No matter what part of the real estate life cycle you or your company is in, any improvement in user experience must start at the very beginning: what is the current user experience, where are the friction points and how can we eliminate them?
Corporates, market leaders and innovators must understand their own expertise, target market and core competencies to work out where these frictions lie. Only then can they find a start-up that eliminates those frictions for them.
This leads me to the three simple pieces of advice that everyone in real estate should remember when trying to work with scarcely resourced start-ups and small companies.
Find out how fast you can move, as soon as possible
I have seen on countless occasions in my past lives running co-working campuses and in many different industries how start-ups can die a slow and painful death at the hands of corporates who got entangled in their own bureaucracy. After months, or sometimes years, of discussions, time moves on and they end up never buying the start-up’s product after all. This creates big problems for the firm and can often lead it to fail.
Ask yourself the big questions early on
Do you really understand the start-up’s product? If so, is this a product your company really needs? If yes, keep going; if not, stop wasting the start-up’s time as soon as possible. Window shopping is bad etiquette.
Next question: if the product is something you need, do you have a budget for it? If not, can you create a budget for it? If yes, keep going. If no, once again, stop wasting the start-up’s time.
Next up, who do you need in the room with you to get signoff, and can you get them all in the room together in one of your first meetings with the start-upr? (By the way, if you can do this, you are a superstar).
Once all of these questions have been answered and you have either set the start-up free to pursue other opportunities or you have identified a path towards a working relationship, the next new pilot product relationship should be easier over time until a proper due diligence and tech product process has been built internally.
More questions then arise; how long will that take? What due diligence needs to be done? And so it goes on…
Be Transparent
Be honest to the start-up company about your time line. Keep the company up to date. Even if a two-month lead in looks like it will take seven, be respectful and keep up to date with the company, even if it’s only a quick email every week or two to keep it in the loop.
If you are finding solutions to problems in your business, doing your homework internally by getting the right people and the right processes in place before engaging the seller and by being transparent with time lines, contract changes, budget changes and anything else that could reflect the time line, you are on the best path to creating meaningful long-term relationships with start-up businesses that will ultimately make you more innovative.
Vanessa Lee Butz, founder, District Technologies
