Meet the RE Tech Entrepreneur: Tyler Gordon from Agent Inbox
In our latest real estate tech entrepreneur interview, we’re speaking with Tyler Gordon from Agent Inbox. I met Tyler at Inman in New York and had a chance to talk through his product/business — I’m bullish on the prospect of a communication platform for agents (and related service providers such as stagers, loan officers, etc).
Without further ado…
What do you do?
I am the co-founder and CEO of Agent Inbox. I work with a team of high-performing, user-obsessed individuals who love building products for the real estate industry. Each day, it is quite exciting to work with my team to solve problems that have never been solved before, which positively changes how our users do business.
What problem does your product/service solve?
We now live in a messaging world and messaging has become the primary way people communicate in their professional lives.
In real estate, agents have migrated away from phone calls and emails, and messaging is now their most important communication channel, yet the predominant tool used is SMS. Each MLS now has hundreds to thousands of agents negotiating deals and conducting business over their personal text messages – it is crazy! Agents usually have no idea who they are messaging with, there is no context of the real estate data, and there is no historical record of the transaction communication.
Agent Inbox solves this by empowering local MLSs to launch market-wide messaging systems and bridge communication between all agents and transaction participants. Powered by local data and integrated into the MLS, our platform starts at first contact, is accessible everywhere, and centralizes each deal through closing. We also provide helpdesk messaging tools to MLSs, associations, and brokerage staff to manage communication with the agents they serve.
What are you most excited about right now?
I am excited by the high-quality interactions that businesses and consumers can have with each other over messaging. People should be able to message a service the same way they message a friend. They should be able to get a personal response instantaneously, and it should not take their full attention to get what they need. Not only is messaging easier than calling or emailing, at the end of the day it just feels really good. This pattern of interaction is perfect for the real estate industry.
What’s next for you?
We are laser focused on growing our product, team, and user audience. We have refined our MLS integrations and deployments down to a formula, and we are working to deliver the product to every agent!
What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?
Inside real estate, I am passionate about delivering products that have an exceptionally high level of user experience. Since our audience is a little less-tech savvy, and with the amount of data we have, we must deliver products that are intuitive and solve real problems. It is really fun!
Outside real estate, I am also a micro-finance geek and an avid podcast listener. To the detriment of a social life, I tend to spend my free time studying economics, designing new products, and playing with business ideas.
Thanks to Tyler for sharing his story. If you’d like to connect, you may find him on Linkedin and Twitter.
We’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).
Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 11:12h, 08 MayI think this good be a big success if executed right. Right now I see some things that are either not available or not mentioned.
For us we have not migrated away from email. We left the phone behind many years ago, and we tried to jump into text messaging, but I found it too hard to track and keep a history of everything said.
Currently with our emails they are all kept in an easy to search archive, forever. We never lose one, and this is critical if a problem turns up after the sale closes.
In addition, all our emails to clients who are in the offer, listing, or escrow stage go through Teamwork, so we have a complete activity record of every email sent and every response. We give access to our clients, so they can also see a complete email trail, plus they see the 52 tasks we do for each escrow and get notified each time one is done.
In order for a text messaging system to work for us, we would need those two features. Without it, text messaging would be a step backward for us. If we can have those two features plus the instant feel of text messaging that would be a big step forward.
Tyler Gordon
Posted at 11:53h, 08 MayHi Bryn,
You hit the nail on the head and this is exactly how we are solving the issue. Your team is definitely ahead of how most agents are able to manage communications.
It is not that email has gone away, as much as it has limitations, has become incredibly crowded, and is difficult to manage for real estate business communications. To shortcut the crowd, we see agents texting each other, but this results in more disorganization and the loss of any process a brokerage needs, such as the one your team uses.
We bring in context, transparency, and organization at a level that email and text messages cannot provide. In Agent Inbox, every conversation automatically has every participant identified, and conversations are centralized around the real estate property data. Using this data, the platform automatically builds out an audit trail of the entire transaction communication, all within context. Everything can be sorted by agent, client, property, or any data point we have in the data feed. This way, months or years after a deal closes, everything is stored, organized, and searchable for everyone.
Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 12:03h, 08 MayThat sounds good. Is there an API to connect it to Teamwork or a way to copy Teamwork on all texts?
Teamwork uses a special email address for each project, so we memorize that address with our clients name. This way when I want to send to John and Julie, I can just type John and Julie and the email comes up and I send it and Teamwork is copied, as are all other people who need to know such as my co-agent and assistants.
Not sure if that email can be tied into your system some how.
We like Teamwork because it is one place to go for a running history on everything, trying to prevent having to check multiple places.
Tyler Gordon
Posted at 12:58h, 08 MayPotentially. An integration would be something we would need to discuss with Teamwork.
Ultimately, we are building a communication backbone, with the goal of connecting any product or business needed by the users, and Teamwork is a great example of a service that could be integrated.
pb
Posted at 10:10h, 16 JuneHi Tyler,
Just now reading this. Interesting!! Is this platform on the market yet?
Tyler Gordon
Posted at 10:54h, 16 JuneHi pb. Yes, we are in many many MLSs around the country. What’s the best way to reach you? You can contact me at tyler at agentinbox dot com