RESAAS Services Inc
(CNSX:RSS)
CEO: Cory Brandolini
Podcast: Play in new window
RESAAS provides a social network for real estate professionals to make new connections, strengthen existing relationships, and to share information and resources with the right people at the right time.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS:
WSA: Good day from Wall Street, this is Juan Costello with a Wall Street Analyst, joining us today is Cory Brandolini, the CEO for RESAAS Services Incorporated. The company trades on the Canadian Stock Exchange, ticker symbol is RSS. Thanks for joining us today Cory.
WSA: Thanks very much for having me on, happy to be here.
WSA: Anytime, now starting off give us a brief history and overview of the company for some of our listeners that are new to your story.
Cory Brandolini: Wonderful thanks Juan, RESAAS was incorporated three years ago with a goal towards building its platform for the real estate professional. A platform in the sense of a social network very much with the functionalities of LinkedIn and Facebook, but focused more directly on their industry at large to eliminate any other social noise that was very specifically targeted towards real estate, real estate professionals and their customers. So the platform was designed with a lot of the great social tools in mind and entirely developed within our own company over the past two years of hard line coding. We went through very rigorous two years beta, closed beta testing program with thousand of real estate professionals on the platform to where we felt very comfortable about the usage, the scalability and the power of the platform that we have commercially launched just since last February.
And since launch we’ve seen an immense growth of users on to the platform both just by viral, but mainly by direct sale approach right now, we are handling all of our customers one-on-one. So we ruled out brokerage-by-brokerage starting on the west coast moving across the east coast and we are scaling at a great level right now. So after basically a quarter we have managed to upload multiple thousands of real estate professionals on to the system by making unlimited connections, posting listings and making connections with other agents both within their own firm and within their own geographical area. So we are very pleased to have its line out.
WSA: Well, good. And so you recently added a Texas agency to the, your social media platform, can you talk about who some of your main clients are?
Cory Brandolini: Great question Juan. One of the things that we are doing as far as our sales strategy is making sure that RESAAS is present at all of the major trade shows and conventions that are focused specifically on the real estate professional. So while our sales team is on the west coast, we are managing to put teams in geographical areas where these trade shows to make sure we are getting right up and cozy with our professionals and brokerages in each areas that these conventions are running. So we had a fantastic show at the Real Estate Expo called the REX in Dallas last month where we managed to sign a lot of a Dallas and Texas based brokerage firms and we are getting immense feedback from them and growth within that area now.
So we are very much focused on the major hubs obviously for our rollout to get maximum exposure and usage. So again the process has been fantastic and again great growth from within each area that we rollout, we did Chicago as well, we are doing Florida next coming up in August, and we will be working right on the East Coast. We just finished a great trade show in San Francisco with Real Estate Connect where our platform became the actual social platform for the entire conference where all of the agents that have come to the conference can join the actual, as closed network social dialogue on the RESAAS platform, which again really helps expand and grow the usage on the system.
WSA: Right and yeah you are obviously taking advantage of some of the trends right now in the social media world. What are some of the other trends that you are seeing in the real estate sector and how are you positioning the company to be able to capitalize on them?
Cory Brandolini: Yeah, that’s a great question. And so what we have recognized very, very early on with the real estate industry at large, actually if I may back a little bit Juan one of these things that you should know is I spent 23 years as a commission salesman myself and I was in the financial industry, I have a software background, but I spent like I said 23 years in my life as a commission salesman in the financial industries. And I saw it very clearly what had happened to our model when the internet became you know a major tool for consumers and it really effected how you know we managed to do our business, you know from my perspective it was very positive because I used the internet to help market and grow my business. With a lot of people on the internet services you know the e-trades of the world and the companies of that nature affected that model.
So you could really see that trend starting to happen back in the 90s and to the point where it moves forward to, you know how the internet effected the travel industry and the travel agent which to all the benefit of the consumer but effected obviously, you know the travel agent that was moving on. And then the third main commission salesman in the big three as I call them the travel agent, the stock broker and the real estate agent, the internet had been coming on, but it had really not taken hold in any sense of fashion as you know how is it going to prepare between the consumer and the professional, was it eventually going to move towards an area where the agent became minimalized in the consumer search to transactions or was there some other hybrid in between where the agent became it’s still the major focal point in the overall process which was near and dear to my heart being that I was a 23 years commission salesman.
So we went out to make sure that our platform was built with a full blow to be part of this social trend where it’s all about communication and connecting bringing real time live data not only between professionals, but being able to expose that to consumers. So consumers felt they were getting a great service on the internet or social level basis the same way they would if they were just going to go and search through, you know like an Expedia type search looking for travel information. But this, this — under this format the information will be applied and allied feed so there wasn’t any information holding back but actually more of exposure of information from the real estate professional to other real estate professionals and then to consumers.
So the very core of our social platform Juan, it’s a B-to-B to C platform. So with these great networks and the great broker networks get tied together with agents sharing information in real time and now exposing that data to consumers so because it’s a very vibrant platform very much. You know if you look generationally how, you know, if you have teenagers how they interact on the web, you know they don’t go out and search for historical data, they want data in the real time, in the real moment. So I wish I could say you know does your kid go to a website to search for Kobe Bryant, he like to go right to Twitter to follow Kobe Bryant. They want the information in the moment and the whole platform, the genes of the platform is to make sure the agents are creating this real time dataflow and it’s and then it’s exposed to the consumer but the agent always gets to be attached to that I mean all the way to consumer, so there is never a disconnect. So it keeps the content at a tight level of integrity and the consumers get the best benefit out of that as suppose to historical data search.
WSA: Right and what are some of the other factors that make RESAAS unique from some of the other players in the sector?
Cory Brandolini: Well that’s a great question Juan. So if you were look at the two main players that have taken internet and RESAAS and really moved it forward on a consumer level would be Zillow and Trulia. Their model though is based more in the traditional search model, search for listings is a very strong on the consumer side and they provide great services where RESAAS’ model was completely built on the professional, on the real estate professional side. So where you don’t have a direct agent feed into the Zillow and Trulia platforms, we are — again they are collecting historical data, repackaging it and putting it up in a great search tool for consumers but there is very real estate interactivity between that consumer search and the real estate professional in the cycle.
Where RESAAS’ model was very specific to make sure the agent is in quick contact in connection to his content or his listings for that matter or his knowledge with about real estate information and then that gets exposed directly to the consumers. So it’s more of a personnel relationship, but in a very much a social format. So you as a consumer you can come in, you ask a question, you ask the question in a geographical area, all of the real estate agents that are on the platform in that geographical area can respond to the question or the search. So you are getting this instant connection and we all know that if you have this social commentary about a specific item it turns into better engagement and at the end of the day if the consumer gets better engagement then it turns into a better lead for the professional, we have succeeded in our job.
WSA: And perhaps you could talk a little bit more about the strength of the management team there?
Cory Brandolini: Yeah, so from myself spending the 23 plus years in the financial industries but with the software background I have a very strong understanding in dealing this towards you know proper corporate governance, how a public company should operate and likewise with my CFO who had spent 18 plus years in the financial planning and marketing. He is again an 18-year man in the financial industries as well. So we being a very strong team at this two senior levels as far as you know corporate and public governance and we have built a team around that with you know software developers and sales and marketing people that have come from companies like Microsoft and some of the biggest marketing firms in North America. So we really made sure that our whole team is built with not only you know a forward-looking mentality but also a background of very strong governance and you know software development and corporate marketing. So we are very pleased and proud of our team and we have done a fantastic job growing out of our business.
WSA: And what are some of the goals and milestones that you are hoping to accomplish over the course of the next year?
Cory Brandolini: Yeah, so we have got a, you know we have got a marketplace in North America that’s made up close to three million real estate professionals. We have got a targeted number that we expect to see on the platform over the next twelve months and we are probably surpassing those goals, so we are really excited about that. And as we move forward we have got a very clear marketplace in Europe that is reaching out to us now and we are trying to start to move you know an office into Europe starting in Q2 of 2014 with a lot of already ceded relationships in place now.
We have to localize language wise for each country that we are partnering up with in Europe but that’s all part of our strategy coming up to 2014. We have established multiple brokerage relationships as well everything from RE/MAX to Century 21’s of the world and they have released the value of RESAAS, not only as a social platform for each agent to create these great networks and great groups, but they also see this platform as a fantastic backend service from the brokerage level as a way of distributing information internally to all of their real estate professionals on the platform whether it would be in one office or multiple branch offices across the geographical area.
So the platform not only has this great social aspect to it where it becomes not only your hub of connections and groups and also distributing social information out to the social sphere, it also works with a great internet or social tool internally where they can create a private network amongst just the firm or other branches within the firm. So a lot of our customers are quite excited about that maybe and said that they are going to get rid of their current backend and software that they are using and use RESAAS not only as a frontend for the agents but also as a backend distribution channel of you know TDFs and files and that and the news that the broker/owner wants to distribute it to all of the agents that are within this firm or within the branches. So it’s, yeah that’s been a great vertical so to speak for the company as well.
WSA: Certainly and as far as investors and the financial community are concerned Cory, do you believe that the RESAAS story in your message and the company’s upside are completely understood and appreciated by them and if not what do you wish investors better understood about the company?
Cory Brandolini: Well, I think that’s a great questions Juan. Obviously you know RESAAS hasn’t been hurt by the success of Facebook and LinkedIn as far as getting you know the awareness out of the value of a platform that creates multiple unlimited groups, ultimate unlimited connections, ultimate unlimited networks, you know those have certainly been a benefit to RESAAS as far as when we go through present, you know we explain you know how a platform like this works. So when we run through our, you know when we are doing a PR campaign or we are out at a conference presenting it only takes a few minutes for the investors or potential shareholders to grasp the idea and the concept of what we are doing.
So certainly that being — those two public companies being you know aware, created a nice awareness for RESAAS as far as that goes you know. Like every new business and every new startup they want to make sure that you know you have done your homework on your marketplace, you know how this fit into the marketplace, up the marketplace you know, who is the lowest lying hanging fruit that will be the early adopters of the platform, how well do you know them. So obviously when we go through our presentations we make sure that is very clear and understood and how well we do know our customer and what percentage of our customer is an early adopter and how we scale up that conversion all the way up to you know everybody within that specific marketplace.
So by in large Juan, it’s been you know really well accepted — received and everybody gets excited about the idea of the platform because when you have something that can scale has unlimited you know boundaries for growth, the possibility upside is very exciting to the shareholders brochure. I mean there are not so many industries or businesses out there where you can grow from you know, a hundred users to two million users with very little cost on the platform. So there is growth from that perspective, and a lot of blue sky in the eyes of the investors. So, yeah, you know it’s been great so far.
WSA: Well, great and once again joining us today is Cory Brandolini, CEO for RESAAS Services Incorporated, the company trades on the Canadian Stock Exchange ticker symbol is RSS currently trading at a buck fifteen a share, market cap north of thirty two million. And before we conclude here Cory to briefly recap some of your key points why do you believe investors should consider the company as a good investment opportunity today?
Cory Brandolini: Well that’s a good question. We have a, number one I can say we have a very, very dedicated customer base of professionals that has spend an immense amount of time understanding their brand, understanding their market and how they have to invest into their brand and they see RESAAS as a fantastic portal and channel for them to continue on with that model. As we all know real estate agencies you know spent an immense amount of time and effort you know with advertising marketing tools and so again having that, having a platform of RESAAS as an extension to that is obviously a great tool for the agent which turns into a fantastic growth opportunity for our company.
So if you are looking at you know roughly three million professionals that you can reach out to just in North America alone and then in unlimited amounts of consumers that can access that platform, we are talking about a very great valuable tool for this, the real estate marketplace. And when you can calculate that all as a potential growth value, one can look over to companies platform model like obviously a LinkedIn and a Facebook and a Pinterest and a YouTube all of these type of platforms that have this, you know user generated content that has unlimited amounts of connections that can be made despite the limit as far as growth. So RESAAS’ upside can be, is unlimited from that perspective because you can overtime the amount of content of the company collects on to the platform never goes away, it’s all stored for historical research and time marches on that becomes a bigger and bigger part increasing the figure value of the company. So there is many, many ways to monetize all of that and the growth just is literally unlimited.
WSA: Well we certainly look forward to continue to track the company’s growth and report on your upcoming progress and we would like to thank you for taking the time to join us today there Cory and update our investor audience on RESAAS.
Cory Brandolini: My pleasure Juan, anytime.
