Uncharted

Two young entrepreneurs building our company - Presale Match. This is our place to talk about life in a startup.

[presalematch]

“You can observe a lot just by watching”

Yogi Berra

[presalematch]

SlideDeck

Over the last week we spent our time pitching Presale Match in Victoria. It was an awesome experience. Here's a little teaser of our pitch. 

Presale Match better informs home buyers - online. 

Problem

1) Homebuyers need to physically go into new home sales centers to gather the best information possible

2) Realtors have no easy way to showcase they are new home & neighbourhood experts

Solution

1) Homebuyers save time & get access to information no one else has 2) Realtors showcased as neighbourhood specialists

How do we do it?

We crowdsource new home information from realtors who get rewarded for uploading it to our platform

[presalematch]

Refined

Do we need it now? 

Can we make it simpler?

Resource and time strapped, our success relies on our ability to identify the most fundamental features for launch. The first question helps us figure out the difference between a "necessity" or a "nice to have". If it's a necessity we ask the second question to figure out what we need and how we can bring that feature to the lowest common denominator. 

For example, we were recently talking about whether we need to showcase why a user should use a Neighborhood Specialist. We decided the information is an absolute necessity, but after asking ourselves whether we can make the process simpler so we can ship the Beta on time - we found that our best solution is to put that information into the FAQ rather than creating a video. 

While simple, these two questions have forced us to think about what our customers truly care about - and has made us better for it. 

- Kyle 

[presalematch]

Why I love Concord Pacific homes, but hate that they’re trying to kill our business

Dear Terry Hui & Members of Concord’s Pacific Marketing Team,

Let me start by saying I love your homes. I live in one! I love its location, functional floorplan and thoughtfully designed features. 

However, my love for Concord Pacific is waning. It all started a couple of weekends ago when I toured your One Pacific Presentation Centre in Downtown Vancouver before its official ‘public launch’. 

Your sales staff kindly told me that they didn’t want me to collect information, take photos and they refused to even provide me with a brochure before I left.  I couldn’t tell if it was the way I smelled or if it was because I told them that I was a part of a small team building a website to make it easier for people to find new homes online. 

And one of the ways we make it easier is by publishing prices for every home. I still don’t understand why the sales staff refused to give me this information? I’m trying to help you sell your homes too. I shouldn’t be a threat. I urge you to take the more difficult - and more courageous – path to sell your homes through being more open with us and the rest of the community. Stats indicate that 90% of people find homes by starting their search online. How do you expect people to continue buying your homes without even knowing something as simple as its price in the first place?

I urge you to listen and strongly say that this is a very unnecessary policy. Please change it!

- Shawn

[presalematch]

Just do it.

“Kyle, just get out there and f***ing do something”, said Andrew Wilkinson, founder of MetaLab. Those series of words set to motion a realization for me which was - I’m not an entrepreneur if I just think about it (school) just as I’m not a swimmer if I think about swimming. I actually need to get out there and start swimming.

All the best entrepreneurs I can think of didn’t need to study entrepreneurship in a classroom because they learned through sacrifices and hard-work. I think this realization helped me understand that I can actually create something while I’m at school (it’s probably a safe bet to graduate), and in fact it may be the best time to start something because I can leverage relationships as a student. I’m intrigued and nervous of what is to come but I look forward to sharing what I learn, the challenges I face and what it takes (or doesn’t take), to build a company from the ground up.