I often tell people community building is the most defensible strategy in existence. It’s also the hardest. For those who want to better understand community, you should read the latest post by David Spinks at CMX Hub (hint: he knows more about community than virtually anyone…

Everyone wants to see an example of someone using your product/service in a way they should be using it. StreetAdvisor is no different. The value proposition for sellers is clear, and the agent/broker value proposition is the ability engage with buyers and sellers who have self…

Want real, honest feedback on the user experience of your real estate website? Go inside Starbucks (or any other busy coffee shop), and offer to buy someone in line a coffee in exchange for spending 10 minutes browsing your website and providing honest feedback. Many people will…

Readers of Geek Estate range from tech savvy agents to technology vendors to aspiring entrepreneurs. I thought I’d share the questions that seem to resurface again and again in my conversations… With entrepreneurs/founders: Can you cover our upcoming news on Geek Estate? Can you write about our startup? How…

As a real estate guy, sometimes I look over to my data scientist’s screen and believe what he is doing is some sort of magic — it’s like pure computer science sorcery. I mean, they’re building a chatbot that can communicate using human language and learn…

If you’ve followed my posts here on Geek Estate, you know I’ve had a long history as a customer of Diverse Solutions. I’m not sure exactly when I started with them, probably sometime in 2008, but I was using their dsSearchAgent (Mapping IDX) well before they launched dsIDXpress…

About a week ago while on LinkedIn, a job posting popped up in my feed for a real estate broker by a company that was new to me called Homebay. It was a complete coincidence that Drew had them in his radar at the same time….

There’s a new entrant to the unicorn club: Compass (just closed on a $70 million round). I’m curious to hear the industry’s thoughts on how what they’re building is defensible? What’s their moat? They are poaching top talent from other firms, what’s to prevent the same…

SRE Matrix has $200 million in funding from Takeshi Sekiguchi, operating a discount model in Hawaii and San Diego, and looking to expand (see Inman). What are they doing with all that money? Building another national portal… The brokerage planned to have set up shop in…

I’ve long been a fan of Zillow Digs. It’s been months since I’ve opened the app — but tonight I opened it up, and was surprised to see advertisements integrated into the photos. You can click any of the dots on the image, and be…