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Yesterday I learned some vital things about how to position and promote our service to our target market. I was particularly impressed with Scott Gallacher from BSkyB - his really direct and straightforward approach is what we need to adopt. He made a great comment that I think will stick with me which was "Marketing is the thing you do when you cannot have a conversation."
The lunch lecture yesterday was totally amazing, with Martin Varsavsky giving us a very entertaining insight into the mind of a serial entrepreneur. Martin was funny, sincere and mostly inspirational. Great quote #2 from yesterday was Martin saying that "I never wanted to save. I just wanted to make money faster than I could spend it".
Yesterday was a little more relaxed, but lessons were equally valuable as day 1.
t:M
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It was a whirlwind of a day with each team giving their 5 min pitch, a panel discussion with the likes of Niklas Zennstrom (who I got the chance to discuss our idea with at lunch), and an intensive mentoring session that last all afternoon where we were able to meet and discuss our ideas, passions and needs with top class investors/mentors.
My feeling about the day is just shell-shock. I cannot believe how much you can learn in such a short space of time. For me a highlight was the discussion with Pete S, a YCombinator graduate whose company is nearing launch. He was able to give us the view from inside the process and some great pointers about what to expect from something like Seedcamp.
I am blown away by the quality, talent, ideas and drive I saw today. We have some tough competition, but I knew that before today. We are just happy to be part of this amazing process. Roll on Tuesday...
t:M
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Well it starts tomorrow morning - Seedcamp - a crash course in make or break! I'm sitting in Helsinki Vantaa airport at the moment waiting for my flight and have a feeling that I should be doing something, but I am not sure what ;)
We have delivered our presentation for tomorrow morning to Reshma at Seedcamp and I guess I could go through that again - although to be honest I think that I need to work out how to fit everything into the 5 min presentation we give in the morning.
We are also looking forward to being in such celebrity company over the next 5 days. Some of the people we will meet are responsible for some of the most influencial web disrupters ever and we get to talk with them face-to-face...it is going to be hieno.
So, what is the reason for doing this? We want Reavia to launch as the quality service we always imagined. It is already shaping up very nicely, but I think that we can get some important do's and don't do's from the people we are going to meet this week. I know we have a solid idea of what Reavia is and will do, but I also know that at the end of this week the business idea will be sharper, more focused and hopefully will a little bit more funding. Bring it on!
I will blog each day from Seedcamp, so check-in for more from the inside.
t:M
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Well, now it is out in the open. The Seedcamp finalists are announced and it is really true...we are really going seedcamping next week! The FT ran a short article and confirmed that they will be blogging and vblogging during the week-long event.
We have been tuning the site and adding some of the finishing touches to the beta version. I think we will almost be done by next week, but we press on to make sure that we show what 6 years of effort can really produce....boy this is exciting...;)
Check out www.seedcamp.com for the latest or have a read at http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2007/08/seedcamp.html#more
t:M
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I am delighted to announce that Reavia has been selected as one of the finalists for Seedcamp 2007. For those not familiar with Seedcamp, it is a Europe-wide search for the brightest and best business prospects, and a catalyst for the next generation of entrepreneurs. The "prize" is the offer to the best 5 propects of €50K of funding and 3 months of intensive coaching to bring their ideas to market.
Both Wole and I feel it is perhaps the most exciting thing to happen in our period of working together, and it is a great validation of our efforts at keeping the faith. We were really pleased to be selected as one of the 20 finalists from the 268 companies that entered. We are now going to concentrate our efforts on soaking in the wisdom during the 5 day camp in the London in 2 weeks time and making sure that Reavia is one of the last 5.
Whatever happens, this is going to be a great experience and I am really, really looking forward to it.
t:M
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I think now you need to see what we have been working on. We are still in the pre-beta phase, but I would like you to get a feel for how the application will look and what it will do.
Portfolio View
Here we have the property portfolio view, with each of the properties displayed individually. From here you can jump to the lease, drill into the map, look at the performance charts on the right or share this portfolio with a trusted partner.
You can also see the tag cloud that we have just implemented in the
bottom right. This lets you jump to a list of the items in the
portfolio with those tags. I am actually suprised how powerful the tag
cloud is for seeing what is in the portfolio.
There are many more features that I will highlight over the coming days to give you a flavour of just how different Reavia is from anything else on the market today.
t:M
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We got an update to the alpha version again, and the changes are amazing. Most of the core functionality is in place, but now it seems we have to look at the navigation and usability issues again. I guess it is always the way, that you have to look at everything with fresh eyes from time to time.
The bits I really like are the way it feels like an application, not a website. This definitely makes for a better user experience. I know that we are a little behind schedule, but I think it is going to be worth it. We need to iron out a few things - but the heart is beating.
To recap - we are launching a portfolio collaboration site. This means you can create a real estate portfolio and share it with whom ever you like. The site has automated event management, analysis and reporting and provides the best asset management experience possible. You are going to love it.
t:M
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Well it is summer in Finland, and that means sun, lakes, mökki (summer cottage) and sauna. It also means a bit of time to relax and read, and I recently read a book that was introduced to me by my friend Sampo called “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. I know that this book has been around for a number of years, and that Sampo had really taken the principles to heart, but I had just not got round to reading it. I am glad I did though….as it has help me to refine what Collins calls the “Hedgehog Concept” for Reavia. It is based on the principle that the “fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one BIG thing”. This means you need to discover the one BIG thing that will power your organisation from a good company into a great company. To do this you need to answer three questions as follows:
- What CAN you be best at in the world?
- What are you passionate about?
- What is the denominator of your economic engine?
Well, for Reavia the answers are really clear now (after much thought, of course!):
- We can be the best at providing easy to use and affordable internet-based asset management systems
- We are passionate about enabling change in the real estate industry and ensuring it makes the best possible use of technology. We are also determined to be the comet that kills the dinosaurs that still roam the systems landscape in the real estate industry.
- Our denominator is profit per property. This means we need to focus on helping our clients to store as many properties possible in our service and provide utility and facilities that generate value for them and their trusted community of advisors and partners.
While on the face of it seems easy to answer these questions, when you really start to think about them it leads to realise all the things you should not be doing, as well as the things you should be. Now we have the three circles of our hedgehog concept and we have a very clear forward view of where we are going. If you do not have a hedgehog, you need to get one.
t:M
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Just spent two days in London with a client talking about how we will extend our offering to let them manage their portfolio of public/private partnership assets. Really interesting case, as we will be using the core of Reavia and adding a neat performance management and payment mechanism service. This will allow them to streamline their operations and provide wider access to higher quality information about their portfolio to their tenants, their partners, their funders and the directors.
The wonderful thing about the way we are building Reavia is the ability to take on a challenge like this and know that we are going to produce a Class A service for our clients – because we have designed it to be modular, extendible and very configurable. I know that we are going to have many more of these types of client, and I figure it is going to become an interesting market segment.
Our programmers have launched another alpha version, with some new bits added. There is still a lot to do – and a lot of work other than the programming – but step-by-step it is getting closer to launch. Now I have to dedicate my time to helping the guys put the finishing touches for the beta and finalise some of the details. I have to admit that this is not my strong point, but I figure that I can only get better at it.
t:M
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I met with the programming team again late last week and got a tour of some of the new features they have added, including a very cool way of handling the property blogs and giving each property their own dedicated folder structure automatically. The thing that constantly amazes me is how we can make this service look so simple at the front, but give it so much depth underneath.
There are lots of “hidden” things, like the fact that you never need to geocode a property, it happens automatically, you do not need to tell the system which events to remember, it does it automatically and you do not need to worry about how complex a lease structure can be – because Reavia delivers the most important information to you first. These are the types of usability issues that I have always known need to be addressed. The system should take care of you, not the other way around.
I also gave sight of the demo version to a close friend of ours, and his reaction was “HMMMM…maybe I will wait for the next version…” – he is right of course, because it is still work in progress – but I can see the vision appearing that Wole and I have held for many years and I know it is going to blow his tiny socks off!
The biggest issues have been how to handle the keeping true to the PISCES schema. Difficult and definitely a challenge for the programmers (keep going Pasi, you are doing a great job ;) ) but I know it is going to be worthwhile. So now I just wait for the next alpha version from the guys and hope that our friend can be patient a little longer.
t:M
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I think that the process of getting people to know about your site is harder than I thought. I guess it works on the “3-times” rule. This goes that you have to send your press release, blog entry, mailer to contacts at least three times before they will take you seriously. This means I have two more rounds before I begin to worry. On the positive side, the Google Analytics are already showing interest from Israel and South Africa, so someone is watching!
I had the privilege of seeing what the guys have done to date and I am really excited. The main structure of the site is in place and there are some wonderful little bits of functionality that will really make it easy to use the site. Simple things like the data loading in the background to ensure that you do not have to wait for the screen to refresh to see updated information. I love that. Another neat trick is the combination of both simple and more detailed views in a single page…it is a beautiful solution by the guys and I am really impressed with the amount of thought going into the build. So, we are now counting the first alpha release in days, so look out for it soon. There are still some bits to build, such as the calendar and the report writer, but they will be there in time. Until then there is plenty to test, trial and tweak – lots of exciting work ahead I guess.
Remember to sign up to be one of the first to see the first release of Reavia. We already have some important people on our list, so join them and see what will change the real estate industry.
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The whole concept of Reavia is to maximise the use of knowledge about a portfolio of assets by connecting people together. It is not about changing the way the industry works, it is about giving it a technological boost. I think we now have a good balance in place in the application. I use my friend Paul as another acid test on this point. He is a strong advocate that technology should be about making his job easier, not harder. We had a long chat on this subject this week, specifically about how document management systems seem to get it wrong time and time again, by thinking that people actually work the same way as a document management system. Paul's message, keep it simple, don't change the way that people work – just add the bits that they miss and the glue to make it work seamlessly.
So now we are getting close to finalising the use of the PISCES format. Clearly, as a interchange format, it was never designed to be the underlying schema for a complete system, but with some work it seems we have cracked it. We now have an approach that I believe will be easy to implement and allow us to maintain strict compliance with the standard. It seems that step-by-step we are getting there.
t:M
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Well I received the SCRUM schedule from our super-talented development team in Helsinki this afternoon, and I have to say that I am really excited about what we are going to complete this week. The work to create our API is well underway, and this is going to be the beating heart of the system. I have known for a long time that we need to make this as open a system as possible, so by providing a way for other developers to create mini-apps based on our core system, we are really to change the way real estate systems have been developed and deployed.
We have finalised the look and feel now as well, and I have to say that the reactions to it so far have been very positive. My acid test is allows my wife, Tarja. For her a computer application has to be understandable the first time she sees it, so her “that looks quite simple” comment was a shot in the arm for us. It is definitely a less is more approach to design.
We also are receiving interest from potential investors, and this is also a confidence boost. Both Wole and I have known for a long time that we were on to something big, but the feelings we have at the moment are a mix of excitement, fear and wonder. We have been playing the “what-ifs” over and over in our minds, but now we are at the startline of the end of the beginning. Its been a bloody long way from the dressing room to here, but I have to say that right now I would not be anywhere else.
t:M
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Well our journey to this point has been a long and winding road, but I am now really happy to say that reavia.com is becoming a reality. Wole and I started this adventure in 2000, working together on a project to develop a web-based property information management system.
We had a clear vision then that the industry needed to harness the power of the internet, and in many ways it has. There are still things that have been missed though, most importantly the fact that the industry is a social industry. It relies on people speaking to people and sharing facts, information and tidbits about what is going on and where the deals are happening. This is where we saw potential in 2000, and the potential is still there in 2007. That’s why we have created Reavia – to help the industry change by introducing technology that supports the way it works – not by trying to change the industry!
We are nearing the completion of our first release of the service, and will be opening it up to a small group of trusted people to test, try, break and generally suggest what is good and what is bad. We started with a series of principles that have helped us to craft the product these were:
- the industry is a social industry – support the way the industry works – do not try to change the way it works
- real estate is permanent but changes slowly – design for a conservative industry
- systems in property tend to support financial processes – design for property people not accountants
- there are few digital standards in the real estate industry – design with standards and let the users improve them
- old, fat and ugly – the “leading” property management systems seem to exhibit the characteristics that are connected with the wealth they generate for themselves, therefore make the service youthful, agile and beautiful – experience, knowledge and design are the keys to success
We just want to create a service that the industry wants to use because it makes everyone’s life easier. That’s what we are working towards and hope that you can join us on the remainder of the journey to our first release.
t:M
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