Our story: Buying + Growing LisitingAI

Written by Andrew McGrath June 19th 2024

When I met Omar Sabbagh back in early 2023, he had just bought ListingAI from some old colleges from Shopify. At the time ListingAI was a basic website with a few subscribers, some traffic but on the surface it didn't look very special. Omar was networking with others in the real estate space as he explored ways to partner and grow his subscriber base, this lead us to meet up in Toronto.

Fast forward to March 2024, and it was me who was now buying ListingAI from Omar. It’s been a wild ride, but I’m excited to be working to solve the problems that real estate agents face every day.

This blog post is about the journey of ListingAI, where it's been, and where it's going.

Before ListingAI

During the pandemic, my wife and I bought a lakefront property in rural Ontario. We had been living in Toronto, and we wanted an escape from the city. I've bought and sold a few properties, I joke with agents I meet that I've done more transactions than the average agent (7 and counting). I've always been interested in real estate, and I've always been interested in technology. Every time I've bought or sold real estate, I've learnt something during the process that I wish I had known earlier. I've always thought that there must be a better way to do this.

This lead me to start MappedBy.com, a tool that helps buyers make more informed decisions by providing them with data about the property they're interested in. I believed that data could help people make better decisions. I've also always been a believer in the power of the Internet as a positive force for change, and I thought that the Internet + data could help people make better decisions about real estate.

The bad news is, so far I've really struggled to get any meaningful transaction with MappedBy. I think I know why at this point: the incentive for an agent to use the tool just isn't there, in fact knowing more is a bit of a liability for an agent, and most agents won't go looking for reasons to tell their buyer to not make an offer. And for buyers, well they already feel like they're paying a lot of fees, comissions and interest, they don't want to pay for a tool that helps them do what they see as being their agents job.

The good news is that I've learnt a lot about the real estate industry, and I've learnt a lot about the problems that agents face every day. I've also learnt a lot about the tools that agents use, and I've learnt a lot about the tools that agents wish they had. That experience lead me to seeing an opportunity with ListingAI.

The decision to buy

When we first met, Omar had a handful of subscribers on ListingAI, and he was growing the platform but his attention eventually turned to a new project and the platform was stagnating. I looked at ListingAI and thought to myself "This business is just an AI Wrapper, and I don't think it's doing anything ChatGPT cannot do". I regret not being more open minded at the time.

When I was first introduced to ListingAI, I had already spent a good 6 months building MappedBy. Despite my initial judgement of ListingAI and it's present state of being a simple "Listing Description Generator" for real estate, I too had made a listing description tool as part of MappedBy. I was inspired by a free coaching session put on by Dan Wood, where he did a demo of ChatGPT to a group of agents. It was clear to me that without the right data, in the right format, the AI would provide really bad and often misleading responses. I saw the opportunity of helping agents use AI better as an entry point to get people to try my tool. I was surprised at how many people wanted a listing description tool, and now I found myself surprised that ListingAI was doing the same thing but actually charging people for it.

Omar offered to sell me ListingAI in March of 2023. The asking price was small, I think it was around $20k, and while I thought seriously about it, I believed that the product and frankly the market was too small to be worth it. I assumed I could re-make the product in a weekend (I could and later would), and that I could successfully market it to agents (this part was a lot harder than I expected). I had forgotten an important lesson, trust is hard to earn, and I was starting from scratch. ListingAI had already earned the trust of a few people, and that was worth a lot.

Almost exactly a year to the day, in March 2024, ListingAI had over 10x it's revenue since when I first met Omar, and I was buying it for much more than the original $20k. I also had the benefit of having had a year to see what Omar had done, and now I had my own ideas on how to grow the platform. We closed the sale early March 2024, and I've been working on re-launching and growing the subscriber base ever since.

At the time of the acqusition my big fears were 1) I might not be able to pivot the offering to something more valuable than a simple AI wrapper providing Listing descriptions, and 2) Churn was very high, I might not be able to get it under control fast enough, and that would hurt my ability to ever make a profit. I'm happy to report that we've made great progress on both fronts.

Where we are now

At the time of closing, the I bought an AI Listing Description generator tool for real estate agents. It had hundreds of customers, and decent SEO. It helped agents create written marketing materials, the two outputs were Listing Descriptions and the text for Social Media posts.

Fast forward to today, we've added the ability to generate social media imagery, stories, ads, listing landing pages, QR codes, image captioning tool, lead capture forms, and we even have our very own chatbot that can answer questions about a property. We now measure our customer base in the thousands, and we're growing every day.

In the 90 days since the acqusition we've seen the number of people registering daily increase 200%, for the first time ever the number of people using the site is actually accumulating, churn is 50% lower, and as you would expect we've seen a direct impact on revenue. We've also completely re-launched the website, now we're offering a full suite of marketing tools for real estate agents.

Where we are going

My big focus since the acqusition has been trying to escape the "Listing Description" / "AI Wrapper" niche. While it's been a great niche to kick start the company, it's also a small niche. I want to grow ListingAI into a full suite of marketing tools for real estate agents. I want to be the go-to platform for real estate agents when they need to create marketing content for their listings.

AI Wrappers are a common theme in the startup space today, and I hate being bundled in with them. These are platforms that use AI to help people do things, often no better than ChatGPT could help them, but with a slightly optimized user interface. ListingAI is a AI Wrapper for real estate agent that want to write listing copy. But here's the thing, AI Wrappers really feel like a joke to me, and frankly I'm driven by the embarasment I have when someone asks me "So what do you do?". I want a better answer, I don't want to be an AI Wrapper, and I want agents to love the product we're giving them.

So yes, we use AI to help agents create marketing content for their listings, and while this has served us well, I personally believe this concept as a core offering is not going to be a viable offering for much longer. The business needs to evolve to deliver even more value if we're going to continue to grow and have a sustainable place in the market. I think the future of ListingAI is in helping agents use their data better.

My hope is that we can become more than a marketing platform. I want to be a platform that helps agents make better decisions. I want to be a platform that helps agents understand their market better. I want to be a platform that helps agents understand their clients better. I want to be a platform that helps agents sell more, faster and reduces the cost of transacting. I want to be a platform that helps agents be better agents.