Realogy announced the contests for the 2016 FWD competition (press release): ASK DOSS – An artificial intelligence-powered real estate advisor designed for real estate professionals with a voice-controlled natural language interface. (Houston, TX) CallAction – A mobile web application to automate the tracking and engagement…

"What's the most important non-obvious skill for success?""The ability to keep believing in your own ideas when others say they're dumb" — Sam Altman (@sama) May 1, 2016 To re-iterate what I mentioned last year — don’t let me derail your startup by telling you…

Note to all startup founders, MetaProp NYC is accepting applications for their 2016 accelerator. Flip, a company profiled here already, is the anchor member of the 2016 cohort. Apply now (closes July 31st): http://www.metaprop.org/apply/

I’ve alluded to the fact we’ve been working on and testing an Android version of Horizon. Today, I’m excited to be able to announce we’ve released a public Android beta on Product Hunt — with full support for posting and filtering to find sublets. Would…

PiLabs, an accelerator in London, recently announced it’s 3rd cohort of startups: Candarin Home: A platform for Chinese and other international students to find accommodation. Industry Hub: Enables developers to discover the professionals behind projects they admire and crease online notebooks. A who’s who of a…

I’m a fan of the new Cloud CMA logo, seen below:

I watched the following video on Realstir’s Angel List profile (a startup I’ve previously written about): After watching it, I don’t know what their focus is at all. What’s the one unique differentiator that is going to cause consumers to use Realstir instead of Zillow, Realtor.com, or…

More startup news… congrats on those selected for REach’s 2016 class (press release): Flipt enables brokers and agents to win more listings by connecting with millions of home sellers at the earliest stages of their selling decision. Homeselfe by Energy Datametrics helps brokers and agents…

A couple pieces of news related to real estate startups… Placester acquired Realsatisfied. The Placester move makes sense given they grew their reach by 150,000 agents in one day. The combined team is a more formidable foe to Zillow than they were as separate companies. Congrats…

For the founders of real estate startups reading, would love a bit of feedback on what the largest obstacles are to growing your business. I’ll review the responses, and see if there is anything I can do to help further (either resources, advice or introductions)….