Real Estate Search Marketing, A VC's Take

Living in Upstate NY puts you out of the way for new ideas, interested colleagues and tech start-ups in Search and Search Marketing, let alone Real Estate Search Marketing.

For Venture Capitalists (VC's), Upstate NY is the back woods, the hinter lands, the boondocks. In VC Speak, it's "Flyover Country".

So, in Upstate we import our VC's, even if it's just for a few days. I'm part of the TEN-NY (The Entrepreneur's Network - New York) Program, an off shoot of John Hession's Boston's TEN Program. Recently we had the honor of hosting Jason Mendelson, one of the authors of the VC Blog, AskTheVC.com, and a partners at Mobius Venture Capital in Boulder, CO.

On meeting Jason, I was surprised at how quickly he understood my idea, put it in a context and made relevant comments and suggestions. He knew competing companies including Zillow and Realtor.com. He quickly saw my idea wasn't "Just another Social Networking site".

Although he did not have an in depth familiarity with Zillow and Realtor.com (or Trulia and Redfin), he knew them as a consumer and felt there was much room for improvement and a great business opportunity.

Jason felt Zillow may have blown it by coming out too early in California and Colorado and giving estimates off by 35% or more. "How can you alienate the CA and CO Real Estate Market and hope to survive?"

My rebuttals about Zillow being little more than a year old, selling ads and not houses, and being just a beta, had no effect.

Two suggestions for approaching VC's about your Real Estate Tech idea:

• Don't compare yourself to Zillow. They'll think you'll need $57 Million too.
• Don't mention Google as your direct competition.

Jason's take on Realtor.com was even more critical. "Of little help." "Not what I wanted." Damned by faint praise. When I told him of Google's pulling out of negotiations to supply search for the NAR, he wasn't surprised.

About Upstate NY, Jason felt we have most of the pieces "to move from a Level 3 to a Level 2 VC Market":

• Research Universities: Cornell, University of Rochester (U of R)and Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).
• Major companies throwing off tech employees and middle management: Kodak, Xerox and Bausch and Lomb.
• Great Tech ideas of interest to VC's
• Tech Incubators: HTR (High Tech Rochester), Cornell's ad RIT's Tech Incubators
• Startup Monies: Excell Partners, RAN (Rochester Angel Network) and The Trillium Group (our local VC Group)

What's needed are:

• Top flight University Tech Transfer Offices
• A Home Run: like Google, Yahoo, YouTube, MySpace to get you on the VC's radar screen

Are there opportunities in Search Marketing, Real Estate Search Marketing and in Upstate NY?

Yes! And they're getting better all the time.

Greetings From Upstate New York.

Adapt Or Die!  Happy Searching.

WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing

Comments

[Marty Van Diest]

Just stopping by to read your post for Carnival of Real Estate.

I like the line, "don't mention Google as your direct competition"