Today's Entrepreneur: Jesse Friedman

Diggsy.com

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on September 7, 2012

***Attention Judges - LIVE DEMO INSTRUCTIONS CLICK HERE***

Demo/About Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-7EdkEqh5k&feature=youtu.be

Description:

Diggsy.com will take real estate search into a new direction.  Diggsy.com will revolutionize search by giving people the ability to find homes that not only match their basic home criteria but more importantly match their tastes and lifestyle.

We constantly analyze user search behavior to provide users with search results unique to the individual. When a search results set contains a property that perfectly matches their search behavior, we promote it by making it more prominent. Similar to how Google finds more relevant search results by analyzing your search behavior. The addition of personalization and property recommendation has never before been attempted in the for sale real estate market. This is not only unique but can help home searchers tremendously to find their next property.

Novelty/Innovation

1.  Does this product/service solve a clear market problem? 

Finding the perfect home is a long, time-consuming process especially for first time home buyers. Most people do not know what they are looking for initially so they sift through hundreds of properties every day. Each day, looking at the same ones over and over. In addition, users generally choose not to work with real estate professionals until later on in the process so they do not have any initial guidance.

By analyzing search behavior and connecting to users social profiles, we can see what home styles and features people prefer and promote properties that better match this unique set of data. We can then show the user different statistics about their search behavior so they better understand what they have been looking at, which in turn should help them identify what they should look for. 

A real estate agent suggests homes to their clients based on properties they like and dislike, they analyze their personal style and other characteristics. We are doing the same thing.

2. Is it a new and novel approach to solve a problem? 

Analyzing search behavior and social integration to provide users with personalized home suggestions is an approach never before taken. The internet is turning personal and Diggsy is at the forefront of personalizing real estate search.

3. Is there enough differentiation that gives this idea a fighting chance against competitors?

There is some major competition in the industry but the niche is starting to blur together. Everyone is now offering the same functionality. Diggsy.com aims to break through with something that is not only fresh and unique but ultimately helpful to the consumer as well. Everything from our user interface to our property suggestions are different and we are not going to stop there. We have plenty of plans to build on our platform, each differencing us from the competition in novel ways. 

Market opportunity

1. Is the market a big macro opportunity?

The real estate niche is huge. Nearly 300 million visitors a month. There is more than enough room for a new major player and the field is ripe for disruption. There is a wealth of new sites focusing on rentals and apartments, while Diggsy.com powers the real estate market as a whole including "for sale" listings.

2. Is there a prototype and has it already received some initial traction?

You can see a demo using the instructions below or viewing our video demo. We have some initial major press interest for when we are ready to launch. Our current live site gets significant traffic and has received industry praise and press. 

3. Is this just a feature or a service?

Personalization will be at the core of our system, it is not just another feature. Everything will be built on top of this. By analyzing search behavior and social integration, we not only will be able to provide personalized recommendations but we will be able to use this data for other aspects of the site as well such as highly targeted advertising among other things. Think Pandora and Flipboard, these companies revolve around personalization. Sure you can change the radio station but why not have the perfect one? You can go find your news or you can have the news come to you. With Diggsy, we will deliver users their perfect home. They give the user a feeling that these systems were built for them. Diggsy.com aims to do just that.

4. Go-To-Market Strategy:

We currently have good press relationships who are ready for our launch. Campaigns will be created for areas of the site that are feed monetized with definable ROI. 

Diggsy.com will be offering users a different way to search for real estate. Traditional search follows the criteria set forth by the user. This results in an overwhelming amount of results. We aim to take this to another level by tying in to users social profiles and analyzing their search behavior to discover their personal style and taste to deliver a more unique set of search resutls. We believe by cutting out much of the clutter and unneccesary information presented by competitor sites and just focusing in on the consumer needs, we will become a major player in the real estate search niche. 

There are many avenues for monetization for Diggsy.com

1. Display Advertising: At the easiest and most basic level is display advertising. The beauty of National real estate is that we can target hyper locally for advertisers, which is in huge demand

2. Agent Upgrades: We will be offering agents and brokerages the opportunity to sponsor geographic areas and increasing their exposure.

3. Feed Sponsorships: Various data providers pay for placement on the site to generate leads; foreclosure.com, apartment rental sites and more.

4. Mortgage Sponsorships: We currently have a mortgage partner that we provide mortgage leads to.

Users will be generated through a variety of methods. Organic search traffic will be a large focus in addition to ppc traffic and media campaigns specifically targetted to monetized feed based pages with a specific and identifiable ROI such as rentals and foreclosures.  

Questions and Answers

 1. Where do we get our data?

We currently have nearly 2 million active properties, almost 75% of all active properties in the US, in our database that come straight from real estate agents and brokers through various feeds. We will be adding nearly 1 million more in the next month. In addition, we will be opening up our system to allow individual users, agents and brokers to upload their own properties.

*****Attention Judges - DEMO INSTRUCTIONS*****

Demo Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-7EdkEqh5k&feature=youtu.be

Or try for yourself:

Please go to http://diggsy.com/vator
*note: please use chrome/firefox for best performance 

Please note that this is not public and we are still working on this, although this should give you a good idea of where we are headed. As you search and look at properties, we will eventually have enough data to start showing you promoted properties which will you see as bigger properties. It may take 6-12 property views and/or a few minutes of searching to build enough of a profile to show personalized results. When we have the facebook connection completed, personalized results will show immediately. 

We have a profile set up if you just want to login and start playing with a profile that has already been built up enough to start showing personalized properties.

1. Login to Diggsy.com with the following credentials:
username: vatortv@diggsy.com
password: vatortv 

2. Go to http://diggsy.com/vator

Jesse Friedman

Joined Vator on September 7, 2012