This Startup Wants To Give You $25K Cash When Buying a Home (feat. Rishard Rameez)

Hello, everybody. Welcome to yet another episode of the Building Public Podcast. I'm your host, KP. And today I am super, super, super thrilled to have Rashard Ramiz joining us.

He's a good friend of mine. And we got to work together for his startup Zones product and launch, which went terrifically well. And since I've got to meet him and got to learn about Zones story, He was one of those things that really stood out among so many startups that I get to hear about and get to study about. And I thought, okay, it would be so cool to bring him on the pod and unpack all of his journey and lessons learned and where he's going with the ambitions he has for his own.

So that's why I'm excited today. Sher, welcome to the podcast and thanks for being here today. Thank you for having me. Super excited to be on the podcast.

So for someone who is just tuning in and maybe they haven't read the text interview that I've done with you on the newsletter, would you mind introducing Zone? Like, how would you define what the startup does? And I know it's zonehomes.com, correct?

Yeah. You have two domains, if I'm not wrong. Yes, yes. We have a Canadian domain and also a U.

S. domain. Yes. So tell us about Zone.

What does it do? Yeah, no, I mean, zone solving one of the biggest problems that I think in our lives, in my life, I think in a lot of my friends' lives, which is home ownership. And I think it's a topic that's often talked about in news channels, often debated about in politics, but I think not really a solution out there. And that's where we decided to build something special, where we turn all these bloated real estate commissions into down payment for people who are looking to purchase a home and cut down the time to home ownership by two to three years.

And that's what we do at Zone. That's brilliant. And so you would be obviously in the real estate category, right? And so there's sort of many layers, right, in the real estate sort of transaction, home ownership, you know, as a category.

Where do you exactly fall? Or at least for now, what's the wedge to market? It's kind of funny that you ask. I mean, that's something I think it feels very different every day, to be honest.

Because, I mean, I sometimes read our reviews and someone I did recently posted saying the best mortgage company ever. But I'm like, we don't even do mortgages by ourselves. And then I think someone also talked about the closing process and all that stuff. I mean, at the end of the day, what we are building, I don't think that is a specific word.

What we are building is a one-stop shop for anyone that's looking to buy a home. Usually when you're buying a home, you have a realtor, you have a mortgage broker, you have a lawyer. What we've done is sort of combine all of these folks together and sort of built one place for people to sort of go through the entire process of getting a mortgage done, finding the right home, placing an offer, getting it accepted at closing. And that is us, the end-to-end transaction.

And at the end of the transaction, instead of getting a big, large bill at ZONE, we give you a big, large check that helps you with your down payment. And that's where we come in. so that that specific thing where you flipped um the the expectations generally on on what happens at the end of the real estate in the process which is like you you dole out the big check to to the i mean to the uh yeah as a seller let's say right you dole out the big check um sorry as a buyer you do out the big check to the seller and um what you guys are doing is is basically the opposite of it and when i first heard about that i was like i had to ask you like two times three times like what's the catch like is this really true am i hearing this right like what's going on well like so zone will give me money i'm like what is it what are you talking about so can you break that down a little bit um because i think it's a it's a great hook and um i it's again an average person's reaction to that would be like that's too good to be true what's the catch what's happening so what's the math behind this and and also break it down like you know why did you come up with that specific uh i guess wedge to market absolutely i mean i mean this is a question i think we get asked very often i mean it's been i mean we've 300 million transactions after and we still get asked the same question what's the catch it's too good to be true what's hidden.

But I think the reason for that question is lack of education, right? I think when you really wrap your head around what happens in a transaction, if you look at the traditional space, a realtor that helps you with the purchase of their home, they do a few things. One, they connect you with mortgage brokers to get your mortgage done. They find you a property that fits your criteria online.

Then they go take you to see these properties. They drive a few hours to maybe the city that you're looking to purchase in and negotiate the deal. And then they might introduce you to a lawyer to close the deal. And this is what a realtor does.

Now, if you look at all these hours that a realtor spends on this transaction, it's roughly about 20 hours that a realtor spends on a transaction. Right. Now, let's take a average home of a million dollars. The commissions that the buying agent gets paid is 3%.

That is roughly $30,000 on a million dollar property. Now, you have $30,000 divided by 20 hours. It doesn't make sense. Let's do it.

I want to do it. How much is that? Because that's crazy. I never even thought about...

Yeah, it's about $1,500 an hour, right? Yeah. $1,500. You're right.

that's insane that's like more expensive than like cardiologists yeah so it doesn't make sense but if you also take a step back why are realtors still struggling after making that kind of money and that's because for a realtor to do one transaction they have to roughly work with 10 people that means they have to spend money on marketing today a good realtor is who's good at marketing, right? So they spend a lot of money on Facebook ads, Google ads, whatever that is. So they spend money getting 10 leads.

So let's say each customer costs about $2,000 to $3,000 in real estate. So that is $30,000 they've spent on acquiring a customer, acquiring 10 customers. But out of these 10, only one person's going to buy. And that person's not going to buy today or tomorrow.

They're going to take their time. They're going to find a property. And even once they've purchased a property, you still have to wait roughly three months to get your commission check. Right.

Now, you are actually, it's not 20 hours they're spending. They're spending 200 hours. Yeah. Because all the wait, all the, you know, yeah.

They don't have to spend the same time with others. They don't know out of the 10 who's actually going to transact. Exactly. Yeah.

That's where the math kind of breaks down. It's not actually one transaction. They have to make the money that they've spent on all these other nine people through that one person who is going to be transacting. That's where a zone changes everything.

We treat real estate just like how we treat everything else in life, which is essentially you have to be efficient in the process. How do we cut down these nine individuals? How do we also make realtors do what they're supposed to do rather than cold calling and spending money on marketing? That's not their expertise really, right?

They get a license to negotiate. They get a license, you find you the right home. And what we have done is essentially empower our realtors to do just that and not focus on any of these other things. We have a team of really good marketing folks to generate the lead.

We have a online mortgage qualification tool that qualifies you to purchase a home. Right. You have essentially a zone advisor who is a licensed realtor who educates you on the market, finds you the right home. Then instead of this agent also driving around and showing you properties, we have a network of showing agents who simply drive around and show you properties, right?

Interesting. Their simple job is to show you the home. And then when you like a home, this zone realtor who initially found you the home will negotiate and get the deal done. So now the zone realtor is specialized in finding you the right home and negotiating and getting the deal done.

and we pay our realtors an hourly salary. And that way, they are incentivized to provide you the best service because they're not trying to make a sale. Because in the traditional space, realtors only make money when you buy a home. Right.

So they're trying to almost pressurize you into deciding and committing. Right. Because the longer you wait, the longer I'm spending money without making any commission. With ZONE, our realtors get paid right away for the work that they do.

our showing agents gets paid right after a showing so that's so radical that's so radical like the fact that you decoupled showing agents exactly from realtor exactly i mean there may be an overlap but like the the core tasks are slightly different right like so exactly so now we are actually not spending that 200 hours a realtor spends in our case we are spending the 20 hours they should be spending and they're getting top dollar hourly pay for that 20 hours They're getting paid for the top dollar as well.

They're not just making random salaries. They are also making the top of the top per hour salary. And they're getting paid for every productive hour than all these not unproductive hours they don't have. And so you must be attracting forward-thinking realtors by now.

Absolutely. They want realtors to join us. Forward-thinking. They believe in the fact, hey, they should get paid for the work they do.

So for example, just to kind of, the reason I am sort of interrupting you is because it's like, so again, mind blowing and radical. So an average realtor could have a month where they may have had like five quote unquote customers in the pipeline, but have sold nothing because they haven't decided, let's say. That means the person hasn't made any money for that month, right? Through the commission checks in the traditional space.

I'm sure there's some baseline, but still, generally speaking, they haven't made the lion's share of their salary, which is very stressful for them. It's not great, stressful. They still did the work, right? It's not like they slept and, like, you know, this happened.

Exactly, and that affects the experience as well for the 10th person who's coming to go to the front. Taking all that frustration out on that one. Yeah. That's where we change it.

So, I mean, 20 hours of productive work. We pay $100 an hour. That is $2,000 spent. Out of the $30,000 minus $2,000, we are left with $28,000.

Yeah. Now, out of that, we give 50% back to the person who's buying the home. And we still get to keep a lot more money than even an average brokerage or a realtor. Right.

So you can cover your marketing costs, right? You can cover your admin overhead costs. $2,000 in terms of operating. Yeah.

And these are the software costs. And we are profitable right now, right? So now you look at it. That's still a lot of money we still make after giving back the money.

Yeah, but still the customer's getting 15K in this example. Which is significant, right? Which is a lot. And I think that's where we make the huge...

Because think about this. The customer's happy. I just kind of you know Like the customer happy because you know they got the 15K check which is a real cash they getting from the transaction And the realtor is happy because there was no inefficiencies and wastage and there was no... They feel like they were compensated fairly for all the hours and the work they put in.

There's no uncertainty, right? Right. And then you guys are happy because you got all the boxes checked in terms of everybody was paid. and then you still had a little bit margin for your profit.

That's insane. This is my reaction, by the way, to anyone watching. This is exactly how I made Richard explain to me when I first met him. Like three times.

I can't believe this. Because, you know, Richard, every once in a while you come across... Because to me, this is a business model innovation. Of course.

Right? This is a decoupling. It's almost like unbundling, bundling strategy. So every once in a while you come across a startup like this where maybe the tech is, it's not the, it's not the NVIDIA style innovation.

It's not the, you know, the next Uber or whatever, but it's, it's the connecting the dots in a way that nobody's ever thought of, you know? And, and a couple of examples that come to my mind are, if you remember Warby Parker, right? Like the, the famous, you know, eyewear brand, like when they were pitching the idea, it was such a radical thing because like the traditional way was you had to go to the optometrist and like get the you know get the prescription glasses right and then you're limited by the shelf of whatever five ten twenty options and then you have to try right there and then decide right there with that pressure and then come home you know and then the thing will be mailed to you or you'll pick it up next day yeah whereas what would be like okay how about we just send you all the frames whichever you want which you send us the ones you're not using that was too good to be true i was like this can't be real um and so i'm getting the same kind of vibe you know it's the it's the same thing where it's like why did nobody else think of this you know the same way right um also i mean the the cool part about even the tech piece is when you sort of unbundle what an agent does it also becomes easier to innovate for example one of the so what we've done is we've sort of treated this as a production line why are production efficient and they're able to generate the same.

Sorry, you treated this as a what? Production what? Just like a production line. Line, okay.

Yeah, yeah. You can make sure your quality is the same because it has to be the same. And it is the same product, right? But from real estate, it is not the same.

One realtor is like a great experience. Another one's a bad one. Like all that. What we've done is quality control as well because we have compartmentalized how real estate works into like, you know, the education piece, finding the home, going on showings, placing offers.

And what we've done is we've built tech for each unit for agents to be able to be super efficient. So for example, when we are placing the offers, we empower our agents to really negotiate. And we've built AI tools to automate the offer writing process. That is just simple, right?

Our agents can talk to the AI agent and it'll just fill out all the information and have the offer written. Usually this takes sometimes a couple of hours for an agent to write an offer. Right. But other agents are simply focused on negotiating and not the paperwork stuff.

So, for example, one of our agents who just recently joined us, only I think 24 or 5 years old, he just did 11 transactions last month. Wow. And most agents don't actually even do more than a single transaction the entire year. Yeah.

Right? 11 transactions. And he became the 12th in terms of ranking based on number of transactions. And for him, he still had a lot of time left in his schedule to do other things.

And how? Because he's doing simply what he's good at negotiating. And we use the tech to automate all the other things. So even when it comes to finding compatibles for a property, like, hey, I like this property.

What do you think the price of this is? instead of the realtor having to go through putting radiuses finding recently sold and all that right that is built by pressing a button it brings all the properties it looks at the differences between the two properties hey this property is sold a month ago it has one less bathroom and it is a bit more renovated in the inside and the price adjuster price is this and they click send and it gets sent so that's how we've built tech to sort of sort of optimize workflow and also increase efficiency for each line of the product right because you were able to unbundle the whole experience you could micro focus on each exactly it's like microservices is what we built right wow it's really brilliant man i mean i i'm still like in awe of of the core idea so to tell us tell the users i mean the listeners about the the fun story of of um the reddit rage post because i think that was another thing that really stood out for me when i heard about it um so that was the genesis of of the idea that eventually came to be but what was what happened there and then you know what yeah tell us more i mean i mean me buying my first home i think about three and a half to four years ago i was super excited you know like uh saved a lot of money to buy my first home you know and uh super excited and this is in toronto correct or is it This is internal.

Yeah, this is internal. And I bought a home and also decided to sell during all this COVID stuff and everything. So I realized the market was good. And I also decided to sell my home.

And I sold my home and I realized, shit, I had to pay $70,000 in commissions. And that is almost all of my down payment for years. and I took my Excel sheet, put down all the hours each agent might have spent. I'm like, 20 hours, $70,000 does not make sense at all.

So I was like, okay, this doesn't make sense. And this is unfair, right? I'm all in for like fair work and compensating people above and beyond when there has been work put in that reflects the numbers. But here I couldn't make sense in any way.

And that's when I was like, okay, I want to take my frustration out somewhere. But I also don't want to, you know, like go on like social media where my name's out there and say, hey, I hated this realtor and all that stuff. So I was like, okay, let me just post it on Reddit. It was, I think, my first or the second post on Reddit ever.

And I basically wrote my frustration out. There was no chat GPD back then. So I just had to type it all out. And I posted it and I went to bed.

and I wake up and I'm like looking at my phone and I'm like, I'm just scrolling and there's Reddit notifications, Reddit notifications. It's not ending. Like what is going on? And I click on Reddit and open.

And it's the homepage. The first story is my post. And I go in, I'm like 600 some comments or something along those lines. And I think it said a million people has seen it and 95% up for it.

it and there was so many dms from like i mean uh from i think someone from joe rogan's team reached out reached out so many people and i was like okay let me take a step back let me digest this i'm like okay this is a much bigger problem than just a range post and there is a opportunity to build something really cool here and i posted a small comment in the comment section saying hey guys if this comment gets enough words i'm going to drop everything i'm doing right now and I'm going to start this company.

I think it got 6,000 upvotes in two hours. And I was like, okay, this is it. I'm doing a validation for you, right? Yeah.

Reddit post is still up there. I mean, it is on our homepage, on our story. And you can read the comments. You can read my own post, all that stuff.

And I mean, even to this date, I was at an event last week speaking. And one of the folks come to me and he's like, I saw your Reddit post. I commented on it. I'm like, this is crazy.

This is three years after. That's crazy, man. So I'll make sure that I plug that link in the show notes because I think it's worth just checking out. So when that was happening, right, were you in the mindset of like, you know, I want to start a startup.

I'm looking for ideas. Like what were you, the night before, what were you doing? Like what was your life like? the night before i was very frustrated that i lost so many but apart from that from a from a professional career point of view were you at a startup already were you exploring i was okay right in real estate again right and uh so we were just focused on that and this happened and of course i think uh this was like okay i have to stop everything and do this you really you so you really took action from that day right not not the exact same day actually yeah um i actually did call one of my friends and uh who's who's now a co-founder of mine here at zone and i called but who is it someone someone i know nabeel nabeel yeah yeah yeah so he leads our product side now and i and i actually called him and said dude um there's this sick idea and uh and i i think uh a lot of people actually want a solution and i have a sick idea let's uh uh do you do you want to take this and run with it because i'm working on something else with uh with with another friend of mine can you can you can you start this and go and i can be an advisor to this company right and he said uh bro give me like a week i have to really think through and come back to you and the next day i call him back i'm like dude you don't have a week and he goes like um okay you know i'm gonna get back to you tomorrow and i think the next day he goes like i really love the idea i want to do this but uh i'm not sure if i can do this by myself and he's like, so really sorry, dude, I don't think I can do this.

So the conversation ended there and it took me like five days and I'm like, okay, I'm going to do this now. You're going to do this. Yeah, and I called him up and I'm like, dude, let's start this. And I think that's how we got started.

I think within seven days, we were up and rolling. Wow, that's crazy. So fast forward a couple months and a couple inflection points, right? um take me through the like the moment when you uh pitched investors because this being such a radical and novel idea and like slightly offbeat idea i'm curious to hear like what was their reaction like um you know uh what were some of the objections maybe some others may have had uh and what was the what were the things that the ones who finally invested i think is it moxie ventures finally invested yeah yeah moxie invested in us but i think the first few people who uh invested in us were just my friends and family yeah including the including the realtor who uh worked on my file he was the first one of the first people wait is that wait is it was it the guy who you were complaining about kind of yes he was maybe not personally it was not about him though I think it was the Matt It wasn personally It just how the industry is at the end of the day What did you say It not just him It was the industry and he never was supposed to change The status quo.

He is the owner of a 200-plus agent brokerage. Yeah. And he's related to me. So, obviously, you go with someone who is related to buy their home, right?

Which is one of the reasons why I wanted to be anonymous on my post. But I think he realized right away and he said, like, I agree with you. I mean, this shouldn't be the case. Yeah.

Right. Wow. That's great validation coming from an insider. Exactly, right.

Because he owns the fourth largest century 21 brokerage in Canada. Wow. He invested. He was actually the first investor in zone because I told him, hey, I actually get the experience.

and he invested and then a previous board member of a company that acquired my our first company invested and a lot of our friends gave checks and they were like they didn't even care like you know like to know what the numbers are going to be or anything they were like this is a great solution we need to solve this and we already do you know like and I still remember there's one one guy who who crowdfunded on his own to with I think about 30 or 40 people and he had his own agreement with them and he gave me one check and he's like hey put it under my name but then later I find out like he's he's collected like from a bunch of small like like an SPV right like yeah he did like a informal SPV probably yeah wow so there was there's always so that means that there's always been sort of that resonance from from friends and family and like anyone who came across the idea you know um who was the first institutional check and how was that journey for you yeah i mean our first traditional uh the institutional check came from moxie yeah and i think for the longest time we've debated if we wanted to go down the vc route or not and uh again that comes partly from our experience in dealing with canadian vcs uh here and obviously I think the...

It's very different though, right? It's very different. I think Moxie is based out of California? Yeah, Moxie is based out of California.

It's very different, right? Which is completely different. And that was our first exposure to a VC out of California. And it worked out for us.

And I mean, which is why we are also moving to California now. Because again, I think especially Canada has an ecosystem that is good. but less they have a very sort of they're not prone to taking a lot of risk. Risk, yeah.

You know, could you be a company with recurring revenue and all that kind of stuff? Right. B2C, it's, I mean, it's either you don't make it or you make it really big. Yeah.

It's binary. Yeah. And B2C is filled with risk. I mean, it's just...

It's complete. And you need you need to have a stomach. Like, you need to have that risk appetite to take on B2C. Yeah, because it's not just Joe is your customer and he is selling to Joe.

You're selling to Joe, you're selling to John, you're selling to Jake, whoever that is, right? And everyone's different and everyone wants something else. Something different, yeah. That is also the beauty of it.

The thing with B2C companies, though, is that the risk to reward ratio is amazing. It's dramatic in the sense that, right? Like, you know, we know when we grew up, I'm sure you felt this too. Like, you know, when you think of a startup, like the names that come to your mind is like Facebook, right?

Like, or Uber, right? Or, you know, Airbnb. These are all B2C, right? And so B2C has the impact potential that's global, which, you know, typical B2B doesn't have like HubSpot.

How many people don't know about HubSpot? Like, you know, my mom doesn't know HubSpot, right? And so it's the beauty of that is that it's like you, if, if it works, like you said, it will work globally. I mean, there will be some adaptation you need to do based on regions, but like the idea is like sky's the ceiling.

Right. But initially it's hard to convince people to believe in it and so on, because it takes a certain kind of investor profile. Absolutely. I mean, that's what I think even like, I think when we spoke to the individuals from Moxie, I think that's when we decided, okay, we are going to move forward with this part because I think they did see the potential of what this could become.

And obviously the investors from the Moxie team, Katie, Ashwin and Alex and the entire team, I think they're just amazing people and they understand the problem and they resonated with the problem so much that they felt like a part of our team. And that's the reason we went forward with it. I think that was our biggest reason to move forward with the OECR. That's awesome.

Yeah, I'm excited for the chapters that are coming next for you. So I got a couple more questions. Yeah. In a way, would you say Zones is a marketplace?

or is it more of a all-in-one shop which is less of a marketplace but more of just the end-to-end managed marketplace yeah i think zone as it is right now it is essentially a marketplace for now but what it is also is a end-to-end experience for someone who's looking to buy a home. It's like you go to Amazon, you find the thing, you compare the prices, you check out and pay and everything, right? So that is the experience that we are trying to provide with ZONE when it comes to home buying.

Also enabling them financially to buy that home, similar to how buy now, pay later was for these payment checkouts, bringing that into real estate from a transaction angle as well, by enabling someone who was two years away from buying a home to able to to be able to buy a home today so we are bringing in that transactional angle the fintech angle the prop tech angle from real estate and sort of it's a combination of all this and obviously the marketplace with the sellers and the buyers in it right so it's that one-stop shop just like how rippling is for companies and software as a zone is essentially that for home buyers and home sellers nice so building a marketplace is a chicken and egg problem, right?

You have two sets of customers, the demand and the supply. What are your three tips as someone who's built a zone and has grown it so far? What specific tips or lessons you have with marketplaces? Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I think figuring out is it the chicken or the egg?

I think it's a never-ending, I think, conversation. Pick one and just go with it and then see what happens. Learn from it. If that is not the one, pivot to the other one, which is what exactly we did.

For us, we felt like, let's start with the selling side because, hey, when I sold my home, that's when I really felt the pain that I had to pay $70,000 in commissions. So let's start with the selling side and then build towards the buying side. And we launched the selling side. We got to, I think, roughly about 100K monthly revenue in, I think, in the first year or year and a half.

But it didn't feel like it was about to explode or get to that exponential goal. it was growing, but not at the pace that we wanted it to be. And we built all these AI tools to get home valuations, renovations, and all that kind of stuff. I think I see a lot of companies that are starting to do this now.

And I can see what we did three years ago. And because everyone's coming in from the point of, okay, we are going to do automate this and this and this, and hence reduce the cost associated with selling a home. And that way we will attract people to sell with us sure works principally works it's a good hook yeah hey instead of paying three percent to sell your home pay a flat fee of five thousand dollars works here are the tools that you need works but at the end of the day nothing will make sense if the seller can't sell their property yeah right so in the marketplace today in the traditional space what a realtor does is they They list the property on the MLS and they wait.

Just wait. Wait and wait. There's nothing that they can do to like even the best realtor can't really do much. They might have a small mailing list that they might mail.

They might do some Facebook ads here and there. That's not really going to fundamentally change anything. Then we said, okay, who's really attracted to sell their properties with us? Most people who are attracted to sell their property with us are first time home sellers.

because they are tech savvy. They are in their 30s, early 40s. They want to use some tech and save money. Okay, great.

So these are first-time home sellers, which means they bought a home that could be the home for the next set of first-time home buyers. Yeah, true. So if we can enable first-time home buyers to come into our marketplace and buy this property, then we will be able to actually sell this property, not just like build tools and reduce the price, but actually get these properties to sell. So we decided, okay, we don't want to compete with realtors and spending marketing budget to get more deals from today.

What can we do to bring leads from a year ago, two years into the future? Why aren't they buying now? They have the income, they have the good credit score, but what's stopping them is savings. Down payment, you're saving.

It's the down payment, right? So we said, okay, if roughly a person saves about $500 to $1,000 a month, so if we can give back someone $15,000, $20,000, that will cut down roughly two years, one to two years from their time to home ownership. And no one competes in this space today. Yeah.

You can't give that money up front. So we built a financial tool that can give this money up front. So that way we pulled leads from the future, two years into the future. So instead of waiting for two years, we brought them into today's timeline.

So someone's, let's say, on a savings journey, right? Their down payment goal is 50K. What you're saying is by the time they get to 35K, they can call you or they can use Zone. Zone will fill in the 15K and then now you're ready for your first home, right?

Which would have taken another two years maybe or maybe another year. Waiting for two more years, there's a few things that's happening, right? waiting for two more years. One is your money is also not hedged against what you want to purchase, which is real estate.

So if real estate prices go up by that two years, you also now need to save extra, not that 50,000. You'd have to save an extra 5,000 or 10,000 to get by the same house. And the second thing is you're not also building equity just yet. You're spending money on paying someone else's mortgage.

So we enable people to start building one to two years earlier than they would have without Zon. And do customers do they tell you stories about how like you know they saw the 15k ad or you know the concept and they like okay I started saving or I started like becoming more focused knowing the fact that there is 15k at the finish line or you know like how has that in real life laid out for customers I mean we initially when we launched like I said for us we wanted to figure out the marketplace we started the sell side We wanted to do the buying side because we would have that extra that we would have a 10x buyer pool to sell these properties now Right.

And that was the idea. Right. But then when we went to the market, we saw something that was very strange. People who weren't ready or thinking of even saving are now starting to buy homes with us.

Because what ended up happening was, let's say on a $600,000 home, the $15,000 covers a huge portion of the money that's needed to buy that home. So now all of a sudden you are not... Because usually it's about 3.5%.

I mean, in the US, the FHA loan, right? 3.5%. So let's say on a $600,000, you're looking at roughly $20,000, right?

Wow. So now all of a sudden, Zoni is giving you $9,000 out of like, we give roughly 1.5% to 2% off that price. So let's say in this case, we give 2%, that is $12,000.

Now all of a sudden, it looks possible to buy a home. Yeah, exactly. It feels like within reach. It feels more attainable, right?

Now you're going to figure out, okay, where can I get this additional $15,000? Maybe I can sell some stocks here. I can ask a friend. I can ask my parents.

It didn't come from like we thought, OK, we are going to cut down the time to home ownership for people who are already saving. But what I ended up doing was it actually sort of brought this feeling back to people who have given up on home ownership. I mean, recently we had a couple that bought a home with us and they were like, we were thinking of going back to the country they came from. They immigrated to Canada and they were thinking of going back because they thought home ownership wasn't possible here.

and they want to build a family here. But all of a sudden now with Zoon, it was possible. Now this became their home. Wow.

Do they, I mean, I think, like you said, even if you have them with the 2% within the 3.5%, that's like half or more than half. More than half. What they have to do.

Again, do they act surprised and ask like, is this a mortgage? Is this a loan? Like is the, you know, personal loan that I have to pay back? or is it equity, right?

A lot, right? Which is one of the reasons why we put it on our website. It's not a loan. We don't take any equity.

You don't have to pay us back, right? I mean, a lot of people are not used to... And for you, how are you floating that money? And for you, it's coming from the pool, from the seller savings you're making through efficiency and things like that, right?

We get paid from the seller, the 3%, right? The commission that we get paid. But we've created a financial tool that allows us to advance that even before we get fit and have it as a receiver. That's just brilliant, man.

I mean, just brilliant. Just brilliant. I just cannot. It makes a whole, it makes a complete difference.

It's a whole difference, right? And you just changed the game from inside out. I mean, I can't. It's one of those ideas that it feels like such a, such a what if idea, right?

I just can't. I mean, I can't wait for America to discover Zone because I know you're sort of my segue to the next part, which is your future ambitions and like your roadmap coming into 2025. I know you just, you're planning to move to SF. You guys, all of you as a team, you got to spend three months.

So tell the audience, tell me about your plans for America. We've done the launch. I'm so honored to be part of that launch campaign when you guys went live. So yeah, tell us more.

Yeah, no, I mean, we are live in California. we've already helped a bunch of people buy their first homes in California, even without us being in California. Wow. And we are super excited to, I think, make home ownership affordable and eternable for everyone, right?

Not just Canadians, but also every single American. I think it's such a big piece of our identity, right? Where we grow up and where we call our home. And it cannot be completed without truly being able to call this place home.

And we are excited to bring that to California first. And of course, I think we have plans to launch across the U.S. within the next six to 12 months in every single state.

And we can't wait to bring it to people like you and me who have been priced out of the market, who are forced to pay someone else's mortgage. And we think it's unfair, right? we think it's really unfair and uh it's such a powerful line too like you're forced to pay somebody else's mortgage yeah that's a powerful line because i spent about six to seven years paying um rent i mean more than that but it's at least the last six seven years where i was paying very high rent um uh you know for for a townhome uh we were living in because we the area we like and you know it's close to it's got a bunch of criteria that we like and you know we wanted however it was it was very expensive and all of that uh money was equity is gone like i mean i had no equity in the house eventually obviously that seven years was just like wasted and you know as you know we bought a home last year and since then i've been thinking like man if only i bought the house like seven years ago because it was not that hard like when eventually if you look at the statistics someone who owns a home versus someone who doesn't own a home the net worth the difference in net worth is 40x wow 40x wow so which is really fearless yeah right which makes sense because real estate is one of the biggest ways to really build wealth right right and even if you look uh most of these folks who have made it most of their portfolio is actually real estate real estate yeah right so um it's it's it's it's i mean it's it's one of the most beautiful way because you get to live in it.

Live in it. Yeah, exactly. While living in it, right? I mean, it's the opposite of buying cars, right?

So the problem is the cars, like you buy a nice, you know, Audi and then once you leave the parking lot, you lost 25% of the value. It's an appreciating asset at the end of the day. Yeah. So it's an appreciating asset.

I mean, dude, I mean, I think it's brilliant. The other thing I wanted to say was, yeah, back to that line, like you're paying somebody's mortgage. It's such a great punch in the gut line, right? Like, because an average person doesn't think when they're paying rent, They're like, yeah, I'm paying rent.

I have to pay rent. But you really, you are covering for somebody's mortgage payment. Pretty much, yeah. Pretty much.

I mean, a lot of people come back saying, hey, but rent is $3,000. My mortgage is going to be $4,000. But $3,000 is lost. Yeah.

Even if it's 70%, 80%. I mean, it's, right? I mean, it's irrelevant. Even 50%, let's say, your interest.

You're still saving. yeah yeah monthly mortgage payment is not equal to their monthly interest payments you're net saving yes yeah that's what i'm saying i think that punchline around like you know because that will motivate people who are maybe on the fence or maybe they're they're thinking of buying a home but they're pushing it to the future like that kind of sort of narrative uh and reminder will just immediately wake them up saying like hey why are you you know wasting away your potential and especially the fact that you're questioning the status quo and you're challenging the problem but not just saying it for the rage bait but you actually have an offering a solution which is zone, right?

So that's brilliant. It's awesome. It's really awesome. So again, last question as we wrap up.

I know we're at the top of the hour for our time. I could go on for hours, man. You're such a, you've got great energy. I mean, I told you last time too.

you and i we can talk for hours um thank you what is some advice that you would give for uh a young founder who is maybe you know starting their first startup um what would you what would you tell yourself you know when you were let's say you go back and had to give advice to your younger self about startup journey i mean the biggest thing i i've like i've learned throughout my journey is there's a lot of people who will be ready to give you advice right um friends family um advisors other founders me you whoever that is right they're all willing to provide advice help whatnot consume all the advice right take it but still do whatever you want to do right I think there is a consume everything in such way that you can analyze why they're saying but focus less on what they're saying if I had taken the advice when I started zone hey this is not going to work because hey this is like skydiving you are asking someone to skydive without the instructor attached for the first time so first time home buyers or sellers aren't going to do this I probably wouldn't have even started the company, but I paid attention to why they're saying what they're saying.

Why is such important, and especially coming from previous founders, someone who's experienced customers, that why has so much content behind it. That is what truly will help you build something really cool. For me, that why was, okay, because it is such a large transaction, there's a huge risk involved, and hence you don't feel comfortable. okay then if we reduce the risk it might work if we if we if if we made people feel safe it might work right so these are the things that that helped us build our dna right but it's not the because what i'm going to say might depend on my last conversation with my wife or like whatever i ate or whatnot right because we're just speaking right like what i'm saying it has should be focused less, but why I'm saying it should be the main focus.

And even when you're talking to customers, a lot of customers will say, hey, I didn't like this button. I didn't really enjoy this feature. But forget about what they're saying. Go back, go into more details.

Why do you think they might have said that? Right? Like, why didn't they like this feature? And that is the solution.

It's not to like, listen to the face value and take out that or like whatnot. I think that is something a lot of founders, I think, kind of get into. Like you have these early advisors, they advise you something, you do that. But hey, you are a founder, you are ready to take that risk.

And which means you should be able to think very differently. Yeah. Focus on the why rather than the what. I think that's something that has really helped me.

And I think that's something every founder can, I think, learn from. That's a brilliant answer. I think I've asked that question to so many founders on this podcast. I don't think anyone said that.

So that's very unique, you know, of what you just said. Definitely came from your lived experience too, right? So with that said, you know, we're going to call this a wrap. It's been such a pleasure.

And it's been, I mean, I can't believe the hour went by so quick. Thank you so much for being here, man. I mean, I wish all the best for you and the team.