Theo K. Browne: Geek Estate Founding Member Spotlight: Seth Siegler from Hoverboard Labs

We’ve now published seven Geek Estate founding member interviews; Jennifer Kjellgren, Sep Niakan, Eileen Romito, Ryan Coon, Caroline Pinal, Joel Leslie, and David Marc Harris. The interviews are meant to give you a taste of current business priorities, products and trends to watch in 2018, and what they enjoy about being a Geek Estate mastermind member.

Our eighth interview is with Seth Siegler at Hoverboard Labs.

Without further ado…

What’s your most significant business focus for 2018?

My biggest focus is two fold this year. I’m looking to continue providing custom software and virtual cto services to some companies in our industry, but in my spare time, I’m working on a personal project called Hyperlead. I love the variety of working with clients and getting to help build or improve their products but it’s also exciting to be building something new from my own imagination for the first time in a little while. I keep my workday hours dedicated to client work but I’ve been able to sneak in some night and weekend time for Hyperlead. (even though we have a new baby!)

What real estate technology trend or product are your most excited about?

The trend that I’m most interested in watching right now is decidedly low tech. It’s the iBuyer movement and the reason it has my attention is because it solves a certain set of problems that I’ve always personally hated. I’ve always thought that the process of selling your old home before you shop for a new one is backwards to how most humans want to operate. When you sell a car, for instance, you find the one you want to buy before you sell your old one. Selling your current house first leaves you with precious little time (plus lots of stress) to find your next home and your choices are limited to whatever happens to be on the market during the time that your old house is in escrow, unless you’re planning to move to an interim rental house. The iBuyer systems enable people to find their next house and then sell the old one on-demand at that time. Sure the homeowner will pay a premium for that convenience but I think that’s going to be worth it to a lot of people. Plus the more iBuyers there are, the more they will have to pay for the houses because of competition between them. I’m watching it closely. The only thing I’m not sure I understand is amount of work is going into making the process so automated with AVM’s and doing it completely online. That seems a bit unnecessary to me. I would think that most people wouldn’t care if it took a little bit longer for a real person (like an agent) to visit the house to give them a price assessment and written offer.

What do you like about being a Geek Estate member?

I love the Geek Estate community because it’s a real collection of some of the smartest and most creative people in our industry. It’s so cool to see and join in to some of the high-level conversations without any of the typical noise that comes with other groups or gatherings in the real estate industry. The in-person meetup that we had in NYC the week of Inman Connect in January was really cool. It’s always really refreshing to learn about the various pockets of the real estate industry that I don’t get to experience on a day-to-day basis. I’m looking forward to the next one!

Thank you Seth for being a founding member!

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