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Zillow’s Spencer Rascoff launches AI personal assistant heyLibby

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Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff’s 75 & Sunny Labs has launched its latest product, a free artificial intelligence-powered personal assistant called heyLibby. HeyLibby takes on the work of engaging and gathering important information from leads, creating project summaries based on leads’ needs and scheduling meetings with qualified leads through integrations with users’ preferred customer or transaction management platforms.

Spencer Rascoff

“In the world of small business, whoever responds first to a new client inquiry is usually the winner,” Rascoff said in a prepared statement on Thursday. “Study after study has shown that immediate engagement with a prospective client results in exponentially higher rates of qualified leads.”

“Waiting just one hour to respond can easily result in a lead going cold,” he added. “HeyLibby ensures that anyone, regardless of their schedule, can meaningfully respond to potential customers who discover them on social media or their website.”

Available to professionals in all industries, heyLibby users can set up their accounts in less than five minutes.

To get started, users must provide their name and choose which service they provide, such as event planning, makeup artistry, photography, alien abduction (it’s actually an option on the site!) or real estate services. From there, users will be asked to upload a profile picture, a link to their company’s website and social media pages and craft a custom client greeting for heyLibby to use.

The next step of the onboarding process requires users to provide basic information about themselves and their services, including a brief biography, location, availability and pricing. Users can also edit the preloaded questions Libby asks leads. For real estate agents, the preloaded questions include:

  • Are you looking to buy or sell a home?
  • If they’re looking to buy: Where are you looking to buy?
  • If they’re looking to buy: What is your budget?
  • If they’re looking to buy: Have you been pre-approved?
  • If they’re looking to sell: Where is the home?
  • If they’re looking to sell: How soon do you want to sell the home?

Lastly, users will create their custom heyLibby link and embed code and choose their notification settings. Libby can notify users of new leads via email, text, or both and notify them of all leads or only the leads that provide contact information.

Anna Rodriguez

A handful of premium features can only be unlocked by making at least three referrals to Libby. The features include tailoring Libby’s personality to a professional, jokey, enthusiastic or laid-back tone and integrating your current CRM through Zapier. If a user doesn’t have a Zapier account, they’ll have to create one before taking advantage of heyLibby’s integration feature.

HeyLibby co-founder and former Zillow engineering executive Anna Rodriguez said the platform is an easy, cost-effective way for businesses to capture and convert leads in a hyper-competitive business environment. She said she, Rascoff and third co-founder Tony Small, who’s also a former Zillow exec, believe the platform provides an overall “better experience” for owners and customers.

“HeyLibby makes it easy for any small business to up their game and provide immediate service to their potential customers, regardless of their technological know-how,” she said. “Within minutes, a business can go from simply having a one-way website or social media presence to having a two-way dialogue with customers yielding qualified leads or appointments. It is a better experience for customers and a better way for businesses to convert leads.”

HeyLibby is the latest product of Rascoff’s 75 & Sunny, which includes 75 & Sunny Ventures and 75 & Sunny Labs. The Venture segment invests in 20 to 30 startups per year and counts EasyKnock, FlyHomes, Luxury Presence, Pacaso (which Rascoff co-founded), Side, Tomo and several other real estate companies as part of its current investment portfolio.

Meanwhile, the Labs segment partners with enterprising founders to launch 1 to 2 new companies per year, which include fractional homeownership platform Pacaso, news site dot.LA, streaming recommendation app Queue, foodie-centered social media app Recon Food and heyLibby.

Email Marian McPherson