zavvie Breaks with the Status Quo at the Big Tech Show

Inman Connect SF is next week, and it's so great to see the spirit and spunk that a startup called zavvie is bringing to our industry's biggest real estate tech conference. The headline of the news release they issued this week touting their appearance at Connect SF: "Real Estate Startup zavvie Breaks with the Status Quo at the Big Tech Show." The subhead is nearly as sassy: "Taps Top Pros for Inman Connect to Educate Agents, 'Debunk' Tech Hyperbole."

Turns out zavvie will be at Startup Alley and they are sponsoring one of the coveted "Learning Lab" tracks in Parlor 8 at Connect SF, with a dynamite lineup of speakers who are all General Session-caliber: Jimmy Mackin, Co-Founder, Curaytor; Noelle Bortfeld, CMO, Windermere Real Estate, Victor Lund, Founder and Partner, WAV Group, author Bruce Gardner (Seven Styles: How To Design Your Real Estate Career of Success and Significance), and Director of Agent Development for Your Castle Real Estate—and that's just on Wednesday, Aug. 9, from 2pm to 5pm.

Thursday, Aug. 10, from 2pm to 5pm, will feature Eric Stegemann, CEO, TRIBUS, who became a REALTOR® before reaching the age of 20 and in 2004, built one of the largest independent brokerage firms in St. Louis, followed by a session with Dave Fratello, top-producing Manhattan Beach agent and award-winning blogger of "MB Confidential," with Paul Hagey, former Inman reporter and owner, HageyMedia and Heather Elias, former VP of Marketing at C-21 Redwood Realty.

Then three of the sharpest minds you will find at Connect will take the zavvie Learning Lab stage, including John Heithaus, a DC-area based, third-generation real estate professional and real estate marketing veteran, Abbie Higashi, General Counsel and Manager at McGuire Real Estate, and Neil Cohen, a nationally renowned brand marketing expert who also teaches marketing at San Francisco State.

Provocative titles and real takeaways

It takes guts, as a startup, to not only attract a lineup of top-notch speakers, as zavvie has assembled, but offer a list of session titles that include:

• "What Consumers Really Want Will Shock You (Hint: It's about them, not you!)"
• "Stop Blogging! How To Build a Hyperlocal Content Machine"
• "Could Predictive Analytics Become Tomorrow's QR Code?"

But zavvie also is promising the practical:

• "Farming Is Back: Hyperlocal Marketing in The Digital Age"
• "Using Facebook to Dominate Your Neighborhood"
• "Real Leads Are Back: How Social Lead Gen Will Change the Way You Look at Lead Gen Forever"

I like what my Jewish friends might call the chutzpah of zavvie: not cocky, but confident—something you don't often see in a real estate startup unless the founders have real roots in real estate.

And guess what? The founders of zavvie have real roots in real estate.

Who is zavvie?

If you haven't heard of zavvie, you will. It's a hip Colorado-based real estate startup focused on hyperlocal marketing that was born out of technology created for 8z Real Estate, a brokerage with a mission statement that reads, "Real estate is broken, and we're fixing it."

8z Real Estate is the real deal in Colorado, an established and yet popular brokerage serving the Front Range that the Denver Post recently named the "Best Place to Work for in Colorado" among medium sized companies of all kinds.

zavvie was founded by 8z CEO Lane Hornung and COO Stefan Peterson, who both trace their early real estate roots in executive management with online real estate pioneer ZipRealty, and both served our country as U.S. military veterans. They are two out-of-the-box innovators and practical thinkers who are not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, or peel back why things have always been done a certain way.

What they have built with zavvie is red hot: the nation's first hyperlocal marketing platform designed to provide every neighborhood with a "go-to" local real estate pro.

But you won't get a sale pitch at their Learning Labs. They forbid it. They instead love the idea of providing great content for agents – and brokers – and even welcome opposing viewpoints, and have packed their panels with that in mind. zavvie leaders are confident in what they have created – and the fact that they are quickly selling out all of their markets in Colorado (their product comes with market exclusivity for agents) is an indication that it works, as 8z Real Estate agents already will tell you.

So if you want a sales pitch from zavvie, go see them at Startup Alley. If you want to learn something you can immediately take back to the office or use in the field, attend one of the content-packed sessions at their Connect SF Learning Labs on Wednesday or Thursday afternoon.

Keep an eye on zavvie, as the founders really believe that this is the beginning of a movement – a zavvie movement – towards hyperlocal marketing. Why? Because they really believe it's the most powerful kind of marketing any agent can have today in their arsenal, and the marketing experts we trust, who have accurately called marketing industry trends in the past, agree.

Full-disclosure: WAV Group provides consultation services for zavvie.