ICSC RECon 2019 Podcasts: Episode 4 - Lawrence Yuan, Chief Technology Officer at Ten-X & Mark Kalkwarf, CEO of ATYPICAL

Welcome to the Content Funnel Mini podcast with my guest host, Linda Day Harrison of The Broker List, Amanda Bowen, The Content Funnel, and I am Sarah Malcolm, the COO of The Content Funnel, and we are live every time. And today we've got some technology gurus. We've got Lawrence Ewan, Chief Technology Officer at 10X. And we've got Mark Kelkwar.

There we go. Well done, Sarah. The founder of Atypical. So welcome, guys.

It's great to have you. Thanks. Thanks for having us. Awesome, awesome.

So are you guys new at Recon? Is this a first or have you guys been coming for 20 years? I'll go first. I'm a newbie.

this is the first time I've been here super super exciting you know and so it's great just to see then what's going on the industry see see what new inventions and innovations happening in the space so for me it's about learning as much as I can as well as teaching other folks about our company and our products as well I've been here a couple of times I think it's my third time so So it's always a bit overwhelming when you first arrive, just the size of this event. But yeah, it's always a lot of fun, I think, from a business point of view, but also from a social point of view to kind of hang out and get to know people a little bit better over a cocktail.

So did you expect to run into your closest 35,000 friends? I'm still a bit shell-shocked, to be honest. It's all a bit much to take in, but we're getting there. Yeah.

Being here in technology, what do you think of just the magnitude of this, of how they had to set this up? Oh, I'm very impressed. You know, as I mentioned, I've won the conferences before, but the size of it and the intricacies of where people are placed. I love the fact that they have some structure in the streets and finding the conference.

Like, that's the first question. It's like, where is the booth? How do I get there? And they actually have, you know, some structure there.

So that was great. So good work to the team that has put this together for many, many years, I guess. And it's just fun for me to be, like I mentioned, a newbie coming on the first time and learning as much as I can. How do you guys keep track of all the people that use your sort of mode for organization?

People coming through our booth? No, the people that you meet, like have meetings with, that you need to follow up with. Like how do you keep track of your new contacts that you want to reach out to? Sure, sure.

I'm still pretty old school. You know, I like to have my handbook as I brought it in with me today. And so I like to take notes. I like to talk to folks, kind of figure out, you know, is there a way for me to partner with them, work with them, educate them, what have you.

And so and then moving backwards we work with our team to kind of collate all the data so we can kind of get a single list and prioritize that and you know get that going Cool Fascinating What about you Yeah, I mean, I always enjoy a good notebook and pen, so, yeah, I'm pretty much the same approach. Are you just stealing all of Lauren's answers? I mean, that's such good answers. It's hard to say.

He's got good answers, Natalie. I'm just going to say what Lauren said from now on. I don't know. I don't know.

We'll keep it funny. interesting. And he is chief technology officer at 10X. But isn't it interesting how the tech people still use paper.

I mean, they still do. They like those notebooks. Notebooks are fabulous. I still like reading books.

So I use Audible. I have a screen reader. But I don't know. Something about having the physicality and the earmarking using bookmarks.

I don't know because of childhood, but I'm just so used to it. It's hard for me to get away. And plus you're in technology. It's like you don't want to do it all day long.

It's like now when you're home, just open a book. It's like it's not technology. That's right. Get away from it.

That's right. We know Vegas is a lot of hard work, right? Especially at Recon this show. Sure.

So are you guys having any fun? Like what are you, besides, you know, working? Is there any playing at all outside of the show? I mean, it's hard not to play in Vegas, right?

I don't know. Even when you think you're getting downtown, you're still late. I think that's an important part of it. I think it is important to kind of balance the social and the business.

I mean, that's a good opportunity to kind of come and work hard during the day, meet a lot of people, but then still attend the social events in the evening. So I think we all come prepared knowing that for three days we're not going to get much sleep. But it's worth it. Think for yourself.

It's worth it. For me, actually, my wife, my five-year-old, is here with me today. Oh, wow. So we're going to stay a little later.

Dad of the year. Yeah. That's the first person I've brought a baby. So we're going to take it as a little bit of a vacation, so pleasure, vacation together.

That's wonderful. I love that. That's how you do it, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Have you been here before to Vegas? I've been to Vegas many times. Oh, okay. I live in California, so it's a very quick flight over and not with a five-year-old.

Right. So this will be a first time for that. Or else I'll let me raise the ball. My wife's going to ask to come back with the three kids.

Oh, yeah. You think you're tired now. Yeah. Maybe don't show her this podcast.

Yeah, I'm going to strategically maybe just pop this one to myself. Speaking of, walk us through your flight on how you got here, Mark. Yeah, it was pretty long. So I'm based in Cape Town in South Africa.

My clients are all in the U.S., so I'm pretty used to kind of doing the flight. But it is long.

We fly from Cape Town to Dubai, which is nine hours, then Dubai to JFK, which is 14 hours, and then add another five to Vegas. So yeah I definitely needed a drink when I got in there It so nice to hear about it So Lawrence Lawrence walk us through your flight We thought I jumped in this car and drove here Close. I jumped in Southwest. We came over here on our flight, easy peasy, and, you know, get to the hotel room, and here we are.

So, we're a little bit different. Almost the same. Same, same, but different. So I'd love to hear what's the latest on what you guys are doing at 10X and Atec and Google.

Start with you, Lawrence. Sure. For folks who don't know 10X, we're basically a marketplace, a platform where buyers and sellers can trade and transact online. So think of it as eBay for real estate.

So one of the largest asset classes types, we're doing it online. So that's really fun for me to kind of wake up every day, been there in a company for the last four years, four and a half years, and really trying to figure out how we marry technology to help the real estate industry. Recently, we launched a couple of really cool tools for our customers and really about data insights. So as you can think about, real estate is a very complex asset type and a very complex transaction.

So we work together to build a platform where we can use data analytics to help educate them and help give them insight on, for example, who is a right buyer for our platform? Who should we be talking to? How do we automate this process and bring it online versus email attachment, PDF, what have you? So that's kind of what we're doing for our customers.

Are you saying that it's paperless completely or is there paper involved? Well, I mean, the fact that we're using DocuSign, right? So, you know, it's electric signatures and what have you. We work with other third-party companies for clothing and contracting.

But again, we streamline that process so that our customers don't need to worry about it. So that's kind of where our value add is for us to make them save time, save money, and so they can focus on getting more deals working with their customers. I have to say, I was on my flight on the way here, and the guy next to me started talking about how amazing 10X was. And I was like, I cannot wait to tell you guys.

so it was just it was just like amazing you guys have come you guys have been around what 10 years correct which is like 80 years in tech a millennium right it's a millennium in tech time it's like 80 years that's funny so wow I mean and now that I'm starting to hear I mean on the plane ride over people were talking about you at recon and I just was like that's that's incredible that's amazing I mean at the end of the day that's where you guys are that's right so and we're not done right and so so for me to hear that story from you guys that just makes us want to work harder right and to add more features more capabilities and help our customers more so it's all about getting that customer need solved and building that partnership because we don we want customers that continue coming back to our platform Yeah you guys are only getting bigger and so impressive And I just had to share that story Excited So Mark what about you This is quite a busy time for us as well I mean, I think a lot of our clients are running sort of targeted campaigns, building up to Recon, but also during the conference.

So we're sort of meeting people, but the team back in Cape Town are hard at work making sure that all the campaigns are running successfully. So yeah, I get the sort of easy bet of networking. you got to leave yeah exactly but it's a busy time for us i think stuff that we're sort of excited about going forward i mean the facebook messenger sort of chatbot platform is very exciting for us we're doing some very cool sort of campaigns around that and just trying to i guess bridge the gap between marketing and sales and we really see that as an exciting sort of opportunity to make that transition a lot more seamless and yeah that's that's something cool that we're working one at the moment.

Interesting. So exciting. So I heard that you guys have survey results coming up. Well, I'll jump in.

Basically, 10X did a survey called the state of CRE Tech, which ran for one month. And it was an incredible in-depth survey to all the brokers to find out exactly what they think of CRE Tech. So it's, yeah, it was, it was very interesting. And now from here, we're in the process it's underway now of creating infographic and i'm sure even more information is going to come from it i cannot wait to see those results it's going to be amazing that's amazing all right we'll definitely check that out yeah any last words you guys have for for any of our listeners uh so i guess advice from my side uh sort of come prepared so know who you want to connect with at the conference uh before you get here and wear comfortable shoes wear comfortable shoes i should have actually listened to that last part you know but i'm sure there's like a nike store around here there you go there you go no i i think for you know just have fun come in yes get prepared just have fun you know this is a time about learning having fun talking to new people and to your point mark socializing as well so you know don't don't forget work hard play hard as well absolutely i have to say you are such a sweetheart and you're so different from what I always think of technology.

You know, technology people are usually more, you know, quiet. You're just a friendly, bubbly guy. I think it's great. No, a lot of technology is just real quiet.

You know, they're kind of shy. You're breaking the mold. Okay, Lawrence, we'll see. Lawrence brought the personality.

He's got personality. Okay, thank you very much. Great to meet you. Honored to meet you.

I know you have a tough job. Yes, Lawrence, thank you so much for coming. Mark, thank you. Thank you very much.

We appreciate you guys taking the time to be here today. Thanks, gentlemen. Enjoy the conference. Bye-bye.