Home-sellers spend 1.8 billion a year in NZ and Australia alone, advertising property online, in print media, with street signage and landfill marketing all to attract the buyers that are already known to agents and available in our database.
Download the app, enter your property address, your price and match instantly with buyers already registered in in the App looking, for a property, view their budget, how many pets and kids, have they got a home to sell... all before you invite them to view your most intimate spaces. The future is direct connections on Yelsa Connect.
90 second founder pitch; https://youtu.be/5vyl7TLyJWs?si=M4v9gwlFWS-o_1-3
A deep dive with founder Mike Harvey; https://youtu.be/gBizKX56SSQ?si=K1hMyDaWWeeGyC9q
FAQs
DESCRIBE THE PROBLEM YOUR COMPANY IS SOLVING:
The unnecessarily high costs of advertising in Real Estate to attract buyers that agents already know.
New Zealand and Australian homeowners spend in excess of $1.8 billion per annum on real estate advertising landfill to locate and attract buyers that agents, mortgage brokers and banks already know and have the contact details for.
$1.8 billion translates into huge amounts of print advertising, corflute signage and landfill marketing… not to mention the avoidable impact on the sellers pocket.
DESCRIBE HOW YOUR COMPANY IS ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM:
We’ve fully developed an online buyer matching system, many people we’ve talked to have likened it to Tinder for real estate.
We believe that people only call themselves buyers for real estate, once they’ve undertaken quite a bit of research. Very few people go out for a walk and end up buying a house.
Twenty years in the industry taught me that , regardless of the company, we all work with exactly the same pool of buyers. It’s logical when you stop and think about it, if you are a buyer looking for a property, you view all properties regardless of who is advertising them.
We concluded if there were a database of all of the buyers in a marketplace at any one time, then people selling their houses could simply shop for buyers on that database, and if homeowners could go to a database and review the buying profiles of dozens of buyers, create competition, and sell their house without paying for advertising, then we would have achieved our goal of reducing the impact of real estate marketing on both the cost on the environment and the homeowners pockets.
Our solution is the free matching app that we have developed and released. Buyers and sellers are free to connect directly online, and the more this happens, the bigger impact our product will have on reducing the collective costs and impacts of $1.8 billion of real estate landfill marketing a year.
*Only licensed agents that are paying a monthly subscription for inclusion in the agent directory have access to the name and contact details of the matched buyers and sellers. The agents facilitate the connections.
WHY ARE YOU THE RIGHT TEAM TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM:
We have 20 very diverse years in real estate, and across those 20 years I’ve worked in every field of real estate sales possible.
Our success in the industry was not driven by financial gain. It was purely as a result of an innate, natural ability to take complex contract law, marketing principles, and emotional states, and make them easily understandable, which is the first step toward collectively finding a solution that works.
The day we had our realisation in real estate, as a result of a significant medical event for one of our children, we knew what we had to do. We needed to break down the corporate protection of an advertising system that was the tail of the real estate industry, wagging the dog.
Since then, we have devoted our lives to this cause, because we believe that direct connections are the future for real estate globally.
We’ve learnt a lot of tough lessons, and we’ve faced down some long nights, and still our commitment prevails. We are both systematic hard workers that compliment each other with our skills.
Without each other we would not have overcome the obstacles and the challenges we’ve faced as a family, fully committing to a vision that’s already a reality to us, and is just a matter of time before it’s a reality for the industry and consumers.
ALL GOING WELL, DESCRIBE YOUR COMPANY IN 10 YEARS:
In 10 years we will be a global company, at the heart of first point real estate connection. Our vision is that before anybody pays for any advertising, they jump on our App and see if their property matches with any existing buyers.
The Yelsa Connect software stack and the associated Apps that grow from the Yelsa Connect hub will reach into all associated industries in real estate.
We will have Apps that connect to our hub for associated trades like; legal conveyancing, mortgage broking, building inspections, house dressing, landscape gardening, house painters.
Our two way communication system will be logging data for agents, and agents globally will find themselves using Yelsa Connect in the same way that society uses facebook. Everyone will have an account as it will be the hub of real estate.
Imagine if the ANZ bank offered to post the buying requirements of 60,000 pre approved purchasers, and then the ANZ went out on T.V. and said “If you’re thinking about selling your house, before you spend money on photo’s and advertising, why don’t you check out our database of pre-approved ANZ buyers”. Every vendor would run a buyer match first.
Thousands of connections would be made, properties would be sold, and Yelsa Connect would be propelled into the spotlight. All the buyers would flood in, and now it would be essential for every real estate agent to be able to access the names and contact numbers of those buyers.
Our primary revenue stream will be from monthly agent subscriptions, and we anticipate this will be hundreds of millions of dollars a year globally, 10 years from now.
WHAT IS YOUR TRACTION TO DATE (Do you have customers? How much revenue are you generating? If you don’t have customers, what have you done to validate the idea you are solving? Please include timelines. Numbers mean more than words):
We are aware of at least half a dozen connections that have happened locally resulting in sales. Across the country we’ve had over 3,500 users register, over 70 agents download the App, and hundreds of homeowners run buyer matches.
To date we have not charged for any of our services. We made the decision to give people access to the product and encourage them to use it, and we’ve benefited from their feedback.
We found that if they weren’t paying, were in a pilot program and were testing the product for us, they gave us feedback that was considerably more valuable. We also found they were a lot more proactive with the product in these early stages.
All the agents that have worked with us and understand our concept, are excited and believe this is the future.
Stuff news New Zealand's chief property Editor actually wrote that he considered Yelsa Connect was the future direction of Real Estate sales.
WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT COMPETITION OR ALTERNATIVE:
We have a range of competition, including online marketing display portals much like Trade me and realestate.com.au.
There is a public perception that property needs to be listed online for success. In truth these portals are out of date antiquated systems of a bygone era. The online Real Estate marketing industry is printing cash on the back of an illusion that buyers of real estate are really hard to find.
Our system requires agents to pay a subscription to have an agent profile showing on the Yelsa Connect agent directory. That agent profile will enable them to access the large database of buyers on behalf of their clients, without requiring their clients to spend up large on advertising to find those buyers.
The agents' monthly subscription represents agents paying for access to the database of buyers, this will reduce the cost of Real Estate marketing by $1.8 billion every year, and that is why our competition should primarily be considered the current beneficiaries of the $1.8 billion of real estate advertising.
The cost of display advertising is becoming disproportionate. That cost is being passed onto vendors and homeowners. We consider this an unnecessary expense. We see a future where agents cover the cost of finding buyers through a subscription to Yelsa Connect, a comprehensive database of buyers.
We feel this is where our competition ends, as Yelsa Connect offers agents a tool that has never been offered before, therefore in this respect, our competition is staying ahead of other developers looking to enter the market we create.
WHO IS YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER AND HOW WILL YOU FIND THEM:
Licensed Real Estate agents are our target customer.
There are 152,000 licensed Real Estate agents across New Zealand and Australia, and we believe it is perfectly feasible that every single one of these agents will pay to have a Yelsa Connect agent profile registered on our app.
They will pay a monthly subscription of $99, with this subscription enabling them to access the database of buyers names and contact details. Agents that do not subscribe will not have access to that information, and therefore will be left stranded as sellers will approach agents that have access to Yelsa Connect before they talk to anyone else.
This will give Yelsa Connect affiliated agents an unbeatable edge in the marketplace, meaning that all agents will need to join us.
That will represent $15 million a month annually in income just across New Zealand and Australia.
We believe our product has the potential to be a global unicorn, accordingly we have made the appropriate investment in the development of our product and are confident given the right connections and other factors. The real gold is our custom built supporting software stack for frontline salespeople that intuitively aligns itself to every aspect of an agent's role throughout the selling process.
This is software developed by real estate agents, for Real Estate agents, and there is nothing else like it on the planet, and that is the gold.
The agents will deliver this to the market. There's actually no real requirement for the market to do anything; the agents will just simply start using the product, the database will quickly develop, and agents will start running buyer matches before they spend their clients' money. It will be a simple and swift transition once it starts, and our product will be at the forefront of that wave.
WHAT IS YOUR BUSINESS MODEL? HOW DO YOU PLAN TO MAKE MONEY:
We are a business to business (B2B) model. We know exactly who our target consumers are; real estate agents (frontline salespeople).. We know where they like to hang out, what they like to talk about, and the type of person that they generally tend to be.
There are 152,000 Real Estate agents across New Zealand in Australia and we have developed a product that works for agents exclusively while eliminating the insatiable demands for eye watering investments in marketing.
Our primary revenue stream will be from monthly agent subscriptions. Even with an uptake of only 30% of real estate agents, that will bring in over $4.5 million in revenue per month.
There are many opportunities for other revenue streams within our product in the form of industry related partnerships, upgrades and social media advertising within the App.
DOES YOUR COMPANY REDUCE CARBON IN THE ATMOSPHERE:
There is currently an excess of $1.8 billion spent on Real Estate marketing across New Zealand and Australia. A great percentage of that 1.8b is spent on corflute signage, print media advertising and landfill marketing, all environmentally impactful activities.
Our products will vastly reduce the investment in this landfill marketing approach. We dream that one day Yelsa Connect will be accredited changing the cost and process of the Real Estate industry globally. We all saw what Uber did to the taxi industry, Spotify did to the music industry, Shopify to online shopping, Airbnb to the accommodation industry, and Tinder to the dating game.
We believe Yelsa Connect is set to transform the environmental impact of real estate globally.
IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT YOU:
My wife and I make an exceptional team as founders,We are resilient and resourceful and we motivate each other to a higher standard. Sarah believes deeply in the vision and gives me her unwavering support.
In 2018 when I realised the folly of the Real Estate industry I effectively stopped working in the industry, set up a company, advertised internationally for technical staff, employed four full-time technicians in the Philippines, and set about funding the development of a superior software product.
I am not technical by nature. I left school at 15, I have only ever been a sales person, and since 2018 I have re-trained and learned the skills required for me to survive this quest, to make the change that so desperately needs to be made.
I am unbelievably determined and have succeeded against some pretty extraordinary odds in my life. When I'm given an opportunity I understand the value of the opportunity and I do not take opportunities lightly.
IS THE COMPANY INCORPORATED:
Yes