Three-year-old homebuyer education platform Nestiny, like many innovative startups, was the product of its founder’s personal pain and suffering. As a real estate agent in California through the recession, with a background at the corporate level of high-tech companies, Jody Rotman saw clients confused by internet searches on how to buy or sell homes and misleading information.
“Folks were looking at houses but didn’t understand what they wanted at first – a cart in front of the horse situation,” she said.
Struggling to grow her audience and build a solid client base, Rotman needed to find a way to intercept clients early in the sales cycle. She also found that education was the root cause of problems for homebuyers and sellers.
With that information in hand, she launched Nestiny in 2016 to provide consumers homebuying information through online content and a guided buying experience.
“People need to know how to get from A to Z and want to do it digitally, so we created a product that would work with modern homebuyers,” Rotman said.
Potential buyers can use Nestiny’s free platform to learn about the process on their own time. Through a series of questions and interactive content, the app helps its 140,000 users understand what they’re looking for in a home and what they can afford.
“Millennials want a personalized experience, so they can get customized answers,” Rotman said. “Most members have answered over 50 percent of the optional questions.”
On the sales side, Nestiny has a network of more than 3,000 agents that it recruited and vetted to participate in the platform. After using the education content, members are paired with an agent from the system that fits their needs.
Rotman said the agents benefit from connecting only with clients that are not only committed to buying, but also well-educated on what they’re looking for. Nestiny takes a fee from agents on closed sales that were generated by the platform.
“In a lot of ways we’re a creative agency housed in a real estate tech startup, and you can’t get better talent than in this town."
To better serve its buyers and agents, the company recently rolled out a SaaS product that customizes its educational content for individual agents, allowing them to pick out specific articles, add their branding and distribute it in their home market.
Rotman said Nestiny is self-funded so far but will look to raise capital this fall. It went through what she jokingly called an “in-house incubator” – receiving early-stage startup advice from her husband Frank, who works at D.C. venture capital firm QED Investors.
She also gave a nod to Richmond as Nestiny’s home base, and not just for the residential architecture.
“In a lot of ways we’re a creative agency housed in a real estate tech startup, and you can’t get better talent than in this town,” she said. “There are so many reasons why Richmond is a great place to build a technology company.”
