AK Lalani, the founder of Rollout, joins us to share the profound challenges associated with API integrations within the real estate sector. He elucidates how Rollout endeavors to streamline the integration process, thereby enabling proptech companies to focus on their core offerings without the burden of complex API management. Drawing from his rich background, including a formative upbringing in Tanzania and extensive experience in the tech industry, AK shares insights into his entrepreneurial journey and the motivations behind his innovative solutions. Our conversation traverses his early ventures, the lessons learned from working at startups, and the pivotal moment that led him to address the critical integration issues plaguing the industry. As we delve into the future of technology in real estate, AK emphasizes the transformative potential of AI and the imperative for seamless data connectivity across platforms.
The dialogue with esteemed guest AK Lalani unveils a profound narrative of his formative years, tracing back to his upbringing in Tanzania and the indelible impact of his familial background on his entrepreneurial aspirations. Lalani's reflections on growing up in a developing nation highlight the stark contrasts between his educational experiences and those of his peers in the United States. He articulates a burgeoning sense of empathy fostered by witnessing the struggles of those in his community, which ultimately propelled him to initiate a poverty reduction initiative during his high school years. This endeavor exemplifies how early exposure to socio-economic challenges instilled in him a desire to effectuate tangible change, a theme that resonates throughout his professional journey.
Transitioning from his roots, the conversation delves into Lalani's academic pursuits at Stanford University, where he encountered the duality of being both a standout student and a member of a highly competitive cohort. His experiences at Stanford were transformative, shaping his understanding of entrepreneurship and technology. The narrative highlights the pivotal moments that led him to recognize his strengths in economics, steering him away from traditional engineering pathways. This realization set the stage for his eventual foray into the startup world, where he sought to learn from existing enterprises before embarking on his entrepreneurial ventures.
The latter part of the discourse centers on Lalani's current ventures, particularly his role as the founder of Rollout, which addresses the intricate challenges associated with API integrations in the proptech sector. He elucidates the complexities faced by companies striving to connect various software solutions, emphasizing the time-consuming nature of building and maintaining integrations. Rollout's innovative approach—allowing companies to build once and integrate everywhere—represents a significant advancement in simplifying this process. Lalani's insights into the future of technology in real estate, particularly the integration of AI through their recently released MCP server, underscore his forward-thinking perspective and commitment to enhancing the operational efficiency of proptech companies.
Takeaways:
- Growing up in Tanzania provided AK Lalani with a unique perspective on community and empathy, shaped by the challenges of poverty.
- His entrepreneurial journey began in high school with a poverty reduction initiative called Prompt, reflecting a commitment to social impact.
- AK's experience at Stanford was transformative, challenging him to outwork his peers and discover his true talents in economics.
- Rollout, the company founded by AK, addresses the complexities of API integration in prop tech, aiming to simplify data connectivity for businesses.
- The MCP server introduced by Rollout enables advanced AI capabilities, facilitating seamless communication between CRM systems and...
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And I wanted to go work at anearly stage startup to learn and
see what that was actuallylike. Because I figured, hey, I'm
going to make all themistakes. I'd rather learn on someone
else's dime and make thosemistakes somewhere else first.
You're listening to the RealEstate Sessions and I'm your host,
Bill Risser. With nearly 25years in the real estate business,
I love to interview industryleaders, up and comers and really
(00:23):
anyone with a story to tell.It's the stories that led my guests
to a career in the real estateworld that drives me in my 10th year
and over 400 episodes of thepodcast. And now I hope you enjoy
the next journey. Hi,everybody. Welcome to episode 416
of the Real Estate Sessionspodcast. As always, thank you so
(00:43):
much for tuning in. Thank youso much for telling a friend. Today
we're going to talk a littlebit about a cool new technology.
A shout out to Marcie Jamesfor another wonderful guest suggestion.
Marcie, please keep themcoming. We are going to chat with
AK Lalani, who is the founderof Rollout, which solves the issues
of API. And trust me, thereare lots of issues at times with
(01:08):
API, so we're going to talkabout that. But of course we're also
going to talk to AK aboutwhere he grew up and where his entrepreneurial
spirit came from and all kindsof other good things. It's a fascinating
story. It's going to be a lotof fun. So let's get this thing started.
AK welcome to the podcast.
Happy to be here.
Yeah, I'm very, very excitedto chat with you. I had a nice conversation
(01:31):
with Marcy in Dallas at whatwas she there for?
The 1000Watt Summit?
Oh, there you go. Were youthere for that?
No, no. But I remember shementioned she's going for that. Yeah.
So we had a nice conversationand, and I'm really excited to kind
of get to find out about yourbackground like I do with all my
guests, but I have a layman'sknowledge of API and I know it was
(01:52):
always a hassle and if, ifyou've created a solution to that
hassle, like, that's, that'samazing. So. Well, we're going to
talk a lot about that. Firstquestion I ask every guest is, where'd
you grow up?
So I grew up in Tanzania,which is on, you know, the coast
of East Africa. Yeah. I wasborn in Kenya and moved to Tanzania
(02:13):
as a four and grew up thereall the way up until I came out to
the US for college. Wow.
So my first thought is maybemom or dad had worked there. Is that
kind of why you were there?
Yeah. So my parents both grewup in Pakistan and they, you know,
had to provide for the family.And so my dad basically worked his
(02:36):
way up at a bank. And, youknow, the bank said, hey, we're going
to start a branch out in Kenyaand who wants to go? And no one raised
their hands. And so he thenbasically said, well, you know, if
you give me a salary bump,I'll go. And they agreed to that.
And so that's how we ended upin Kenya. Wow. And lived there for
many years and finally gotopportunity to go for another work
(02:57):
opportunity in, when I was 4years old to Tanzania. And so that's
how we moved.
Can you explain to me whatit's like being, you know, entering
school, let's say, right.Whatever kindergarten or whatever
it is in Tanzania. First ofall, did you speak the language?
Did you learn it because youwere there at that young age?
Yeah. So the entire countryspeaks Swahili. Right. English is
(03:23):
not something that most peoplespeak, and so you had to learn the
language. My parents didfortunately send me to an English
speaking school. So I was veryfortunate in the sense that, you
know, it was somewhat of aninternational school. And so I did
get a chance to, you know,obviously speak in English and get
more of a traditionaleducation from that perspective.
(03:44):
But yes, going to, you know,kindergarten and all the way up through
to high school in a developingcountry was very different from what
a lot of my friends haveexperienced in the US.
What do you think it did foryou? It seems to me like there's,
there's some big value about.I don't want to call it a hardship,
I just want to call it. It'sdifferent. Right. And so what are
(04:06):
some of the things you takeaway from that going? I'm really
glad that I had this experience.
You know, I think the, thething that jumps out is we were in
the middle of just so manydifferent things happening around
us. And so, you know, like, wegrew up in this huge context of there's
(04:28):
so much poverty around us.Right, right. And we got to, I mean,
it was unfortunately veryheartbreaking. And so you develop
a sense of empathy at the sametime because there was a lot of hardship
in a developing country.Right. There is this incredible sense
of community and there's thisincredible sense of, hey, we're,
you know, here to help eachother. And that is something I think
(04:51):
like, you know, was veryimpactful to myself as I, as I grew
up and Kind of like take awayfrom, from that time in my life.
I'm going to take you a littlebit further than that. You, it was
more than impactful. Can youshare the, what you did there to,
to help with that problem inTanzania, right, of poverty or, or
(05:12):
some of the other issues aswell? You, you actually started a,
I don't want to call it acompany, but an operation, right?
Yeah, yeah, it was really justa high school club. It's not, you
know, we don't have toglamorize it, but, you know, you
know, part of that is, look,we grew up in. It was just incredible
just to see all the resilientpeople around me. And so, you know,
(05:33):
when I say resilient peoplearound me, like, you know, because
it was a developing country,we would have, you know, drivers
to effectively, you know,drive us around. We would have maids
in the house. It's prettycommon there. But these people become
a part of your life. So I'vevisited, you know, our driver's house,
I've met his wife, hischildren, and you get to see, you
know, how they live and someof the hardships that they've had
(05:54):
to endure. And so for me, abig part of that was I, you know,
I became very motivated tohelp in any way I could. And so,
you know, when I was in highschool, we started this thing called
prompt. It was a povertyreduction organization. And we really,
you know, spent a lot of timetrying to figure out how do we, how
do we actually have an impacton the people around us. Right? And
(06:17):
it's funny because inhindsight, a lot of, a lot of the
ideas were just from likeforward thinking, you know, development
economists. Right. Weliterally, you know, maybe not a
common thing that for mostpeople do in high school, but I spend
a lot of times reading likethese popular books like the End
of Poverty by Jeffrey Saxon, afew others. They had a lot of really
good ideas in there aroundhealth care and providing access
(06:39):
to, you know, world producingassets. And so we would do things
like buy, you know, hold thesebig fundraisers, these charity walks
and raise as much money as wecould, you know, in the tens of thousands
of dollars almost, right? Andthen go and buy a bunch of mosquito
nets and find populations thatwould suffer from malaria and, you
(06:59):
know, where we could basicallygo and prevent that. We would basically
go distribute these, you know,household by household, these rural
villages or, you know, one of,one of the fun projects we did is
we actually built an energybriquette press and we would distribute
that to schools in the area sothey could produce their own energy.
And you know, being adeveloping country, there's, you
know, price of oil goes up anddown, fluctuates, really impacts
(07:22):
their budget. And this is away for them to have a little more
resiliency and being able toprovide high quality education while
being affected by the ups anddowns of the energy markets.
I don't think we'reglamorizing anything. I think that's,
I think that's reallyimpressive. I'm trying to imagine
most high school kids here,what are they thinking about and
what are they doing? And it'snot that. So that's, that's awesome.
(07:43):
I'm going to assume though,though, the, the, the early, it was
probably much earlier thanyour time with prompt where you were
thinking about technology andentrepreneurship. It sounds like
that was baked into you pretty early.
You know, less technology. Butyes, entrepreneurship for sure. Yeah,
I would, you know, I'd sayentrepreneurship was actually somewhat
(08:05):
of an expectation versus likea dream. And part, part of that was,
you know, when my dad moved toTanzania, it was for work opportunities
so that he could actually haveequity in the job that he was doing
and become a partner in, youknow, this new venture. And, and
that kind of started hisjourney of entrepreneurship. And
so the expectation was alwayslike, hey, he's going to build up,
(08:27):
you know, some sort of likefamily nest egg. And my job is being
the only boy in the family tocome and work for him and then eventually
take over whenever he's readyto retire. Ironically, I have two
sisters who both did join thefamily business and I never did.
So go figure.
No, you did somethingdifferent. You attend Stanford. I
(08:51):
don't have a lot of guests onthe show that have attended Stanford
that are working in the realestate space. So my first question
is this. That had to be apretty important milestone in your
life at the time, I wouldimagine, getting that. And do you
remember getting theacceptance letter or email or whatever
it was that had to be pretty exciting.
Yeah, yeah, I absolutely do.So I remember it like it was yesterday.
(09:14):
It was like a Sunday morning.I was flipping through my email.
You know, email is much fasterthan snail mail, obviously, given
where I was. But, you know, atthis point I had been rejected by
a lot of colleges and so, youknow, hadn't gotten into Harvard
or Yale or any of the otherones. And so I was expecting to,
you know, get rejected aswell. And I remember reading the
email came through and read itlike three, four times before I realized,
(09:37):
hey, actually, no, this is Nota rejection email. I actually got
in and I, you know, my momhappened to be just in the next room,
so I, you know, go and tellher. I was so excited. I give her
a hug. She hugs me back superelated. She's like, congrats. What's
Stanford? Is that a goodschool? Just because, you know, this
is the time before a lot ofsocial media, the Internet wasn't
(09:58):
as pervasive in our lives. Youknow, they just hadn't heard of it.
It wasn't as big of a thingwhere we lived. And so, yeah, you
know, I think everyone waspretty, pretty happy afterwards though,
once we figured out what wasgoing on.
Yeah, tell me, tell me abouttime at Palo Alto. Had to just be
an amazing part of your life.
Yeah, it was transformationalin many ways. And, you know, I think
(10:21):
one of the things I didn'trealize I didn't fully understand
the history of Silicon Valleyand the context of living there and
being part of it. And so Ifeel very grateful that I just kind
of randomly ended up there.But, yeah, you know, I think going
to Stanford was transformativein several ways. One is, you know,
(10:43):
I went from being maybe one ofthe smartest kids in my high school
to being very mediocre andvery average in the college context
and having to learn that Ineed to outwork everyone around me
if I want to do well. Thesecond thing maybe I learned is I
have to work on the rightthings because, you know, actually
moved to, you know, I went tocollege thinking I was going to be
(11:04):
a civil engineer because Iwanted to build low cost housing.
And I thought that was goingto be kind of the arc of my career
and realized, wow, there areso many people that are better at
engineering than I am. Wow.And that forced me to just, you know,
figure out, hey, what am Igood at? And turned out to be, you
know, economics. And, youknow, that ended up being the focus
(11:24):
of kind of my studies andwhatnot. So that was, you know, another
great thing. But apart fromthat, you know, just being in the
middle of Silicon Valley,getting access to speakers, and not
just that, like, also seeingtheir arcs was a great way to learn
firsthand what, you know,firstly, like, what the reality is
(11:47):
on the ground versus what themedia tells you. So, for example,
Mark Zuckerberg gave a talk,like the last talk, for like an intern
to CS class that I was takingonce. And I remember it pretty vividly
because, you know, he walksinto the classroom, you know, he
walks in the classroom, it'sfully packed because everyone's expecting
this big guest speaker.
(12:07):
Yeah.
And he, you know, literallylike I see him walking next to me,
like just walks past me andyou know, trying to like figure out,
hey, where should I go? How doI get, you know, someone taps on
the shoulders that they,they're expecting up there and he
gives his entire talk that isvery unpolished, very raw, very uncut.
It's completely irrelevant forthe entire classroom. He's talking
(12:28):
about these like crazytechnical scaling like technologies
he's working on and the entireclassroom is like, dude, this is
an intro to CS class. We don'tknow what you're talking about compared
to the guy you see today inthe media. Right. He is very polished
and you know, he's got a pointof view and knows who his audience
is. And so it's, it's, youknow, things like that are just very
(12:49):
interesting to see as you getto know people before or you know,
at least get to learn frompeople before they're rich and famous
and you know, very successfuland see what me, you know, the traits
that they had that got themthere. Right. And you know, like
the, we had a lot of verysuccessful people that I went to
school with that it was fun toactually see their arc as maybe dumb
(13:11):
college kids to people thatare magazines now.
Yeah. There's stories youdon't share.
Right.
I mean that's all what's doneat Stanford, stays at Stanford. I
guess I'm just. So you getyour bachelor's there, you get your
master's as well. And is itbehavioral economics? Is that what
I find that? Right?
(13:33):
Yeah, that was, no, that wasconcentration. I kind of carved that
for myself.
Okay.
As an area of interest.
Okay.
My master's was in what'scalled the management science and
engineering.
Oh, okay.
But it was very focused oncomputer science as well.
Okay, gotcha. So what is yourplan now? Because you're not going
to be working on, you know,you're not an engineer building small,
(13:53):
you know, low cost homes. Butwhat are you doing?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had inthe back of my mind that I wanted
to be involved in technologyentrepreneurship at some point. Right.
And I was basically ready to,you know, explore that as a future
career at some point. But Iknew I wasn't ready at that point.
(14:14):
Right. As I'd graduated and Iwanted to go work at an early stage
startup to learn and see whatthat was actually like because I
figured, hey, I'm going tomake all the mistakes I'd rather
learn on someone else's Dimeand make those mistakes somewhere
else first. My goal was reallyto find any startup that would hire
me. And it was complicatedbecause I was on a student visa and
(14:35):
so I would need someone tobasically give me, you know, like
a sponsored visa. And Iliterally found one company that
was, you know, these twoStanford MBAs that were starting
a company in the solar spacethat were also international and
happened to need to like getlawyer to sponsor their own visas.
(14:55):
And they were like, well, youknow, we don't mind, you know, doing
a third one because we werepaying the lawyers already, but you'd
have to come work with us. Andthat ended up being startup called
Aurora Solar, which isactually proptech adjacent in some
ways. Right. They're a solarsoftware company.
And so you're with them forhow long?
(15:16):
For about five years. So we started.
Did you learn some mistakesalong the way?
I don't want to give anythingaway, but yeah, absolutely. I mean,
we start. So when I started,we didn't have a product, right.
We hadn't written a line ofcode and look, we gotta build the
product from scratch. We gotto, you know, fumble our way around
(15:41):
to getting early customers andthen finally building an engine to
grow from there. And, youknow, we also were. When we started,
you know, Aurora Solar was notthe first company in their space.
They were actually startingbehind. Right. They were trying to
catch up to other companies inthe space. And so we learned how
to compete in the marketplaceand build better products faster
(16:04):
than others and add real valueto customers. And so a lot of important
takeaways, I'd say from thatexperience, you move.
On to a company called EGranary, which feels like when I
looked at this a little bitlike you're kind of revisiting a
little bit of your previous life.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. E Granarywas basically me starting the journey
(16:28):
of saying, hey, I think I'mready to finally start something.
So, you know, I'd spent fiveyears at Aurora. We built a real
business. And, you know, Ithought I was ready to go onto an
actual business of my own. AndE Granary was partly something that
I was just very inspired to dobecause we were working with a nonprofit
(16:52):
which is called the EastAfrican Farmers Federation, who serve
millions of, you know,impoverished farmers in, you know,
seven plus countries acrossEast Africa. And the goal was to
help them, you know, obviouslydo things, you know, basically give
them access to capital andresources that help them, you know,
come out of poverty.
(17:14):
The.
And, you know, there's. We hada slide deck that showed you, hey,
this is actually a goodbusiness while we do that. And so
that was the thing that I wasreally inspired to go do. And so
we spent, you know, a year orso building this platform out. We
onboarded about 200,000farmers, which is kind of a crazy
(17:34):
feat given, you know, no onehad smartphones. This is literally
off of SMS and dispersed, youknow, loans kind of in the millions
of dollars to them that we hada pretty good repayment rate on.
And you know, the companycontinues to exist and has done extremely
well. I had actually justgotten married at that point and
so, you know, about the oneyear mark, it was really a go time
(17:56):
decision of, hey, I got, youknow, this business is starting to
work. Am I going to move myfamily, you know, my wife, myself
to East Africa to kind of likego do this thing. And turned out
that that just wasn't theright fit for our family at the time,
but it was one of the most funthings we've ever done.
Wow. Austin was a better fit.Is that what I'm getting here?
(18:18):
You know, it did end upworking out a little bit better.
Yeah.
Okay, just checking because,because that's where you're based
out of now. Correct?
I'm actually in Houston right now.
Oh, okay. All right, good.
I am.
All right. So you, did youstart in Austin when you made your
Texas journey?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah. So, you know, part of itwas also like, all right, well where
do we want to live next? AndAustin was a really great place to
(18:40):
be. Part of it was I'd justbeen in Palo Alto for 10 years and
wanted to try something new.And Austin was this like, you know,
interesting, artsy, but alsohad some sort of tech presence and
just seemed like a fun, fun,relaxed environment to kind of go
to. Yeah. And so, yeah, weended up there for a few years before
(19:03):
moving to Houston. Kind ofwhen we want to be closer to family,
as we had children, whatnot.
Nice, good. You're, you're thefounder of Rollout and it's like
many startup names, sometimesit doesn't tell you what it does,
but it does when you know, ifthat makes sense. That makes sense.
Yeah, I, I, I like to, as alayman just kind of say this is simplifying
(19:26):
all the issues that, thatpeople have with API, especially
in prop tech, because it's allabout the data for just about every
proptech company. Am I, am Igood there? I'll let you expand on
that.
No, absolutely, that'scorrect. Right. I think the problems
most prop tech companies runinto with respect to integrations
is you know, they build thisamazing product, you know, they're
(19:49):
trying to solve a real problemfor agents, brokerages, teams and
you know, let's just saythey're doing something along the
lines of nurturing leads orhelping you convert existing leads
or just generating more leads.Right. And you know they as in the
process of selling to anywherefrom individual agents all the way
(20:11):
to you know, brokerages andfranchises, they're going to get
asked like hey, can youconnect to my existing CRM? Can you
connect to the tools that Ialready use, the source of truth?
And you know, they'll say yes,let me go build that. And you know
most people will start withthe follow up boss integration and
they'll build it and they'llrealize, wow, this is a lot of work
and it's really hard. Andokay, now everyone's asking for you
(20:33):
know, a real geeks or a syncor you know, another CRM integration
and then they have to kind oflike solve for several different
things that we try to take offthe plate. Right? So like the first
thing is just firstlybudgeting the resources, right? Building
an integration will take youweeks to months. And I've literally
heard from folks, there is afew that have taken them years to
build. Right. Then there's themaintenance of it as well. So it's
(20:56):
not just a one time build butas you get more usage you'll realize
hey, we have to do all sortsof things for all these edge cases
that we hadn't seen. Like oh,this one has it set up as a multi
office versus a single person.You know, this company has all these
configurations and customfields that we have to accommodate,
et cetera, et cetera. And soyou know there's like that budgeting
(21:17):
of actual developer resourcesand engineering resources on their,
you know, that they have tolike do. The second is hey, every
API is different and so youhave to standardize the data. And
you know what is called leadsin one system might be called people
in another. Features thatexist in one system may not exist
in others. And you know,sometimes you basically, you know,
(21:39):
literally have to learn thenuances of every single system. So
how do pawns work in a realgeeks versus how do they work in
an another system. Right.There's all sorts of like nuances
there that you have to educateyourself on to be able to like create
an integration that works foryour customers. And you know, the
third part of that issometimes the data isn't even available
via API. Right, okay, so what,you know, you might have this incredible
(22:03):
robust integration with onesystem and you want to replicate
that for another system. Andturns out, hey, the API doesn't actually
even give you that data, eventhough the feature exists. And you
know, trying to get someoneelse to, you know, release the like
a new API is, you know,pushing a boulder up a hill. It's,
you know, very, very, veryhard to do. And then I think lastly,
(22:24):
once you have all thisworking, the APIs change all the
time, right. Or you know, therestrictions and permissions around
them change. So, you know, Ithink Ball Bus was just in the news
saying, hey, we're going totake away these two APIs that we've
offered for years, forexample, right. And so that's where
a company like rollout comesin. And what we do is we say, hey,
look, you build once andconnect everywhere and you're basically
(22:48):
done. Right. What we do on ourside is we fill in the missing data
pieces. So we get you all thedata, we standardize it into one
format and we keep up with allthe maintenance and all the changes.
Right. So you're neverimpacted by these. And we've done
all the legwork and continueto do so. And we pre solved all these
issues that you know, youwould have run into if you were building
(23:10):
it yourself, but we've presolve them for you. So it's just
plug and play. So you kind ofbuild once with us and you're integrated
everywhere. We started withCRMs primarily, we've now added transaction
management software and wejust released our first loan origination
software. And so, you know,we're kind of adding a few more categories
over the, over time.
(23:31):
What, what was the trigger foryou to even start this company? I
mean, you know what, itobviously it sounds amazing. I, I,
I had a brief fling with astartup out of Australia for a few
years and yeah, it was a bigdeal trying to move data around the
right data at the right time.And so I completely feel for the
(23:51):
people that have thatstruggle. But what you had to be,
were you thinking about proptech? Was there something that said,
you know what, there's a, thisis space and there's a ton of stuff
going on there and if you cansolve a problem maybe that no one's
really ever looked at before,I think that's massive and maybe
that's part of your journey.
Yeah, you know, we started offbuilding horizontally before we focused
(24:12):
in on prop tech. Right. And sowe started off building a white labeled
zapier. Right. And we, youknow, grew that to, you know, let's
say 100 plus customers. Wewere doing about 10 million API calls
a day. And once we had builtour first 100 plus integrations,
the every single customerwould now ask us, hey, don't build,
(24:34):
you know, something moregeneric like a Gmail or a Slack or
a Salesforce. But they wantedtheir industry specific integrations.
And what we had realized is wecan't do that for every single industry.
There's just too many, there'stoo much context that we'd have to
learn. And so we startedlooking at, hey, where do we have
the most customers? And ithappened to be real estate. A lot
of real estate companiesalready used apeer. And so I think
(24:55):
that's why our product wasvery appealing. We had a lot of customers
in that space and we basicallysaid, all right, this is interesting,
let's dig in a little bitdeeper. And as we kind of started
to go deeper in there, werealized, wow, there, there are such
large problems and you know,the sources of truth for a lot of
(25:18):
brokerages, you know, thoseare not connected to all the other
systems that they want to use.And there's a lot of opportunity
if we are able to solve thatin a way that makes the lives of
proptech founders andcompanies much easier. Right. And
so we started going down thatjourney and had, you know, this product
(25:39):
pulled out of us. Really.
MLS data is, is a big piece ofthe puzzle. Are you able to work
in that space as well? I mean,obviously if it's brokerage, they
have the right, you know, theyhave access to that sort of data.
But then there's when it'sanother sort of a company that has
to then acquire the data withpermissions and things. Do you play
(25:59):
in all that stuff too?
Yeah. You know, it's funny,you could basically think of what
we currently do as like ananalog for what some folks like the
Constellation Ones or theAtoms have kind of done for MLS data
where they give you a singleAPI to connect to all the different
MLS feeds. Right. We don't dothat, you know, and really part of
(26:20):
that is just because it feelslike it's a solved problem. We would
just be another vendor in aspace where many exist already.
Gotcha.
You know, our goal has reallyjust been to solve unique problems
that just haven't been solvedyet and just do them better than
anyone else.
What's your most commonintegration? Is it, is it CRM because
that's where you started or.
Yeah, you know, I thinkthere's just a lot of products that
(26:44):
help with the leads Kind oflike in everywhere between, like
generating, nurturing,converting, scoring, you know, everything
kind of to do with leads.Right. And so CRM has been a very,
very common use case for us.
You mentioned loanorigination. They feels to me like
they were like, we reallyearly in the game when it came to
(27:06):
kind of moving informationaround. They, they, the LOS were
always there. Back in, when Ifirst started in the industry in
2000, they were doing somestuff already. So does that make
it easier or more complex foryou as you try to roll out that industry?
Yeah, you know, loanorigination is a super interesting
(27:26):
space.
Yeah.
There's one large player whodominates, right. And I want to say
they have 50% market share andthen everyone else is, know, 10%
or less, right? And so it'slike if you kind of get one of them,
you hit most of the 80, 20,and then everything else is pretty
(27:48):
fragmented. But the issue isthe large player in the space, right?
If you were to go to them andsay, hey, I want to integrate with
you, they'll basically tellyou to give them about 15% of your
revenues, if not more. Right.And like, you know, the numbers that
you'll get quoted to evenbuild integration is actually insane.
And so part of the innovationthat we've had to come up with is
(28:09):
like, hey, how can we enablean integration here without, you
know, any one of our customershaving to fork over basically like
all their Runway in order tobe able to integrate? Right. How
can they grow their businesswithout doing that? And so we've
had to kind of like do a bunchof innovative things around that
front.
Wow. What's on the horizon forrollout? I mean, I know you're always
(28:31):
forward thinking, like you'reprobably three, four steps down the
road, but what, what can youtalk about? I'll say, you know, on
a podcast.
Yeah, well, you know, I'mhappy to share that we just released
our MCP server, right. And soanyone that's building an AI, which
a lot of folks are right now,MCP is kind of the, the protocol
(28:53):
that everyone is using tocommunicate with APIs and do very
interesting and innovativethings. Right. And so I'll give you
an example. Just yesterday Iwas playing with our little, you
know, our internal demo and Iconnected to my CRM and I asked it,
okay, well, firstly, like, youknow, give me a list of leads. Tell
me more about this onespecific lead. And for that one specific
(29:14):
lead, it not only pulls in thebasic information, but it pulls in
all the notes, all the tasks,all the email communication we've
had. So it gives you the fullcontext. And then I'm able to ask
it complex things like, hey,who is my best lead source in the
last month? And it will, youknow, because it's connected to an
AI engine that has the abilityto process logic, it's able to create
(29:35):
a table of, hey, these are allthe different, like, lead sources
you've had. You know, here areall the different categorizations,
and this is the one that isbest. And then I can ask it to do
even more, you know, like morecomplex things like create a node,
do this task. Right. I canactually ask it to fulfill or do
things that I would do. Right.And so if you're an agent out there,
imagine kind of having thisvoice enabled. Right. And on the
(29:58):
road you could basically justtell it to do all the things versus
having to manually update yourCRM at the end of the day. Right.
While you're on the road. AndI think there's just a lot of very
interesting possibilitieshere. And so we're starting to pilot
this with some earlycustomers. I imagine this will be
commonplace a few years fromnow, if not a year from now. But,
you know, we're the firstpeople to enable this, and I'm really
(30:18):
excited to see what people endup doing with it.
Wow. Yeah, you think about it,the fact that you could talk to AI
was a big deal, but it's likewarp speed for all this stuff. Right.
It's incredible how fast we'removing down a path. You know, there's.
I don't know if, you know,again, Jason Pantana, right, who's
works with Tom Ferry, and hisfocus is, for the last few years
(30:39):
has just been AI and to watchhis YouTube channel and just see.
You're kidding me. We're doingthat now already? You know, because
I thought that was just a fewyears down the road, but that's.
That's really cool. Yeah. Theability to. And you could iterate
on those prompts, Right. Youcould, you could just continue to
narrow down to be exactly whatyou needed for that upcoming meeting
or whatever it is. Right?
100%. 100% super cool.
(31:01):
All right, well, okay, look,I've, I've. I've had you here the
time I, I asked you for, so I.But I have to ask you the same final
question I've asked everyguest. This is. And I know you're
not a realtor, never have beena realtor, but you know them well,
now you're working with themand all that good stuff. What one
piece of advice would youshare with a new agent? Just getting
started.
Yeah. So I've been a homebuyer, and I can tell you from my
(31:25):
experience from thatperspective, you know, so one of
our customers is this guycalled Mark Choi, who is. Yeah, yeah.
You know, he's an industryveteran from having started climb
and, you know, most recently.High Note. Yeah. He had this amazing
strategy when he was startingclimb, which was he dominated this
(31:46):
one building. Right. And heliterally bought a house there and
then sold all the units in thebuilding. And that would be kind
of my advice, which is justcreate your local monopoly. Right.
Because I bought a house inneighborhood that was. That's literally
like two square miles large.And we ended up hiring the realtor
that literally had themonopoly on this market because she
(32:06):
knew everything about it. Shewas the local expert. She could get
a transaction done faster andbetter than anyone else. And that's.
That's the advice I'd giveanyone, which is like, find a small
area where you think there'san opportunity and then be the person,
be the realtor. Explore that area.
That's a fantastic answer.I'll tell you, I been doing this
(32:27):
since Jay Thompson was thefirst guest. And so you're episode
416, and no one's ever saidthat yet, so congratulations. I feel
like I should be sending you aprize because it's hard mostly. A
lot of mentors find someone tohelp me, which makes perfect sense.
That's a great thing too, butI love that. And Mark Choi is amazing.
(32:47):
Yeah. So he's been on the showbefore when I started High Note.
I think High Note's amazingwith what it does, so that's very
cool. Ak, if somebody wants toreach out to you, is there an easy
way for them to do that?
Yeah, just akollout. Com, sendme an email or feel free to add me
on LinkedIn. Happy to chatthere too.
Awesome. This has been great.Once again, Marcy comes through.
(33:08):
She says she's amazing, and I.It's. It's been really fun to watch
what you've done so far, and Ican't wait to see especially how
that MCP and AI stuff's goingto work together. That's going to
be a lot of fun. So thank youso much for sharing your story.
No, thank you. And thank youfor inviting me. It's been a long
journey for you as well, andso happy to be part of that for.
And I wanted to go work at anearly stage startup to learn and
see what that was actuallylike. Because I figured, hey, I'm
going to make all themistakes. I'd rather learn on someone
else's dime and make thosemistakes somewhere else first.
You're listening to the RealEstate Sessions and I'm your host,
Bill Risser. With nearly 25years in the real estate business,
I love to interview industryleaders, up and comers and really
(00:23):
anyone with a story to tell.It's the stories that led my guests
to a career in the real estateworld that drives me in my 10th year
and over 400 episodes of thepodcast. And now I hope you enjoy
the next journey. Hi,everybody. Welcome to episode 416
of the Real Estate Sessionspodcast. As always, thank you so
(00:43):
much for tuning in. Thank youso much for telling a friend. Today
we're going to talk a littlebit about a cool new technology.
A shout out to Marcie Jamesfor another wonderful guest suggestion.
Marcie, please keep themcoming. We are going to chat with
AK Lalani, who is the founderof Rollout, which solves the issues
of API. And trust me, thereare lots of issues at times with
(01:08):
API, so we're going to talkabout that. But of course we're also
going to talk to AK aboutwhere he grew up and where his entrepreneurial
spirit came from and all kindsof other good things. It's a fascinating
story. It's going to be a lotof fun. So let's get this thing started.
AK welcome to the podcast.
Happy to be here.
Yeah, I'm very, very excitedto chat with you. I had a nice conversation
(01:31):
with Marcy in Dallas at whatwas she there for?
The 1000Watt Summit?
Oh, there you go. Were youthere for that?
No, no. But I remember shementioned she's going for that. Yeah.
So we had a nice conversationand, and I'm really excited to kind
of get to find out about yourbackground like I do with all my
guests, but I have a layman'sknowledge of API and I know it was
(01:52):
always a hassle and if, ifyou've created a solution to that
hassle, like, that's, that'samazing. So. Well, we're going to
talk a lot about that. Firstquestion I ask every guest is, where'd
you grow up?
So I grew up in Tanzania,which is on, you know, the coast
of East Africa. Yeah. I wasborn in Kenya and moved to Tanzania
(02:13):
as a four and grew up thereall the way up until I came out to
the US for college. Wow.
So my first thought is maybemom or dad had worked there. Is that
kind of why you were there?
Yeah. So my parents both grewup in Pakistan and they, you know,
had to provide for the family.And so my dad basically worked his
(02:36):
way up at a bank. And, youknow, the bank said, hey, we're going
to start a branch out in Kenyaand who wants to go? And no one raised
their hands. And so he thenbasically said, well, you know, if
you give me a salary bump,I'll go. And they agreed to that.
And so that's how we ended upin Kenya. Wow. And lived there for
many years and finally gotopportunity to go for another work
(02:57):
opportunity in, when I was 4years old to Tanzania. And so that's
how we moved.
Can you explain to me whatit's like being, you know, entering
school, let's say, right.Whatever kindergarten or whatever
it is in Tanzania. First ofall, did you speak the language?
Did you learn it because youwere there at that young age?
Yeah. So the entire countryspeaks Swahili. Right. English is
(03:23):
not something that most peoplespeak, and so you had to learn the
language. My parents didfortunately send me to an English
speaking school. So I was veryfortunate in the sense that, you
know, it was somewhat of aninternational school. And so I did
get a chance to, you know,obviously speak in English and get
more of a traditionaleducation from that perspective.
(03:44):
But yes, going to, you know,kindergarten and all the way up through
to high school in a developingcountry was very different from what
a lot of my friends haveexperienced in the US.
What do you think it did foryou? It seems to me like there's,
there's some big value about.I don't want to call it a hardship,
I just want to call it. It'sdifferent. Right. And so what are
(04:06):
some of the things you takeaway from that going? I'm really
glad that I had this experience.
You know, I think the, thething that jumps out is we were in
the middle of just so manydifferent things happening around
us. And so, you know, like, wegrew up in this huge context of there's
(04:28):
so much poverty around us.Right, right. And we got to, I mean,
it was unfortunately veryheartbreaking. And so you develop
a sense of empathy at the sametime because there was a lot of hardship
in a developing country.Right. There is this incredible sense
of community and there's thisincredible sense of, hey, we're,
you know, here to help eachother. And that is something I think
(04:51):
like, you know, was veryimpactful to myself as I, as I grew
up and Kind of like take awayfrom, from that time in my life.
I'm going to take you a littlebit further than that. You, it was
more than impactful. Can youshare the, what you did there to,
to help with that problem inTanzania, right, of poverty or, or
(05:12):
some of the other issues aswell? You, you actually started a,
I don't want to call it acompany, but an operation, right?
Yeah, yeah, it was really justa high school club. It's not, you
know, we don't have toglamorize it, but, you know, you
know, part of that is, look,we grew up in. It was just incredible
just to see all the resilientpeople around me. And so, you know,
(05:33):
when I say resilient peoplearound me, like, you know, because
it was a developing country,we would have, you know, drivers
to effectively, you know,drive us around. We would have maids
in the house. It's prettycommon there. But these people become
a part of your life. So I'vevisited, you know, our driver's house,
I've met his wife, hischildren, and you get to see, you
know, how they live and someof the hardships that they've had
(05:54):
to endure. And so for me, abig part of that was I, you know,
I became very motivated tohelp in any way I could. And so,
you know, when I was in highschool, we started this thing called
prompt. It was a povertyreduction organization. And we really,
you know, spent a lot of timetrying to figure out how do we, how
do we actually have an impacton the people around us. Right? And
(06:17):
it's funny because inhindsight, a lot of, a lot of the
ideas were just from likeforward thinking, you know, development
economists. Right. Weliterally, you know, maybe not a
common thing that for mostpeople do in high school, but I spend
a lot of times reading likethese popular books like the End
of Poverty by Jeffrey Saxon, afew others. They had a lot of really
good ideas in there aroundhealth care and providing access
(06:39):
to, you know, world producingassets. And so we would do things
like buy, you know, hold thesebig fundraisers, these charity walks
and raise as much money as wecould, you know, in the tens of thousands
of dollars almost, right? Andthen go and buy a bunch of mosquito
nets and find populations thatwould suffer from malaria and, you
(06:59):
know, where we could basicallygo and prevent that. We would basically
go distribute these, you know,household by household, these rural
villages or, you know, one of,one of the fun projects we did is
we actually built an energybriquette press and we would distribute
that to schools in the area sothey could produce their own energy.
And you know, being adeveloping country, there's, you
know, price of oil goes up anddown, fluctuates, really impacts
(07:22):
their budget. And this is away for them to have a little more
resiliency and being able toprovide high quality education while
being affected by the ups anddowns of the energy markets.
I don't think we'reglamorizing anything. I think that's,
I think that's reallyimpressive. I'm trying to imagine
most high school kids here,what are they thinking about and
what are they doing? And it'snot that. So that's, that's awesome.
(07:43):
I'm going to assume though,though, the, the, the early, it was
probably much earlier thanyour time with prompt where you were
thinking about technology andentrepreneurship. It sounds like
that was baked into you pretty early.
You know, less technology. Butyes, entrepreneurship for sure. Yeah,
I would, you know, I'd sayentrepreneurship was actually somewhat
(08:05):
of an expectation versus likea dream. And part, part of that was,
you know, when my dad moved toTanzania, it was for work opportunities
so that he could actually haveequity in the job that he was doing
and become a partner in, youknow, this new venture. And, and
that kind of started hisjourney of entrepreneurship. And
so the expectation was alwayslike, hey, he's going to build up,
(08:27):
you know, some sort of likefamily nest egg. And my job is being
the only boy in the family tocome and work for him and then eventually
take over whenever he's readyto retire. Ironically, I have two
sisters who both did join thefamily business and I never did.
So go figure.
No, you did somethingdifferent. You attend Stanford. I
(08:51):
don't have a lot of guests onthe show that have attended Stanford
that are working in the realestate space. So my first question
is this. That had to be apretty important milestone in your
life at the time, I wouldimagine, getting that. And do you
remember getting theacceptance letter or email or whatever
it was that had to be pretty exciting.
Yeah, yeah, I absolutely do.So I remember it like it was yesterday.
(09:14):
It was like a Sunday morning.I was flipping through my email.
You know, email is much fasterthan snail mail, obviously, given
where I was. But, you know, atthis point I had been rejected by
a lot of colleges and so, youknow, hadn't gotten into Harvard
or Yale or any of the otherones. And so I was expecting to,
you know, get rejected aswell. And I remember reading the
email came through and read itlike three, four times before I realized,
(09:37):
hey, actually, no, this is Nota rejection email. I actually got
in and I, you know, my momhappened to be just in the next room,
so I, you know, go and tellher. I was so excited. I give her
a hug. She hugs me back superelated. She's like, congrats. What's
Stanford? Is that a goodschool? Just because, you know, this
is the time before a lot ofsocial media, the Internet wasn't
(09:58):
as pervasive in our lives. Youknow, they just hadn't heard of it.
It wasn't as big of a thingwhere we lived. And so, yeah, you
know, I think everyone waspretty, pretty happy afterwards though,
once we figured out what wasgoing on.
Yeah, tell me, tell me abouttime at Palo Alto. Had to just be
an amazing part of your life.
Yeah, it was transformationalin many ways. And, you know, I think
(10:21):
one of the things I didn'trealize I didn't fully understand
the history of Silicon Valleyand the context of living there and
being part of it. And so Ifeel very grateful that I just kind
of randomly ended up there.But, yeah, you know, I think going
to Stanford was transformativein several ways. One is, you know,
(10:43):
I went from being maybe one ofthe smartest kids in my high school
to being very mediocre andvery average in the college context
and having to learn that Ineed to outwork everyone around me
if I want to do well. Thesecond thing maybe I learned is I
have to work on the rightthings because, you know, actually
moved to, you know, I went tocollege thinking I was going to be
(11:04):
a civil engineer because Iwanted to build low cost housing.
And I thought that was goingto be kind of the arc of my career
and realized, wow, there areso many people that are better at
engineering than I am. Wow.And that forced me to just, you know,
figure out, hey, what am Igood at? And turned out to be, you
know, economics. And, youknow, that ended up being the focus
(11:24):
of kind of my studies andwhatnot. So that was, you know, another
great thing. But apart fromthat, you know, just being in the
middle of Silicon Valley,getting access to speakers, and not
just that, like, also seeingtheir arcs was a great way to learn
firsthand what, you know,firstly, like, what the reality is
(11:47):
on the ground versus what themedia tells you. So, for example,
Mark Zuckerberg gave a talk,like the last talk, for like an intern
to CS class that I was takingonce. And I remember it pretty vividly
because, you know, he walksinto the classroom, you know, he
walks in the classroom, it'sfully packed because everyone's expecting
this big guest speaker.
(12:07):
Yeah.
And he, you know, literallylike I see him walking next to me,
like just walks past me andyou know, trying to like figure out,
hey, where should I go? How doI get, you know, someone taps on
the shoulders that they,they're expecting up there and he
gives his entire talk that isvery unpolished, very raw, very uncut.
It's completely irrelevant forthe entire classroom. He's talking
(12:28):
about these like crazytechnical scaling like technologies
he's working on and the entireclassroom is like, dude, this is
an intro to CS class. We don'tknow what you're talking about compared
to the guy you see today inthe media. Right. He is very polished
and you know, he's got a pointof view and knows who his audience
is. And so it's, it's, youknow, things like that are just very
(12:49):
interesting to see as you getto know people before or you know,
at least get to learn frompeople before they're rich and famous
and you know, very successfuland see what me, you know, the traits
that they had that got themthere. Right. And you know, like
the, we had a lot of verysuccessful people that I went to
school with that it was fun toactually see their arc as maybe dumb
(13:11):
college kids to people thatare magazines now.
Yeah. There's stories youdon't share.
Right.
I mean that's all what's doneat Stanford, stays at Stanford. I
guess I'm just. So you getyour bachelor's there, you get your
master's as well. And is itbehavioral economics? Is that what
I find that? Right?
(13:33):
Yeah, that was, no, that wasconcentration. I kind of carved that
for myself.
Okay.
As an area of interest.
Okay.
My master's was in what'scalled the management science and
engineering.
Oh, okay.
But it was very focused oncomputer science as well.
Okay, gotcha. So what is yourplan now? Because you're not going
to be working on, you know,you're not an engineer building small,
(13:53):
you know, low cost homes. Butwhat are you doing?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had inthe back of my mind that I wanted
to be involved in technologyentrepreneurship at some point. Right.
And I was basically ready to,you know, explore that as a future
career at some point. But Iknew I wasn't ready at that point.
(14:14):
Right. As I'd graduated and Iwanted to go work at an early stage
startup to learn and see whatthat was actually like because I
figured, hey, I'm going tomake all the mistakes I'd rather
learn on someone else's Dimeand make those mistakes somewhere
else first. My goal was reallyto find any startup that would hire
me. And it was complicatedbecause I was on a student visa and
(14:35):
so I would need someone tobasically give me, you know, like
a sponsored visa. And Iliterally found one company that
was, you know, these twoStanford MBAs that were starting
a company in the solar spacethat were also international and
happened to need to like getlawyer to sponsor their own visas.
(14:55):
And they were like, well, youknow, we don't mind, you know, doing
a third one because we werepaying the lawyers already, but you'd
have to come work with us. Andthat ended up being startup called
Aurora Solar, which isactually proptech adjacent in some
ways. Right. They're a solarsoftware company.
And so you're with them forhow long?
(15:16):
For about five years. So we started.
Did you learn some mistakesalong the way?
I don't want to give anythingaway, but yeah, absolutely. I mean,
we start. So when I started,we didn't have a product, right.
We hadn't written a line ofcode and look, we gotta build the
product from scratch. We gotto, you know, fumble our way around
(15:41):
to getting early customers andthen finally building an engine to
grow from there. And, youknow, we also were. When we started,
you know, Aurora Solar was notthe first company in their space.
They were actually startingbehind. Right. They were trying to
catch up to other companies inthe space. And so we learned how
to compete in the marketplaceand build better products faster
(16:04):
than others and add real valueto customers. And so a lot of important
takeaways, I'd say from thatexperience, you move.
On to a company called EGranary, which feels like when I
looked at this a little bitlike you're kind of revisiting a
little bit of your previous life.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. E Granarywas basically me starting the journey
(16:28):
of saying, hey, I think I'mready to finally start something.
So, you know, I'd spent fiveyears at Aurora. We built a real
business. And, you know, Ithought I was ready to go onto an
actual business of my own. AndE Granary was partly something that
I was just very inspired to dobecause we were working with a nonprofit
(16:52):
which is called the EastAfrican Farmers Federation, who serve
millions of, you know,impoverished farmers in, you know,
seven plus countries acrossEast Africa. And the goal was to
help them, you know, obviouslydo things, you know, basically give
them access to capital andresources that help them, you know,
come out of poverty.
(17:14):
The.
And, you know, there's. We hada slide deck that showed you, hey,
this is actually a goodbusiness while we do that. And so
that was the thing that I wasreally inspired to go do. And so
we spent, you know, a year orso building this platform out. We
onboarded about 200,000farmers, which is kind of a crazy
(17:34):
feat given, you know, no onehad smartphones. This is literally
off of SMS and dispersed, youknow, loans kind of in the millions
of dollars to them that we hada pretty good repayment rate on.
And you know, the companycontinues to exist and has done extremely
well. I had actually justgotten married at that point and
so, you know, about the oneyear mark, it was really a go time
(17:56):
decision of, hey, I got, youknow, this business is starting to
work. Am I going to move myfamily, you know, my wife, myself
to East Africa to kind of likego do this thing. And turned out
that that just wasn't theright fit for our family at the time,
but it was one of the most funthings we've ever done.
Wow. Austin was a better fit.Is that what I'm getting here?
(18:18):
You know, it did end upworking out a little bit better.
Yeah.
Okay, just checking because,because that's where you're based
out of now. Correct?
I'm actually in Houston right now.
Oh, okay. All right, good.
I am.
All right. So you, did youstart in Austin when you made your
Texas journey?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah. So, you know, part of itwas also like, all right, well where
do we want to live next? AndAustin was a really great place to
(18:40):
be. Part of it was I'd justbeen in Palo Alto for 10 years and
wanted to try something new.And Austin was this like, you know,
interesting, artsy, but alsohad some sort of tech presence and
just seemed like a fun, fun,relaxed environment to kind of go
to. Yeah. And so, yeah, weended up there for a few years before
(19:03):
moving to Houston. Kind ofwhen we want to be closer to family,
as we had children, whatnot.
Nice, good. You're, you're thefounder of Rollout and it's like
many startup names, sometimesit doesn't tell you what it does,
but it does when you know, ifthat makes sense. That makes sense.
Yeah, I, I, I like to, as alayman just kind of say this is simplifying
(19:26):
all the issues that, thatpeople have with API, especially
in prop tech, because it's allabout the data for just about every
proptech company. Am I, am Igood there? I'll let you expand on
that.
No, absolutely, that'scorrect. Right. I think the problems
most prop tech companies runinto with respect to integrations
is you know, they build thisamazing product, you know, they're
(19:49):
trying to solve a real problemfor agents, brokerages, teams and
you know, let's just saythey're doing something along the
lines of nurturing leads orhelping you convert existing leads
or just generating more leads.Right. And you know they as in the
process of selling to anywherefrom individual agents all the way
(20:11):
to you know, brokerages andfranchises, they're going to get
asked like hey, can youconnect to my existing CRM? Can you
connect to the tools that Ialready use, the source of truth?
And you know, they'll say yes,let me go build that. And you know
most people will start withthe follow up boss integration and
they'll build it and they'llrealize, wow, this is a lot of work
and it's really hard. Andokay, now everyone's asking for you
(20:33):
know, a real geeks or a syncor you know, another CRM integration
and then they have to kind oflike solve for several different
things that we try to take offthe plate. Right? So like the first
thing is just firstlybudgeting the resources, right? Building
an integration will take youweeks to months. And I've literally
heard from folks, there is afew that have taken them years to
build. Right. Then there's themaintenance of it as well. So it's
(20:56):
not just a one time build butas you get more usage you'll realize
hey, we have to do all sortsof things for all these edge cases
that we hadn't seen. Like oh,this one has it set up as a multi
office versus a single person.You know, this company has all these
configurations and customfields that we have to accommodate,
et cetera, et cetera. And soyou know there's like that budgeting
(21:17):
of actual developer resourcesand engineering resources on their,
you know, that they have tolike do. The second is hey, every
API is different and so youhave to standardize the data. And
you know what is called leadsin one system might be called people
in another. Features thatexist in one system may not exist
in others. And you know,sometimes you basically, you know,
(21:39):
literally have to learn thenuances of every single system. So
how do pawns work in a realgeeks versus how do they work in
an another system. Right.There's all sorts of like nuances
there that you have to educateyourself on to be able to like create
an integration that works foryour customers. And you know, the
third part of that issometimes the data isn't even available
via API. Right, okay, so what,you know, you might have this incredible
(22:03):
robust integration with onesystem and you want to replicate
that for another system. Andturns out, hey, the API doesn't actually
even give you that data, eventhough the feature exists. And you
know, trying to get someoneelse to, you know, release the like
a new API is, you know,pushing a boulder up a hill. It's,
you know, very, very, veryhard to do. And then I think lastly,
(22:24):
once you have all thisworking, the APIs change all the
time, right. Or you know, therestrictions and permissions around
them change. So, you know, Ithink Ball Bus was just in the news
saying, hey, we're going totake away these two APIs that we've
offered for years, forexample, right. And so that's where
a company like rollout comesin. And what we do is we say, hey,
look, you build once andconnect everywhere and you're basically
(22:48):
done. Right. What we do on ourside is we fill in the missing data
pieces. So we get you all thedata, we standardize it into one
format and we keep up with allthe maintenance and all the changes.
Right. So you're neverimpacted by these. And we've done
all the legwork and continueto do so. And we pre solved all these
issues that you know, youwould have run into if you were building
(23:10):
it yourself, but we've presolve them for you. So it's just
plug and play. So you kind ofbuild once with us and you're integrated
everywhere. We started withCRMs primarily, we've now added transaction
management software and wejust released our first loan origination
software. And so, you know,we're kind of adding a few more categories
over the, over time.
(23:31):
What, what was the trigger foryou to even start this company? I
mean, you know what, itobviously it sounds amazing. I, I,
I had a brief fling with astartup out of Australia for a few
years and yeah, it was a bigdeal trying to move data around the
right data at the right time.And so I completely feel for the
(23:51):
people that have thatstruggle. But what you had to be,
were you thinking about proptech? Was there something that said,
you know what, there's a, thisis space and there's a ton of stuff
going on there and if you cansolve a problem maybe that no one's
really ever looked at before,I think that's massive and maybe
that's part of your journey.
Yeah, you know, we started offbuilding horizontally before we focused
(24:12):
in on prop tech. Right. And sowe started off building a white labeled
zapier. Right. And we, youknow, grew that to, you know, let's
say 100 plus customers. Wewere doing about 10 million API calls
a day. And once we had builtour first 100 plus integrations,
the every single customerwould now ask us, hey, don't build,
(24:34):
you know, something moregeneric like a Gmail or a Slack or
a Salesforce. But they wantedtheir industry specific integrations.
And what we had realized is wecan't do that for every single industry.
There's just too many, there'stoo much context that we'd have to
learn. And so we startedlooking at, hey, where do we have
the most customers? And ithappened to be real estate. A lot
of real estate companiesalready used apeer. And so I think
(24:55):
that's why our product wasvery appealing. We had a lot of customers
in that space and we basicallysaid, all right, this is interesting,
let's dig in a little bitdeeper. And as we kind of started
to go deeper in there, werealized, wow, there, there are such
large problems and you know,the sources of truth for a lot of
(25:18):
brokerages, you know, thoseare not connected to all the other
systems that they want to use.And there's a lot of opportunity
if we are able to solve thatin a way that makes the lives of
proptech founders andcompanies much easier. Right. And
so we started going down thatjourney and had, you know, this product
(25:39):
pulled out of us. Really.
MLS data is, is a big piece ofthe puzzle. Are you able to work
in that space as well? I mean,obviously if it's brokerage, they
have the right, you know, theyhave access to that sort of data.
But then there's when it'sanother sort of a company that has
to then acquire the data withpermissions and things. Do you play
(25:59):
in all that stuff too?
Yeah. You know, it's funny,you could basically think of what
we currently do as like ananalog for what some folks like the
Constellation Ones or theAtoms have kind of done for MLS data
where they give you a singleAPI to connect to all the different
MLS feeds. Right. We don't dothat, you know, and really part of
(26:20):
that is just because it feelslike it's a solved problem. We would
just be another vendor in aspace where many exist already.
Gotcha.
You know, our goal has reallyjust been to solve unique problems
that just haven't been solvedyet and just do them better than
anyone else.
What's your most commonintegration? Is it, is it CRM because
that's where you started or.
Yeah, you know, I thinkthere's just a lot of products that
(26:44):
help with the leads Kind oflike in everywhere between, like
generating, nurturing,converting, scoring, you know, everything
kind of to do with leads.Right. And so CRM has been a very,
very common use case for us.
You mentioned loanorigination. They feels to me like
they were like, we reallyearly in the game when it came to
(27:06):
kind of moving informationaround. They, they, the LOS were
always there. Back in, when Ifirst started in the industry in
2000, they were doing somestuff already. So does that make
it easier or more complex foryou as you try to roll out that industry?
Yeah, you know, loanorigination is a super interesting
(27:26):
space.
Yeah.
There's one large player whodominates, right. And I want to say
they have 50% market share andthen everyone else is, know, 10%
or less, right? And so it'slike if you kind of get one of them,
you hit most of the 80, 20,and then everything else is pretty
(27:48):
fragmented. But the issue isthe large player in the space, right?
If you were to go to them andsay, hey, I want to integrate with
you, they'll basically tellyou to give them about 15% of your
revenues, if not more. Right.And like, you know, the numbers that
you'll get quoted to evenbuild integration is actually insane.
And so part of the innovationthat we've had to come up with is
(28:09):
like, hey, how can we enablean integration here without, you
know, any one of our customershaving to fork over basically like
all their Runway in order tobe able to integrate? Right. How
can they grow their businesswithout doing that? And so we've
had to kind of like do a bunchof innovative things around that
front.
Wow. What's on the horizon forrollout? I mean, I know you're always
(28:31):
forward thinking, like you'reprobably three, four steps down the
road, but what, what can youtalk about? I'll say, you know, on
a podcast.
Yeah, well, you know, I'mhappy to share that we just released
our MCP server, right. And soanyone that's building an AI, which
a lot of folks are right now,MCP is kind of the, the protocol
(28:53):
that everyone is using tocommunicate with APIs and do very
interesting and innovativethings. Right. And so I'll give you
an example. Just yesterday Iwas playing with our little, you
know, our internal demo and Iconnected to my CRM and I asked it,
okay, well, firstly, like, youknow, give me a list of leads. Tell
me more about this onespecific lead. And for that one specific
(29:14):
lead, it not only pulls in thebasic information, but it pulls in
all the notes, all the tasks,all the email communication we've
had. So it gives you the fullcontext. And then I'm able to ask
it complex things like, hey,who is my best lead source in the
last month? And it will, youknow, because it's connected to an
AI engine that has the abilityto process logic, it's able to create
(29:35):
a table of, hey, these are allthe different, like, lead sources
you've had. You know, here areall the different categorizations,
and this is the one that isbest. And then I can ask it to do
even more, you know, like morecomplex things like create a node,
do this task. Right. I canactually ask it to fulfill or do
things that I would do. Right.And so if you're an agent out there,
imagine kind of having thisvoice enabled. Right. And on the
(29:58):
road you could basically justtell it to do all the things versus
having to manually update yourCRM at the end of the day. Right.
While you're on the road. AndI think there's just a lot of very
interesting possibilitieshere. And so we're starting to pilot
this with some earlycustomers. I imagine this will be
commonplace a few years fromnow, if not a year from now. But,
you know, we're the firstpeople to enable this, and I'm really
(30:18):
excited to see what people endup doing with it.
Wow. Yeah, you think about it,the fact that you could talk to AI
was a big deal, but it's likewarp speed for all this stuff. Right.
It's incredible how fast we'removing down a path. You know, there's.
I don't know if, you know,again, Jason Pantana, right, who's
works with Tom Ferry, and hisfocus is, for the last few years
(30:39):
has just been AI and to watchhis YouTube channel and just see.
You're kidding me. We're doingthat now already? You know, because
I thought that was just a fewyears down the road, but that's.
That's really cool. Yeah. Theability to. And you could iterate
on those prompts, Right. Youcould, you could just continue to
narrow down to be exactly whatyou needed for that upcoming meeting
or whatever it is. Right?
100%. 100% super cool.
(31:01):
All right, well, okay, look,I've, I've. I've had you here the
time I, I asked you for, so I.But I have to ask you the same final
question I've asked everyguest. This is. And I know you're
not a realtor, never have beena realtor, but you know them well,
now you're working with themand all that good stuff. What one
piece of advice would youshare with a new agent? Just getting
started.
Yeah. So I've been a homebuyer, and I can tell you from my
(31:25):
experience from thatperspective, you know, so one of
our customers is this guycalled Mark Choi, who is. Yeah, yeah.
You know, he's an industryveteran from having started climb
and, you know, most recently.High Note. Yeah. He had this amazing
strategy when he was startingclimb, which was he dominated this
(31:46):
one building. Right. And heliterally bought a house there and
then sold all the units in thebuilding. And that would be kind
of my advice, which is justcreate your local monopoly. Right.
Because I bought a house inneighborhood that was. That's literally
like two square miles large.And we ended up hiring the realtor
that literally had themonopoly on this market because she
(32:06):
knew everything about it. Shewas the local expert. She could get
a transaction done faster andbetter than anyone else. And that's.
That's the advice I'd giveanyone, which is like, find a small
area where you think there'san opportunity and then be the person,
be the realtor. Explore that area.
That's a fantastic answer.I'll tell you, I been doing this
(32:27):
since Jay Thompson was thefirst guest. And so you're episode
416, and no one's ever saidthat yet, so congratulations. I feel
like I should be sending you aprize because it's hard mostly. A
lot of mentors find someone tohelp me, which makes perfect sense.
That's a great thing too, butI love that. And Mark Choi is amazing.
(32:47):
Yeah. So he's been on the showbefore when I started High Note.
I think High Note's amazingwith what it does, so that's very
cool. Ak, if somebody wants toreach out to you, is there an easy
way for them to do that?
Yeah, just akollout. Com, sendme an email or feel free to add me
on LinkedIn. Happy to chatthere too.
Awesome. This has been great.Once again, Marcy comes through.
(33:08):
She says she's amazing, and I.It's. It's been really fun to watch
what you've done so far, and Ican't wait to see especially how
that MCP and AI stuff's goingto work together. That's going to
be a lot of fun. So thank youso much for sharing your story.
No, thank you. And thank youfor inviting me. It's been a long
journey for you as well, andso happy to be part of that for.
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