Frontdoor co-founders want to connect real estate agents with buyers

Back in the day, before technology took its hold over the property industry, real estate agents would do all of their work in an office all day.

A family would stop at the corner real estate office on their way to the meat store or fruit stand. Storefront offices, referrals from neighbors, and even paper ads brought in the business. These days, getting a client to even call back can take insurmountable effort for agents. But cofounders Alain Kapatashungu, 34, and Emilie Kapatashungu, 32, have an idea.

They met in Lyon, France, while both getting their master's degrees. With a background in real estate marketing, Burundi-born Alain and France-born Emilie noticed agents spending many hours manually collecting information on online prospects, without any data to help them understand their clients better. They decided they could solve this issue by creating a product that extracted the data for them. According to Alain, Frontdoor, a real estate software platform they founded in 2016, weaves social insights into agents workflow so agents can automatically see who their online leads are, where they're based and what they do, including their LinkedIn profiles. Both Alain and Emilie hope this can help agents find more natural ways to break the ice and topics to bond over prior to a showing. Like the old days, but with a twist. 

Alain claims that with Frontdoor, agents can increase their conversion rate by 3X compared to other tools and save 7 hours per week, allowing agents to focus on what matters the most to them.

With a former RE/MAX president sitting on the board, the couple hope that Frontdoor can take the real estate agent and customer experience to a new level of authenticity.

Maryann Reid:  How did you get a former RE/MAX president, a giant in the industry to support Frontdoor?

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