The National Association of Realtors (NAR) released its annual REach Class of 2014. This is a group of companies selected for their potential benefit to NAR members and/or potential impact on the real estate industry. I doubt Marc Andreesen will blog about this list so I’ll do it for him.
Goby, LLC is in the business of saving owners and managers time and money. Their tag line says it all: “Savings-Compliance-Sustainability-Built for Real Estate”. This business model has been around for years. For profit companies, engineering firms and non-profits offer consulting reports and building audits which show what could be better with your building’s energy consumption. I have met several property owners who invested in systems that were supposed to produce savings…with mixed results. That said, Goby seems to be taking this to the next level by incorporating automatic reporting techniques. I would love to go through their process or discuss a post-mortem with an Atlanta client of Goby’s.
Other groups to check out in this vein include Atlanta based Southface and Skye Energy.
Desktime helps people who have extra space find people who need it. I’m not sure why NAR chose desktime over PivotDesk which has 10x better user interface and a better explanation of how the process works. The NAR article mentions commissions which would be a self-serving reason but I don’t see where Desktime offers to pay them. Commission or not, I think companies like PivotDesk provide a great service to small companies for a very reasonable cut. Commercial brokers should cheer to have a place to politely send clients looking to lease a couple of offices for less than a year!
Fundwell connects business owners with bankers and alternative lenders. This is certainly not the first site to attempt to connect borrowers and lenders but I must say, I found the site content informative and refreshing. They’re focused on small businesses, that’s it…bricks and mortar is okay here. You all virtual types will want to check out Atlanta based Kabbage.
Deductr scans your receipts, tracks your mileage, expenses and other deductibles. Call me old fashioned (I’ve been using Quickbooks since 1993) but why do I need this mobile app? What’s wrong with my typewriter? Seriously though, I already import all transactions and assign accounts. I suppose this is useful to people who file an itemized return but don’t necessarily own their company.
Back at You Media helps you with your Facebook campaign. Yikes. I would block anyone from my FB who I felt was running a ‘campaign’ on me.
SendHub is a VoIP phone system. I’ve been using RingCentral for years and don’t feel that change is necessary here. Have you experienced both and can convince me to switch? Please call or write and tell me what I’m missing.
smartzip helps residential agents find sellers before they know they’re sellers. That’s cool. Just draw the line at telling someone their daughter is pregnant.
wevideo is a video creation platform. Lord knows there are terabytes of bad video out there (many of mine included). I will definitely try this out and see if I get better results.
While you await my directorial rebirth, also check out these start-ups:
Flash Issue
RentPost
SparkMarket
Groundfloor
CrowdVested
What are your favorite start-ups or productivity tools?