Carl von Linné goes real estate

Imagine the following; you travel from Sweden to Dallas in the US to attend a real estate conference focusing on IT and you end up in a presentation about the famous Swedish botanist Carl von Linné. Surprised is an understatement!

However, there was two good reasons why this occurred;

1. First of all, the presentation was about the benefits of standards
Linné created what should became known as the Linné taxonomy, a system of scientific classification.

2. The speaker, Mark R. Linné, was a relative to Carl von Linné!

I've attended many presentations but a better storyline is hard to find. Finally, the presentation was indeed interesting and put an interesting point to standards. It also introduced me to the abbreviation AVM (Automated Valuation Models).

Realcomm I -- CoStar vs Google

At the Opening Session at the Realcomm two different ways of data gathering was displayed.

On the photo is Diane Paddison, Andrew Florence, John Hanke and Michael Joroff (MIT).

John Hanke, general manager of Google Earth (an founder of Keyhole), did a great presentation of Google Earth which included a display of Bombay city with all major buildings named out on the map (se below). The interesting part is that this informed has been put in place by the users 'the Google community. In other words, collaborative information gathering. Something that John was pushing to the real estate audience; "why not put in information about your buildings in the system and market it to the 100 million users?".

In contrast to the approach of having the users themselves putting in the data CoStar's founder and CEO Andrew Florance ran through their new retail solution.

Also that an impressive product, but you have to wonder, what if Google manager to have the industry to put in the same data into Google Earth for free?

One year later; the same topic

Today, the 18th of june, is the 1 year anniversary of this blog.
To celebrate(?) I put in a post about the same topic; Realcomm.

Realcomm has the mission "to provide a single place where industry leaders can come together to discuss, analyze and debate the latest innovations that are impacting the Commercial Real Estate industry". This conference is hosted in Dallas (USA) and starts on the 25th.

European dinner
If you are from Europe and going to the fair, why not gather with other EU members at a dinner on the 26th. Contact me or Andrew Wallet at Remit Consulting.

See you at Realcomm.

A promising start for Bostart.se

Two months ago a new Internet service with real estate  focus was launched in Sweden. The service, Bostart, aims to make it easier for the seller  of residential houses/flats to negotiate the brokage fee.

I'm happy to see that the service has attracted more than 100 brokage firms in the first months. The real estate industry, both residential and commercial, needs to be more efficient. This is, for sure, a service I'll use when it's time 'to upgrade' the state of living.

Further reading;
'Prispress på mäklararvode'    Vår Bostad, 2006-04-21   (In Swedish)

LoopNet - The first week on the List

Last week, the 7th of June, LoopNet went public (and raised $72 million) by offering 6 million shares at $12 per share. A proposed market cap of $485 million which is more than 10 times its current revenue run rate.

After the offering, the company expects to have 34.8 million shares outstanding. Executives and directors, who didn't sell any shares in the IPO, continue to own 43 percent of the company's stock.

The first day generated an increase of close 30% but hos gone back to around $15.

Revenue
LoopNet reported net income of $18.9 million on $31 million revenue in 2005.
Revenue has almost tripled in the past three years.

The company has been profitable since the second quarter of 2003. Its revenue in the first quarter rose 65 percent to $10.2 million, and net income rose 59 percent to $2.97 million, compared with the same period in 2005.

The company makes money mostly (80%) through premium subscriptions to the site. The remainder of the company's revenue comes from advertising revenue from the site and certain product licensing fees.

Number of users
The site has 1.2 million registered members, with 64,000 of them paying a monthly subscription rate of $39.95 to $49.95 for premium service. The site averages more than 590,000 visitors per month, according to ComScore/MediaMetrix. Thirty percent of the company's paid subscriber base is concentrated in California

Number of listed properties
At the end of March, LoopNet listed 360,000 properties totaling 2.8 billion square feet worth more than $296 billion.

The IPO Prospectus
Is found here.

Seeking Alpha has published to analysis on Loopnet;
"An in-depth look at LoopNet IPO"             12th June
"LoopNet IPO: Strong out of the gate"         9th June

"It's the user experience, stupid"

Does software needs to look ugly?
Relevant question, because most of them actually do!
However, this may change faster then expected according to the article below.

'It's the user experience, stupid'    ZDnet, 8th of May 2006
'A friendly face of business software'    BusinessWeek, 3rd of May 2006

"Good design is becoming more than a nice-to-have feature. Thanks to slick Web sites like Amazon.com, people are coming to expect software that takes no or little training to use."

There is a never ending list of Property Management Software, but have you ever seen a well designed one?

Get Real wtih 37 signals

37signals is a much hyped company in Chicago (read about their passionate user rating here) . But keep an eye on them if you're into product development and Internet.

For a background of the firm read the Salon.com article "The next web revolution".

However, it's not the company or even their products that caught my interest.
It's their philosophy, which includes;

• less is more
• design first (then code)
• find people who are enthusiastic
• don’t try to find “tricky” ways to get more cash. Earn it.

To find out more about the hilosophy, read their blog 'Signal vs Noise' or even better, download their book (no hardcopy) for 19 USD. Excellent and straightforward reading. Like their products.

Salesforce outages vs Competition

Since last October there has been a lot of writing about Salesforce and their outages. This has of course started a discussion about the reability of SaaS. Like this one 'Salesforce.com's hiccups'  (Rough Type, 2006-02-01).

In order to be transparent Salesforce created the site http://trust.salesforce.com.
A site that monitors the uptime for their service.

However, the surprising part is that other SaaS companies are using this to impress the market. "Some of its rivals have taken to monitoring the site and sending e-mails to reporters whenever something is amiss."   The Tech Beat 2006-04-27 

How clever is that?
I guess the question the potential customers are asking themselves are if to go for a webservice. Not which one. Like pointed out in this ZDnet article 'Are Salesforce's outages sullying the reputation fo the SaaS model?'

Property investment company purchases an online community

Sten Mörtstedt, CEO of CLS Holdings plc (a property investment company), places a bid to buy the rest of Lunarstorm for 170 million SEK (roughly 18,2 million EUR). His interested in the company started in 2001 when he invested 15 million SEK for 30% of the company.

The aim is to go internationally
After years of talk Lunarstorm started last autumn to expand by launching the service in UK. Read more here.  According to an article in Dagens Industri on Saturday "they will invest a few hundred million SEK the coming years to launch the service in Europe, US and China".

Background
I believe the timing of the purchase has to do with the growing focus on similar services in the US. The biggest is MySpace. Bought by News Corp, the company run by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, nine months ago for $580m. The story told in CNN. Another one is FaceBook which is apparently on the market according to BusinessWeek. I bet the value of those companies is attracting the interest to grow something similar on this side of the pond.

Lunarstorm
Lunarstorm is Sweden's leading youth oriented community service with over 900 000 members logging in to their service every week. Roughly 80% of the youths between 12-17 years are using their service! The revenue was 71 million SEK last year with a profit of 14,9 million SEK.

Further reading see the article in the Herald Tribune (200511-28).
IDG wrote earlier this year a story about how they managed to start charging for their service. (Only in Swedish)

About communities
Last December BusinessWeek wrote an article on the culture of youth communities. More on the topic is found in the blog of Danah Boyd who recently had a speech about "Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace" .

More about Sten Mörtstedt and CLS
"Sten Mortstedt, 65, began his career 1962 with Svenska Handelsbanken (Stockholm). 1968 was appointed Managing Director of the Mortstedt family property company Citadellet AB, which he successfully floated on the Stock Exchange in Stockholm 1981. Since 1977 he has been involved in establishing and running property and other family interests in Europe and USA and is the Executive Chairman of CLS Holdings plc (established in 1987 - listed on the London Stock Exchange 1994).

CLS Holdings plc is a property investment company, listed on the London Stock Exchange since 1994. It has an equity of £426m and a property portfolio in London, France, Sweden and Germany valued at over £1bn. CLS has invested primarily in offices. It has established local management operating from offices in London, Paris and Stockholm. The company was founded by its current Chairman, Sten Mortstedt whose family holds a controlling stake in the company."  The description is  from GRI. 

Software as a Service (SaaS)

I have never really felt to happy with calling a webbased service for ASP (application service provider) since that is for me what it was in 2000, a client/server software distribuated using, for example, Citrix to a webbrowser.

SaaS (Service as a Software) is better name for the services of the future. Something that is build from scratch for the web.

Where I found the acronym;
'Software as a service: The next big thing?'   (An article in InfoWorld 20th march 2006)