in real estate. Whatever category ideally they're going after or experience in multifamily that could be applied to another asset type. That's maybe moving slower. That stack that sometimes is really interesting too. I had a lot of success in this faster moving asset class and now I'm looking to bring it into this slightly slower moving asset class, right? Whether it's going from multifamily to office, I think that's certainly possible. So definitely domain expertise. Ideally, startup expertise as well. I think having experience in the category and just having worked at an industry incumbent for a really long time can be helpful, can also be dangerous. I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs who were very successful when they had really talented teams of 20 hungry people working under them and doing all the work. And then when they moved to a team of two or three, they had to do all the work or 33% of the work. They just weren't they hadn't been had enough reps recently, and so they just didn't have what it took. So I look, I look for that. One of the biggest mistakes I see entrepreneurs making, and we do a lot of B2B SAS business is vertical SAS within our industry. Entrepreneurs who come from a sales background typically think that all someone has to do is sales and no marketing and no product. We can just call someone on the phone. I'm so charming. I'll close the deal even if my product's not very good. Doesn't work very well, doesn't create efficiency. And then a lot of entrepreneurs come from marketing and think they can just excel at branding and marketing and their product will go viral like Instagram. But B2B SAS in Proptech doesn't go viral. You still have to call someone on the phone. So what I what we've learned is, is is viewing sales marketing in product like they're dials on a guitar amplifier and they're not all going to be at ten for every company, especially when they're starting out. And you have to kind of AV tested to figure out where you sit. But if you're all sales and no marketing, your deal is going to get killed because it gets up to the C-suite and they say, well, I've never heard of this. I haven't seen them at any conferences. I can't buy this product even if the product's really good. The junior people are demanding it because it creates efficiency and the salesperson is done his or her job convincing the buyer those deals get killed. The companies that are all marketing those get killed too, before they even start, because everyone's sitting around waiting for this moment when the product is going to go viral. And when it doesn???t, they have no idea how to build and scale a sales organization. And so those are really key things. I've seen that mistake made a lot. So we were looking quite a bit for that, like, what's your what's your percentage? Are you 80% marketing, 20% sales, you 80% sales, 20% marketing. If you're a 100%, one 0%, the other, that's not going to work for us when it relates to the product, we like to drill it. Is there real efficiency being created? Are you delighting your customers or is this right? We talk about is it a need to have or a nice to have? Are you enhancing the margin profile of your customer when an entrepreneur comes in to pitch us and we say, well, walk us through the what's the analog archaic version, the pen paper facts, carbon paper version of what your customers doing right now when they can't answer that, when they're not in the in the headspace of their customer, that's a that's a red flag for us need to be able to articulate exactly what your customer does every day, all day, and how your product wedges in to create efficiency and margin enhancement for them. Does it enable them if they're a appraisers surveyor, can they do two appraisals a day instead of one, or is it something else? I think one of the exercises we do still do in the accelerator, which always gets a laugh but is tends to be enlightening for the entrepreneurs and us. So we have them write comic books about their customer. And it's like a day in the life of Zach. Zach is a loan officer at this bank. What does he do now during the day and now write the comic book for what he could be doing if he was using your technology product? And if somebody can't do that, they don't understand their customer well enough and they don't understand their products well enough. So that's something we definitely look for a lot. On the on the product side.