On Thursday I sat through a load of new tech companies presenting at SF NEW Tech. You get 5 minutes to pitch and show your business to a tech savvy audience who then has 5 minutes to put questions to you.
Many of the companies are amazing; they show some really great technology or a spin on some existing theme which makes you go wow, what an awesome idea. This tends to be leading edge stuff and unfortunately most of the companies never make it to real success but often their technology appears in successful companies 6 to 12 months on.
One of Thursday's presenters was a company called Lunch.com. In a nutshell you rate things or add opinions a little like Yelp.com and then it profiles you. When you search for things it matches you up with reviews from people who are profiled like you. Example - My definition of a great restaurant and yours may be quite different. But if you are a 37 yr old, wine loving, meat loving, sport loving guy we are probably more likely to come up with the same review of the same restaurant. It all makes sense.
The more information you give, the more accurate the system will get. Find me concerts, find me a review of a car, find me a review of a restaurant, etc. etc.
You can actually type in - Find me the most similar person on the system to me. Sure enough it will come up with someone - These are interests you share, similar tastes in music, films etc. After the event, which has beer, I returned home to excitedly try and explain the brilliance of the whole system to my unimpressed fiancé. Some people just don't get it.
If my fiancé dumped me I could cut the 37 year search down to minutes by simply choosing her closest profile who by all accounts should like me? Anyway.....
This morning I got an email from a guy who had signed up to NationalBLS. We are not advertising or promoting until after we launch at Inman Connect in San Francisco in August. Even so, we get people signing up every day as buyers. I asked him how he found us, expecting it would be from Twitter or this blog and his answer was a little more scary.
He said that he was looking through properties on an MLS and thought: "Why am I doing all the work. How can I tell sellers that I am looking to buy a house, and where can I market myself as a buyer and let sellers come to me?" He Googled "Buyer Listing Service" and sure enough we popped up.
What is scary is that his email reads identically to how I came to set up NationalBLS. Same thoughts, same Google search, same everything. Obviously, I now want to know if he likes amazing gorgeous talented inspiring ladies, eats Sushi and is terrible at golf.
Comments (0)Subscribe to CommentsComment