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After years away from proptech, Spacio founder Melissa Kwan is back in business.
The technology entrepreneur has inked a deal with The National Association of Realtors’ REACH Program on behalf of her latest venture, eWebinar, an automated webinar platform that combines prerecorded video with live, dynamic interactions.
The REACH program is a technology accelerator for the real estate industry. It selects a “class” of young or startup companies each year to financially and operationally support during early, key growth phases.
Its 2022 class includes Courted, Fractional, Inspectify, leadPops, PLACE, Perchwell, Reggora and Revive.
Melissa Kwan
While not specifically for real estate, eWebinar’s functionality and Kwan’s expertise overlap clearly with the industry’s digital evolution.
“I’m particularly excited to partner with REACH to help their portfolio companies solve the exact problem that eWebinar was created to solve,” Kwan said in a statement. “With eWebinar, no one ever has to deliver the same webinar twice.”
NAR selected eWebinar to help make training programs and web-video content easier to develop and replicate. The software will help the organization “scale agent onboarding and training by automating the tedious task of doing the same webinar over and over again,” a statement reads.
Kwan launched eWebinar in 2019, demonstrating remarkable prescience prior to a pandemic that would push so much of the industry into online business.
The company gained significant traction in the last 18 months especially, as Kwan’s team aimed at real estate professionals for the advantages the software provides in conducting online events, such as recorded new buyer seminars, agent onboarding, sales training and even neighborhood tours, among other uses.
Once a webinar is created within the product, it can be leveraged as an ongoing event, ideal for helping agents learn new software products or to mentor sales teams.
“In addition, attendance rates for live webinars are often low – especially in the real estate industry, where agents are independent contractors with unpredictable schedules. Webinar replays simply don’t offer the same quality or engagement,” eWebinar stated.
Custom elements can be added to each scheduled webinar, as can a live chat, and the software will launch and conduct the event with little manual intervention. To some extent, agents and sales leaders can be two places at once.
Also, eWebinars can be watched at any time, providing target audiences with the flexibility to watch a “personalized live event” out from under the schedule of the content provider.
Second Century Ventures is a primary backer of the REACH initiative. Its managing partner Tyler Thompson said in a statement, its partnership with Kwan will help blossoming proptechs grow faster.
“We are excited to work with Melissa and the team at eWebinar to introduce their intuitive, time-saving solution to our newest portfolio companies,” Thompson said. “With multiple past REACH program participants already leveraging the platform, we are confident eWebinar will be an impactful tool for our incoming cohort.”
Kwan launched sold Spacio, a software solution to better monetize open houses. It was acquired by HomeSpotter, in 2019, which was then absorbed by Lone Wolf Technologies, in 2021, as part of its recent roll up of smaller technology companies.
Kwan has smartly leveraged her time in real estate to power eWebinar’s early growth, installing it within a number of former REACH participants, such as RealScout, BombBomb, Adwerx, zavvie, ActivePipe and immoviewer.
“The real estate industry is near and dear to my heart,” Kwan said. “I’m so excited to help REACH’s companies grow by showing them that they can do so much more with so much less.”
