The truth behind IPO and exits within the Real Estate industry. With Peter Gibbons and Jeffery Gray

In this episode of The Propcast, Louisa speaks with Peter Gibbons, MD of Openn Negotiation and Jeffery Gray, Founder and CEO of PROPIC about what it takes to exit and IPO a real estate company. They discuss how to set your company up to be IPO ready, how exciting it is to be in the Proptech sector right now, and how to maintain resilience when working in a Proptech startup.   Companies Mentioned: Openn Negotiation https://www.openn.com.au/  PROPIC https://www.propic.com.au/  REACH Australia https://nar-reach.com/  Domain Group https://www.domain.com.au/group/  Second Century Venues https://www.scv.vc/ National Association of Realtors https://www.nar.realtor/  MRI Group https://www.mrisoftware.com/ Fleet https://fleetspace.com/    Shout Outs Ash from ActivePipe (Ashley Farrugia) https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-farrugia-99bb0616/?originalSubdomain=au  MRI Group https://www.linkedin.com/company/mri-software-llc/    Key Insights From This Episode: Australia is quite advanced in terms of the technology we're using this vertical... there’s probably a contact every two or three months from potential investors, from the US. So they are clearly watching what's happening with technology in PropTech, in Australia – Jeffery Gray 80% of all consumer inquiries for real estate happen out of work hours. - Jeffery Gray   Forbes has estimated by 2025, 95% of all consumer interactions are going to be supported by AI technology. Residential real estate is the largest asset class in the word. And you look at it as a vertical, it is well behind any other consumer facing vertical, arguably in the world. - Jeffery Gray VC’s and investors in America are...scouring the word, looking for technology companies that are investing in artificial intelligence. It is the next generation of technology and that's why they're reaching out. - Jeffery Gray There's positives and negatives to being listed. For us it was overwhelmingly a positive on balance, particularly around securing the funding so that we don't need to worry about funding now in terms of our runway, but more importantly, we've got a very clear roadmap that needed funding to execute it. - Peter Gibbons To me real estate is that last great bastion. It is a great industry to be in, but there's so many areas for improvement, and that improvement is all about customer journey. So the buyer and seller journey, how do we make their lives easier? And the key conduit to that is help out the agents. - Peter Gibbons COVID was a bit of a wakeup call to maybe there are other ways of doing things that aren’t the traditional way that we've undertaken it. So agents have really embraced it from that perspective because a) they either had time on their hands to learn about new things, and b) they had to come up with solutions that they probably haven't thought of before. - Peter Gibbons     Keywords: proptech, AI, IPO, listing, public, exit, property, real estate, funding, VC, investors   About Our Guests: Peter Gibbons, Openn Negotiation https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-gibbons/?originalSubdomain=au  Peter Gibbons has extensive experience in property investment banking, property development and financing and technology development. He has held senior roles in some of the world’s largest investment banks, including Macquarie Bank, Bankers Trust and Deutsche Bank, as well as Board roles at Landcorp, the Western Australian Football Commission, Silver Chain, and Chairman of the Bethanie Group.   About Openn Negotiation Openn Negotiation is an Australian property technology company offering a proprietary cloud-based software platform to support real estate agents in selling property online with greater transparency. The Openn platform facilitates a negotiation process, featuring streamlined digital contracting and automated communication tools, which enhances a property transaction. The solution provides buyers with real-time feedback through their device on how much competition exists and where their price stands in the negotiation, resulting in an optimal sales outcome.   Jeffery Gray, PROPIC https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffery-gray-8b3216a/?originalSubdomain=au  Jeffery Gray the founder and CEO of Propic. He has extensive experience in property technology, data and AI. Jeffery was a former executive of Domain Group, Aristocrat, Lexis Nexis and numerous other data and technology companies. After a successful exit from a prior start up, he be came a Real Estate agent for a period, prior to joining Domain Group. As such has first hand experience with the pain points, challenges and opportunities that the Real Estate vertical has.   About PropicPropic is an Australian based data and AI company that delivers conversational AI and data solutions to residential real estate agents spanning, Sales, Property Management and Project Marketing, House and Land and Build to Rent Propic's conversational AI (Enliven AI) serves consumers 24/7 enabling its customers to scale with out people and in real time. ReVeal AI is a data platform that tracks every property and listing in australia, ingests customer data and its algorithms works out who has the highest propensity to transact in the future. The agent app tells and agent, who to call, when and most importantly why, all in natural language.   About Our Host Louisa Dickins https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisa-dickins-ab065392/?originalSubdomain=uk Louisa started her career in property working at a well-known estate agency in London. Realising her people skills, she moved over to Lloyd May to pursue a career in recruitment. She now is a Director at LMRE, who are a specialist recruitment firm driven by PropTech and recruitment professionals, and Louisa oversees their 5 core areas. Louisa co-founded LMRE and provides a constructive recruitment platform to the new disruptors in real estate. Louisa is also on the board of Directors at UK PropTech Association (UKPA).   About LMRE www.lmre.tech LMRE believe there is a better way to recruit. LMRE focus on a more comprehensive, client led focus delivering exceptional talent to the place at the time. They are passionate about the industry and passionate about people's careers. LMRE spend time with each client to become and an extension of the business, and their transparency and core values help them grow with the sector. LMRE simplify recruitment and innovate with our clients and evolve the people driven, PropTech community.