Are you set up for success in 2016? Join 2,500 real estate industry leaders Aug. 4-7, 2015, at Inman Connect in San Francisco. Get Connected with the people and ideas that will inspire you and take your business to new heights. Register today and save $100 with code Readers.
Many companies that are household names today (Zillow and Trulia, for example, to name just two) made their debut on the Connect stage as wee startups.
Next week, we’ll continue the tradition of giving the newbies a chance to pitch their business to the best and the brightest in real estate and tech.
Here’s the first half of the roster for this year’s incoming class, which is so jam-packed full of potential stars that we’ve booked two sessions. Join us at ICSF to decide for yourself who will make it big — and who might fade away before closing out a funding round.
Alex Bowman
Alex Bowman
Alex Bowman is the co-founder and CEO of Casamatic, a platform that helps homebuyers discover their perfect home through curation and personalization. Bowman is a marketing and analytics geek, an avid coffee enthusiast and a recovering corporate so-and-so, spending a decade in marketing roles at Amazon and BlackBerry.
Bowman, along with the Casamatic team, is currently in The Brandery, a top startup accelerator based in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Patrick Browne
Patrick Browne
Patrick Browne is the founder and CEO of LendYC, a tool for discovering mortgage lenders in New York City. Browne has over 10 years of professional real estate experience. His career started in the residential mortgage industry and transitioned to the commercial market where, most recently, he was the VP of asset management and acquisitions for a real estate investment management firm. He holds an M.S. in real estate finance and investment from New York University.
Taylor Hou
Taylor Hou
As the product manager for HomeAhead, Taylor Hou has had the opportunity to hear 400 agents, homeowners and homebuyers describe what’s right and wrong with real estate — and then he works to design a product around their wishes. Hou has helped champion transparency in market information and HomeAhead’s Realistic Valuations and Shared Wishlist tools with one simple goal: to create a better way to buy or sell a home.
Joshua Kaplan
Joshua Kaplan
While working for Alain Pinel Realtors, Joshua Kaplan developed the idea and business model for IntellAgent: To provide one app that allows agents and their clients to communicate in real-time, track search activities and synch all communications to transaction management systems. Kaplan is a serial entrepreneur with core experience in technology development. He began his career as an analyst with Gartner, then worked for the San Francisco investment banking firm Robertson Stephens & Company. Kaplan successfully raised $30 million in equity capital and founded Intouch Group Inc., building a nationwide network of music kiosks with over 1.5 million users and the world’s largest music samples database.
Danny Klorman
Danny Klorman
Daniel Klorman is a highly motivated, forward-thinking, young entrepreneur/photographer, who, at the age of 18, founded the 3-D virtual imaging company N3 Tec. The company, powered by Matterport Technology, caters primarily to the residential and commercial real estate markets, along with the hospitality, vacation, retail and construction industries.
Anthony Mann
Anthony Mann
While being an active real estate agent, Anthony Mann has seen many markets and new technology emerge without any real benefit to agents. In July 2014 he decided to make a change in the industry and launched AM Open House. Since inception, he has dedicated his entire focus on the AM Open House app and management platform and making the lives of agents easier while supplying them with technology they actually want and can benefit from using. Today, the app has over 10,000 users, integrations with over 20 CRM providers and partnerships with multiple companies.
John Morgan
John Morgan
John Morgan is the founder and CEO of BoostUp, the first-of-its-kind social savings platform where prospective car and home buyers can set up a free account, tap into savings rewards from brand partners, and start saving and raising money for a down payment. Morgan has grown BoostUp to become the leader in down payment social savings. Since the company launched, its users have purchased more than $100 million worth of products. With more than 15 years of experience in sales and marketing, Morgan was instrumental in establishing a partnership with Hyundai Motor America and Quicken Loans to provide BoostUp users with added savings via a dollar-for-dollar matching incentive up to $500 on new car purchases and $750 to apply toward closing fees on a home financed through Quicken.
Ani Rangarajan
Ani Rangarajan
Ani Rangarajan is a Chicago-based entrepreneur and co-founder and COO of ReaLync. He is on a mission to bring you real estate in real time on a global scale. Prior to founding ReaLync, Rangarajan was a management consultant at Accenture, specializing in operations, process improvement, corporate strategy and HR. He studied industrial engineering/business at Northwestern University, where he worked on his first startup, Chimu Solutions, with NU professors.
Justin Rosenthal
Justin Rosenthal
Justin Rosenthal is vice president of digital marketing at Housefax, which offers homebuyers, sellers and real estate professionals due diligence tools to aide in the process of buying or selling a home. With over 15 years of marketing and engineering experience, Rosenthal has a proven track record for growing audiences, engagement and revenue. He fuels digital innovation by conceptualizing, testing and executing integrated digital strategies. Rosenthal received his master’s in social sciences and statistics from the University of Chicago.
Riti Verma
Riti Verma
Riti Verma is founder and president of RankMyAgent, an online platform that connects real estate professionals and brokers to consumers by providing unprecedented customization of the real estate experience. By leveraging the power of online reviews, RankMyAgent is a high-performance tool for savvy agents looking to strengthen relationships, amplify their personal brand and establish trust. As an agent herself, Verma holds keen insight into the changing landscape of the real estate community.
