In our latest real estate tech entrepreneur interview, we’re speaking with the founder of ShowPal, Chad Torstenson.

Without further ado…

What do you do?

I am the Founder and CEO of RoHo Technologies and our go to market brand ShowPal.  As a start up company my role is fairly diverse with time currently spent on product development, marketing and ultimately customer acquisition.

What problem does your product/service solve?

ShowPal has 1 product in the market and another product that will be live very shortly.  Our first product is ShowPal ID.  ShowPal ID provides an on-the-go identity verification solution for real estate professionals.  Every year real estate agents are the victim of crimes such as robbery, assault and homicide. ShowPal ID allows an agent to email a new client a digital ID verification request.  The new client simply opens the link and follows the directions.  It takes under 2 minutes for a new client to complete the process from their mobile phone.  We use a triple verification algorithm to ensure a person is who they say they are before an agent meets them for the first time.  Our goal is to utilize this solution to keep real estate agents safer.  An individual intending to commit a crime would likely not go through an ID verification and would move on to an agent not requesting ID verification prior to meeting them. ShowPal ID is available to individual agents as well as brokerages or MLS associations that want to add the solution as a perk to their agents or members.

Our second and soon to launch product is ShowPal Home IQ.  This product can tell any buyer or buyer’s agent whatever they want to know about a home. It works on the Amazon Echo platform so all a buyer or buyer’s agent has to do is ask a question and the device will programmatically answer any question that they may ask during a physical home showing.  ShowPal Home IQ is incredibly powerful solution as it has the ability to answer a question with a voice response or show and send the interested party any image, graphic or document to support the question.  The possibilities are endless in what the product can support.  For example, say a buyer is taking a tour and they want a copy of the home owners association bylaws. They would simply ask the device to send them the HOA bylaws and our solution pulls the document from the cloud and allows them to instantly pull up the document on their smart phone by scanning the QR code provided on the screen after the request. We can deliver diverse content or any document that the listing agent feels may be of value during the showing.  Our goal is quite simple.  We want buyers to leave a showing with offers, not unanswered questions!

What are you most excited about right now?

ShowPal is a technology company and we want to position the company and solutions we develop to be a value add for all stakeholders in the real estate transaction.  We are somewhat agnostic to who perceives this value but it is paramount to us that our solutions truly provide value.   Our platform is a evolving ecosystem centered on the home showing experience and beyond.  Technology has tremendous potential to augment what a real estate professional does and make friction points in the industry less painful while serving the consumer more efficiently.  We want the real estate industry to embrace meaningful technology and I think we are well positioned for a synergistic relationship.

What’s next for you?

ShowPal wants to build an ecosystem in real estate tech.  We have already built solutions that can provide identity verification of an individual and deliver content, data or documents on a home on-demand via artificial intelligence.  With this said, several high-tech brokerages or i-buyer platforms are using or investigating the possibility of allowing buyers perform an home tour with or without a real estate agent present. How does the incumbent industry compete with high tech, low commission brokerages or platforms?  To answer this,  ShowPal is currently working on an access control solution that will allow agents or brokerages to add the ability for screened and trusted homebuyers to take autonomous home tours with the full support of ShowPal’s other products.  There are generational differences is how a homebuyer wants to tour a home.  If our platform is able to drive foot traffic to a home because autonomous tours were allowed then the ShowPal ecosystem became the best marketing tool a home could have.  We are excited about what we have planned but we want the real estate industry to take the journey with us.

What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

Survival from out of hospital cardiac arrest.  Sudden cardiac arrest leads death unless someone performs compression only CPR on the victim until trained help can arrive.  Advances in post-cardiac arrest care has come a long way to nurture the brain and body back to health but a cardiac arrest victim has little chance of meaningful survival unless a family member or a bystander in the community performs high quality chest compressions on the victim.  My message to everyone is to go take a CPR class.   Saving a life is easier than you think!

Thanks to Chad for sharing his story. If you’d like to connect, find him on LinkedIn here.

Meet The RE Tech EntrepreneurWe’re constantly looking for great real estate tech entrepreneurs to feature. If that’s you, please read this post — then drop me a line (drew @ geekestatelabs dot com).