Congrats to the Avenue team for winning the $25,000 prize for Realogy’s FWD startup pitch competition (via Inman). Avenue delivers “Professional Advice from Local Real Estate Experts”. I haven’t seen their actual product to know whether they’ve nailed the user experience or not, but I absolutely…

MetaProp NYC, an accelerator in New York City, is now open for business. I’ve long believed there is an opportunity to fill in the “real estate accelerator” market (see this post & this one), and MetaProp seems like they can execute on it. They have a…

From the list of TechStars Boulder companies, I found Trelora. Another startup going after cutting commissions. It seems Trelora has been around quite awhile in Denver, here’s an article from 2014. Sure, everyone will tell you they want a cheaper way to buy and sell…

For the startup founders and employees out there curious about the state of the venture market, here’s some new data from Andreessen Horowitz… U.S. Technology Funding — What’s Going On? from a16z

Those who read regularly, know I’m a huge fan of doing good in the world (see this and this). That’s precisely why when I came across New Story a couple weeks ago on Twitter as a result of getting backed by YCombinator, I immediately knew it…

Have you been frustrated with your website, and just waiting to pull the trigger on redoing it entirely? As previously mentioned, we’ve been bootstrapping Horizon with consulting money. Currently, we have bandwidth to design one full custom agent/broke/franchise (or tech vendor for that matter) website at…

We’re (Horizon) building a marketplace for people looking for places to stay, and those willing to provide it. Every startup, in any industry, matching needs and haves – aka building a marketplace – will have to address a number of challenges along the way. It’s far…

Any entrepreneur interested in trying to reduce or cut out agent commissions should read this article about Redfin on the SeattleTimes. Redfin has had eight rounds of venture funding since 2005 totaling $167.8 million, according to Crunchbase. Redfin after 10 years still has less than a…

As a startup, you often have no choice but to build on external APIs or platforms. In real estate, you’re almost always reliant on IDX/MLS data. Or WordPress. Or Drupal. Or Facebook. Or Twitter. Etc. There are, of course, massive advantages to building on top…

There have been many, many attempts at discount brokerage models, and those looking to dis intermediate the agent entirely over the past decade. Of course, Redfin and Zip Realty are two that come to mind first, because they reached fairly large scale and their brands…