00:00Balty Kramer joins us now down here on the trading floor of the New York Stock
00:03Exchange. He is the CEO and founder of Luxury Presence here to talk all about
00:07the ways the real estate industry is undergoing some major transformations.
00:12Nice to have you here. Thanks for having me. You started Luxury Presence 2016 I
00:17believe? That's right yeah 2016 I worked with legendary real estate agent Jade
00:23Mills in Beverly Hills and I came to the US and built my life here as an
00:29entrepreneur so I've always loved entrepreneurship and I saw how
00:31entrepreneurial this industry was and I saw the state of technology these agents
00:38were using fragmented tools and decided to build something that was a lot more
00:41modern fast forward to today we've built a full growth platform for real estate
00:45professionals and agents like Jade who we started with so we've come a long way.
00:50What does it mean to go from the fragmented tools that had existed pre 2016 to try and
00:55transform what does the evolution look like that you feel like was sort of
00:58missing that needed to be addressed? Yeah so my wife's actually a real estate
01:02agent and I at home I sit next to her and I see her using 10 different software
01:07tools to do her job and so what we do is we bring all of that complexity onto one
01:13platform and we have a unified data platform and that agents can use to
01:17grow their business so everything they need to grow their business is in one
01:20place and then of course we have lots of AI tools to make the job easier. Okay so
01:25pretend I'm a real estate agent to be fair I know very little about what it is to
01:28actually be it what are the main pain points that I have that I would come to
01:32you and say this is information or gaps that exist in the marketplace that I
01:37need to be better informed on behalf of my clients? Yeah so agents come to us
01:41because they want to grow their business and historically they've had to use lots of
01:47different tools to do that one tool for their website one tool for their ads for the
01:51lead generation for the CRM and we bring that all into one platform and then use
01:56AI to make it easier for them to generate new leads and opportunities and grow
02:01their business that way. How many agents? We have 18,000 real estate businesses on
02:05the platform and over 85,000 agents. Are there particular geographic regions
02:09you're seeing more interest in over others? We are across the entire United States
02:15and Canada and predominantly in higher-end markets so metropolitan areas
02:21around the US. Do you find a willingness for agents to embrace the sort of
02:25underlying technological change the new AI opportunities that they have or do you
02:29have any who say hey you know maybe we got some pain points but the way we've
02:33been doing things for the most part has been working? Yeah agents realize that this
02:37is an inflection point and that they need technology to be successful in this
02:42industry that wasn't always the case so when I started out technology was a nice
02:46to have now it's very much a must-have and these agents are spending at least
02:51half of their time doing repetitive work admin work and the technology
02:57especially the AI can take a lot of that off their plate and allow them to spend
03:01more time with their clients out in the field doing the things that they really
03:05love to do but they got into the business in the first place. Because AI is so
03:10much more prevalent now than it has been in years past in what ways does luxury
03:14presence look different today than maybe you had first envisioned let's say
03:172016-17? Yeah back in 2016 we were primarily a website platform like a
03:22Squarespace for real estate websites and today we offer the full suite of
03:27solutions including a CRM that we just announced alongside our Series C and agents
03:34can do a lot more with our products than just generating leads they can now
03:38communicate with their clients they can share listings they can get feedback we
03:42have AI that can jump in and find opportunities that they would have
03:45otherwise missed out on. As the housing market has evolved what is the real-time
03:49feedback look like from agents to you on the platform and have you and your team
03:53therefore been a situation to sort of evolve yourselves to meet the needs given
03:58where the real estate market itself has been? Yeah we see the data in real time and we
04:02see how many transactions our customers are closing and we have access to a
04:07tremendous amount of data over 15 billion data points across the platform
04:11in a given year and we actually use that to inform a lot of the products we build
04:16we see what works across these 18,000 customers and we can use that and bring it
04:21to everyone on the platform so they benefit. Do you have a favorite product or tool or AI
04:26ability that the platform is embracing right now? My favorite product right now is our AI
04:31lead nurturing tool it automatically follows up and nurtures the leads that
04:37our clients get from their website and it holds a conversation over text and soon
04:41it'll be able to do it over voice to figure out is this a real lead and are
04:45they ready to talk to the agent and if so they make the handoff and our agent
04:49takes over. If I'm a would-be buyer or renter not the real estate agent but I'm
04:54the person of the kind of last step of the process am I even aware that my real
04:58estate agent might be leveraging these types of technologies is that is that
05:01clear is that a premium that I therefore as the ultimate consumer or would-be
05:06buyer and paying for as well? You as the end consumer would absolutely experience a
05:11better experience if an agent is using our technology it makes it a lot more
05:16seamless for them our agents for example have access to their own branded
05:21mobile apps so they can invite their end client into that mobile experience but
05:25they can access listings and other content that the agent wants to share
05:28with them and so while we focus on the agents we do make the experience a lot
05:32more seamless for the end consumer. I've asked a version of this next question to
05:36lots of people in many different industries is there a world where AI
05:39ultimately replaces the traditional roles of a real estate agent or do you
05:43always see that as being much more of a complementary relationship? We believe the
05:47answer to that question is no we believe AI will not automate what real estate
05:51agents do but rather amplify what the best agents do and so we look at the tasks
05:57and the work that agents do really in two categories there's the client facing and
06:01strategic work and that will always be human-led it's a high stakes transaction
06:05for most consumers it's a huge financial decision and in those
06:09situations we believe humans will want other human experts to guide them
06:14through that transaction but then for all of the things that happen all of the
06:17things that happen behind the scenes all of the booking of meetings and
06:22transaction coordination and other admin tasks we absolutely think AI will be
06:26able to do that. What can agents or investors or anyone else expect next from
06:31the company? Yeah so we just announced a $37 million funding round
06:35led by Best of My Venture Partners one of the top VCs in Silicon Valley and we're
06:40using that funding to accelerate product development specifically the CRM we
06:44just announced and to build additional AI products that we're planning to launch
06:48this year. Malty Kramer CEO and founder of Luxury Presence congrats on all the
06:52success thanks a lot for joining us. Thanks for having me. Nice to have you.
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