Welcome to Disruptive CEO Nation, where company founders, entrepreneurs, and cutting-edge thinkers drop in from around the globe to share startup stories, insider insights, and hard earned success lessons. Now here's your host, a woman who mastered business by placing heels on the ground all over the world, having worked with and coached CEOs and senior leaders from over 90 countries and who wants you to build your best business future. Allison K. Summers. Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Disruptive CEO Nation. We are going to talk about disruption today. I love stories of people who are trying to reinvent the way certain industries work, and particularly, particularly when they are helping out the individual and the family get ahead in life. And so it is my absolute pleasure today to introduce you to Ben Bear, who's the co-founder and CEO of Turbo Home. And I just, I can't wait to introduce you and hear what they are doing because I think it is a solution. Any of you who ever want to be a home buyer, who ever want to keep a little bit more money in your pocket, there is something that you can learn in this episode today. So Ben, welcome to the program. Great to be here. So tell everybody in your own words, beautiful, wonderful things that Turbo Home does for the people who choose to come to you and use it. Yeah, so we are a new and better way to buy a home. So think of it a bit like telehealth where you still work with a licensed real estate agent, but there is an amazing platform that you can use to analyze properties, price them, look at inspection reports, get properties recommended to you, self-schedule tours. And because we are able to take a lot of work off of the agents plate where they don't need to spend it all day driving around, prospecting for clients, doing home tours, rather than charging a 3% commission, it is a flat fee which is about an average of $10,000. So folks save an average of about $30,000 in the transaction. And so that can be the difference between winning and losing. If you are buying a million dollar home using Turbo Home and someone else is using a traditional agent, your offer to the seller can be $20,000 stronger. Or if it is not a super competitive scenario, you can get a $20,000 rebate that you can use for things like reducing your closing costs or actually getting a lower rate on your loan. So in a world like today where 80% of people are finding the homes themselves on Zillow and doing a lot of the work themselves, we just don't think that the 3% commission model makes that much sense anymore. And so we are making the transaction more efficient and putting that savings back in people's pockets. Yeah, I think that back when I was doing a lot of work and going to activities at the United Nations, which I'm not saying is a flux. I'm just saying it as there's so many things that you need to wake up to in the world. And by going to activities and meetings there, it really elevated my awareness of the housing crisis. One, that there are a lack of affordable homes for people, multi-tenant homes. And I know you also are the co-founder and CEO of Build CAUSA. So you've got that on one side, right? Just accessibility to inventory. And then you've got this affordability piece on the other side in that pathway that people, I feel like I have children that are in their 20s and 30s and they've basically already just come to terms with that there's not going to be a pathway. And you shared some interesting statistics with me that both had to do with the number 40. So can you lay on for our listeners some statistics about why I think we as a society and community should care about these pathways to home ownership for people? Yeah, so when we think about the American dream, I think home ownership has always been a big part of that. And if you look at the market as it exists today, the average age of a first-time home buyer is 40 years old, which means that people are getting on that pathway to wealth much later, if at all. And if you look at all the data, there's people out there that will say, you could have gotten much wealthier if you just invested in the stock market and paid rent. But homeowners end up 40 times wealthier than renters on average over time. And so for most people, their home is their biggest asset. I think one of the reasons that that's the case, even though the S&P 500 does do better from an appreciation perspective than real estate does is if you don't invest in the stock market, nothing really bad happens until you're 65 and you don't have the savings or the investments that you'd like to have. If you don't pay your mortgage, then you get foreclosed on. And so it creates this force savings mechanism for folks that really causes them to invest in their wealth. And then I think there's a lot of knock on societal benefits as well where people really feel like they're part of a community for the long term. They invest in getting to know their neighbors. They invest in understanding the local political landscape and engaging with politicians and community groups. I think rebuilding that pathway to homeownership is a really important issue. Something that I think is rare in that both political parties in Washington are really acknowledging that it's a major issue and something that needs to be fixed. And so when you think about key drivers, obviously interest rates are really high and that makes homeownership challenging. But as you mentioned, the other key drivers are, there's a lack of supply. And so on the build costs aside, what we're doing is working with investors and developers to help them find opportunities that allow through subdivision to create more starter homes for sale. And then on the turbo homes side, on the demand side, reducing the transactional costs, which are roughly five times higher in the United States than almost any other developed country. I think five times higher than the UK, for example. And so once you talk about five times higher, five or six percent of a million dollars, that's real money. And so what we're trying to do is just sort of make that more efficient for the folks that are comfortable searching on Zilla themselves, but still provide expert support on negotiation, on consultation with transparency into what's going on with different properties. And the way we sort of think about our true north is the mission is to make homeownership more affordable. And what we want to deliver on is great user experience that gives people transparent data and information at their fingertips so that they can make the best decision for them without feeling pressured and sort of Oscar-like pricing on real estate services that are transparent and flat fee rather than scaling what the price of the home. Yeah, I love that. I think that when you talk about disrupting an industry and certainly an industry that has a lot of regulatory pieces around it, what were those things that made you say, there's an opportunity here and I can build a company that's going to solve these problems. Tell us a little bit about how the light bulb went off and you were like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to get some partners together and we're going to make this happen. Yeah, I think that oftentimes entrepreneurs are afraid of regulation. I've always had sort of a contrary view there that regulatory change creates a lot of opportunity and if you run towards it rather than running away from it, there's a lot of upside. And so I've spent most of my career really looking for opportunities that are at the intersection of regulatory change, a big consumer problem like housing or transportation and then a technology opportunity. And in the case of the BuildCasa business where we launched it because there had been a law that passed in California that made subdivision a lot easier and sort of took away the local and neighbor control from the process and standardized the process of going from one house on a very large lot to multiple lots where you could build more homes. And in the case of TurboHome, there was a big real estate lawsuit around commission called the NAR settlement and that basically settled in the middle of last year. And we were in a position where we had a brokerage, we had agents on the team, we had some technology built and it was just very clear to us that somebody was going to take a crack at this because in a world of AI you can automate a lot more of the work. The NAR settlement, I think, really raised consumer awareness that, hey, maybe 3% isn't the right commission structure if I'm finding the home myself on Zill. And the combination of those factors, along with the fact that post COVID, there's been this network of agents that's emerged that are available on an hourly basis to basically do home tours and open houses. That allowed us to scale a service without having to build out that infrastructure to do the tours and just be able to focus the agents that are part of our brokerage platform on the negotiation and the expert guidance and support, or sort of enabling factors for the business. And so, whenever there's a big regulatory change, I think it creates opportunity and you've got to be able to move quickly and if you have a thesis, validate that thesis quickly, because others are going to see it too. And so you've got to get out ahead and make it happen. Well, let's talk about getting out ahead. Let's talk about your go-to-market strategy and I love this phrase that you were talking about when we were prepping for this conversation is that, you know, talking about the race to trust, right? Like, there's things that I can, as a consumer, very quickly see online and be like, it's a low threshold risk for me to engage and try a purchase or try a service. This is a bigger piece, right? So tell us a little bit about your, you know, go-to-market strategy, what your position is, how you're making sure that people who come to you feel comfortable and that you can convert them to turbo-home users. Yeah, I mean, people buy a home, you know, every seven or eight years and everybody, you know, has a cousin or a brother or a law or a friend who's a realtor. I think the biggest challenge for these types of new models historically is that, you know, people think that the buyer's agent is free. Well, you know, the reality is, you know, if you use turbo-home and your agent costs $10,000 and someone else is using a traditional agent that costs $30,000 at a million dollar home, then you could have paid less for the house. And so the NARA settlement did create this pool that was fairly large of what I would call sort of early adopters or very savvy buyers who sort of understood this fact implicitly. And so, you know, what we focused on was, you know, sort of capturing those early adopter, you know, ICPs, high intent people with a very good service that, you know, started fairly manual and we've added more technology over time. And then, you know, get those good early reviews and references, you know, get them to review you on Google, get their stories featured in local press, you know, talk about those local press stories where people are hanging out online in places like Reddit and just try and build a flywheel of trust that, you know, leads to more referrals, leads to more interests. And, you know, do a great job for the early people once you understand, you know, who the ideal customer is. And for us so far, it's been, you know, sort of the types of folks that use a wealth front or a turbo-tax and are comfortable with these types of online platforms and other aspects of their financial life and where, you know, it feels familiar to them and they're sort of like, you surprise something like this didn't exist before. And then a couple of surprises as well, which is that we've seen very strong uptake from Chinese buyers and Indian buyers who have a strong savings orientation. And so when you see those types of data points showing up, you have to think about, you know, how do I reach more people like this in order to make the product more mainstream. And then building strong geographic density. So, you know, we started in the Bay Area and have seen a lot of success here, but then, you know, recently have expanded to Southern California and Texas as well in Dallas and trying to build those nodes of early success stories and that flywheel of getting those stories out to their friends, but also to the press to build a compounding advantage from a customer acquisition perspective. I like to talk to my founders about any kind of hard lessons or nicotruths and, you know, you had other entrepreneurial experiences before you launched this one. So separate from Turbo home, what is a piece of advice that you always gravitate to when you talk to other entrepreneurs and business builders like, you know, and usually I know they often come from people's pain points or hard lessons. But what is some of that wisdom that you would share with others? Yeah, I mean, I think the hardest thing as a founder is that, you know, nobody really cares, right? And so, you know, you're starting from nothing. There's a lot of inertia. And so, you know, the first thing is that you need to get out in the world and and talk to people who, you know, aren't your friends or your family and validate that there's a there there from sort of a problem solution perspective. And then, you know, do a fantastic job with the early customers so that you're able to build momentum. I think every business has different advantages and different challenges. And so, your job as an entrepreneur is to sort of identify what the biggest risks are to the business and sort of eliminate them one by one. And in almost all cases, the biggest risk is just getting people to care initially. And once you've gotten past that, then you're in a position where you're optimizing your product market fit. You're trying to grow beyond that, you know, sort of initial pool of people who care about what you do. And, you know, it's always going to be a lot harder than you think. And I think another thing that I've learned is that it's just as much work to build a bad business as a good business. And so, there's a almond maxim that ideas don't matter and execution is everything. I think execution is very important, but if you're working on the wrong thing, there's not a lot you can do from an execution perspective to change that. Ben, what brings you joy in your day? You are working on build class, you're working on turbo homes, you, you know, previously we're CEO at Spin Scooters, which was acquired by Ford. You've done all of these things. But what is it when it's bedtime? What is it that brings you joy? I mean, recreationally, I love going to concerts and biking and hiking from a business perspective. I think it's problem solving. And then, you know, in the early days when, you know, you're 10 or 12 people in the office and things just start to work. And you get those positive customer views and, and make progress from a business perspective. You know, that high is really, there's nothing like it. The best way I can describe it is, you know, you, like, if you take like an 80 sports movie, you know, major league, the montage where, you know, you start winning a bunch of games in a row. Those sorts of moments and the people that you're with when, you know, you're 10 people and a dog in an office are really fun. And so, you know, I think that, you know, if you talk to later stage entrepreneurs, those are the moments that they look back on most fondly. And so I was fortunate at a pretty young age with my first startup, Vungal, to join at, you know, 23 years old as a VP of sales. What we did was, you know, imagine you're playing Temple Run, you die at the end of the run, watch a video to get some coins to continue. So mobile video advertising, we went from eight people to 202 years from, you know, a zero dollar revenue run rate to a $70 million run rate and ended up selling to Blackstone. And it was just such an incredible ride at a young age that, you know, even though I probably would have, you know, had safer paths if I'd gone to work at a big company, it's really hard to replace that feeling. And if you are, you know, sort of strident or, you know, incordable enough that you want to be, you know, one of the early stage people that is really having an impact on the outcome, you know, there's nothing else that can replace that. Even though, you know, when you look at the failure rate of companies, it really is a pretty irrational choice to start a company and I wouldn't recommend it for most people. So you've talked about your teams and I can see you as we're having this conversation. Tell me a little bit about the team you have today. This is your place to give them a shout out to what makes it all work for you. Yeah, so I think a principle that I've had is, you know, going from mobile advertising to running a scooter company to starting a real estate company is sort of knowing what I know and don't know. And so trying to find people that are experts in the areas where, you know, I don't have a ton of experience has been a focus, but also people who are comfortable with the uncertainty. And the fact that, you know, not everything's figured out and comfortable with ambiguity is another big priority. And so you want to have people that are self starters that can both identify problems and come up with solutions and then execute them. And I think we're really fortunate in that, you know, Rob, who's our CTO, has an early stage start-up experience at a Sequoia back company, but then also build his team to 70 or 80 people. Daniel, who runs our go-to-market and agent team, worked with me at Bungle and was a top sort of revenue leader there. And then at a personal interest in real estate, Lucas, our COO, worked with me at Spin and spent a bunch of time at McKinsey and is sort of a left brain to my brain. So Ben, you're saying you collect good people. That's what I'm hearing you say. I think you've got to be a good people picker and then they have to like you and want to work with you again. And then, you know, where you don't have the expertise, you need to be able to, you know, triangulate what good looks like even if you don't have direct experience in an area. Now, I love that. Hey, I want to give a shout out because you're not a California originally. You are from Pittsburgh. Is that correct? Is that the. Yeah, I grew up in Pittsburgh and then went to school in Chicago and then, you know, sort of go West Young Man ended up here in California pretty soon after graduation. No, I really, I love that. I want to come back, bring everybody if you're near a computer, you know, take a look at TurboHome.com. It walks you through. I think this is going back to where you're talking about the race to trust. It's, I love. There's a lot of white space on here. I'm not overwhelmed on your website. I can. It's got this lovely image of a woman who clearly is smiling because she's a benefit from, um, benefited from your service. Can you just tell me a little bit about the way that you want the, like, somebody to feel when they come to the website and walk a little bit through more the experience? Do you have data on, on, like, how long it takes, like, when people find TurboHome, are they usually already at a point of, yes, this is what I was looking for, or is there still quite a journey that you have to take people through? It's a mix. We see sales cycles as short as, like, a week because someone went to an open house and they're like, I want this house and let's, let's do it. Um, or, you know, six months. But on average, it's about 80 days from when someone comes to us to when they flows on that house. And I think, you know, the stat that I'm probably most excited about and proud of is that we're winning about 50% of offers in the most competitive markets in California. And now Texas and I don't, there's not perfect data on this, but I think it's at least 2x what, sort of traditional brokerages see. And that's because we're giving people, you know, roughly 2% economic advantage in the transaction, which makes a huge difference for them. And I think, you know, generally, you know, I've had five friends that have bought a home in the last year. None of them have used us. So we're, we're very much at this sort of early stages of building trust. But when I look at our customers, it's folks like the CEO of Kaiser, the chief business officer for Plexigy, you know, people at Metta and Oracle. And so very smart people and, you know, it's often said that the future starts in Silicon Valley and then spreads outward. And so we've done about $300 million in transactions in the first year and saved people $6 million in commissions. And so, you know, given how big of a barrier affordability is right now, we get up every day, really excited to continue to expand this vision outward. Well, I'm really grateful that you drop by to share a little bit about your personal journey and talk about Turbo home. I do think it's an important piece. And I do, like I said, I get sad when I listen to my children be like, I don't know how I can ever afford this or I can't do this. And I also really do believe in some of the things that we both talked about about why it's good for a community when there's a home ownership, whether it's a condo, whether it's a townhouse, whether it's, you know, whatever that mode is, you know, for stabilization and just having people, you did such a lovely job of explaining what it is when people feel like they are part of that place where they live, that it's not a temporary, am I going to be here in another 12 months, which is not to be disrespectful to the rental community in any way, but there is something when when people can plant their roots and plan to stay. So thank you for sharing Turbo home story. If people want to learn more or they want to connect with you, is there any place, any other advice we could give? We've talked about the website. You are on LinkedIn. Any anything else that you would want our listeners to know? Yeah, I'm at
[email protected] so feel free to reach out and, you know, generally, you know, happy to chat with anybody, whether it's someone buying or selling a home or someone just looking to, you know, connect on their own sort of entrepreneurial ventures. Well, thank you so much. My two-hour audience, if Ben said something that you think somebody else needs to hear, pass along a copy of this episode. If there is another disruptive, engaging, and brilliant founder that you think we need to speak to, send us a note at
[email protected] until we speak again, keep your eye on the future and always be disruptive. Ben, it's been a pleasure. Thanks, Allison. This episode, yeah, we made it. The voice you just heard. We helped put them there and right now, someone's out there thinking, I should have my own podcast. You should. Not because it's trendy, not because content is king, but because your voice has weight, your ideas have gravity and the right people, they're waiting to hear you. We build shows that don't just sound good. They work for your brand, your business, your audience. Ready to step up to the mic? To see if you could grow your business with a podcast, apply at yourdrain50.com/seth-green. Because your story deserves more than just years.
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