Real Time Agent

So, I'd known Dan since 2009. We'd done a bunch of work together and travelled a bit in Japan too.

At the time, I was running Joan, and one day Dan walks in with this other guy who is in a suit and is like, "how would you design an iPad app to get data into it as quickly as possible?"

So, we obviously want to know what kind of data, when, who is using it and why do they want to do this? And who is this guy in a suit?

The guy in the suit was Gus, his co-founder and at the time, full time real estate agent.

They went on to describe how broken and out-of-date the real estate industry was. At weekend auctions, they described the a role called 'the penciller' whose job it was to write down the bids that were coming in from the crowd on a piece of paper so they auctioneer had a record of how much had been bid and in what order.

They wanted to digitise that process with an iPad app that could recognise handwriting in real time and then share the inputs with their office back at home base.

We said, "sure" and made a prototype for them.

A few years later, Dan and Gus sold their company to Australia's second largest property marketplace.

It is an incredible story of dedication, product execution, vision and grit. One day, Dan and I will record a conversation about it.

realtimeagent.com.au