42Floors (YC W12) Launches Commercial Real Estate Search Tool

http://betakit.com/2012/03/19/42floors-launches-commercial-real-estate-search-tool

by erin_bury • 14 years ago

89 30 14 years ago

kenrikm• 14 years ago

Great idea, I have noticed that office space is hard to find though the standard outlets (realtor.com, zillow) however I wanted to see what was available in Mountain View and Palo Alto but it seems it only works in San Francisco at the moment? Keep up the good work guys/gals there is defiantly a market for this.

jaf12duke3• 14 years ago

Actually, it's available throughout the Bay Area. Bay Area today, the world tomorrow...

scarmig• 14 years ago

Available, maybe, but the East Bay is definitely a bit sparse.

Nice looking site, though!

jchrisa• 14 years ago

Interesting to note that they are going for a web-site first strategy. I've been waiting for things like this (basic data entry, search, etc) to move to a mobile first strategy. At least for this use case, we aren't there yet.

wtvanhest• 14 years ago

If Freedman sees this, I'd like to get his opinion on what they are doing better than the two incumbents: Loopnet.com and CoStar.com

Personally I find both sites irritating, so I'm sure there is an opening here, but I'd love to hear what he thinks it is.

thoughtpeddler2• 14 years ago

Ah yes, I answer this question in my coverage for VentureBeat here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3724343

Click through to the link, ctrl/cmd+F "loopnet" / "costar" ... see what he thinks.

The article also mentions: this is not for commercial property, just leasable spaces, which is another differentiator between those giants.

suking• 14 years ago

You can find leasable spaces on loop for sure.

jaf12duke3• 14 years ago

Those companies are both explicitly broker tools. Their business model is a subscription model that the professional real estate community pays in order to do their job. This is just like the airline industry in the 90s: travel agents were equipped with (and paid for) better tools and thus, the average traveler was fully reliant on them.

It's also how residential search existed 7 years ago. There were MLS systems that were mostly just used by realtors to keep track of availabilities. Zillow, Trulia, and Streeteasy liberated all that fragmented data into usable search experiences.

We're 'liberating commercial real estate data.' Which means, anyone can search for free. Once the data is freely available, then companies everywhere can compete for traffic with user experience, customer service, value-added features,etc—all the things you as a customer want these companies to be competing on.

In a world where data is still subscription based, companies compete with lock-in contracts and exclusivity clauses and nobody wins. For proof, check out the design of the big incumbents. It's more than just bad, it's not caring.

We may win, we may not. But we believe that within the next 5 years, the internet will have its usual effect on commercial real estate. And we welcome it for no other reason then we also need to search for office space.

vaksel2• 14 years ago

good idea, but I think this is an industry where you don't win with technology...but with connections in the industry...and it doesn't look like the team has that.

and the investors are mostly tech guys, not real estate guys...which means there is no inside track into getting a meeting with heads of "big office corp"

so they'll most likely hit adoption issues outside of the bay area.

plus there are a dozen sites doing that, and besides the fancy UI, there is no real advantage over the other sites. And speaking of UI, that site is too javascript extensive....takes way too long to load

also the $/sqft per year seems a bit useless...at the very least should provide how much it'd actually cost per month.

finally the SEO on the site is terrible...you are trying to rank for "find office space" that gets 170 searches per month, when you should be trying to rank for "office space for rent" which gets 4400 searches per month...also lease should be somewhere in the title, since that's also getting searched for.

don't get me wrong, chances are they'll have some limited success in the Bay Area based on the YC referalls alone. But they'll have to deal with a major chicken and egg problem elsewhere...and as you can see, the search volume is pretty low, so they'll need to go offline to actually reach their target customer.

pelemele• 14 years ago

>> good idea, but I think this is an industry where you don't >> win with technology...but with connections in the >> industry...

Exactly. CRE is slightly a different kind of animal.

brm• 14 years ago

$/sqft per year makes more sense when you take into account that most corporate budgets aren't monthly (this isn't an apartment rental) and that most commercial lease terms are several years long

vaksel2• 14 years ago

fine then calculate yearly cost...showing 2 completely different spaces with the same price doesn't really make much sense. That'd be in addition to the square foot rate

jaf12duke3• 14 years ago

Love this! Thanks for the feedback. While your feedback is at times harsh, this is what makes us better. Please keep it coming.

On your product feedback—yes to all of it. We'll improve cost/month, SEO, and load times (along with the 148 other tickets on our wish list).

On your adoption points, all I can say is yes it will be difficult and I think you've done a good job focusing on the toughest challenges. Big challenges=big rewards; we're willing to take that risk.

The part I would push back on the hardest is our team. I believe an engineer-centric company will win in this space. Our advisors and investors are helping us with high-level introductions. We can get in the door anywhere, but in the end the product matters and we pride ourselves in building valuable products quickly. Some other companies in our industry pride themselves on being 'built for brokers, by brokers.'

When competing on the web, I'll bet on hackers any day.

samstave• 14 years ago

>"also the $/sqft per year seems a bit useless"

As far as I know - this is how most people look at commercial real estate costs. At least in my talks with people here in SF who were looking for, and leasing space.

ry0ohki2• 14 years ago

Yes, this is the standard for commercial real estate. $3,000 a month really means a lot less then $15/sqft for someone who has looked much into commercial real estate.

silentscope• 14 years ago

Been reading his blog for a while and was wondering what he was up to. I'm wondering if they have plans for any social features--couchsurfing for startups. It'd be tricky as hell due to NDAs, but with referrals acting as the vetting it could create a whole new level of startup community.

Not knowing the logistics, maybe that's just too sticky an idea. Either way, it looks damn useful, especially with that in-house photographers part. CL photos are SKETCH.

bostonvaulter2• 14 years ago

Or maybe make it easy to team up with other companies to rent out a space. So for example a 4,000 sq ft space could be split into two and the rent shared between the two companies who now each have a 2,000 sq ft space.

ry0ohki2• 14 years ago

If you are looking for couchsurfing for startups, there are already quite a few people on it... http://www.quora.com/Is-there-an-Airbnb-for-office-space

kloncks• 14 years ago

Curious: why the name 42Floors?

cpursley• 14 years ago

Dude, read the article.

prawn• 14 years ago

Skimmed the article 2-3 times and must've missed something obvious or maybe obtuse.

JoeToday• 14 years ago

Nobody's heard of Rofo.com? They're already doing this pretty well AND have the exclusive LinkedIn real estate app. I used to work there and it IS all about connections in the commercial real estate industry. Commercial brokers are still very entrenched and protective of their listings. The only value they have left is 'inside information' and they know they need to protect it.

Do some keyword research too, like the other dude said, mucho importante.

starrhorne• 14 years ago

Congrats on the launch. This space is definitely seeing a lot of interesting activity. Rofo's in SF, and we just launched in Portland ( http://www.officespace.com/Portland-OR ).

Best of luck. You guys definitely have a nice interface.

mcdowall• 14 years ago

I submitted an eerily similar application to YC in Summer 11' though it was focused on storage as well as office space. Best of luck, its a market thats ripe for some disruption. If you want my domains let me know, I won't be using them.

steveklbnf• 14 years ago

Overall, I dig the site and like the map-centric interface. I like the sqft cost per year, and recognize that an awesome thing to calculate and filter on.

I'd really like to be able to "click into" the actual Streetview to be able to rotate around on a listing page. It looks like the auto-grabbed images aren't always the most useful representation. Also -- I immediately found the two Google Maps images on the listing page to be kind of an eye sore with each having the Google logo and trademark.

Best of luck to ya'll, the site is off to a pretty awesome start.

sixQuarks• 14 years ago

I never heard of this site betakit.com before. Does anyone know of any similar sites? I'm trying to break away from TechCrunch

robwgibbons• 14 years ago

##things = terribly unoriginal name

_sentient• 14 years ago

As a designer, I LOVE your interface.

The only thing I'd do differently is allow users to zoom in/out on the map using the mouse scroll. I know this is default behavior on most map products, so when I went to zoom and my scroll button did nothing ... it was a little counter-intuitive.

That's a very minor issue however, and this is a great product overall.

dazbradbury• 14 years ago

Nice and simple UI, I like it! Congrats on launching, looks like you're on the road to success.

As a founder of a similar business (residential rather than commercial), and YC interviewee in the same round as you, I would be interested how you plan to tackle the problem you state on your blog:

    I did my best to search myself online and it's almost impossible. 
    It is incredible. Craigslist is almost totally filled with spaces 
    that are off the market, put up by brokers simply trying to get 
    you to call (it's called a flytrap).

We applied with our solution in the same round as you, so just interested how you guys are going to tackle the problem? It appears you're not doing anything at the moment, but I'm sure you have some ideas in the pipeline...

Congrats once again!

42Floors (YC W12) Launches Commercial Real Estate Search Tool

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