3. Synthicity Team Members
LLP Team
Ian Carlton Gabe Cohen Erin Koehler Nikki Lowy
PhD candidate, DCRP Haas School of Business Haas School of Business Haas School of Business
Manager of Real Estate
Applications, Synthicity
Advisors
Fletcher Foti Carlos Vanegas Rob Matthews Paul Waddell
Manager of Transportation CTO & Director of Research Director of Product CEO
Applications Development
5. Customer ecosystem for major urban development
Local & Police
Neighborhood Schools
Minority & Fire
Sustainability Groups
Biz Housing
Advocates Public Council
Works Offices Orgs
Planning
Firms Metro
Metro Economic City
Planning City DOT
COGS Development Planning US HUD US DOT
Orgs
State
DOT Housing
Redevelopment
Engineering Authority
Firms Transit County US EPA
agencies DOT US
Private Real Treasury
Chamber of Estate Developer
Commerce Consultants+
Organized
Lenders Equity Contractors
Social Justice Labor
Investors
Groups
6. Could Synthicity pivot from consulting to software…
Long range
planning
Regional
priorities
Transport
project plans
Project design
& delivery
Economic
Development
Land Use
Planning
Basic infra.
Investment
Real Estate
Development
Location
Selection
7. Could Synthicity pivot from consulting to software…
software serving more segments of the value chain?
Long range
planning
Regional
priorities
Transport
project plans
Project design
& delivery
Economic
Development
Land Use
Planning
Basic infra.
Investment
Real Estate
Development
Location
Selection
8. Enterprise software customers were likely to be the
smaller set of service firms, not end users
Long range
planning
Regional
priorities
CBRE ™
Transport
project plans
Project design
& delivery
Economic
Development
Land Use
Planning
Basic infra.
Investment
Real Estate
Development
Location
Selection
10. “That’s cool, but it would be great if you do this…”
Real estate service providers told us:
Would love predictions about the future
Want multiple data sources at fingertips
Have low willingness to pay relative to our
cost to provide such data & analysis
11. So, we pivoted…
Wanted a $100M business opportunity
Spoke with John Hanke at Google Earth:
Manage multiple verticals or one horizontal?
12. Interviewed potential horizontal customer segments
New customer segments:
• Home buyers
• Home owners
• Small business owners
• Neighborhood activists
Potential channel partners:
• Realtors & brokers
Clear pain/gain/emotional need:
Want 5-year predictions
15. We shifted our focus to a web product for consumers
Web Development
Decision makers:
Home buyers
Home owners
Neighborhood
activists
Business owners
Understanding of
Urban Futures Consumer Website Realtors
Freemium: limited free queries, sell enhanced data
16. Digging deeper: we verified that there is a need, but not
for the exact product we offered
MVP Interviews
What we did: Who we contacted:
• Tested MVP • Home buyers, homeowners,
website, report N’hood activists, realtors
• Small biz owners, brokers
• Directed web
traffic using What we found:
Google Ads • Want hyper-local data
What we found: presented in easily
digestible form
• Customers did NOT
buy the MVP report • Care about development
projects and n’hood trends
17. Google AdWords campaign failed to convert users to
payers, but there was a silver lining
Engaging maps kept visitors on site ~two minutes
Realtors were REALLY excited about our offering
Original customer segment - real estate investors – also
need the data collected for MVP report
18. We believe there is an opportunity to build a $100M
business…
Capture Rate Customer Segment Annual Value Annual Revenue
5% x 4 mil urban homebuyers x $125 = $25M
1% x 36 mil urban homeowners x $60 = $24M
1% x 7 mil urban small/ x $250/ = $23M
mid-sized businesses $500
5% x 25k real estate x $10k/ = $30M
investment firms $500k
$102M
19. A trusted brand is critical to convert engagement to sales
We can develop a brand in several ways:
1 Build: 2 Borrow:
Invest in building ‘White label’ to
our own brand existing brands
20. A white label strategy could be pursued
Fees
Home
Reports Buyers
License Fees &
Revenue Share Fees
Home
Synthicity Owners
Updates
Data &
Urban Insights Fees
Futures CBRE ™
Commercial
Reports Lessors
Fees
Business
Updates Owners
Advisory Fees
Real Estate
Flow of Money
Investors
Flow of Services
21. Alternatively, building a brand would require a spinout
from Synthicity
Home
Buyers
Home
Owners
Fees
Synthicity Urban Futures
- Predictions - Brand Commercial
- Relationships - Execution Reports/ Lessors
Data
Business
Owners
Real Estate
Flow of Money
Investors
Flow of Services
22. Next Steps
Can we prove the business model?
1
• Further development and testing of MVP
Can we build the right team?
2
• Do we have a committed leadership team for Urban Futures?
A lot of the feedback we’ve received from the class last week and from customer interviews relates to ‘how do I know if this is accurate? Where do you get your data from?’And given the challenges we’ve had this week, we’ve concluded that we need to both build our credibility and our brand first, before expecting to monetize this side of the businessHave a lot of people share, engage with the platform and encourage our user base to build virally through both referrals, word of mouth and the realtor community (and we’d love feedback from the teaching team if this is the right way to approach this)
A lot of the feedback we’ve received from the class last week and from customer interviews relates to ‘how do I know if this is accurate? Where do you get your data from?’And given the challenges we’ve had this week, we’ve concluded that we need to both build our credibility and our brand first, before expecting to monetize this side of the businessHave a lot of people share, engage with the platform and encourage our user base to build virally through both referrals, word of mouth and the realtor community (and we’d love feedback from the teaching team if this is the right way to approach this)
A lot of the feedback we’ve received from the class last week and from customer interviews relates to ‘how do I know if this is accurate? Where do you get your data from?’And given the challenges we’ve had this week, we’ve concluded that we need to both build our credibility and our brand first, before expecting to monetize this side of the businessHave a lot of people share, engage with the platform and encourage our user base to build virally through both referrals, word of mouth and the realtor community (and we’d love feedback from the teaching team if this is the right way to approach this)
VP: Data aggregation & analysis
A lot of the feedback we’ve received from the class last week and from customer interviews relates to ‘how do I know if this is accurate? Where do you get your data from?’And given the challenges we’ve had this week, we’ve concluded that we need to both build our credibility and our brand first, before expecting to monetize this side of the businessHave a lot of people share, engage with the platform and encourage our user base to build virally through both referrals, word of mouth and the realtor community (and we’d love feedback from the teaching team if this is the right way to approach this)
A lot of the feedback we’ve received from the class last week and from customer interviews relates to ‘how do I know if this is accurate? Where do you get your data from?’And given the challenges we’ve had this week, we’ve concluded that we need to both build our credibility and our brand first, before expecting to monetize this side of the businessHave a lot of people share, engage with the platform and encourage our user base to build virally through both referrals, word of mouth and the realtor community (and we’d love feedback from the teaching team if this is the right way to approach this)
A lot of the feedback we’ve received from the class last week and from customer interviews relates to ‘how do I know if this is accurate? Where do you get your data from?’And given the challenges we’ve had this week, we’ve concluded that we need to both build our credibility and our brand first, before expecting to monetize this side of the businessHave a lot of people share, engage with the platform and encourage our user base to build virally through both referrals, word of mouth and the realtor community (and we’d love feedback from the teaching team if this is the right way to approach this)
A lot of the feedback we’ve received from the class last week and from customer interviews relates to ‘how do I know if this is accurate? Where do you get your data from?’And given the challenges we’ve had this week, we’ve concluded that we need to both build our credibility and our brand first, before expecting to monetize this side of the businessHave a lot of people share, engage with the platform and encourage our user base to build virally through both referrals, word of mouth and the realtor community (and we’d love feedback from the teaching team if this is the right way to approach this)
A lot of the feedback we’ve received from the class last week and from customer interviews relates to ‘how do I know if this is accurate? Where do you get your data from?’And given the challenges we’ve had this week, we’ve concluded that we need to both build our credibility and our brand first, before expecting to monetize this side of the businessHave a lot of people share, engage with the platform and encourage our user base to build virally through both referrals, word of mouth and the realtor community (and we’d love feedback from the teaching team if this is the right way to approach this)
A lot of the feedback we’ve received from the class last week and from customer interviews relates to ‘how do I know if this is accurate? Where do you get your data from?’And given the challenges we’ve had this week, we’ve concluded that we need to both build our credibility and our brand first, before expecting to monetize this side of the businessHave a lot of people share, engage with the platform and encourage our user base to build virally through both referrals, word of mouth and the realtor community (and we’d love feedback from the teaching team if this is the right way to approach this)
