Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.
The fascinating thing about optimizing for growth is that it can actually discover startup ideas. You can use the need for growth as a form of evolutionary pressure. If you start out with some initial plan and modify it as necessary to keep hitting, say, 10% weekly growth, you may end up with a quite different company than you meant to start. But anything that grows consistently at 10% a week is almost certainly a better idea than you started with.
-Paul Graham
I was watching this fireside chat with Fred Wilson the other day and he brought up something that I thought was pretty neat: 1 slide pitches.
It got me thinking. What’s the most important slide in the Dirt pitch deck? Could one of them stand on its own?
Well here it is. Dirt’s 1 slide pitch.
People say startups are risky, but for me, working at a job my entire life seemed like the worst possible outcome, so starting a company was the least risky thing I could do. I think that’s what people mean when they talk about founders being a little crazy. I realize this is an unusual personality trait.
Arram Sabeti
New Dirt release. Check us out.
TORONTO, Feb. 19, 2013 /CNW/ – Key highlights for the year ended 2012 include $1.5 billion of new venture capital investment and $1.8 of new capital formation for domestic venture capital funds. These were among the findings of a statistical report released today by CVCA- Canada’s Venture Capital & Private Equity Association and research partner Thomson Reuters.
Canada saw $1.5 billion of new venture capital investments last year
Dirt was founded to correct the problem of information in the real estate industry: too much of it is either fragmented, restricted or entirely unavailable. We believe that real estate consumers should be able to easily and freely access all the information they need through one consolidated source.
Live in the future, then build what’s missing.
@paulg
“The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It’s to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself.
The very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they’re something the founders themselves want, that they themselves can build, and that few others realize are worth doing. Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all began this way.”
The Problem on Greenlaw
This is a new house under construction in my neighbourhood at 130 Greenlaw Ave. It’s been under construction for what seems like years as it underwent multiple periods of inactivity. It was formerly a small run-down bungalow. The site is narrow. But the new house under construction looks modern and promising.
As a real estate professional and area resident, this project interests me. I like to see good development taking place in the city and I, particularly, like to see good development taking place in my neighbourhood. Previously, I spoke about Dirt targeting real estate pros, but I think there’s an opportunity here for it reach beyond the industry. Lots of people have an interest in and are impacted by real estate.
In any case, I drive by this property on an almost daily basis and it got me wondering a number of things.
First, is this property going to be modern or some crappy faux-historic suburban style house? Then the flat roof went in and I sighed relief that it was likely the former. A sign also went up showcasing the architecture firm. I emailed them to ask them about the property (the first time the site went inactive). I received no response.
At this point, I was wondering, did the owner run out of money? What did they pay for that one storey bungalow? Must have been in the high $400,000s given what I’m seeing in the area. Maybe he/she thinks they can’t turn a profit. But wait, maybe it’ll be owner occupied. I tried googling the address to see what I could uncover, but found nothing.
Now, working in the industry obviously has a lot to do with the things I was wondering, but it doesn’t negate the fact that herein lies a problem. A problem that I want to solve with my startup.
There are people out there with the answers to my questions, but there’s no centralized place for it to be shared and distributed. Sure, if this property eventually goes up for sale I’ll see it on MLS, but I want more info that and I want it immediately.
That’s where Dirt comes in.
Dirt is envisaged as a crowd-sourcing tool for professionals (and enthusiasts or maybe just nosy neighbours) to discover, track and share the real estate activity happening around them.
