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Sales and marketing podcast on a mission to help you close more deals, retain more business and build the life of freedom you're working towards. But only if you're willing to take action. Today my name is Josh Dyke, Chief Marketing officer at Reminder Media, joined as always by Luke Acrey, President of Reminder Media. And our guest today is Dave Garland. Dave is managing partner of Second Century Ventures, the most active venture fund powering real estate technology and leads reach the award winning global accelerator program. With decades of experience investing, advising and leading teams around the world, Dave has helped scale some of the most influential startups in the industry, shaping the future of real estate innovation. Dave, welcome to Stay Paid. Thanks for being here.
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Hey, thank you for having me guys. Really appreciate the time.
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C
Yeah, Dave, there's no better time to have you on right now because the industry seems to be turning. Yeah, it's like everything is shifting. I mean literally the deal with Compass right in anywhere just, you know, solidified. I mean, we'll see if it gets through everything, but it just solidified. And you know, I'm curious, you know, your take on the industry right now. If you were going to give your kind of 30,000 foot view of what's happening with these mergers and then obviously tech, what would be your take right now of that deal deal that's taken place and where you see the industry headed?
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A
Look, it's a really good question and I think that real estate has proven time and time again that the more big things change, the more certain things stay the same. We can get into the nuance of, well, what does this mean for the practitioners? What does this mean for the brokers and owners within, within the respective franchises? But, but I think the, you know, the global reality of this acquisition is that it just creates new standards for operation. And I think that when you look at publicly traded companies in this space, they're trying to solve a very specific problem for investors. And what does the street want these organizations to do in order to receive a relatively strong return on their investment? Now, what does that mean for the day to day practitioners? Well, the day to day practitioners, these are entrepreneurs and these entrepreneurs are still going to be entrepreneurs regardless of who owns what entity or what logo you slap on your shoulder. I mean, the reality is that for most brokers, the most valuable asset walks out the door every single day. And brokers are praying, hey, are my agents going to come back to me or are they going to go to another organization? And the amount of attrition in the space, and I say attrition two different ways, those folks that switch brands and those folks that just stop being practitioners but just maintain their license, it's still relatively high. And I think that you look back last 20, 30 years, those numbers really haven't changed dramatically. So regardless of what logo you slap on your shoulder, the business is still relatively the same. Can you serve your clients and can you serve your clients and provide information and details and advice better than your competitors? Can you do it better, quicker, faster? And that really stems from the relationship. So regardless of whatever innovation you're using, regardless of whatever tool you're using, and regardless of whatever brand you're using, at the end of the day, this is a belly to belly business. And I think that it will always be a belly, belly to belly business. I think that there's going to be organizations that carve this out. Yeah. But it's going to always be this belly to belly business to do it right.
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C
Yeah. That's interesting coming from you because you have a unique take because you're obviously with the venture capital side investing and I'm sure a lot of new up and coming tech ventures and things to shape the industry. But your core belief still is that even with all the tech, innovation and AI and everything that we're seeing, I think what was it that big article that shocked Everybody is the AI in Portugal was it that sold 100 million in real estate? Right. And I haven't dug into the actual legitimacy of it. I know Gary Vee quoted it at a keynote the other day, but are you seeing in the companies you're investing in, even the way you're looking at technology and the opportunities you guys have from an investment, you're still going. Nope. Even what you're seeing, you're still going to have the real estate agent in the transaction. Belly to belly with the relationship, really.
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A
That'S, that's the core of what we do and why Second Century Ventures was, was founded and exists. It's to ensure that innovation happens with the realtor in mind and it is a partner to the realtor. So all of the, the tools and technologies and innovations that we choose to invest in are there to serve for the benefit of the practitioner. And I say practitioner in very big umbrella term. Right. So you have your realtors, your agents, your brokers, your teams, but also the practitioners of the loan officers, the settlement service, the title escrow, the appraisers, inspectors. All of these players in this space are leveraging technology as part of their business one way or the other. Our job is to find the best technologies that keep these practitioners central to the transaction. Because when you, the individual person in the middle with the technology tools on top of it, it kind of creates, you know, if used right, it can create a superpower and that benefits the consumer. So to the extent that the consumer has that demand and you can take better, quicker, more decisive action and be the individual or organization that provides the appropriate information for the betterment of the deal for the customer, then that's what allows you to win. That's what allows you to differentiate yourself. It's sort of rare like nowadays. I think you mention AI. I can't think of a company in the last two years in our portfolio that doesn't use AI as one part of their strategic operations or value proposition. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's meant to replace the practitioner in general. Now there's going to be certain times where innovation does replace certain tasks and those tasks may be managed by individuals and those individuals may need to either level up or modify their positions. But the underlying reality of it is that as long as humans are there controlling, then this innovation is really like a tool for their respective success. And I believe that our ability to make consumers comfortable is going to be a really direct predictor of deal velocity and partnership success. And that's a very soft skill. I don't care how much AI you can apply to that. Now yeah, I can create an AI tool or an agentix system to create a workflow, to submit an offer to close a deal, et cetera. There could be a lot of slop in that, There could be a lot of waste and there probably will be tools along the edge there that help to either streamline the functionality or solve for how do we broker at scale. But the reality is that that's going to be an edge case. Most of the time people are still transacting homes between that 6 to 10 year period depending on your region in the United States. And these are folks that the studies say that these are people over 50, 60 years old. To my knowledge right now they're not wanting to deal with a genetic system. There's a trustworthiness function there that is only served again by that belly to belly relationship.
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C
Interesting. So a little bit of the thesis which I do buy into is human adoption in human beings today. Like you take your baby boomer generation, they're probably not going to adopt AI at the rate that, you know, you would need in order to get people to actually do the whole transaction through technology. And that's just because of their own, you know, Convenience or their own desires. It's interesting because I look at the industry and I see the industry. Everybody's headed towards this idea of this integrated services model and this super app type model.
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Right.
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C
I think Zillow coined that phrase of we're trying to build this super, super app, or somebody did around them. But you can see that across the industry is going, okay, everybody's trying to get this application that can help the consumer with convenience of the transaction, from paperwork to showings to all the stuff that goes around this transaction. And they also want to tie in all the integrated services. So lending and title and home inspection and all that stuff. Like, that's the big race right now. And I'm just curious, when you're looking at the companies that you can invest in and technologies, are you seeing anything unique out there that's happening, or what are some of the cool things that you're seeing that would allow that potential to come true? I'm just curious what you're seeing out there in the venture space.
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A
Yeah, I think that you have two different types of companies. Those companies that are trying to solve for one very specific problem, and then those companies that want to do the full stack integration and solve multiple problems. You mentioned the example of Zillow and the full stack. Hey, we want a super app. And that's not necessarily a new concept. You know, most of the big franchises and brokerages have tried their own various models of super apps. And really, I think you have to ask the question, who's that benefit? Does that provide a direct benefit to the customer, or does that provide a direct benefit to the practitioner who's just trying to reduce office costs? Or does it create a variance in the relationship between the broker and agent? Because if a broker is trying to create a super app and ensure that their agents use it, a lot of times agents will say, well, why, right? Why do I need to use this app when I'm just fine with my CRM and my transaction management tool or with my pen and paper, Right? And oftentimes it's, you know, it creates management efficiency from a brokerage standpoint or at a portal level, it can create ancillary revenue opportunities. But again, it's like, okay, are we doing efficiency for additional revenue extraction? Right? Like this whole idea that, hey, if commissions are compressed, where am I going to get my. Where am I going to get my revenue? And if I'm a big vendor in this space, of, of course I want people to use all of my tools and I want to extract as much economic value as possible. But to the consumer, what do they care? At the end of the day, they're like, I want this transaction done right.
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C
They want convenience and speed.
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A
Exactly. Convenience and speed. And if these tools provide that, then. And then there's a market for it. And what's the willingness to pay for that from the intermediaries?
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C
So don't you see that like you, don't you see consumers want that? Like, I do. I see, like, the reason why the real estate agent has to move to integrated in a super app is not because of replacing the real estate agent. It's because of this. The convenience you'll give to the consumer and the pain points of the transaction. Having to deal with the lender, having to deal with the title, the insurance. It just, it's painful. Now you're dealing with three, four different people versus one inter. One mediator, essentially for you.
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A
Yeah, and that's a good point. And I think that it comes down to, well, what's the goal of the consumer? I mean, for some consumers, it's speed and ease. For others, it's. It's price point. Right. So if I'm, if, if you're forcing me to, to work with a set of intermediaries, let's say, you know, lenders, appraisers or inspectors, etc. That may charge a higher value. But I don't know, as a consumer, it's really difficult for me to parse that through. But if I have optionality in the space, which I think you see a lot of consumers, they get frustrated with the process because there, there has historically been a lack of transparency.
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C
That's a great point.
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A
Whether it be in terms of like, okay, what. Let' take a look at the closing statement, right? Like, what are all these, all these fees for? And oftentimes the consumer just is curious or surprised. And, you know, eliminating that surprise solves a problem for a certain segment of consumers. Other consumers, well, they're just like, just get the deal done and then that transfers to buyers and sellers. And then you can extrapolate that out to even, you know, not just the residential real estate ecosystem, but the commercial real estate ecosystem, which has its own challenges, lack of transparency, et cetera. So I guess it just really depends on which ecosystem you're talking about. But I think the one truism is that there's really no shortage of applications and innovations for every aspect of the real estate industry trying to solve every little nuance. You can create the super app, but the more you get toward the super app, the less Efficient that that gets as far as the overarching transparency for the end consumer. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. On the other side you could have apps that solve one specific problem and they do it better than everybody else. And that could be a net benefit to the practitioner as well. And we see it on both sides of the equation. And in particular you look at other and the way that they do transactions and let's say they may have commission spreads that are, that are much less than the United States. So they tend to rely on other ancillary service models. And you'll see some of these packaged integration type services but you'll also see things that are important post transaction as well and staying in front of that consumer and providing services after the fact. I think a good example in the United States is a lot of agents will tend to take on property management just for the, you know, just for the ease of service for consumers that may be purchasing assets for, for rental. But also it's, it's a good ancillary rental stream. And on top of that, what tends to happen is those, those become quicker sellers and, or future buyers if you have a tenant. So it's, it's like what, what can you do to get involved within the go to market marketing process in order to maintain your, in order to maintain your, your farm? Right, because at the end of the day this is, this, this is sales. If you're a practitioner, right? Yes. Broker, you're, you're recruiting the, you're an agent. You're always trying to make sure that your farm is taken care of. And that gets back to the idea of, you know, are you building relationships or are you just building transactions? And if you're building relationships, you're building a career. If you're just building for transactions, well then you're at, then you're at the whim of the marketplace. And I think that, you know, studies have shown time and again that those folks that are really good at nurturing their farm, it doesn't have to be a huge farm. Your CRM doesn't have to have tens of thousands of people in it. I mean if you've got a good farm of 2, 300 people and you nurture it, I don't care if you're a resi agent or commercial agent. That's a recipe for, for a great life.
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C
Yeah, it's, it's so well said because at the end of the day like the consumer, they want convenience. But the transaction, they ultimately have to have trust and the relationship is the best way to build trust and maintain trust over long periods of time and then with a relationship like you can build trust in from a brand perspective. But the beautiful part that I always see with the relationship that the brand doesn't always get to tap into at the same level is the emotional and personal connection. And, and you'd be surprised, I mean, that people will do business with people just because it's like, I want to support them. I know their kids, their kids play soccer with my kids. And it's just like that you can't even in a brand, like, it's almost impossible to invoke that same emotion from a brand standpoint. So it's like the relationship is the medium to really solidify that trust, which I think is going to maintain. I'm curious for you, you know, going back to this, you know, kind of overarching of the industry, do you believe that the like, especially because you worked at ReMax for a long time, right? You, you did a lot of stuff there. Do you think, like the ReMax, okay, you do a ReMax and a Keller Williams will merge this year or like you're going to see a lot more roll up in the, in the actual real estate space this year? What's your thoughts there?
- [15:37]
A
Well, I think that in general, the markets, especially for publicly traded assets, they're highly dependent on liquidity and the availability of capital. And I think that as the availability of capital increases and the price of that capital decreases, then, yeah, you're going to see a lot more mergers and acquisitions. Now, what that means for publicly traded franchises, I don't know. I think that, you know, certainly, certainly there is a motive from an investor standpoint where they want return on their assets. And if you can't get it from a general market standpoint, then you work to financially engineer that. And one of the financially, you know, one of the tools to financial engineer is through mergers and acquisitions. So, so is that a likelihood this year? I would guess so. I mean, if, you know, I'm not, not super impressive at reading tea leaves, but if I, if I were to guess, do interest rates go down? Does the cost of capital decrease for some of these large organizations, is the availability of liquidity more in 2026 than 2025? I'd say yeah, the trend seems to point to, yes. So that macro trend would say, all right, there's likely going to be more merger and acquisitions. 2025 was a banner year for merger and acquisitions in the innovation space. And also from the investment standpoint, know, just look at your public, public equities. The S and P is the highest that it's been in a long time. I mean, crazy. The challenge in the housing market is really, well, everybody's still expecting these lower mortgage rates and that bemoans some risk within the bond markets at the moment because the Treasuries are still not where they need to be for, for those people who are locked in under 3% to justify a move. And, and so it'll be an interesting scenario because when, when the wholesale 30 year fixed from a resi standpoint gets to a place where people feel comfortable that they can move and the velocity of the transactions gets back up to a normal above 5 and a half, 6 million single family existing home sales a year to really where it needs to be as opposed to that 4 million benchmark that we've been living in the last couple of years. Then all bets are off. It's like we've been living in this system where it's been tough for the traditional RESI focused agent because you haven't had the velocity of transactions. So because of that we gravitate toward these big headlines because there's not a lot moving. And so this fear's been around for a number of years and everybody's waiting for this dam to break loose. When the good times roll for the RESI agents, I think we forget about all these big merger acquisitions. We forget about all that stuff, we get back to work. And frankly, you know, the best agents have been doing that the last couple of years. The best brokers have been just recruiting like crazy.
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C
Yeah, well, you see all of it fading way more past the 80, 20 to really like, you know, maybe 95, 5 is where 5% of the agents are really doing all the transactions. But doesn't that, that leads into like thinking about this is that why are the 5% or top 10%, let's say doing all the transactions? It's because they're more treating it like a business. They're professionalizing and organizing and operationalizing their whole systems. I think of Acre Brothers Realty, right. My brother's team. And it's like they're treating it like a business. They have technology that they're running just like reminder media does. They have, you know, administrative features happening. They have all these things and the normal residential real estate is not doing that at a high level. And that's what the consumer is now needing and demanding. And it's only going to get worse. Now the hope for the residential real estate agent, that's solopreneur is that these technologies will advance enough to where they get all of that just because the technology is so good, the AI is doing it for them. But there is that gap. I don't know if you see it the same way of like the residential real estate agent is not professionalizing their business fast enough.
- [19:38]
A
Look, I think that people gravitate toward confidence. And if you've got a process and a system that is repeating and providing good service, you're going to win in your market. And that takes time and thoughtfulness and effort to build those systems and then to consistently make them better with very solid feedback loops. And that builds a brand. Right. And when you build a brand, you can build that consistency. So do I see that bifurcation in the market? Absolutely. And I tend to refer to this as sort of a K shaped economy in a K shaped future. And I see this just in general, especially with like, like the, the, the more recent introduction of AI into every part of our lives. Right. The idea that things like AI makes it easier for us to, to do things that we've never done before. So, you know, the barrier, the barriers to, to starting a company or to building a product or to selling a service have never really been, been lower. But you know, rather than praying that somebody, let's say, is going to hire you, I see this with young people. Young people have the opportunity to accelerate their achievement and financial freedom by creating jobs for themselves that they've never been able to create before in these systems. But it takes this dedicated focus. So the ability to compete and not complain, I think is first and foremost and that helps to build confidence. But then secondly, the ability to say, okay, what tools can I use to create these systems, these repetitive systems, tweak the systems as necessary and then provide really good customer service and throw a brand to it. That takes committed focus. And if you provide that committed focus and build a brand, then yeah, you can build something sustainable. Those people that are adopting the appropriate tools, the appropriate technologies, providing their curiosity, bringing that intelligence and creativity to the ecosystem. Yeah, those are companies, companies that are thriving. Those individuals and companies that aren't, that aren't investing in themselves, that aren't investing in those processes, those are the folks that we say, oh gosh, we worry about, are people going to be replaced by AI? Well, you're not really being replaced by AI per se or any type of innovation. You're just being outpaced, right? You're being outpaced by those people that are being curious and intelligent and being.
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C
Well, it's because your services are going to be worse. Like it's, it's simple as, like whether it's AI, the Internet, you name it, right? It's just, are your services better than the competitor services and can you do it at a reasonable within range price as everybody else from a quality standpoint? And, and that's the reality that AI will bring. It's just like you're going to be beat by the people who use AI only because they'll be able to provide faster, better, smoother service and lower their cost of operations. And, and now they can charge you less. And that's the name of the game. And all, all of business that, you know, people just don't, don't get. I'm curious, just switching gears because you deal with a lot of like, entrepreneurs, a lot of founders, right? You're talking to all the visionaries out there. What is it that you've seen over the years investing into these founders and the ones that have made it? I don't know how. Well, like, if your portfolio is like a lot of, you know, venture capital out there where, you know, there's a lot of losers and, you know, kind of couple huge winners, maybe you guys have done a lot better than that. But what do you see in the founders that are really good and the companies that are really good?
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A
So I'd say first and foremost, I would say that the main bottleneck for the future, this goes for agents as well, because agents and brokers oftentimes operate very similarly to the entrepreneurs that we deal with in the innovation space, right? Like the main bottleneck in the future is not like technical skill, but it's really sort of a lack of good ideas. Right. In the future, intelligence is going to be really cheap to meter, right? And that may sound crazy, but what we have today would have sounded kind of crazy back in 2020 or 20, 2015, right? And so when we look at like good founders and good ideas, you're looking for people that you throw the term grit is one component, but folks that are genuinely curious about the problem at hand and when they're looking at the problem, whether it be a massive problem like affordability or a really small problem like, hey, how do I solve for my lead gen problem, whatever the case may be, what's the problem? How big is the problem? What's the impact? Who benefits if I can solve this problem at scale and does it work for other industries? Right. So the companies that we invest in are companies that tend to reduce friction in or around transacting owning or improving place. And really that's essentially the guts again of the largest asset class in the world. So a lot of the companies that we're involved in, you know, we'll do things like they'll support the back office worker, practitioners, owners and operators with things like, you know, big data, AI, back office accounting and transactional system. But, but to, to support that, we also focus on the financial aspect, right? And this is where we look at financial services or fintech companies that help to manifest the transaction or bring about new equity opportunities for practitioners. But, but then we also try to support the underlying idea of place by providing, you know, appropriate insurance mechanisms to reduce risk for practitioners and consumers. So things like insurtech are extremely important and we really know how important that is. Especially where I am in California, insurance prices, I mean, that is the new expense in Florida, that is, yeah, that is a massive expense in Texas, we see that. So there's some exciting technologies that we're reviewing that's reduce that friction point and help to ensure assets at scale. But for practitioners, and I think that this is sort of the crux of what you guys like to focus on is marketing services. Marketing services are not only critical for listing and selling, but really for, I think for branding and differentiation of a agent or a brokerage and the assets that they represent. So marketing technology has been a very big winner for us, powering many systems that members use every single day. So, and I'd say that the last category that we'll focus on is enhancing place or this idea of enhancing place, and really that the idea of continuing to add value to the real estate itself post transaction, or whether it be new construction or providing services to improve the asset, that just helps the economy in general. And when you enhance the asset, then you can enhance the resale value, et cetera. You guys get that. So there's tools along the road for every single one of those categories. And I think that what, what we're really good at, we spent 17 years focused on expanding our community, right, to seek out these key challenges. When you start from that top down of saying what are the problems? Right, and what are the problems that agents have, the brokers, the practitioners have? And then ask the question, okay, are these problems universal? Because really what you're trying to get to is that what's referred to as the TAM or the total addressable market of a given problem. And what's interesting is, you know, I'm always looking for those universal problems that don't just span across the United States or the resi market I'm looking for problems that are universal across ecosystems, across segments. Is this problem consistent for consumers or practitioners in lending, title, escrow or other industries? Right. And so we've, we've built a strategy to curate this continuity community that provides us feedback. And so this community of owners, operators, developers, practitioners, both domestic and global, give us insight as to what are these problems. Right. And you ask the question, well, you know, how are you like a traditional VC where 90% of the companies fail and 10% of them succeed? We haven't had that respective issue because what we're trying to do is solve problems for the community. And if you build a good community, find universal problems, solve them at scale, and then take those solutions from one geography to another or one segment to another, then you can really multiply the growth of some of these startups. And if you're meeting the needs of these customers, and when I say customer in this particular instance, it tends to be the practitioner. If you're meeting those needs at scale and they're happy, then the innovator wins, the customer wins, and then we win as well, and the industry wins as whole. Because we see ourselves largely as fiduciaries of the ecosystem. We were created in 2008 to really drive innovation and empower entrepreneurs to revolutionize an industry that is often resistant to change. And so the launch of Second Century Ventures by NAR and their leadership team at that time was really reflecting a commitment to put members first and to stay ahead of the tech trends, but also by building this community. And now as this community has grown, it's really provided substantial return to the ecosystem. And I will mention that these are all. Yeah, the initial check is non dues dollars. Like we do this. There's, there's never been a dues dollar from a member that has gone into Second Century Ventures. So this is really a true benefit to the realtors, which is, which is, which is pretty phenomenal in a way. And so, you know, we'll vets will shape technology, we'll create, provide mass savings to, to members. But, but really the whole idea is that, you know, how do we provide these substantial benefits to these practitioners and, and realtors so they can.
- [29:32]
C
What's been, what's been one that was a home run for you guys? And what's been one that you were like, yeah, I missed on that one? Well, there's, this is like the exclusive, you know, stay paid Second Century Ventures, you know, home run and fail, you know, like, you know, they do on Shark Tank Scrub Daddy's like the home run and then you know, there's like a lot of them that are failed. Now what's been like a home run and what's been a failure where you're like, man, I missed on that one.
- [29:58]
A
Well, I guess. Have you heard of, have you heard of DocuSign?
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C
Yes.
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A
Okay. So, yeah, the idea of transaction management is a perfect example of adapting a proven technology from other industries to real estate. Right. So we know that DocuSign revolutionized contract execution, streamlined transactions globally. But most people don't know that DocuSign wasn't really in real estate until we actually brought them into the real estate ecosystem.
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C
I did not realize that. Yeah, that's crazy.
- [30:35]
A
And so it's. Yeah. And that kind of ushered in a new forum for how we do deals digitally. And if you were a practitioner during COVID it was very difficult to close deals. So you know, other technologies were extraordinarily important, like remote online notarization. Right. So we were, you know, we had invested pretty heavily into a couple remote online notarization organizations. For instance, Notarize, which is now going by the moniker of proof that really that transformed closings by enhancing secure digital transactions. And know you're able to reduce a lot of, a lot of errors as part of the transaction, saving, saving significant time. And that's another application that's not just germane to the real estate ecosystem, but applies to other real estate ecosystems. So I think it's. You step back and say, okay, gosh, like what, what are the big wins? The biggest wins are when we can look at proven technologies and other industries and then bring them into our community. And if, you know, whether they're insuretech type companies or marketing type tech companies, when we bring them into our active community and juice them even more, they can become large scale unicorns, decacorns, etc. Which provides substantive exits, but really they provide substantive benefits to everybody in the ecosystem to where you can really draw a direct line to enhancing efficiencies or reducing costs loss as part of the transaction.
- [32:04]
C
What, what about the one you feel you missed on. You don't have to name the exact company if you don't want to, but yeah, I'm just, I'm just always curious because obviously we learn more from our losses than our. Yeah, oftentimes. And it's like I thought this was going to be a game changer technology, but I didn't realize the consumer didn't want it or whatever it is. I'm just curious because you have such a unique perspective I mean, yeah, we.
- [32:29]
A
Have over 350 investments in our portfolio today, domestic and globally. And I think it's a really good question. And I always beat myself up for just not being early enough on certain trend lines. And you see that across the board. It doesn't mean we're not in some of those companies. But from a valuation standpoint, you say, gosh, I wish I would have gotten.
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C
I wish I would have gotten in a lot sooner.
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A
Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, you and I can go in the public, you know, public markets and invest in Google today if we want. Yeah. But it's, it's, it's a different story when you're, when you're investing in their seed round. Right?
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C
Yeah.
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A
And so oftentimes it's like, okay, you end up getting into some of these companies, but it's, did you get into them the right time and right terms? Now that's, you know, we have a fortunate advantage because many of the companies that we invest in, regardless, regardless of where they are in their respective cycle, they want access to our community. Our community is, is among the, the biggest and the best in the world. Because when you say community we have.
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C
Are you referencing mainly like the agents that are members? Are you referencing like the actual community of founders that are helping each other and stuff or is it all encompassing?
- [33:40]
A
Yeah, so as I mentioned, we're good community builders and we've been doing that for 17 years. And it starts, started off with, okay, just the realtor, call it the realtor family. Right. And since then we've, we've branched out to include owners, operators, developers.
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C
Gotcha. Yeah, that's sick.
- [33:55]
A
That would be, et cetera. And on top of that, governments as well. So, I mean, we have unique partnerships with various governments around the world. We just inked an exclusive partnership with the DLD, the Dubai Land Department, that's, you know, it's responsible for 50% of the GDP of Dubai. We have relationships with, you know, the narrative equivalents in England and in Canada, in Latin America, in Southeast Asia, Australia. So those partnerships are incredibly important because when you look at the regulations that govern real estate in those respective markets, that is from a top down, that's how the practitioners will create their pattern recognition. That's where they will be trained. That's where they will get their advice and their governance. So aligning ourselves with the needs of those governing bodies at the top and then the practitioners and owners and operators at the bottom, you really get a good sense of, well, what the needs are at that time and those Those partnerships are really critical to our community because we're constantly surveying our community on like what are your needs? What are your problems? So that we can be the stewards of bringing this innovation to solve those problems at scale. When you solve them at scale again, if they're universal, then I can take, then I can take a success story in one region and bring it to another. And we see that time and time again within our portfolio where companies start in a certain region and then they come to the US or vice versa and then we try to amplify their message in other areas. Like a good example is a Box Brownie. Years ago they really brought photo editing and virtual staging into the United States. They kind of revolutionized real estate marketing at the time, like scaling globally. I mean they've, you know, 100,000 realtors still use Box Brownie today. So it's crazy affordable tools. But they, you know, small Australian company came to the US and started dominating the market. We really tried to help them expand within the, within the, the US ecosystem and, and globally as well. And so we see that across the board. We see that with, with Rental Beast right now on the, on the rental side of the equation with rental data, I mean underpinning most of the MLS and the United States. The United States and it's, it's. And you know you look at like the, one of some of the neglected regions where the real green fields are in the future. The rental space is just this open green field with, with a lot of disparate data. And so companies like Rental Beast are, are stepping up and providing some really important services for, for that community to not only provide transparency but, but efficiency and solid data to the end customers but also to, to the practitioners really large.
- [36:29]
C
That's interesting you say that because I was at a Sixers game the other night. The guy beside me, he owns a ton of apartment complexes and I, I got to talking to him and he was saying the item on his operational expense that grew a ton this year is marketing. And that marketing, I forget the exact stat he said but it was like up 30% on the P and Ls of all these multi family complexes. And I thought to myself, oh wow, that is an untapped like we as reminder media aren't going after like the marketing aspect of multifamily owners to trying to get tenants in and stuff like that. And so just you mentioning like rental is untapped. There's probably a greenfield out there for even the marketing services companies out there to go help these. You Know, owners get tenants in leasing, stuff like that. Done. Yeah, super interesting. Well, last question for you, Dave, is knowing what you know now, right, and your journey, you've seen so much over the years, especially in the real estate industry, what would you go back and tell your younger self? What would you tell that, you know, 16 year old kid? What advice?
- [37:32]
A
That's, that's a really, really good question. I'd say focus on etiquette. Right. I think that when etiquette is really about showing up in like those, those high stakes situations with, with a low heart rate and you know, it's, it's, it's like, it's, it's an incredible tool for composure, confidence and not like politeness theater, right. Like when you know the unwritten rules of like a social setting, both you and your counterpart can focus your attention more on the content of your conversation. Right? And so like in this world again, where, where, where software is commoditized and AI is automating technical work, human skills like etiquette and trust building, which etiquette I think is sort of the basis of trust building, are going to be your real key differentiators and the ability to build those relationships. Whether it be, if you're an agent, okay, what's my buyer seller wanting or whether you're working with a vendor or whether you're, whether you're an entrepreneur looking to get into the space. I mean, the challenge today and the challenge in the future in an area where content commoditization is so easy, we can create anything and everything. The differentiator, the differentiator for now and in the future is what's your, what's your go to market strategy. And if you've got a really good go to market strategy that's based on solid etiquette and based on that underlying relationship, you're gonna, you're gonna succeed. Because if you build your relationship and you can build multiple relationships, then all of a sudden you have a community. When you have a community, you can rely on that community to support you, to help you grow and to provide you all of these respective tools that are necessary to thrive. And I think that starts with the underlying relationship and the ability to build that relationship and trust. And that gets back to etiquette. Yeah.
- [39:32]
B
Said Dave, thanks for joining us today. Before we close out, let people know how they can connect with you.
- [39:38]
A
So if you're interested in second Century Ventures, scv, vc, but we also have Reach, our award winning international accelerator, and that is NAR, reach.com and you can find me anywhere at dgarlandcv VC.
- [39:55]
B
Awesome. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you all so much for listening. We'll include those links in the show notes of this episode. You can get that@staypaidpodcast.com and if you like this episode and want to show your support, head on over to YouTube.com reminder media. Make sure to subscribe to the channel and give this video a thumbs up. If you want to get hold of me or Luke, you can email us@podcast remindermedia.com or of course you can follow us on social. We are at Stay Paid Podcast for this episode of Stay Paid.
- [40:21]
C
I'm Josh Dyke guys, I'm Luke Acre. Dave, thank you so much for coming on, man. I can't wait to get to know you more. I have so many more questions I want to pick your brain on. Selfishly, as a business owner in the space that you're in, I feel like, man, you have so much knowledge and wisdom from everything you've seen over the years. My action item for people like that, the obvious one, is you're hearing Dave say it over and over and over again, right? In the referencing of it's a belly to belly business. This etiquette and the underpinning of your go to market strategy being relationships. It's just a reminder that here's the guy that's investing and building the companies that are shaping the future of real estate from tech and convenience and all this stuff. And he is even saying, guys, it's about relationships. So all this stuff that I'm building, it's really about relationships. But so I want you to focus on that action item, right? Because this podcast is always about action items. But the second thing I want you to focus on this week because I think it'd be very tangible, is he mentioned kind of how he invests and how he thinks about investing and now he thinks about the go to market market strategy. It's like, what is the problem that you're solving? What is the actual tension point in the transaction? What is the tension point for the consumer? And you know, building that into what you do. So often we as real estate agents, we just aren't actually focused on the problem that we're trying to solve for the consumer. We're just focusing and blasting our marketing out there or just selling and selling and selling. And we're not really refining our value proposition based upon the problem that we're solving. So I would just challenge you, sit down today and ask yourself, what is the problem that I solve for the consumer, what is the problem? And then think about it in terms of a niche, right? There's riches and niches. Think about it in terms of a niche like, how am I solving this problem for these specific consumers? And that will help you so much in defining your operational things that you need to implement your marketing strategy that you need to implement. Remember the difference between top producers and mediocre producers. In every industry, as top producers take action, so take action on that today.
- [42:34]
A
Sam.