Welcome to the Startup Spotlight, where we give our supporters a chance to walk the walk and uplift the startup community! In this interview series, different local startups meet with an interviewer to help us learn more about them and ways to support them.
At a Glance
Interviewers
Aislynn Van Clief
Scenic West Design
Erin Stewart
Scenic West Design
Interviewee
Jim Perry
Get In Contract
Scenic West Design
Scenic West Design is hosting a Rapid Product Discovery workshop on May 14 at 2pm during Boulder Startup Week. Head here to learn more and sign up to get the materials via email after the event.
In Business Since: 2016
Industry: Product Strategy + UX Consulting
Mission: Scenic West Design is a team of senior B2B SaaS Product Strategists and UX/UI Designers that come from diverse backgrounds, but share a common passion for helping product leaders achieve their goals through creating scalable and engaging product experiences.
Get In Contract
Get In Contract is launching for Colorado real estate professionals in May. Join the waitlist or sign up for news here.
Founded: 2022
Industry: Real Estate
Startup Mission: At Get In Contract we empower real estate professionals with innovative technology to streamline transactions, enhance security, and foster transparency; revolutionizing the industry one contract at a time.
The Interview
Aislynn – Scenic West Design – Interviewer
Would you like to say hi and introduce yourselves before we jump in?
Jim – Get in Contract – Interviewee
Sure. Yeah, I’m Jim Perry. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Get In Contract. I live in Denver, Co and we’ve been working on this for about a little under two years.
Aislynn – Scenic West Design – Interviewer
Awesome. And I also have Erin here with Scenic West. Erin, do you want to say hi?
Erin – Scenic West Design – Interviewer
Hey guys. I’m the founder of Scenic West Design. Looking forward to Boulder Startup Week.
Aislynn – Scenic West Design – Interviewer
Awesome. So let’s jump right in. At Scenic West, we’re in business because we want to help B2B SaaS teams solve complex product challenges. So why don’t you start with telling me a little bit about why you started Get In Contract and what the impact is of what you do.
Jim – Get in Contract – Interviewee
Sure. Yeah. So Get In Contract (we use GIC for short), so GIC started because real estate itself is a relatively antiquated technological industry, particularly in the contract writing and transaction management space, really in terms of what software it uses. And so many times we see software companies approach this marketplace as a one size fits all. So it goes across the country and it kind of forces localities to fit into a relatively cumbersome software environment.
Real estate itself is a relatively antiquated technological industry.
We know that real estate, specifically, is hyper-local and so Boulder operates very differently than Denver does. Denver operates very differently than Vail does. And then every state operates differently. And so Get In Contract really comes into play here to localize that transaction in the real estate market to how it should go and how agents and buyers and sellers are used to it happening instead of being forced into a software environment that they just kind of have to break a little bit to fit their needs.
So we saw that specifically in Colorado – because one of the top lawsuits in Colorado every year is people signing in the wrong spot on their contract. And so we wanted to solve that pain point specifically. So someone can sign the wrong contract, they can accidentally sign multiple contracts, or they can sign the wrong one. And there isn’t really the oversight or transparency to the software solutions, and so we started in Colorado and we’re launching in Colorado next month and we’re super excited about it.
Aislynn – Scenic West Design – Interviewer
Awesome. That’s super exciting and super relevant to Colorado as well. Can you talk a little bit more about your launch, what should the Community know about why you’re starting in Colorado specifically?
We wanted to give a better source of transparency to the community.
Jim – Get in Contract – Interviewee
Yeah. So in Colorado specifically, there’s one dominant player in the real estate space that has been around for about 20 years. The UI is very confusing and there’s a lot of security problems. The Colorado Association of Realtors says one of the top lawsuits in the state is people signing in the wrong place or signing the wrong contract.
And so we wanted to give a better source of transparency to the community, really – on here’s what’s happening, here’s where you should sign. Instead of just sending an offer over that you can sign anywhere. Specifically even myself, when I moved here, I was buying a house and I accidentally signed for the seller and it just caused chaos in the entire transaction. And so we said there’s a better way to provide professionalism to this industry through software. So Colorado was a pretty quick first step for us.
Aislynn – Scenic West Design – Interviewer
The devil’s in the details, right? So here at scenic W design, we believe strongly in the value of partnerships built on trust and as consultants, trust ties us now to how we work with client product teams. But you know, trust and transparency are also key pillars to how we can approach B2B SaaS product design as well. And I’m curious if you see any overlap in some of these company values – and what do those values mean to you in your own words.
Jim – Get in Contract – Interviewee
Sure. One of the company values we have here is transparency and accountability. And so in the real estate environment, it’s been a relatively opaque transaction. Really agents control everything and then the client gets dragged along. And it really depends on the strength of your real estate agent on how you get information disseminated to you.
Real estate has a relatively short certification cycle. So we see a really vast range of very professional agents to communicate and can really explain what’s happening to maybe an agent that does one or two transactions a year and they are really depending on the strength of their leadership to help them communicate what’s happening in a transaction.
So at GIC we say we want to give more transparency to the public as they’re transacting on real estate. One of our features in that is that an agent has access to their documents and to transaction communications forever. And so we really look at our software as a vault for somebody to always be able to come back to a real estate transaction and access their files.
Additionally, on the partnership, a lot of the solutions right now, particularly in Colorado, are built in what we call closed garden, in terms of software, and so they don’t talk to other softwares. We wanted to bring something to this marketplace that, as a real estate agent transacts, the pertinent information of the transaction can go directly to a title agent, an insurance agent, a lender, a transaction coordinator who’s helping manage the transaction, and then the clients in a very open and transparent way.
With the National Association of Realtors lawsuit that just happened, there’s a lot in there about transparency to the public. And so instead of operating in these closed garden environments, we really wanted to open that up and provide a better solution for everybody.
Aislynn – Scenic West Design – Interviewer
Wow. Yeah, that’s great. Thank you.
Erin – Scenic West Design – Interviewer
I wanted to circle back a little bit and ask you guys just broadly speaking, could you share a recent win that you guys have had? I know you’re leading up to launch, but curious what – you know, it’s the small things for startups, right? – so, what comes to mind?
How do we help agents operate in a more efficient way?
Jim – Get in Contract – Interviewee
Yeah, there’s a few. This is maybe a little bit of a polarizing answer, but that National Association of Realtors lawsuit is very good for us. And so some agents view that and there’s a lot of noise around that lawsuit. But we knew that this marketplace would only go towards more professionalism and more transparency through that transaction process. So we’ve built our entire system based on: “How do we get that information out?” and “How do we help agents operate in a more efficient way with better oversight from their brokerage leaders?”
It’s relatively small to the greater community as a whole in the US, but in the real estate community, this is really disruptive, this lawsuit, and we’ve set our software up to be agile enough to react to that. Additionally, we just started to raise our first round and got our lead investor in. So that’s a big win for us.
Erin – Scenic West Design – Interviewer
Congrats. Yeah. A lot of what you guys mentioned, we’ve certainly done work in the real estate tech space, but it also draws a lot of parallels to the insured tech space in terms of sort of what’s sparking the innovation and what the pain points are. So it’s really exciting to see those themes as well. I’m curious – building on what you mentioned: polarizing, lawsuits, and things like that. What are some of your biggest challenges currently?
Jim – Get in Contract – Interviewee
Sure. Yeah, there’s a few. So as I started this interview, I said real estate is a relatively antiquated industry and software environment. And that’s really because it’s so hyper-localized. There are a lot of, there are a lot of relationship modes that are built around these localizations, or these localities, right. And so, like I said earlier, Boulder operates very differently than Denver operates. And it operates very differently than Vail does.
So breaking down those relationship modes as we expand – because we aren’t one-size-fits-all, we are very localized – it’s just time intensive. And everyone’s used to how they transact. They don’t like shifting their process to be more secure, necessarily, even though they may say they want to. So as real estate is very cyclical – summer time, specifically – as we launch is the busiest time in real estate. As we launch, nobody wants to say, “Hey, I’m going to go change all of my processes,” and so that one is a very big one.
But then specifically in Colorado, there’s a player that has about 80% market share and it has a very strong network effect. [Agents] think, “If you’re not using the same software that I am to write and and counter contracts back and forth, then I know as an agent this transaction might be a little bit harder.” So we kind of try and flip that on its head. Everybody in the world has a UI and UX expectation in their life. There’s the Ubers and the Airbnbs and the Amazons of the world that make everything easy and streamlined for the end consumer.
So I look at agents and say, “It’s your job to create that really great user experience for your client.” Moving off of an old software is a big challenge in front of us because people just don’t want to be that first mover when there’s this really strong network effect.
So I look at agents and say, “It’s your job to create that really great user experience for your client.”
Erin – Scenic West Design – Interviewer
Yeah, I find that a really interesting UX challenge. It’s something we see in HR tech and Fintech, where as you know, you meet teams that have this aspiration to go towards automation, workflow automation, machine learning. And really there’s this first challenge when you’re onboarding new customers or finding your product market fit that’s around just switching off of bad habits, right? So it’s not just, “Hey this will make your life easier.” Down the road, we know there’s going to be some other win that they’re going to get out of it, but it’s a little hard to help them see that light at the end of the tunnel sometimes.
Jim – Get in Contract – Interviewee
Yeah. On that, Colorado specifically – the software here – really forced the real estate transaction to operate in a specific way that’s different than other states, and so it’s not necessarily learning a new system, but it’s unlearning the bad habits that they’ve gotten from a 20 year old software that hasn’t had a lot of innovation in it. And so that is the hardest part – especially for an agent who’s been around using the same thing for 20 years to switch off of.
Aislynn – Scenic West Design – Interviewer
Yeah. So to round out some more about you guys, I was curious, could you tell me what the startup community and the broader Boulder community can do to support you during this launch and exciting time?
Jim – Get in Contract – Interviewee
Sure. Yeah. So the Boulder community as a whole, I’d like to say: Don’t let a real estate agent dictate everything that happens to you. I would say to hold them accountable to having that transparency and accountability to their transaction.
Everybody here operates on real estate, whether that’s a lease, a professional lease, a personal lease or buying and selling a home.And creating this really fractured environment where we’re signing documents in four or five different softwares is really difficult. And so as you go operate in this system, I would say to really make sure you’re working with a real estate agent that is forward-thinking and is really looking to give you the best user experience that they can. And so that’s the Boulder community as a whole.
But for the startup community, we are always looking for integrations and partnerships. And so we’ve built our system to be a full open API to push relevant information where we need to and there’s a lot of players in a real estate transaction: insurance agents title, lenders, transaction coordinators, home inspectors – and all of them need that pertinent information that comes from the contract specifically. And so as we look for growth opportunities, it really is in these tangential markets to the real estate transaction that we can partner to make that end user experience better.
Erin – Scenic West Design – Interviewer
Anything else you want the community to know about you that we haven’t covered?
Aislynn – Scenic West Design – Interviewer
When’s launch day?
Jim – Get in Contract – Interviewee
It will be the second week of May.
Erin – Scenic West Design – Interviewer
Great. We’ll watch out for your launch announcements and be sharing on LinkedIn and other social media to help you guys out and we look forward to seeing you in person at Boulder Startup Week.
Jim – Get in Contract – Interviewee
Yeah, we’re super excited. Thank you.
Thank you so much to Erin & Aislynn at Scenic West Design for putting the spotlight on Jim and the Get In Contract crew! We hope you’ll keep an eye out for other Startup Spotlights.
