Editor-in-chief Sarah Wheeler spoke with Divya Aathresh, founder and CEO of MaxHome.AIto talk about the startup’s goals and how using artificial intelligence to solve real estate’s back-office problems will give agents the freedom to do what they love most.
Sarah Wheeler: You founded MaxHome.AI in January. What stage is the company currently in?
Divya Aathresh: We are still very early, in the pre-sowing phase. In terms of options, we are fortunate to have some of the country’s top real estate agents working with us on a product suite that we will be bringing to market soon. Processing is a big part of what brokers care about, so we have a co-pilot that we’re getting feedback on and plan to have six or seven co-pilots starting next year.
SW: How did you decide which part of the process you wanted to improve?
DA: When we started, I thought AI would be most useful in marketing, getting people into the funnel. But as I talked to more people, the real pain point is the way the transaction is managed, reflected in the way customers or employees view the company, so we started looking at the downstream part of the transaction.
A co-pilot is a broad term, but at a high level the idea we’re pursuing is that no officer has to go back late at night and open their laptop to do more work. We are very focused on assisting in the back office and streamlining the 10-15 different parties involved in coordinating the transaction.
AI can do a lot to reduce complexity here because it can understand language and we can train the model in a very real estate specific way. The goal is very practical solutions to address what is hidden in the back room of the back office.
SW: What sets your technology apart?
DA: If you look at how an agent spends his time, half of it is spent doing things that don’t make him money: entering data, collecting documents, calling people. Much of what happens is very inefficient, but it is difficult to develop technology for that. We use technology to understand the transaction, to look at all the documents and emails, and once you map it out, it opens up a whole range of experiences for all the people involved.
We work with our customers and analyze the details. We have trained our AI models to be highly specific to also help agents, brokers and end customers.
SW: Tell me more about your background.
DA: Early in my career I was consciously a generalist. I wrote software, then spent time in fintech, specifically risk, and did strategy work McKinsey. Than Better brought me to this industry. I joined the strategy team there and saw how complex, how big the challenge is, but also the kind of solutions that were offered.
I worked at Better for four years shadowing our own internal agents. I looked at the details. Why is this email being sent? How do they use technology? That aspect taught me a lot: part of it was product discovery and part of it was my connections in the industry.
Over the past few years, the starting point for me has been seeing the potential of how hard work and smart work with tech options could unlock opportunities for our customers.
SW: What do you see as the risks of AI?
DA: I think there is a potential perception risk, with the question of whether AI is useful or harmful. In our case, we already see how it adds value and helps customers. I’ve had clients tell me that it changes their lives because they now only have to work at midnight.
From a startup founder’s perspective, I’m hyper-focused on the team I’m bringing together. Very early on, I brought in people from Better who understood the industry. Our head of sales is a lifelong real estate agent, one of the first people I hired when I was at Better. Our head of machine learning – they understand the industry and customer pain points.
SW: What keeps you awake at night?
DA: Having a dissatisfied customer. That’s the only focus. If we do that right, everything else will work out fine.
