Homebot, a digital tool that agents and lenders can use to help homeowners manage their housing wealth, was chosen among 10 real estate tech startups to receive $25,000 at Realogy’s sixth annual FWD Innovation Summit at its Madison, New Jersey headquarters on Wednesday.
Startups spent the morning giving a panel of judges and representatives from Realogy’s portfolio of brands a 15-minute pitch and question and answer segment. Ultimately the judges and audience chose the three finalists: Homebot, Disclosures.io and SHYFT. The audience – made up of Realogy representatives – chose Homebot, after some technical glitches caused the vote to take place by paper ballot.
“It’s a tool that agents and lenders can give to their clients to empower them to build wealth with the largest asset they’ll ever own,” said Ernie Graham, founder and CEO of Homebot.
Homebot
In addition to the $25,000 cash prize, the winning company receives placement in the ZapStoreSM, an app and service marketplace that is integrated within Realogy’s proprietary technology platform.
“We’re only going to build certain things,” Ryan Schneider, Realogy’s CEO and president said. “There’s a whole bigger world out there of smarter people than me thinking about technology and you represent them. So our goal is whether we build it, whether we buy it, or whether we partner with it, to actually deliver the best technology we can to make our agents successful to make our franchisees successful.”
The 10 finalists that were chosen to present, were:
- Amarki, a Texas-based digital marketing startup with a suite of tools for real estate franchises, brokers, teams and agents.
- ByteGain, an artificial intelligence-powered predictive analytics and customer engagement tool from a Silicon Valley startup.
- Disclosures.io, a negotiation management tool from a San Francisco startup that boasts the ability to “take the guesswork out of receiving offers.”
- Evabot, a Silicon-Valley based gift service that helps companies create personalized and branded gift packages.
- Homebot, a Denver-based software startup offering a tool for agents that helps their clients build and manage wealth, resulting in more repeat and referral lead opportunities.
- Iovox, a communication analytics company with call-tracking technology that’s based in San Francisco in the U.S. but has offices in London, Paris and Sydney.
- RealKey, a platform to manage transactions and originate mortgages in a unified portal from a San Francisco startup.
- SHYFT, a San Francisco and Serbian-based moving and relocation software company.
- Sisu, a Salt Lake City-based startup that offers an agent training and development platform.
- TourZazz, a Texas-based property tour app that allows agents to collect feedback and facilitates communication between buyers, sellers and agents.
