Originally posted on August 6, 2017 on https://www.shelterzoom.com/resources-blog/posts/08062017/
Coming together to build our real estate tech company, ShelterZoom, has been like finding and constructing our own Silk Road.
For me, life in Australia has been a blessing. Last year, after leaving my two decade-long corporate life, I was ready to push my boundaries and explore startup opportunities.
On the other side of the world was Allen Alishahi, a New York-based, pioneering real estate broker and innovative business strategist. After three decades of running several highly successful real estate and lending companies, Allen was keen to tackle a new approach to real estate. This approach, in his mind, had to address the industry and consumers’ real needs, and not have geographical boundaries. He realized his answer was to use Technology.
Our shared interest to create something new and different eventually led to our collaboration on a real estate technology project we decided to call ShelterZoom.
When Allen and I first met on Skype last year, we did not know how far we would go with the project. We had some great ideas and were initially just excited to share them. Our conversation flowed easily. We appreciated each other’s complementary skills, which made us a strong and balanced team.
From the very beginning, we believed that our platform had to have a life in and of itself. After several months of work – which produced the development of a business plan and product strategy, along with a well-defined scope and design – we knew we had something special to offer the market.
With support from a highly qualified team, our first blockchain-based platform became available to the general public at the end of November 2017 (a product demo and B2B partner registration commenced in mid-October). ALL real estate websites, from large listing sites like Zillow and Realtor.com to franchised company websites like Re/Max and Century 21 to single office brokerage websites to MLS websites, can easily integrate with ShelterZoom’s widget and be empowered by our blockchain solution. We want the whole real estate industry to benefit from ShelterZoom’s groundbreaking innovation.
The entire project, up to June 2017, was done via Skype collaboration and email. Allen and I finally met in June when I travelled to New York. The meeting brought out a new meaning to our mission through discovering our respective Persian and Chinese cultural heritages.
ShelterZoom can potentially become the vehicle for building our own modern version of the ancient Silk Road, whose purpose was to connect our two historic civilizations and others along a trading route. It excites us when we think about how many people we can help along this modern Silk Road. We will be able to provide them with better shelters and transport if we can turn our business partnership into a thriving technology platform.
We are committed to making ShelterZoom the Silk Road of the twenty-first century by transforming it into something significant.