The Value of RESO for Pre-Revenue Start-Ups and First-Time Conference Attendees

Early-stage real estate technology start-up TourZazz allows agents to create and manage real estate property tour itineraries online in collaboration with today's home buyers. TourZazz CEO and Co-Founder, Stacy Spickes, along with her husband and long-time real estate business partner, Michael Spickes, developed TourZazz during their quest as top producers at Realty Austin in Austin, Texas, to better meet the needs of their clients.

Stacy recently attended her first RESO conference and sat down to discuss how early start-ups and first-time attendees can tap into the value of RESO by attending one of its conferences.

She first learned about RESO from the principal of WAV Group, a RESO charter member, who told her that TourZazz needed to be in attendance.

Said Spickes, "The information has been invaluable, given what we do in our business as REALTORS® and also as property tech developers. It could not be more timely for us to be here."

Stacy admits that she had not always been fully up to speed on the nuances of real estate data. "Having been REALTORS® in the trenches, boots on the ground, I know we've been unaware of all that's going on behind the scenes for our MLSs and our brokerages to get the data that they need so that we can do our jobs effectively," said Spickes.

Putting on her technology start-up hat, Stacy says that attending the RESO conference helped her understand that her development team has important factors to consider during the development process, especially regarding awareness of current RESO standards.

"It's not an option for us not to be RESO compliant," said Spickes. "We are not going to bring a product to the market that isn't RESO compliant, or I guess I should I say 'RESO Certified,' right? Because that's where we're ultimately going."

RESO conferences offer TourZazz something different from other real estate conferences.

"Most all the conferences that we attend are really from the sales agent perspective," said Spickes. "This is a whole different ballgame. Being exposed to all this technology and all the data conversation is just really a whole new world."

Stacy appreciates the deeper tech insight a RESO conference offers, observing that, ultimately, it helps "the REALTORS® and the brokerages better serve the consumer, which I think is really what all this, at a high level, is all about."

For their first RESO conference, Spickes said, "We came into this just wanting to be students. We've really just used this as an opportunity to just mine the brains of all these smarty-people around here and learn what we need to learn."

"We are very aware that there is a lot that we don't know," she adds, "We're at a phase in our business where we just want to be sponges and students of the people that have gone and are going before us so that we can do things the right way."

For other early property technology start-ups attending RESO conferences, Stacy offers some simple advice: "Show up and be here and engage and ask questions."

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