Flying in my gondola

Interview with BOOM co-founder Jacopo Benedetti 23 November 2018 Gordana Davila Launched in early 2018, Milano-based  BOOM  Image Studio is a Prop Tech marketplace connecting professional photographers with businesses worldwide. We caught up with its co-founder Jacopo Benedetti at the recent Property Portal Watch Conference in Madrid 2018. When asked what prompted the conception of BOOM Image Studio, Benedetti commented: “When we buy a meal or a house we are first attracted buy by their image representation – usually a photograph. So having a quality image is critical and crucial for a lot of all companies which who want to boost their online sales." Although Benedetti’s background as a biomedical engineer has little to do with photography, he has always been fascinated by the eyes and the science of the human brain, which come together in Artificial Intelligence and the development of BOOM Image Studio sof...

Erik Backer, Co-Founder, and CEO of Portal.chat 26 November 2018 Gordana Davila Recently we caught up with Erik Backer, Co-Founder, and CEO of  Portal.chat  at the 24th Property Portal Watch Conference in Madrid. The decade-old Netherlands-based Portal.chat offers online real estate sites an instant messaging app that also supports live video and audio chat.  “We have a plug and play solution that allows real estate classified sites and marketplaces, anywhere in the world, to offer a live chat solution between consumers and the listings owners or between the advertisers (the agents) and the real estate site. “In the past 18 months, we have noticed that there has been a significant increase in the use of chat and it can no longer be ignored as a communication channel,” stated Backer. He also added that the use of chat is generational with the younger generations using chat as their prime method of communication with so...

21 November 2018 Gordana Davila Madrid was the city of choice for the 24th Property Portal Watch conference where a record 400 attendees from 48 countries met to discuss the key issues facing their businesses. Over the three days, some of the biggest names in online real estate classifieds and marketplaces listened to 42 speakers from 17 countries present on this year's theme of "From Classifieds to MARKETPLACES." Ideas were exchanged, technologies shared, networking was conducted, and startups pitched their business plans to the panel of experts. There were many wonderful presentations, but here are some of the highlights. Mayank Yadav, Product Manager,  Facebook Marketplaces  was interviewed by conference founder and leading industry expert, Simon Baker, about Facebook’s rollout of its Marketplaces product, the success they are having and the next steps.  The interview directly addressed the key issues of co-opetition and whether Facebook would t...

27 September 2018 Gordana Davila Property Portal Watch had the pleasure of interviewing  Anthemos Georgiades , CEO and co-founder of  Zumper . Launched in 2012 and based out of San Francisco, California, property portal Zumper was conceived due to the frustration experienced by Georgiades and other Zumper team members during the process of searching for, applying and signing the contract of rental properties, in the UK, as well as in the U.S. Whilst attending business school in the U.S., Georgiades noticed that the process of searching for and renting an apartment was quite antiquated and cumbersome, so he decided to plant roots in the Silicon Valley, and he co-founded Zumper. Having already raised a whopping US$90 million in funding, we asked Georgiades about Zumper’s steps in raising funding, and what advice he could give other companies who are in the same situation. Georgiades stated that the company’s approach was to have a narrow scope of what they we...

09 August 2018 Gordana Davila Founded in 2012, based in Redwood City, California,  Kahuna  is powered by big data and machine learning and is trusted by companies like Yelp, Yahoo!, GoPro, Dollar Shave Club, among many more companies, to provide a new level of authentic engagement between brands and their customers via web, email, mobile and social media channels. Claiming over 144 million engaged users and over 4 billion messages sent, Kahuna has quickly taken the lead in becoming the platform of choice for meeting the needs of marketplaces, using state of the art machine-learning technology to drive extreme personalization, product and pricing optimization, trust, and engagement. Sameer Patel joined Kahuna as CEO and board member in 2016. Before Kahuna, Patel served as General Manager at SAP / SuccessFactors overseeing the Collaboration and Hybris Commerce Community Software business. Prior to SAP, Patel had 15 years of leading enterprise tec...