Are you a buyer having difficulty finding quality listings? Or a broker struggling to match with a potential investor?
Gordon Smith is the co-founder of Biproxi, an online CRE platform that brings buyers and sellers together to close deals faster. He joins us today to talk about how they are transforming the real estate marketplace and offering a better transaction experience online. He gives an in-depth look at what makes Biproxi work and how real estate professionals can take advantage of the platform to run their businesses more efficiently.
[00:01] – [04:15] The Tinder for Real Estate
- Gordon shares his background in business
- They started Biproxi as a buyer matching platform, to curate the listings and provide detailed and accurate information to buyers
[04:16] – [13:59] Bringing Real Estate Transactions Online
- They developed a suite of tools and have third-party integrations that will interest investors and brokers and will encourage adoption
- How they are monetizing the platform
- Non-disclosure states present a little bit of a challenge in collecting transaction data
- Gordon breaks down the matching process
- Quality over quantity, curation over aggregation
- The adoption process has been positive so far and they have a free promotional period so users can try and love the product
- There’s a messaging feature in the platform where users can view the history of all their interactions
[14:00] – [15:10] Closing Segment
- Reach out to Gordon!
- Links Below
- Final Words
Tweetable Quotes
“We joke it’s Tinder for real estate, but hopefully, we match them up inside our app rather than relying on what’s traditionally been sort of an email blast that’s undirected and usually gets deleted.” – Gordon Smith
“We want to be the place that powers the transaction, so we’re not really trying to be a marketplace with hundreds of thousands of listings. We want this to be a place where a broker and investor can actually transact online.” – Gordon Smith
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Connect with Gordon at Biproxi.com or email him at gordon@biproxi.com.
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Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
[00:00:00] Gordon Smith: We eventually want to bring the whole transaction. We want to be the place that powers the transaction. So we’re not really trying to be a marketplace with, you know, hundreds of thousands of listings. We want this to be a place where a broker and investor can actually transact online. So we’ve got some third-party integrations that we’re looking to add, which would include, you know, diligence, title, contract negotiation, all the kind of things that we want to bring online.
[00:00:38] Sam Wilson: Gordon Smith is a seasoned real estate finance and private equity professional with extensive experience in asset management, brokerage, and operations. Gordon, welcome to the show.
[00:00:47] Gordon Smith: Thanks, Sam.
[00:00:48] Sam Wilson: Hey, the pleasure’s mine, Gordon. Hey, there are three questions I ask every guest who comes from the show: in 90 seconds or less, can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now, and how did you get there?
[00:00:56] Gordon Smith: Yeah, so I started my career at actually CBRE as a commercial real estate broker. And then made the transition to a private equity firm called Fortress Investment Group, and I am now running two technology real estate technology platforms. One is Biproxi and one is OfficeSpace.com.
[00:01:12] Sam Wilson: That’s a lot of transition. Did you ever know, I guess, early on that you had an interest in technology, or was this something that just kind of came to you along the way?
[00:01:24] Gordon Smith: It came to me along the way. At Fortress, we made an investment, the first online marketplace, which was called Auction.com, which was a residential platform, right? And then Ten-X and I went on the board of that company and the founder, you know, I saw what they were doing, it seemed really exciting, and he convinced me to leave Fortress and come run the commercial business for him, which was called Ten-X.
[00:01:47] Sam Wilson: Got it. So you, you moved to Ten-X and now you are at Biproxi.
[00:01:52] Gordon Smith: Yeah. We built Ten-X up over around three years. That was sold to a private equity firm, and then I sort of took a year off and launched Biproxi.
[00:02:00] Sam Wilson: Gotcha. So Biproxi is your own animal, like this is something you’ve built, It is built from…
[00:02:05] Gordon Smith: Yes. I’ve got two co-founders, but it is my own animal.
[00:02:07] Sam Wilson: That’s cool. I love that. And I’m certainly, in the early days back, or I say early to my early days in real estate, spent plenty of time at Auction.com auctions buying foreclosure properties. That’s how we cut our teeth. So, you know, I’m very familiar with that process. That’s really cool. What is the major problem in the marketplace that you see that you’re trying to actively solve?
[00:02:29] Gordon Smith: Yeah, I think we’re trying to, you know, if you look at a lot of marketplaces, they started with aggregation. You know, you look at, it could be anything from fashion to, you know, this traditional auction platforms. And what’s happened over time is that the quality of listing data on a lot of these sites really produces a tough buyer experience. They’ve got to sift through a lot of listings. Most of them or some of them are inaccurate. Many times they’ll call the broker and not get a callback. I mean, we interviewed a Chicago investor who wanted to invest in Florida. You know, because no one knew who he was and he was coming from out of town, he could not get the mind share of the brokerage community there. So we really built Biproxi to be more of a buyer matching platform, and we curate the listings, we make sure they’re accurate. We ask the buyers to provide us with detailed information on what they’re looking for. We ask the broker to actually profile their listing, and then hopefully we match them up. We joke it’s Tinder for real estate, but hopefully we match them up inside our app rather than relying on what’s traditionally been sort of an email blast that’s undirected and usually gets deleted.
[00:03:34] Sam Wilson: Right. Yeah, there’s certainly plenty of that. You know, those email blasts that you get and I think the problem for, you know, for us as investors is getting those email blasts, is remembering that, Oh, hey, Gordon sent me an email. Like, oh, yeah, I need to go back and review that. I did, shoot, I did it today. I was at the doctor’s office with my daughter. I’m like, oh, yeah, somebody sent me a deal last week, and I haven’t, you know, you looked at it once, you hit read, and then forgot about it.
[00:03:57] Gordon Smith: Yeah.
[00:03:57] Sam Wilson: And that’s bad for everybody. I mean, that’s bad for the broker, that’s bad for us as investors. Outside of, though, just creating a set of filters, right, I mean, your platform has to be more than filters, which is just like, Oh, I want to buy in Florida and I want to buy, you know, office space and I want to, it needs to be over 10,000, whatever. I’m just making up numbers.
[00:04:15] Gordon Smith: Yeah.
[00:04:15] Sam Wilson: What else did you guys do to really dial this in and say, this is a product that the market wants?
[00:04:21] Gordon Smith: Yeah, so we’ve developed a bunch of tools that enable a broker and an investor to transact. So we have a private listing tool, which allows a broker to run an off market deal and decide who they want to admit so they can kind of curate, their buyer database. Or we just develop Private Events, which is actually the first, and since you’re familiar with auction, you’ll understand this, it’s really the first self-service auction tool that can be run by the broker, he or she, rather than relying on a much more kind of structured auction process that the broker doesn’t always.
[00:04:55] Sam Wilson: That’s pretty impressive. I love the idea of a private listing where it’s like, Hey, you know what? I want Sam to see this. I want Gordon to see it. I want three other people to see this deal. And again, as opposed to emailing them or texting him or calling you and say, Hey, it’s right here inside of the Biproxi platform. When you say quality goes down, I’m thinking of some other well-known sites. I probably shouldn’t mention ’em, but quality goes down as these deals just get, you know, they put a name of a website in there and say, that’s where deals go to die, right? I think that’s probably what you’re referring to. How did you get your company built? I mean, obviously, you have a background in technology, but you’re not a technology or a technologist, is even a word, yourself.
[00:05:35] Gordon Smith: Yeah. Well, obviously learned a lot at Ten-X when I ran that. You know, I ran product and marketing, and Ten-X really is a pure auction site, so, you know, we always had a vision for really bringing the traditional process online. So if you look at where we’re headed long term, this should be a place for a broker to market their listing, you know, list it, market it, and eventually transact online. That’s our long-term vision, but obviously, I’ve surrounded myself with, you know, a great engineering team. Our co-founder runs product. She’s got a lot of experience and then it’s all about the team you built.
[00:06:06] Sam Wilson: Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s absolutely cool. And you guys really have two components. You’ve got the broker side, which is one part of your business you serve. And then you have the investor side that you serve. Are those two different animals or is it something that it’s kind one of the same?
[00:06:22] Gordon Smith: No, they are. I mean, we believe fundamentally that our platform will get massive adoption if we can bring more investors to the platform ’cause that’s ultimately what the brokerage community wants, right? They want buyers for their listings. And we have a couple of tools that are interesting for investors. We have a product called Data Explorer, which gives you all the national tax record data on every property in the United States, including owner unmasking if we’ve got it. Transaction, financing history, demographic data, and we’re going to keep adding to that and that product is actually free on our site.
[00:06:55] Sam Wilson: Wow. That’s impressive. I mean, that’s a whole suite of tools. I mean, you’ve got so many different data providers out there.
[00:07:02] Gordon Smith: Well, you’ve got Black Knight obviously. Yes. First American has their own data product. Our partner is a relatively new company called Cherry. And we use them because they ingest all this data, but spend more time cleaning it. So it’s better quality than what you might get from a raw tax record.
[00:07:19] Sam Wilson: Right. Right. And so I guess from an end-user experience, you guys monetize this from a subscription model or how do you guys make money on this?
[00:07:27] Gordon Smith: Yeah, we are purely a SaaS model, which, again, if you look at our self-service auction product, you know, the cost of running that for a broker and an investor is meaningfully less than, you know, paying a three to five point buyers premium.
[00:07:41] Sam Wilson: That’s fantastic. What are some problems in the marketplace right now that you guys haven’t yet solved, that you look forward to solving?
[00:07:49] Gordon Smith: We eventually want to bring the whole transaction. We want to be the place that powers the transaction, so we’re not really trying to be a marketplace with, you know, hundreds of thousands of listings. We want this to be a place where a broker and investor can actually transact online. So we’ve got some third-party integrations that we’re looking to add, which would include, you know, diligence, title, contract negotiation, all the kind of things that we want to bring online.
[00:08:15] Sam Wilson: Are there asset classes, and hopefully I’m asking the right question here, but are there asset classes that you guys don’t have the data for? I asked this specifically ‘cause I used to be in parking. Back in pre-pandemic, we bought parking lots and parking garages and I couldn’t find data on that anywhere.
[00:08:30] Gordon Smith: Yeah, that’s actually a good question. I’m going to go back and there’s definitely 11 non-disclosure states where the data’s not as good. And there’s roughly, I don’t know, 3,300 counties in the US, and all of them kind of present their data differently. So, you know, that’s a little bit of a challenge, but it’s getting better and better. I think in general, we’ve got tax record data on pretty much everything. We might not have transaction data and then nondisclosure states.
[00:08:54] Sam Wilson: Right. Right. Yeah. And that would be an interesting challenge to work around, 11 non-disclosure states. And by that, can you tell our listeners what that means?
[00:09:03] Gordon Smith: Yeah. So what it really means is, you know, when the deed is signed, and I think the mechanics are probably different every state, but the sales price is not disclosed publicly.
[00:09:12] Sam Wilson: Right. Got it. That’s very, very helpful. Tell me this, on the buyer matching side, can you walk me through that process and why that’s so important to what you guys do?
[00:09:22] Gordon Smith: So, you know, one of the buyer investor complaints is that when they submit a lead to another site, the broker usually just gets an email address without any detail on who that person is. And in some cases, the broker’s getting so many leads and it’s hard for them to follow up on all of them. So our basic thesis is by asking the buyer to be very specific about what they’re looking for and asking the broker to actually profile who they think the logical buyer is for this asset, then we run a match, and if there is a match, then we put the investor’s information in the broker’s dashboard. We don’t disclose the phone number until the investor says they’d like, you know, to speak to the broker ’cause we obviously want to respect that. But that is basically, we run the algorithm and if there’s a match then we put the two together.
[00:10:13] Sam Wilson: I mean, that’s so simple. It seems so simple, but yet I’m sure it’s quite complicated on the back end. But, I mean, what a cool way to get curated listings sent right to you as an investor, as opposed to, again, you know, reading that email from this morning where there’s probably eight or 10 different properties on that email blast. And I’m like, No, that’s the wrong state. No, that’s not. And you got to go to the bottom. And then by the time you got into the bottom, somebody’s interrupted you and you forgot all about it.
[00:10:38] Gordon Smith: Yeah, no, it’s a real promise. And it’s, you know, if you look at Apple’s privacy changes, it’s even harder for you as a marketer to track even who’s opening those emails anymore. So a gain, it’s really curation over aggregation.
[00:10:50] Sam Wilson: Right. Right. And I think one thing you said though, that you guys don’t want to become though, is just a giant listing site. Like, there’s enough listing sites out there. So how do you effectively onboard brokers with their opportunities, match those two, then investors, without becoming a listing site?
[00:11:08] Gordon Smith: So it’s not about the quantity of listings we’ve got on the site. We want a broker to think of our platform as a place to bring their listing and run their sales process. So, you know, we don’t need 50,000 listings to do that. We just need a very intentional broker who wants to run their process. We spend all our time driving investors to our platform. We think we need roughly, probably five to one investors for every listing, right? And then if they don’t find anything that exactly matches what they’re looking for, at least they’ve got our data product, you know, to do some discovery on their own.
[00:11:41] Sam Wilson: What’s the adoption process been like for you guys?
[00:11:44] Gordon Smith: So right now we’re kind of in a free promotional period. We’re really spending more time just getting user adoption. And we probably intend to, you know, start putting our paywall up in early 2023. But right now, it’s just about getting people to use and love the product.
[00:12:02] Sam Wilson: Yeah. I wondered about that, you know, and and I’m not in the technology business, but I wondered about that early on, how you guys tackled that problem ’cause you know, early on you have to have people using the platform in order to generate interest, generate just kind of some momentum there.
[00:12:16] Gordon Smith: Yeah. But they’ll always be a free component of our product. Like I said, that’s our data product that’ll always be available to investors if they want to do some discovery. And that’s our general theory.
[00:12:26] Sam Wilson: That’s really, really cool. I absolutely love that. Is there anything else that comes to mind that you say, Hey, here’s something that I really wish people knew about our platform and about what we do that I haven’t covered.
[00:12:37] Gordon Smith: Well, I think, you know, for a broker who’s looking to upload their listing, it’s a very intuitive process. We’ve spent a lot of time, you know, if if you are marketing a retail asset, it’ll then give you a choice of what type of retail asset. So I think, you know, as a, just a core listing product, it’s actually very intuitive and easy to use. All our messaging, it stays in the app. So every asset you’ve ever looked at or spoken to a broker, you have that in the app forever, right? So you always have a history of all your interactions, and I think that’s, also a big difference.
[00:13:10] Sam Wilson: It sure is, especially as you’re developing relationships with new brokers and new markets. It again can be, you know, you’re solving problems that I think about where it’s like, Oh yeah, I reached out to somebody. I can’t remember his name. Who was that again?
[00:13:21] Gordon Smith: By email.
[00:13:22] Sam Wilson: Yeah. Right, right. Then you’re searching email by asset or where you think it was located. And again, it’s just a cluster of like, this is never going to actually locate that. That’s really fantastic.
[00:13:32] Gordon Smith: So the idea is that you know, all your messaging, either as an investor or a broker is all in your app, in your dashboard.
[00:13:37] Sam Wilson: Man, that’s really, really cool. When did you guys hit the go-live button? When did this officially launch?
[00:13:43] Gordon Smith: We went live in October, November of ’21 with kind of our V1 of the product. We released, you know, Private Event. We released Private Listing kind of in the summer of this year. So it’s kind of really, now, you know, we’re kind of putting the pedal to the metal.
[00:13:59] Sam Wilson: Man, that’s cool. I love it. I’m looking forward to getting in and spending more time there on your website. For those who are listening, that’s Biproxi, B I P R O X I.com. Look forward to checking that out a little bit more. Gordon, if our listeners want to get in touch with you, and I know I just mentioned your website as well, but if just want to get in touch with you, learn more about what you guys do, what’s the best way to do that?
[00:14:20] Gordon Smith: Probably just my email. It’s gordon@biproxi.com. They’re free to call me if you want me to give out my phone number, but probably email’s easiest.
[00:14:27] Sam Wilson: That’s fantastic. I love it. Gordon, I’m looking forward to using your product. This will be a lot of fun. I’m going to spend some time on there getting my information uploaded ’cause I know there’s certainly an asset class I specialize in that I look forward to, yeah, put it out there what we’re looking for. So thank you again for building the product and, yeah, thanks for coming to the show today.
[00:14:43] Gordon Smith: Awesome, Sam, great to meet you.
