A Birmingham-based company was selected for a Google startup accelerator.
Accompanied by companies headquartered in Brooklyn and Oakland, Magic-City-headquartered Smart Alto was selected for Google for Startups Accelerator: Black Founders.
Smart Alto caught the national attention for its goal of helping real estate agents and local service providers reach homeowners without cold calling through a big-data and machine-learning approach.
"Our ... model is the simplest way to find a list of homeowners instead of meeting, without cold calling," said Hassan Riggs, CEO and founder of Smart Alto. "Our approach is five times more effective at connecting with clients. And our goal is to bring real estate agents, local service providers, mortgage professionals, into the modern age of selling.
"We start by qualifying new inbound leads for real estate agents because talking to qualified prospects on the phone is the hardest and most challenging thing a person can do. If you're not talking to qualified prospects, then you're not making money."
Riggs added that Smart Alto, which currently has 14 employees, has all the data real estate agents need to connect with potential clients.
"We can tell you everything there is to know about the homes in the neighborhood and the people who lived there: deed and mortgage tax, assessor, valuations, phone numbers, emails, social profiles, everything, and then we'll allow the real estate agent to reach out to those homeowners across LinkedIn, Facebook texts, email direct mail, and we give them the analytics to know what to do when to do it, why to do it and what to do next on which platform," Riggs said.
The company has had a presence in Birmingham since 2017, the same year it was founded. It relocated it headquarters there in 2018.
And Birmingham has provided velocity toward the company's funding.
"Our greatest kind of momentum around funding has been in the Birmingham metropolitan area. That's where we raised a pre-seed round around $700,000 back in 2018," Riggs said, adding that the company is now looking to raise a pre-seed round of $2 million.
Riggs, a Birmingham native, is a big believer in the city.
"t's a great city," Riggs said. "It's the city I love, and it's the city I wanted to come back and build a big business in, because we know that you can build a big business and Birmingham. ... If you got the talent and you got the moxie and you got the grit, Birmingham will provide you the resources to take your company to the next level."
As far as next steps, Riggs said though the current focus is on real estate, the company is eyeing mortgage, solar, insurance and anyone who wants to connect with a homeowner.
"They won't have to settle for the traditional way of doing marketing and sales," Riggs said. "They can connect with homeowners on the platform that they prefer."
