Serial Entrepreneur Bootstrapping Three PropTech Ventures: LuxuryProperty Founder Jason Hayes (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What you’ve built is a vertical search engine that is specific to luxury real estate. That has its own meta tags and meta data. What is the AI part of it?

Jason Hayes: We do have some AI agents launching soon. We believe that we are going to be the first to do that. Certainly in the Middle East anyway. The AI we’re using is in the backend of the system. For our brokers who work for us, we have what we call the opportunity platform. That is an app that forms part of the CRM.

What AI does and what we’re building into our platform is allowing the guys to sell real estate. All the heavy lifting that’s involved in that process is done by the AI process. We’ve got some very exciting times ahead. I often say to people that nothing’s changed.

If you looked for your home 10 years ago and then went back to the same website or portal that you use now, nothing would have changed with that system at all. But over the next three to five years, we’re going to see some enormous changes.

Sramana Mitra: Where AI is right now, you can actually write descriptions and structured descriptions. You can establish the metadata in a structured format that captures the vocabulary and workflow of your domain. That’s what’s exciting about where AI is and where it’s going. The introduction of chatbots for businesses like yours can take all that data structure and chat around it.

Jason Hayes: In Dubai, cryptocurrency is huge. We are building a platform where you can come on to the website, click on the off-plan project, you can choose what color the walls are going to be, press enter and make a booking or pay the deposit. All of that’s coming. All of that will be part of the LuxuryProperty.com platform.

When you’re buying a home, they don’t want that. They want to physically visit the property. For a number of people who are making investments and particularly for those using digital currency to do that, the process need not be a physical process. They are looking for all of that to be digitalized.

Sramana Mitra: The previous two companies were real estate companies. This one seems like a real PropTech.

Jason Hayes: I got there. It just took me 35 years.

Sramana Mitra: How far along are you?

Jason Hayes: I founded it in 2017. So I’m seven years in. At some point, I need to do some more scuba diving. I don’t know how long I’ve got.

Sramana Mitra: Metrics are what? What kind of revenue level?

Jason Hayes: It’s all privately funded. We hit revenues of $25 million. EBITDA is really high. We’re in a great place. When we plateau, I get super frustrated because I feel that the plateau is going backwards. We’re working towards opening physical brokerages in New York, London, Miami, and Los Angeles. New York is going to be this summer. That’s an opportunity for us to see whether or not it’s truly scalable in the physical sense.

Sramana Mitra: I understand the brokerage business model. So far, the $25 million run rate, is that the brokerage business model?

Jason Hayes: That’s combined. When we sell homes in South Africa or wherever we take a fee for selling those.

Sramana Mitra: What percentage is brokerage fee and what percentage is digital marketing?

Jason Hayes: About 75% is brokerage.

Sramana Mitra: In the case of digital marketing, the property owners pay you for the marketing?

Jason Hayes: It’s a combination of both. Most of the time, it’s the property owners who are paying us. We do have some strategic alliances with a number of realtors. They pay a fee. It’s transactional.

Sramana Mitra: Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Serial Entrepreneur Bootstrapping Three PropTech Ventures: LuxuryProperty Founder Jason Hayes
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