Alohome’s story

Welcome back to ConteNIDO; the best place to learn about VC, startups, and Latin America!

To start the new year, we bring you the profile of Alohome, a company in our portfolio that seeks to change the world of real estate with cutting-edge technology. Not to mention that they have now implemented, for the first time in LatAm, artificial intelligence to ensure that everyone has not only a house but also a home.

Here you will find opinion pieces, essays about NIDO, and profiles of entrepreneurs. Our mission is to share our vision for the world of VC and the role we want to play in it.

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-Jose Luis

Enabling real estate dreams through artificial intelligence

??????There is no reason why imagining should be difficult for us. Even less with a dream shared across all countries such as owning a house to make a home. However, for so many, that dream is met with the obstacles of reality. That is, until Alohome arrives to return an intuitive aspect to the act of imagining.

??????Let us think, for this, of a vacant lot in a random corner of any city. Now, let’s engage in that same radical act of imagination. A developer, upon finding it, begins to design a modern apartment building with all the amenities possible. They immediately make plans and designs, while, at the same time, a business partner drafts a proposal to sell the apartments. To achieve their vision they have to get enough buyers that will in turn give them enough capital for construction. Thus, to do this, in turn, they need salespeople, models, and as many artifacts as necessary to convince a client of their vision. A superhuman effort to transform a plot of land into something better.

??????It sounds poetic, of course; nothing better than creating homes from abandoned space. But in that act of imagination, there is a wide margin for error. The initial models may not be attractive or the prices may be far from what the average customer is looking for. Websites can be archaic and, let’s not forget, that promises do little to convince others. This, in turn, ignores that salespeople can suffer from inefficiencies when dealing with out-of-date spreadsheets or, quite simply, be overwhelmed by the dozens of buildings they ought to control. With so much room for error, everyone ends up losing. To start, we cannot blame the disappointed buyer who is left without fulfilling the dream of owning a home. At the same time, without their purchase, we leave the sellers disappointed and, in turn, frustrate the developer's imagination. A chain of dreams broken by well-known inefficiencies.

??????This was the problem that Eduardo Orozco and Michael Meo found in different ways. Eduardo grew up in Mexico and, early in his working life, was attracted to the world of real estate. He studied a postgraduate degree in finance and urban planning, then worked in a fund dedicated to housing development. There he began to realize the enormous inefficiencies in the sector. Despite the millions the company spent on creating buildings, they lacked the tools to even track in real time which apartments had been sold or to predict how many they would need to sell to meet their targets.

??????At the same time that Eduardo was encountering these realities, Mike was trying to innovate in the world of real estate. Born in the United States and trained as an architect, he first came to Latin America working for an NGO. But, once in the region, he decided to become an entrepreneur. The idea was to create a startup dedicated to buying underserved hotels in Mexico City and renovating them to attract more clients or converting them into collective work spaces (the famous co-working). In the middle of this venture, he found Eduardo's profile on LinkedIn and decided to tell him about the company. A sporadic coffee turned into friendship. Eduardo became an investor in Mike's company and a close advisor in what would be the beginning of several more projects.

??????Mike's company would eventually collapse, as is the fate of so many startups. But that was just the beginning. Now, the idea of starting a business came to Eduardo. With the accumulated frustration of his years in the real estate sector, he decided to take matters into his own hands, focusing on a single segment that, until then, had been neglected. He chose to look specifically at the world of primary housing, i.e.real estate projects that wanted to transform an empty piece of land into homes, but needed investment to achieve it. Those spaces of dreams that we’ve previously mentioned that find it difficult to come true.

??????The problem was so big that, as a start, they made a website promising to increase sales for the sector with digital tools. The tools, then, did not exist; they were just another dream. But the support was such that there was nothing more to do than build them. Of ten contacts to whom they sent that rudimentary website, 5 hired them promising that, in exchange, they would give them a percentage of the sales made by the real estate developments. The problem was such that, without a formulated solution, there was already overwhelming interest. This is how alohome.mx was started. With a desire for change, a hope to exercise it, and a WordPress that promised to turn the imaginary into reality.

Eventually, the promise materialized in four services that immediately streamline the entire sales process for a real estate developer. If imagination occurs within the mind, Alohome is the hand that carries such projections to the real world. Each Alohome client receives, first, a control center where all the prices of apartments are available to all sellers and, instead of depending on outdated spreadsheets, they can have reliable information instantly. Second, understanding that new generations interact, above all, with the digital world, they created a project website with all the necessary information for the buyer. Third, tied to the above, they design a digital model of the building to be constructed so that those interested can visualize, specifically, what would be their home—from the layout to its eventual views. And fourth, in closing, seeking to support sellers, they created a quoting tool that significantly reduces the process necessary to send a customer the price for their new home.

??????But most importantly, recently, there has been a fifth tool that Alohome added to its services. Not only did they digitize the process, but also, with artificial intelligence, they brought greater certainty to sales. When making such a large investment, the least the client expects is a prompt and accurate response. But, with so many potential customers, site visits, and more, sellers can't keep up. So Alohome created the first artificial intelligence for the Latin American real estate world. It is an intelligent chatbot that, when the first contact arrives, responds on behalf of the company, and is even capable of providing the buyer with all the necessary information to be certain that their future home is in the best hands.

?????Thus we reach the end. Eduardo and Mike's paths met so that a sector of yesteryear entered modernity. With the variety of products that Alohome has, they have been able to improve sales for primary homes and provide certainty to a process full of uncertainties. And the numbers? Those five initial companies today are more than 50 in Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil, all testifying to the success of the startup.

?????Now, if you pass by an empty plot of land, as you walk through a city, you can stop for a second to imagine all of its possibilities. That abandoned space, very soon, could house your new home, without hesitation or impediments, all with the trusted tools that Alohome has brought into the world.

From the Nido,