Proptech panel: Lessons from Australia's Award-Winning Innovators
On 19 August 2026, founders and leaders behind some of Australia's most-awarded proptech companies came together for one hour to answer an all-important question: what does it take to build a proptech that wins?
In an exclusive Proptech Australia webinar, they discussed the challenges and the triumphs – no pitch decks, no product demos.
They talked about the problems that nearly broke them, the bets that paid off and the hard-earned lessons of taking a product from idea to market-ready at scale.
On the panel:
Josh Callaghan – Paypa Plane, Proptech Australia board director (host)
David Howell – CEO, Dynamic Methods / Forms Live
Rhys Rogers – Co-founder, Before You Buy
Martin Karafilis – Chief of Staff, Asseti
Johnny Siu – Co-founder & CEO, Vinny
The conversation was honest and insightful, covering:
What separates high-performing proptech businesses from the rest of the market
Emerging trends influencing the future of property, finance and technology
Opportunities for collaboration and innovation across the ecosystem
The biggest challenges and opportunities facing the industry
Lessons learned from building and scaling award-winning businesses
Transcript:
Josh Callaghan:
Today I am joined by a number of incredible proptech founders and business builders. But first, by way of introduction this is the Proptech Panel Webinar. The Proptech Association of Australia is Australia's peak body for proptech businesses, serving real estate, property, and construction. We have recently had, I think it was in July, early July, at The Ivy, we recently hosted our Proptech Awards our annual Proptech Awards. Another great event. Hundreds of people there celebrating the awesome stuff that happens in proptech, and the great ideas and businesses that are serving everyone in that proptech spectrum, from the large enterprise businesses that are, that are managing assets and dealing with large amounts of scale through to the individuals and how we support them through their journey of renting and buying property, and everything in between.
This year, there was 35 awards in the Proptech Awards. The panelists that I have with me today combine to make up 10 of those awards, so almost 30% of the awards given out on the night are represented around this panel which makes this a very relevant panel around I guess, starting to explore what is it that makes these proptechs and the things that they're doing interesting, what makes them leaders in their areas, and what learnings can we pull out of that for our own proptechs or our own ideas or businesses and organisations that we work in. So with that, I'll now go and introduce each of them very briefly.
We have David Howell from Dynamic Methods, Rhys Rogers from Before You Buy Martin Karafilis from Asseti, and Johnny Siu from Vinny. And I think the best way to start is, 'cause not all of you are gonna know exactly what their businesses do. Some of you may recognise some of these guys from around the industry. They have been kicking around in the industry for a little while, but may not have really understood where they sit or what they do. So the best thing to start with like any good proptech positioning, is an elevator pitch. And I'm gonna kick off. Dave, you are first on my list, so I'm gonna kick off with you for, I guess, the pitch on Forms Live, Dynamic Methods.
David Howell:
Thank you. I'm probably the oldest as well. It's been an interesting category. So Forms Live, we're, we're the forms engine behind Australian real estate. Whether it's through our independent product, Forms Live, or being a tech partner with some of the real estate institutes around Australia, we would serve the majority of real estate agents across the country in residential, commercial, and business-type forms. So if you need a compliant form, then you use our platform. We've been around for nearly 20 years which is kind of amazing. We're 100% bootstrapped, and while we're probably the oldest company here, we're probably, I'm gonna say we're probably one of the smallest as well.
So very, yeah, unusual position to be in, but what do you know, I'm still loving what we do.
Josh Callaghan:
Well, you challenged it.
David Howell:
Oh, really?
Josh Callaghan:
No.
David Howell:
But yeah so through the 20 years, we certainly know what it's like to bootstrap and yeah, we... This year was our biggest year of awards. Prior to this year, we'd only won one award in the 20 years. So-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
David Howell:
And this year we came away with three or four of them. So-
Josh Callaghan:
Yep
David Howell:
Yeah, we got there eventually.
Josh Callaghan:
Including the big one. You won the Established Proptech of the Year-
David Howell:
Yeah, we did
Josh Callaghan:
Which is a-
David Howell:
We did
Josh Callaghan:
Incredibly tough award. There is a lot of, there's a, yeah, there's a lot of really big names in that category, so to take that out is a huge honor.
David Howell:
Yeah. Very proud. Very proud of the team for doing that, especially over the last few years. Been a lot of fun, and yeah, we worked hard, so...
Josh Callaghan:
Perfect. Thank you very much, Dave. Over to Rhys.
Rhys Rogers:
Thanks, Josh. Yeah, Before You Buy, co-founded with my brother 11 years ago. Predominantly, the beginning is around that pain point of building and pest inspections, strata reports, where buyers can, you know, buy multiple reports, spending, you know, thousands of dollars, missing out on property. So we created a bit of a share cost model between buyers and sellers. That's inspa- expanded into kind of any type of buyer side due diligence in that, in that resi sales space. Yeah, last year, around 70,000 listings, around 125,000 buyers downloading those reports, and yeah, just continuing to focus down that path.
Josh Callaghan:
Awesome. Thanks, Rhys. And Johnny.
Johnny Siu:
Hi, guys. How's it going? I'm dialing in from London. Yeah. Johnny, co-founder and CEO of Vinny. We've built AI agents that works across the entire tenancy life cycle working with institutional owners and operators from leasing to property management, maintenance, anything that you hire people to do today and the repetitive admin that's involved. Yeah, we're the new kids on the block. We've been around for two and a half years, and then growing very quickly and internationally as well. So we're working with customers across, obviously, the UK Spain, Germany, France and Australia as well.
Josh Callaghan:
Very cool. And Martin.
Martin Karafilis:
Hey, guys. I'm Martin Karafilis, chief of staff at Asseti. It's the number one asset operations platform for commercial real estate portfolios. So in simple terms, we help enterprise property owners know the condition of every asset they own without actually having to walk the site. So VC-backed scale-up with a global presence. I'm based here in Sydney. Yeah.
Josh Callaghan:
Perfect, thank you. And worth noting, of the award winners, Asseti did take out the most gongs, with four gongs on the night. Um- And including two of the big ones, so Commercial Proptech of the Year and Scaleup Proptech of the Year, which is really cool. And you can see all of the other category wins and all that sort of stuff of these, this group, as well as all the other groups or all the other teams that were that were award winners on the night, on our website at Proptech Australia. So let's kick off. I guess what I wanted to start with was maybe even just reflecting on those wins.
And we might start with you Martin, since since, you know, you had, you'd gobbled up so many of them. But then we can have a bit of a conversation. I guess I'm interested to understand what did the award recognition do internally in terms of, you know, did some of those areas help to, I guess, understand or justify product market fit or certain market hypotheses that you had, or did it help to sort of, you know, make sense of the competition or, you know... T- tell me a bit about what that award did for you guys internally in the way you're thinking about your product and go to market.
Martin Karafilis:
Yeah. I think a big thing is, like any innovative company is already living in the future. So I look at the progression of the company and what we've gone through over the last couple of years. Yeah, we're actually lucky enough to go through that process and win awards over multiple years. And it's not just this year itself that sort of brings that to life for the company, it's actually seeing that progression over the years. And I think that's, when you're living so far in the future and you're bringing innovative technologies to a new market, it's like how are we starting to get that adoption? How are we starting to even just educate the market when we look at, you know, features like the AI features and how we're actually helping those portfolio managers?
It's like there's a whole new world that we're trying to get out there, and there's a piece of technology and value that we're trying to give. So for me, it's about just seeing that progression, and I think the company as well internally gets to see that, and they get to, you know, really get to see what they're building and say, "Hey, you know what? This is working." And there's that little bit of just reassurance internally of saying, "Hey, like, you know, we can, we can keep doing this and we can keep building this to something, you know, absolutely huge."
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah, that's right. Yes. So it makes it, makes it all worthwhile. People know they're, they're fighting for a bigger purpose. What about the rest of the panelists? How did the-
Rhys Rogers:
I-
Josh Callaghan:
How did the award wins sort of help validate something internally or what? Yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
Well I can jump in. The... Yeah, one of our awards around Data Proptech of the Year. We certainly, it was interesting, you know, I don't know, like most businesses, maybe not the ones who are two years old, but 11 years ago when we started it, we thought, oh, surely the data of, you know, either people downloading these reports or data within the reports is gonna be of interest at some point in time, and be able to provide insights, better insights to buyers and sellers, and also potentially data partners. I remember very early on meeting with what was it? CoreLogic at the time, and they said, "Look, you're, you're just too small.
It's not interesting until you get above 50,000 listings a year."
Josh Callaghan:
Ooh.
Rhys Rogers:
Which we managed over the last few years. So now we are at a size where it does become commercially interesting, and this award was kind of validation, I guess, of that 11-year journey to get to that point.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah. Cool. Johnny?
Johnny Siu:
Yeah. For us, having launched in Australia, I'd say six, seven months ago, it just gave us the credibility very quickly. It was our first award in foreign soil, and so being able to build that trust and network the inbound leads that came in to be recognised so quickly as well has done, has been really great for the business.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah. Awesome. And Dave?
David Howell:
Well, we actually weren't going to s- even submit for the awards this year. We were, we were debating about it internally. We're like, "no, we won't do it this year." And then I got overruled, and I was wrong. So I was glad I was wrong. And or maybe it's 'cause I didn't write them this time that we actually won. But but yeah, no, it was... Like I said, I'm very proud that we were Proptech of the Year, especially in the established category, and it's probably a little bit different to the startup crew who are, you know, looking for that product market fit and all those other bits and pieces.
We've been around for a long time. We know we've got product market fit, but it's good to know that we're still at the top of our game, I guess. And you know, still innovating and still pushing the limits, which is, which is what we wanna do.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah. I guess what I've heard is, you know, certainly Martin and Dave, I guess, you know, angling on the, it's sort of like validation for the team that we're doing the right sort of thing and Reese validation of the strategy. And Johnny with, you know, a bit different in terms of, you know, building that trust, entering a new market and that's, you know, the role or place for awards. When you think about, I guess, the way in which, you know, internally you go about actually leveraging those awards, is there any, did any of you do something sort of fun with the team or a, or a, or an interesting way of sort of launching that out to market having won the awards?
Like I know on the night, SETI were pretty rowdy, so I know you guys probably had a fair bit of fun after the awards. But but yeah. An- anything sort of fun or interesting that, you know, you did differently this year with the award wins?
Martin Karafilis:
I think the night itself-
David Howell:
Well, we-
Martin Karafilis:
I definitely say the night itself was amazing. I think you know, we're super stoked to have a couple of our customers and the wider team there as well. You know, for us, you know, we absolutely got together and had a bit of fun to celebrate that. But you know, funny enough w- we actually got quite a lot of praise from customers and the market itself a- and a few different inbounds, which was which was super cool. So you know, a bit of recognition from that side.
Josh Callaghan:
That's cool.
Rhys Rogers:
Yeah, we just you know, obviously celebrated the night for sure with the team. Glad we took a good team there. Well, I think we went none from four the year before, so it was a little bit of a fizzer for us. It's nice to get two. But then also we've got it in all our email signatures now.
Josh Callaghan:
Mm-hmm.
Rhys Rogers:
You know, obviously socials as well. So it gives, just gives a bit of credibility, you know, to market and also just internal marketing. You know, the team, you've, you know, like any business, after 11 years, you have your ups and downs. But you just gotta celebrate your wins along the way. So this was definitely one of them, which internally you know, everyone was just really proud of it.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Cool. Well, let's let's... We unpacked, I guess one of the interesting things that sits under all of your platforms is data. We might stumble into AI, but rest assured this is not another AI webinar. But data is, I guess, what is, what drives, you know, so much of what we do in terms of how we present information to our customers and all this sort of stuff, but also what enables our future product development and the things that we bring to market. I've got a couple aspects of data that I wanna unpack, but I might just start actually with, again, with ESET in...
And then, and then really, I guess I'm interested in your perspective on it, Martin, but then really interested for the others to add to it because you're, you've all been sort of dealing with the same thing. What are the components? We're all sitting on heaps of data. What are the components that actually make data, I guess, reliable for forecasting and for decision-making? Because, you know, there is, there is a broad, there's a- there's clearly a spectrum of data quality. There's clearly a spectrum of data relevance and there is a way in which, yeah, there's, there's gotta be some sort of ingredients or components that can make it actually useful in decision-making rather than just more noise and information.
So I might start with you, Martin, but I know everyone will have some views on that.
Martin Karafilis:
Yeah, I definitely think this is, this is, like, probably one of the biggest challenges of the industry. And n- you know, not just in property. This is a, across a whole different range of sectors. And I think, yeah, for us particularly it's all about sort of traceability and transparency. It's not just the outputs themselves. So, you know, you can have an amazing amount of data and you can sort of present these things, but actually having that traceability within that, and actually an understanding and sort of showcasing what that value add is to the customer, but how that's actually built is definitely one of those biggest things.
So especially if you look at the side of digestible data in a sense of if I'm the customer and just gathering a bunch of this and trying to make my own decisions that- that's a, that's a very, I guess, basic lens on that. But when you're starting to give outputs that are saying, "Hey, here's the action points that are required," and you're starting to actually take automated actions are based on this, that trust in that data really comes down to a traceability aspect and really making sure that the customer understands that. So, you know, I think, you know, that education piece is a really big piece, but also on the technical side, making sure that it is traceable and making sure that it is easily digestible so it can be trusted as well.
Josh Callaghan:
Mm-hmm.
Rhys Rogers:
We're slightly different, I guess. Josh, our approach to d- data, it's not so much for forecasting and decision-making. We're more consumer-facing product, and we just tweak and test and see what people, you know, constantly speaking to customers, agents, buyers, sellers, but then also our inspectors. So we've got a bit over 600, you know, building and pest strata, pool you know plumbing, electrical inspectors on our, on our marketplace. So how do we, you know, empower them with data to say, "Look, this is something that the best inspectors are doing is finding X, Y, Z." You know, or like the nudge, you know, for the inspector who doesn't get under the house too often.
We're like, "You know, you're getting under the house on 23% of inspections, while-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
The best inspectors are at 70, or you know, strata inspector, you're missing reports X% of the time. That's missing documents X% of the time. So kind of some nudge, behavioral nudges we're giving. But then also then back to the custom- you know, the customer. I guess we've got two. We've got kind of the agent and the, and the buy side, and just giving them stuff to, you know, information to make more informed decisions on whether it's buying or whether it's sometimes it's an agent having something to talk to a vendor about. You know, maybe price alignment might be a bit off because the building's got, you know, a $50,000 special levy or whatever it is.
Um-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
We're trying to smooth those conversations 'cause they are tricky for everyone. So that's, that's a big way we're using data.
Josh Callaghan:
Now that now that you're, I guess, also, you know, selling data or distributing data or under whatever, you know, arrangements that is, th- there must be, I guess, at some point you've, you've gone through some sort of strategy on the reliability of that data, I'm guessing at some point. And-
Rhys Rogers:
Mm-hmm
Josh Callaghan:
Can you talk to any of, any of, you know, what that looks like for BYB?
Rhys Rogers:
It looks like a lot of tech development. You know, as much as, you know, 'cause you can dump these PDF documents into ChatGPT and you can whatever and it spits something out.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
And we, and we know buyers of our reports do dump, you know, building and pest into ChatGPT and say, "Tell me about this."
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
And we've done it, and we're like, "Whoa, it is so confidently saying the wrong thing." you know and then you point it out-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
And it goes, "Oh, I don't know why I've always got an American accent when I, when ChatGPT, ChatBYB talks back.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
Oh, sorry. Yeah, you're, you're right. Thanks for pointing that out.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah. That's right.
Rhys Rogers:
And then it goes and does this next thing, and I'm like- Wow.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
Someone could have made a really bad decision based on that. So-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
We yeah, we very much have all our data in a, in a, in a lake and make sure it's only saying things that are true. And so yeah, that's, that's it's, it's just a lot of take time. Like, you know, I know a lot of people are, we, whatever we say, we're AI native or whatever it is, but whatever the buzzword comes next. But-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
You still just need to do the grunt work. For us-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
Of like look at report, see what it's saying, and we always have a check on that every, you know, every month we're checking a material number of reports to make sure it's just hasn't hallucinated.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, you can't skip the process. I guess, you know, for your solution, Johnny, data is sort of one of the core ingredients to your solution actually being useful to your clients and delivering great outcomes. What- how do you think about it in terms of, you know, being able to create or ingest data streams that are r- actually reliable and can be, you know, can be used to provide insight?
Johnny Siu:
Yeah. On the creation side, something we didn't like necessarily realise how valuable it was early on, was that when you've got AI agents automating parts of your leasing journey, of your maintenance journey, all of those conversations between Vinnye and your tenant or prospect or property manager are transcribed.
Josh Callaghan:
Mm-hmm.
Johnny Siu:
And that gives you 10, 20x the data for each of those processes. The old process, you can't expect your team or property managers to kind of transcribe everything, update your CRM, update your property management system. But now those conversations are just hap- happening at scale. And the benefit of that is we provide that information and those insights straight to the asset managers, and they can see on the data kind of accuracy piece. Obviously we have our dashboards, we have MCP servers where people can query that conversational data, but then they can double click on the conversation itself and then go to see, okay, why did that person not actually rent that property?
Or with their maintenance issue, how did they describe it? Whereas before it was a lot of anecdotal feedback from their teams. And you've got these different layers between the tenants, the operator, and the owner, and there was-
Josh Callaghan:
Yep
Johnny Siu:
Still a lot of it was still very opaque. Whereas now Vinnye has that conversation, takes the action, and you can actually go through that layer and go to, go straight to the prospect and see that if it was a phone call, how did they talk about that issue? If it was on WhatsApp, how what pictures did they send in? What do they answer to their pre-qualifying questions when they were looking to take a lease up? So that was some of the really interesting things that we're doing now and actually building for asset managers and providing them the data that they've always wanted and could never get.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah, 'cause I could imagine that I can imagine in your world what you're describing there is you've sort of, it's almost like first party, you know, or it's, it's owned, an owned data universe that you're able to then, you know, train and understand. One of the big challenges for particularly for I guess proptech starting out or for people starting on this journey is at some point, or at the early stages, you've gotta ingest a bunch of data from a CRM or something.
Johnny Siu:
Yeah.
Josh Callaghan:
If anyone's looked under the covers of most CRMs, they're like, "It's horrible." No one probably knows that better than Dave. And David, your platform has an incredible amount of data a- in the, in the production of forms and all the, all the parts of that journey that you support. I mean, you'd know better than anyone what data accuracy looks like in terms of the actual usage and inputs of those, of that key form data and what goes on and I guess what some of the risks that creates in terms of being able to rely on it.
David Howell:
Yeah. I mean, probably our biggest issue is around or our priorities is r- more around safety of the data-
Josh Callaghan:
Mm-hmm
David Howell:
And making sure it's not getting out in, into the wrong hands. Especially with AI, you know, anyone can jump on and scrape things and, you know, do all that kind of stuff. So it's, you know, AI's been a double-edged sword. I remember years ago, or probably 10, 15 years ago, there was a, there was an NLP product, a natural language parsing product, and it could- I used it to convert or try to formalize or format addresses, Australian addresses.
Josh Callaghan:
Mm-hmm.
David Howell:
Which Johnny, if you don't know yet, you will find out is an absolute pain in the ass. I'm, I'm not sure if it's the same in the UK, but there is, there is no kind of format. Wish we lived in Japan-
Josh Callaghan:
It's different, yeah
David Howell:
It'd be much easier.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah.
David Howell:
And this, but this NLP would, it would take about two or three minutes to kinda warm up and then it would take in an a- address and it would try and spit out something that was fairly structured. Now with AI, you can do it with one of the, you know, the cheapest LLMs on the market and get, you know, without the hallucinations and really. So there's lots of those little tools that you can use, which makes your data better and stronger. But at the same time, you kinda like what Martin was saying about using the data to produce actions or not just insights.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah.
David Howell:
But, you know actual, you know, KPIs or actions. You know, you could be doing this better or, you know, you're better off sending a tenancy agreement at this time of day to get it signed faster. Those types of things as opposed to- The median rent in so-and-so is Y, you know. And that's, they're the things that I think AI and the prop techs are really gonna excel in, because we can r- we can innovate quickly around that kind of stuff now which was a lot more difficult back in the day.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I guess one of those things when it comes to, you know, data quality is what we've just spoken about, and reliability. But it's also, you know, data access is interesting, and it does vary by industry. I just thought, well, we've got a few different industries, it'd be interesting. I'll just do a quick whip around. I'll, I'll, you know, one by one. But you've sort of got, I guess you know, Reece resi sales, Johnny, resi PM Dave across resi and commercial sales and PM, and then Martin across asset mana- large asset management and commercial. What the, my question for each of you is, like, what is the, in that particular industry that you're serving, what are the current, like, sensitivities to data and, you know, how much is theirs, how much is, you know, they're happy to give away, what access looks like, what data rights look like, and all that sort of stuff.
And given it's such a curly question, I'll start with Reece.
Rhys Rogers:
Yeah, I was literally thinking about it as you were warming up to that question. I'm like, we're integrated with 870 or 880 real estate office CRMs, and I think two have asked us to sign something, um-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
Around data.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah. Yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
Now, we've never done anything. All we do is update when people download reports, but it's pret- pretty alarming, actually, now that those are the only ones. I mean, I'm probably-
Josh Callaghan:
It's a, it's a proptech webinar exclusive, coming to you live.
Rhys Rogers:
Yeah. I think because I think because of those 880, I probably have met with 650 of them, and they just think, "Oh, yeah, that guy's probably not all of it." Um- But yeah, it's I mean, we take it very seriously. We've got kind of an, a, an engineer full-time on data security. So like, yeah, on our, on our platform, and they rotate. So we've got 15 in our tech team, and one person's always rotating on platform security, um-
Josh Callaghan:
Mm
Rhys Rogers:
Because there's just always things going on. But yeah, our business takes it incredibly seriously. But yeah, probably the resi side but maybe they do. Maybe we've just been lucky. And no, not, lucky's the wrong word, but we've just been accepted as, "Oh, yeah, you're just upd- " they ask us what we do, and we say, "Look, we just update this data when they download reports."
Josh Callaghan:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
But yeah, maybe the process w- is probably needs a bit of tidying it up or beefing up on the, on the resi sales side. That's-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
After you've asked the question, that probably came out, jumped out.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah, interesting. Yeah, that's cool. Well, what David, o- over to you, just with the crossover on, particularly on the resi sales side of things. And I know that, like, you know, Sardna from REAP has a you know, they're, they're definitely sort of pro owning data in terms of the agent ultimately owning data and having that. But yeah, what are you seeing in the resi sale side?
David Howell:
It's, it's interesting. I think, so we've always been Reece, you were saying about AI native, we've always been API first. So we always build our products with an API, and then that API is the same API that a third-party integrator would use. It's the same as ours, so rather than having two separate ones. And we talk about, talk about data and access to data. Again, a long time ago, I wanted access to the Geof database-
Josh Callaghan:
Oh, yeah
David Howell:
Because it was very expensive to get s- any type of address-matching service. And this is back when I was, there was only I think one or two of us with me. And it was gonna cost me $5,000 for access to the Geof database, and I just couldn't afford it. You know, it was just too much of a risk. And so from that point forward, w- we were always, there's, there's no, there's no paywall or barrier to entry into our products. Um-
Josh Callaghan:
Mm
David Howell:
You know, we wanna try and foster innovation and encourage it, rather than put it behind a dollar bucket. And then, you know, I remember I had a couple of meetings with the CEO of the company that was controlling the Geof database, and then a few years later, they eventually, you know, data.gov came out of it and released it-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
David Howell:
Every quarter now. And it's you know, that just makes things so much easier. Um-
Josh Callaghan:
Mm
David Howell:
And it's, it, again with AI, you can, you can do all these things with it. So yeah, the data question's an interesting one. I think by itself, there's not a lot of value to it. You know, I'd consider it like crude oil. Um-
Josh Callaghan:
Mm.
David Howell:
And that's what CoreLogic, I, that's how I, you know, see CoreLogic and those guys, PriceFinder. They take in the crude oil, they refine it, they produce products-
Josh Callaghan:
Mm
David Howell:
And, you know, and then they s- sell it back type thing. So the value's in what you produce out of it, not necessarily what what's going into it. So-
Josh Callaghan:
I love it
David Howell:
Yeah, but it is a very, it's a very interesting topic. It's a political topic. It's a touchy topic. Um-
Josh Callaghan:
Mm.
David Howell:
But you know, at the end of the day, we wanna build a great product that people use, and a by-product of that is there is a bunch of data there.
Rhys Rogers:
I will say, Josh, just quickly before you move on, but on the point of whose data is it, we've had a number of agents when, you know, people come to our website, they download the building and pest or strata report, and then they're like, "Well, that's our data." I mean, and I'm like-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
"Oh they're kind of downloading our report." So it's like-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah, that's right.
Rhys Rogers:
So yeah, y- but, you know, we don't do anything with it. You know, obviously in terms of the agent that would annoy the agent, but it's just funny that kind of, um-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
Perception, you know. Some agents, not all, but some of them are like, "Oh, that's, that's my data." And be like, "Okay, if you want to define it that way, that's, that's fine." But-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
They can be-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
They can be touchy on it.
Josh Callaghan:
I definitely feel like maybe going back a couple of years now as in like only a couple of years ago, that it was sort of the hot topic. Almost before AI sort of, you know, stole the limelight data ownership was really starting to heat up as a hot topic and I think, I think, you know, it feels like we've probably evolved is not the right word, but w- but, you know, somewhat moved beyond that to go, well, actually things, tools like AI and other things that are coming online, the more data I can get my hands on and the way I can, I can use it actually becomes the valuable point.
I guess to your point, David, you know, like, and to your earlier point, Reece, you know as an indi- if I'm an individual resi agent, I don't have the scale that gives me any valuable data in the sense of, in the sense of market data or stuff that's gonna interest you know, anyone to be able to use as a, as an actual resource to sell. But there is a heap of really interesting data there that I can leverage in my own way to get a competitive advantage in my market which doesn't require you to sort of have to feel like you own it all or that, you know, that you clamp down, which is interesting.
Johnny, you'd be, you know, all across this. What does it look like in the, in the property management space? I guess what's the sen- sensitivity like on data ownership and how you guys are using it?
Johnny Siu:
Yeah, so like two things on the, on the data security side because we work with institutional owners and operators a- a- across Europe and the world. You know, from day one, we had to get that right and very early on. We got SOC 2 compliant. We got ISO. For a startup our size it was very early on, but that allowed us to win some of these big contracts with big asset managers. And then we've kind of taken a different approach. I think too long incumbents have said, you know, the I won't call any names out. Too long's in- incumbents have said, you know, this is the data on the platform.
They make it as hard as possible for you to get that data out and to make it usable. And so we've gone the other way, and we make it so easy. We've got MCP servers. We've got APIs where we've got customers who have set up their own AWS instances and we feed their data directly to them. And we see it as, it's like their alpha as well in terms of their properties. They use that data to then underwrite new buildings that they're acquiring and they're working at that scale where it b- it does become useful to them compared to-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Johnny Siu:
To your in- individual agents. And yeah, a- and that's been a massive selling point for our customers as well. They're like, "Oh-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Johnny Siu:
You're gonna give me all of my data easily, and you're not gonna charge me an additional fee every month for it?" Um-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Johnny Siu:
And the cool thing is they're doing some really interesting things with it. You know, on the more basic level, they're just seeing their leasing funnels and they're, they're understanding their demographics. When you've got AI agents, as I mentioned earlier, speaking to all of your prospects, you're getting so much rich data on people's incomes, their budgets, their preferences, and all of this unstructured data where before, one, there was no place for it in the, in the CRMs or PMSs. And then two now you can use AI. You can actually build some really useful insights. So they've had the data, but they've never had the so what.
And then the so what now is, do we need to increase our prices on our build to rent by 50 pounds or $50? Um-
Josh Callaghan:
Mm.
Johnny Siu:
Or, hey, our inquiry volume is falling. We might need to drop our prices here. And even what people are looking for in th- in their properties are people are not necessarily looking for a two-bed, but if we rebrand them into a two-bed premium and the second one sorry, as a one-bed premium and use the second office second room as an office they can-
Josh Callaghan:
Mm
Johnny Siu:
They're using that to change their marketing strategies, their leasing strategies, and their operations as well. So-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Johnny Siu:
It's just yeah, it's a world of abundance with data, and our customers are really liking that new world.
Josh Callaghan:
It definitely seems to be the way that, you know, modern builders, and when I say builders, I mean technology builders and platform builders are designing products. I, you know, my personal experience just recently implementing a new CRM and very pleasantly surprised how easily I could get data out of it because, you know, the CRMs are, you know, the most, often the popular ones and the ones that, you know, everyone would be able to rattle off, it's 600 clicks and a, and $1,000 to get access to your own data. Whereas you know, rightly so, you've gotta be great at the thing that you do, but then in doing that, you're actually, it's almost the data creation that you're doing, like you say, with all the phone calls and all the interactions and so that creates a whole new data set that the more you're able to make that available to the rest of their ecosystem, it just embeds you further, right?
Johnny Siu:
Yeah.
Josh Callaghan:
You're still great at what you do, but it allows them to do other things downstream off the value that you're creating, which is really cool. And a, and a pretty different way to the way that product people were thinking 10 years ago, that's for sure. And I guess, Martin, what does that look like? How does that translate over... And obviously John has just mentioned, you know, build to rent, and yeah, so they'll, they'll have- there'll be some definitely crossover there. But but Martin, in terms of, you know, those larger asset managers and asset owners you know, what is the sensitivity like around data ownership and around, you know, your use of it and how that- where that ends up?
Martin Karafilis:
Yeah. We- we're incredibly proud of the fact we- we're quite mature in this space when it comes to data management and security itself. I think going back to that point of, like, the progression over multiple years and seeing that it's one of those factors that it's just not built overnight. Just like any other market, we see a bunch of different technology companies and people sort of popping up here or there, but the actual longevity of that you know... Our clients being enterprise clients, you know, we have tens of millions of different data points for a single client in themselves. You know, data sensitivity in itself, or commercial sensitivity, is a, is a huge point.
We have to go through large info sec and security procurement processes to be able to be onboarded with these customers. So yeah, that's super important for us, and that's something that's not built overnight. So the tech team's done an amazing job to be able to do that. So you know, for us, we also have you know, a whole range of different visual data as well which is, you know, a whole different sort of kettle of fish and just making sure that we are, you know, really on the customer's side there. I agree with the fact of making sure that it's available to the customer itself.
But yeah, i- from an infrastructure lens i- it's super important and I'd say it's one of the top priorities for most of the customers coming on board.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I mean, it makes total sense, particularly when you've got, you know, in any particular niche, and we've just spoken about, like, four different sort of, you know, groups of customers, the, you know, the expectations, but also what you're creating and how you can serve them changes the way in which you take that data to market, which is really cool. We have spent a lot longer talking about data than I expected, but it is such a relevant topic that I'm not s- I'm not sad about that. But I did want to just circle all the way back to one of the things that I wanted to you know, try and unpick.
We- we're here to talk about, I guess, why you guys are winners. Like, what makes you know, your proptechs as the business stand out from others? I'd love to know, and I'll just open it up to anyone, jump in, you know, when you're ready. I'd love to know if you if you feel like there's a secret sauce to your business, the way that it, that it, you know, goes about doing what it does that makes it successful, that allows you to be the leaders in the, in the industries and the segments that you are. I'll leave that as an open question for anyone to jump in on.
David Howell:
I think it's you know, the recipe hasn't changed. You've gotta have a good team, good products and good support. And then you get good customers. You know, don't, don't lie to your customers and provide them with a good service. You know, that's, that's... It sounds simple and I am definitely oversimplifying it, but that's what we pride ourselves on, is our, you know, particularly our support.
Josh Callaghan:
Mm.
David Howell:
People get are shocked that they might email us with a support query and we call them within 15 minutes of receiving the email.
Josh Callaghan:
Mm.
David Howell:
They're, they're shocked at that. In today's day and age it shouldn't be one, but it is. So that's, you know, that's our secret sauce is have a good team and provide good service. Um-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah.
David Howell:
Yeah.
Josh Callaghan:
Awesome. Noah, the secret sauce.
Rhys Rogers:
Sorry. Sorry, I was on mute. I started revealing. But, um- I think I think for us it was going after an, a- an incredibly boring niche. You know, when-
David Howell:
Yeah, that too
Rhys Rogers:
When everyone in 2000... Yeah, I was gonna say, David, you're right with me there. But in 2015 I was thinking, it was all, like, blockchain chat and what was something else? I can't remember.
David Howell:
Yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
I remember a friend of mine who's done quite well, he's like, "Just chuck blockchain on your pitch deck-
David Howell:
Mm-hmm.
Rhys Rogers:
And you'll be able to raise this much more." I'm like, "I just can't lie. Like, I'm sorry, it's just not my game."
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
But I think a really boring niche and being obsessive about it and making it incredibly you know just, you know, a, much better than what was in market. And then meeting, you know, thousands of c- you know, customers. Kind of, I was, yeah, I was speaking to 100 agents a day for the first four years, you know-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
Or calling 100 agents a day for the first four years, meeting with, you know, 20, 25 a week. And just seeing what was working, what wasn't, what could add, you know, m- 90% of the ideas came out of those meetings. And people were like, "Oh, that's a great idea." It's like, "It wasn't mine, it was this agent in Penrith who just said, 'This sucks.'"
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
So yeah, obsessed about the customer. And then once you've done that and you can build that out, then you can get the bigger partnerships, you know, the Domains, the REAs, and et cetera. So there's, there's just being obsessive about a random niche and obsessive about the customer, I'd say was the secret sauce.
Martin Karafilis:
I reckon that's probably pretty common with all of us here, right? That customer obsession kind of drives the product, it drives the team. You know, we all have amazing teams, but you know, they have to build something that adds value to the customer, and that, and that's super important. So I think that's definitely a thing.
Rhys Rogers:
I'd ju-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
I'd jump in there, Martin, though, as well and say if we'd done everything that our customers said we should do, we'd be broke.
David Howell:
Yeah.
Martin Karafilis:
Yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
So it's about-
David Howell:
Some- sometimes what the customer want isn't what they need
Rhys Rogers:
Being obsessive with it.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
Yeah. And then, and then politely going, "That s- sounds like a really good idea, but let me just-" So you know, I'll come back to you, David
Martin Karafilis:
I, yeah
Rhys Rogers:
But then David Penny, come back at me with something
Martin Karafilis:
I think that's exactly-
Rhys Rogers:
You know, close
Martin Karafilis:
I think that is exactly what makes you know, though, such a separation, right, is, you know, you can have two customer-obsessed businesses-
Rhys Rogers:
Mm
Martin Karafilis:
But the reality is, those that can focus and hone in on those problems and actually execute on that is the difference.
Rhys Rogers:
Mm-hmm.
Martin Karafilis:
So, you know, you can certainly be obsessed with the customer and absorb all that-... But that absolute focus and velocity to fix those problems is, like, second to none.
Rhys Rogers:
Yeah. And clarity on your vision. You know, like, it's, it's so am- now my- when I sat with my brother in his apartment in Redfern 12 years ago, we've only just completed, I'm not joking, four weeks ago, that business plan. You know, we launched our new website with the ability to have any type of DD service we want on it now. So yeah, it's taken 11 years to do our business plan from 12 years ago. So-... Definitely have a very laser focus on the long-term vision and you know, we've got new ones now, but you know, the customer can help you kind of find where your, where your market fit is.
Martin Karafilis:
Mm. Yeah. What about, what are, what are your thoughts on that, Johnny?
David Howell:
Yeah. Just to echo that point when me and my co-founder started this business, we basically worked in a property management office for a year. By the kind of end of the 12 months, we were just helping out and doing things. And they're like we're like, "Should we have, really have logins for this?" We've been running this process-... 'cause you just can't help it when you're sitting behind them.
Martin Karafilis:
Well, we're back to data.
David Howell:
Yeah, back to the-
Rhys Rogers:
Yeah, that's right.
David Howell:
When you're sitting there watching them doing some of these processes, you're like, "Oh, yeah, I'm just gonna help here. We can build a little tool here for a view there and we can speed that process up." And that's something that we're, we're quite proud that we- we've kept in part of our culture. So our engineers visit our customers' offices, customer success, sales. Every member of the team, I get them at least, you know, once a month to go visit a customer, sit with them, and just stay close to the problem. So that's the first part. The second is, like, speed of execution. As David was saying earlier, if you pick up that phone in 15 minutes, it's, the bar is sometimes quite low.
You just need to do what you say you're gonna do, and then, and then do it. And if you do it quickly that's how we've been able to win in the institutional market so quickly and build a really great book of customers. And yeah, stay close to the customer and then just do what we say we're gonna do and do it very quickly and they get nice a nice moment of delight when you ship that feature they spoke about two hours ago in a discovery-
Martin Karafilis:
Yeah
David Howell:
Session. And you're like-
Martin Karafilis:
Yeah
David Howell:
"Yep, it's live in the platform."
Martin Karafilis:
Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I guess one of the challenges clearly though is, you know, 'cause there's, it's balancing, yeah, I think exactly to Martin's point, you've got like you know, what the customers say, how that lines up with our actual strategy, and you can't be too harsh, I think, about either of those things 'cause otherwise, if you, if you align yourself too much on your own strategy without properly considering customers, you can end up just building whatever you think is good, and that might not end well 'cause you're, you're literally not listening to your co- you're, you're, you're deaf to your, to what your customers are actually saying.
If you go to, exactly to Martin's point, if you go too much to the customer and you end up building all sorts of random stuff for everyone and it's not actually, it's not actually serving the core need. But there is a third element in there, which is revenue. And so like, I'm interested to hear if anyone's got a reflection on, like, how do you balance that third component of like, of of, you know, we actually just need to ship stuff that can put some more money in the bank because we've gotta make payroll next week?
Rhys Rogers:
Yes. Definitely we've built a lot of things which won't make any revenue. Actually, in the M&A discussions with a company at the moment, which is not if you look at the P&L, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but it is mu- very much about our adding more value to our customers. But yeah, you have to. The bigger target needs to be revenue profitability. I know it was not very sexy for those few years after COVID. But-... But it certainly is required if you look, we're not looking to raise money or anything, but if, for those companies that are they wanna see a path to profitability now.
Martin Karafilis:
Mm. Yep.
David Howell:
I was just gonna say-
Rhys Rogers:
Like, a-
David Howell:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
I was gonna say, I had a chat with my cousin's a former partner at Square Peg-
Martin Karafilis:
Mm
Rhys Rogers:
And we're talking about this business, MixHub, which I like you know, I know the founder of, and it's in cement. And as soon as I said-
Martin Karafilis:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
He wants to talk about, you know, what he should do and I was setting up a coffee. You know, cement, it's like perfect, so boring. It's like-
Martin Karafilis:
Yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
This is exactly what VCs want now. It's like, don't tell, don't call any of them about AI or anything like that.
Martin Karafilis:
Yeah. Yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
They want-
Martin Karafilis:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
Old, boring businesses like a hairdressing-
Martin Karafilis:
Yeah
Rhys Rogers:
Franchise or something.
Martin Karafilis:
Yeah, that's right.
Rhys Rogers:
Yeah.
Martin Karafilis:
Yeah. Sorry, Dave?
David Howell:
I was just yeah, I think, you know, AI has put a few yeah, software platforms on notice, I believe, you know, because the value, the value has changed, or-
Martin Karafilis:
Mm
David Howell:
Perceived value have ch- has changed.
Martin Karafilis:
Mm.
David Howell:
And you know, Atlassian was a great example. You know, seeing the share price tank and you know, even though they are probably at the forefront of a lot of the big enterprise-type AI contributions. And now seeing-
Martin Karafilis:
Yeah
David Howell:
You know, them kind of come out of that as well. So it's, it's been interesting. We're getting so many developer requests and they're, you know, they're now one person- developers who are obviously vibe coding and things like that. And and, well, why not, you know?
Josh Callaghan:
Mm.
David Howell:
Why can't they do that? Um-
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah
David Howell:
And yeah, similar to what Johnny was saying, you know, we should make it as easy as possible and see what comes out of it, you know? 'cause there's, there's these ideas that n- none of us in this room have come up with or thought of, someone else has, and they, you know, they wanna execute on it, and now they can. Well, they can at least give it a, give it a shot. So yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
David, are you, David, are you saying are these people coming to you and saying, «Hey, we've got an idea. Love to get access to your you know-
David Howell:
Mm
Rhys Rogers:
Forms live to build a product off the back of it. Here's a client who's-
David Howell:
Correct
Rhys Rogers:
Here's a client who's told me I can contact you. Will you let me do it?» Is that kind of how it's-
David Howell:
That's, that's part of it, yeah.
Rhys Rogers:
Yeah.
David Howell:
And it's not will I let you do it. It's like, well, here you go. Here's a sand- sandbox environment. Have a, have a crack and see what you come up with. More getting a lot like what Johnny was saying. We- we've got customers coming to us saying, «Actually, we've got some skills in-house now. We're gonna have a go at it ourselves and see what we can come up internally with our own workflow management tools and things like that.» So it's been... And I love it. It's, it's, it's exciting, you know?
Rhys Rogers:
Sure.
David Howell:
It's a b- bit of a new lease on life from a established supplier. And you know, let them use our tools, you know, MCP, API, all those types of things to build these products that I don't have the brain capacity to come up with-
Rhys Rogers:
Mm
David Howell:
And be part of the ride.
Josh Callaghan:
Yeah, really cool. Well, look, I am conscious of time and we've covered a fair bit of ground. So so thank you very much to the panelists. Once again, thank you Rhys, Johnny, Martin, and Dave, and congratulations on all the wins and all the achievements of your businesses and how they're cracking new ground and also you know, supporting the businesses that sit in those, in those particular verticals. If there is anything that you've heard today I guess for those watching who that, you know, s- sparks any interest, definitely feel free to reach out to these guys. Connect with them on LinkedIn. They're all very approachable, and would be happy to point you in the right direction or tell you more about what they're up to.
Obviously, you can jump on their website and all that sort of stuff. Before we go, though, let me tell you about a couple of things coming up in the land of proptech. Our major proptech conference every year, proptech Forum, is coming up. It is two days in Sydney. It's Thursday the 12th of November, where we've got a couple of satellite events and our Pitch in the Pub, which went really well last year. I think it was the inaugural one. I think it was the first time we did it last year, and went... It was awesome night celebrating really early-stage proptechs with ideas. And then Friday is the actual proptech Forum.
It's at The Collider in Sydney. So we were in Melbourne last year. Sydney this year. Should be an absolute cracker. If you or your organisation are wanting to either speak there or get some sort of brand presence there, sponsorship opportunities and speaking opportunities are still available and open. Strongly encourage anyone who's, who's, you know, wanting to really be and play in that space it's a great... Not it's, and this isn't the sort of sponsorship like you get in some conferences where it's like, you know, tens of thousands of dollars. Nothing like that. Well worth reaching out to Proptech Association. You'll be able to jump on the website and find the relevant contact details there to get in touch about sponsorship or speaking.
The other thing is one that's happening tomorrow. So for those in Sydney there is the IWST and proptech Australia live event, IRL. It is asking the questions: Do we still need architects? And it's looking at AI and the future of the built environment. There is, that's one of the re- many reasons we didn't touch AI today. They can cover a lot of that tomorrow. In Sydney, it runs from, it runs tomorrow night, 6:30 to 9:00, at The Red Mill Rum in Rozelle. There's a small ticket price to cover pizza and beers as any good startup, scale-up proptech event includes. Well, that's everything. Thank you so much for everyone who came to the awards and supported the winners.
All the other winners, congratulations. These winners that we've got here that took out almost 30% of the awards on the night, congratulations once again, and thanks so much for coming in and sharing your insights. Thank you to everyone who turned up for sharing your time with us, and definitely encourage you to share this. We've recorded this video. Definitely encourage you to share this video with other people in your organisation or in the proptech industry that you know that you'll find it, who would find it useful. Thank you all so much. Have a lovely afternoon.
Rhys Rogers:
Cheers. Thanks, everyone.
David Howell:
Thanks, everyone.
Josh Callaghan:
Thank you, guys.
David Howell:
Thanks, everyone.
