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Nikolay Bankov is CEO at LeadSecure.
Describe what you do in one sentence. I work with the marketing and business development teams on strategic deals and lead the engineering team.
How’d you end up in real estate tech?
For the last year I have been looking for a real estate property, and the one thing that became abundantly clear is that the real estate industry is very technologically underserved. I want to be able to instantly talk to a real estate professional about the property I like. I want to be able to make quick decisions, and I am busy enough without scheduling a live tour for each property.
I spent the last six years of my professional life in online audio and video collaboration, and for me, LeadSecure was the obvious solution. So I decided to build it.
Do you think technology can change the industry?
Technology has had and will continue to have a decisive impact on every industry. And real estate is no exception. It is already changing.
You receive a notification on your phone app when a new property comes to market. You can see drone areal footage of the property. LeadSecure is the next logical thing.
What do you do?
I start my day participating in the daily standup of the engineering team. I accept tasks completed the day before, then course-correct and discuss plans for the upcoming tasks. Then I organize a leadership team standup to sync on the marketing, sales and engineering initiatives.
We set the urgent priorities for the day for each team. In an early-stage startup, everyone is expected to understand and be able to perform everything, so the rest of my day will range from launching and following on a marketing campaign to meeting high-value customers, to cold calling, to testing and debugging the software.
What aspects of real estate are you trying to make better?
We want to increase the engagement of the real estate buyers with the real estate agents. We help real estate agents establish a more trustworthy relationship with their buyers by doing a face-to-face communication the very first time they have a chance to interact. And we help real estate buyers make a smarter decision about the most important purchase of their lives, by using tech to see more properties in a shorter period of time.
What’s your favorite part of what you do?
A job well done for me is a real estate deal closed leveraging our product. The favorite part of my work is to see people satisfied with our product.
What products have you had a part in developing in the past?
Before LeadSecure, I was VP of client engineering at Fuze. I brought to market the Fuze product and helped perfect it to the leading platform for online collaboration it is now.
What are you working on right now? What are the challenges?
My main focus today is winning the hearts and minds of a small but vocal group of real estate professionals. I want to build a critical mass of happy and passionate users who will evangelize LeadSecure.
Favorite city?
Los Angeles. It often gets a bad rap, but is, in fact, a great place.
Favorite band or singer?
Guns N’ Roses.
What do you hate about technology?
Nothing. I love technology.
What is one thing you would like to fix about the real estate industry?
Would like to make house buying faster and increase the number of properties seen.
What motivates you?
I get motivated by success. The more success we have, the more motivated I become. It is a spiral.
Time at current company: 11 months
Age: 40
Degree, school: Master of Science, computer science
Location: San Carlos, California
Social media: Twitter
Are you a real estate hacker who’d like to participate in our profile series? Email amber@inman.com.