In this interview, Brent Williams sits down with Matt Weirich, co-founder of Realync, to discuss the company's journey from a simple idea born out of a frustrating apartment search to becoming a multifamily technology leader recently acquired by Grace Hill. Matt shares how his early experiences and entrepreneurial drive led to the creation of Realync's live virtual touring platform, the pivotal lessons learned in finding product-market fit, and the importance of perseverance and partnership in building a lasting business. He also offers insight into how client feedback shaped Realync's evolution, from live tours to on-demand video, and how emerging AI innovations, such as real-time voice translation, are shaping the future of virtual leasing and property engagement.

Brent Williams: Hey everybody. I have a special guest today, Matt Weirich from Realync, the co-founder of Realync, which about a year ago you probably saw, was acquired by Grace Hill. He's joining me today to tell us about the story of Realync. What was the impetus that led him to start Realync. So Matt, thank you for joining us.

Matt Weirich: Absolutely, Brent, appreciate you having me on.

Brent Williams: Matt let's jump to the beginning. Okay. And usually the beginning starts a little bit before the beginning, right? Where were you at in your life? What were you thinking about before you started Realync? And then let, then we'll jump into to how you started.

Matt Weirich: Realync story actually started when I was at Purdue University and I was getting ready to move up to Chicago, not a terribly far distance, couple hours, but. I drove up to Chicago six weekends in a row. I looked at over 40 different properties in person, and it was just a very painful apartment search process.

And I was always entrepreneurial, doing things on my own growing up, and so I was thinking about why was this such a hard process? Why was the only way I could see the actual unit I would be renting physically, showing up in person. And this is gonna date me because it feels like FaceTime has always been a part of our lives now.

But back when I was doing that, FaceTime had just come out and so that was the original idea of using something like FaceTime to connect with these leasing teams and be able to preview the building because half the buildings I knew either driving up to it or within minutes of being there, I wasn't going to live there.

And even if I could have cut my trips in half and taken it from 40 properties to 15 properties, it would've been a far more efficient and enjoyable search process. And so I sat on the idea for a little bit. I was starting my career at Accenture doing management consulting and as a management consultant.

I was on the road Monday through Thursday every single week. And one of the hardest things I saw my colleagues going through. Was the real estate search process. 'Cause they either had to do it completely sight unseen while on the road or cram tours into their weekends. And so this pain point of being able to see the exact unit and have an authentic touring experience without physically being on site just kept popping up time to time again.

And so I was actually at a work event and my now co-founder Ani was also at Accenture. We were talking about what's next after this consulting life. And he wanted to do something entrepreneurial, but he didn't have the idea. I had the idea but hadn't done anything with it. And one thing led to another.

And the very next weekend we were in my apartment whiteboarding and starting to lay the foundation of what would eventually become Realync.

Brent Williams: I love that. It's interesting how a lot of people can get stuck in what is traditional norms. So I remember when you know, video calling would, started coming about and there was a big question about would people actually feel comfortable doing that?

Would it feel awkward, and once people get over that initial hump of, it's what am I doing here? It just becomes normal and it's just so common now to be on video. So it's embracing that change and realizing that this is just gonna be what it is, then it's gonna be the early one on that trend.

Okay. So you all have an idea. But haven't really moved forward yet with it. So how does that process work?

Matt Weirich: Yeah. For us, being young in our career, not really coming from nest eggs or financial freedom, we had to pull together capital and we ended up raising a friends and family round of funding, small around 330,000.

But that was enough for us to build an MVP, minimal viable product, and start proving it out. And a lot of people don't know this, but actually that MVP version, one of Realync was live virtual tours only. So we stayed true to that vision of FaceTime esque live virtual tour experience.

And it wasn't until actually, I think a couple years into the business that we launched prerecorded videos, which is now what Realync is known for. But version one we launched and started getting it in the hands of anyone that we could, and looking back on our entrepreneurial journey. There were so many shiny objects early on.

Brent Williams: Sure.

Matt Weirich: We were partnering with commercial brokers, single family, realtors, and everyone that we could get it in their hands, and it was all over the place. I think at one point we had. An RV dealership using Realync to sell RVs. We were all over the place. And so if I talk to any entrepreneurs now, the number one thing I tell is find product market fit as fast as possible, sprint and be focused because we were all over the place, but it took a couple years before we actually honed in on multifamily.

And so we technically launched Realync in 2014, but we didn't get our real traction in multifamily until 2016.

Brent Williams: Okay. Yeah. It's interesting 'cause we've gone through the same waves. Like we, we build something new. 'cause we think that, and even sometimes it makes sense, like we see the points in between.

Okay, this logically makes sense to fit into it. And then you do enough of those logical extensions and the next thing you know, you're way off course potentially. Definitely been there. I'm curious about this whole, okay, so you raise money and then you now have something an MVP, right? How, what is that process like?

Because I think a lot of, I think what's funny about that is I look back in my own career and I think. I, we did certain things and I'm like I, looking back like how did I have this the gumption to do something radically different? And I think that now I'm like, that's just crazy. What was I doing?

But back then I didn't know any better. And so they, my, my youth and experience probably helped not knowing exactly that this should be really hard. And I did it anyway. So tell me about that story, about how to make that MVP.

Matt Weirich: I think you hit a key point there is not knowing any better and doing it anyway.

I think there is a certain element of young entrepreneurs bringing that youthful ignorance into a space to try to disrupt things. Like I'm at a very different stage in my life now, and I can't just cash everything out. Cash out my 401k and throw it all in on a new venture. There's, so I actually do think there is a certain need for that youthful energy to disrupt things.

And yes, they need advisors and they need people who can help guide them along that path, but, looking back for Ani and I, when it came to starting Realync, we went all in and we were bullheaded enough where whenever we hit speed bumps or headwinds we didn't take no for an answer and we just kept going.

And that's another thing that I really credit to Realync finding success in the long run. Like I said, it took us two years before we got launched into multifamily and then it took us another two years after that to really grow to a sustainable point as a business. So we were four years in before we were really comfortable from a growth standpoint and we never raised a ton of capital.

We sacrificed a lot, but we just didn't give up because we believed in it and we had felt the opportunity. We saw the opportunity, and especially once we launched a multifamily, we had so many people finding success with the platform that we were like, there is something here we can't stop. And so we just we clung to those successes and clung to each other.

That's another thing I'll say is get a co-founder. I know there's co-founder stories that haven't worked out, but I truly wouldn't be here without Ani and vice versa, like we needed each other to lift us up during the hard times. There were days I wanted to quit and he kept me going, days he wanted to quit and I kept him going so.

Yeah.

Brent Williams: So I should have gone to you for management consulting when you were at Accenture back in the day, so I could have understood that better. Yeah. Throwing a ball against the wall, brainstorming with yourself is not nearly as much fun, I'll tell you that.

Matt Weirich: Absolutely not. Yeah.

Brent Williams: Okay, so you alluded this to some degree as far as, okay, so your MVP had some of the core elements even now, but what, how did it evolve and how did you. See the need for evolution, like where do you see like the driving force to say, we're gonna add this or this?

Matt Weirich: Yep. And that's again, going back to the power of having a co-founder.

I've realized over the years, I'm not the product person. I'm the go to market sales marketing sort of guy and. I learned to listen to Ani. He was the product guy, not from a technical standpoint, but from a mindset standpoint. And one of Annie's best things that he instilled into the business early on was listening to our clients.

And Realync has always been client driven in terms of where the product goes and what we innovate on, how, why and prioritization and all of that. And the example I gave earlier of prerecorded videos coming down the road and us being live virtual tours early on. All of our live virtual tours were automatically saved and recorded for compliance purposes and all sorts of stuff.

And we found our clients were hosting a live virtual tour walking through a unit with no one on that tour with them simply to get a recording of the tour to share with someone. And we were like, why would they not just go shoot a prerecorded video instead of hosting a live tour to get the recording?

And so it was watching how our clients were using the platform, but then also listening to them and learning that, yeah, we want to just shoot a video to send to the client, to the prospect that they can watch whenever they want. And they were the ones that taught us. You send them a prerecorded video and all of a sudden your leasing office is 24 hours a day, they can watch that tour whenever they want on their own time.

Whereas the live virtual tours has to be during leasing hours and there still are constraints and limitations to that. And yeah we've innovated a lot over the years and Realync today is. Hey if I would've known what Realync would become from a technical standpoint, all the AI we have integrated and stuff, I would've never imagined we'd be able to build what we've built.

But it's all because of our clients and all because of who we work with, and so all the credits to them.

Brent Williams: That's fantastic. Now, when you think about getting that feedback from clients, what was your process for doing that? Were you doing focus groups? Were you just watching the analytics? Like how did you identify that?

Matt Weirich: Yep. We had a lot of really close clients. Actually, our first three clients back in the day are still with us today and. We haven't touched intentional touch points once a quarter where we talk through how they're using the platform. Any feedback, any gaps, needs, opportunities any turnover because turnover doesn't happen in multifamily.

Are there new people that need to be trained? Things like that. And so early on we were trying to talk to them even more than once a quarter have. A lot more clients now, and so it's not as feasible to do monthly syns with every single one of our clients. But yeah, it was just intentional conversations and providing the space for them to feel comfortable giving us the feedback.

I think that's what even today, those early clients, client number two, I still get lunch with him every single NAA And we always just love having real conversations and that's what we always wanted Realync to be. We real is what life is all about. Realync. And so we've always led with that and everything we do, including just how we converse, how we interact with our clients in the industry.

Brent Williams: Very cool. So without giving away too many secrets or as many as you want, actually, I'm not gonna hold you back, the future. So let think about like the future of video in multifamily and any, the evolution of what you're doing. Where do you see that taking you?

Matt Weirich: Yeah. AI is fun. I know it's scary and unknown and everyone's trying to figure it out together, but it is such an injection of fun energy into our space right now.

Because there's so many cool things you can do with it. Like we just one of our AI launches earlier this year was AI voice translation. And so if someone is speaking in a video, we can translate that spoken language into French, Mandarin, Spanish, you name it. But what's creepy and cool about it is it actually translates the voice of the person speaking.

Brent Williams: Oh wow.

Matt Weirich: And so it takes that person's voice and translates it into Mandarin and version one of the demo that Moses on our team sent me was a video of me talking Mandarin. I was like, that is I do not speak Mandarin. And now we're going to apply that to live virtual tours. And so if you and I are talking live, you can hear me in Spanish.

And so the, there's just, there's a lot we're doing with AI and unit amenity data. We've got hundreds of thousands of unit specific videos in Realync. AI can pull a lot of information out of that content that is not logged anywhere else. And so we're leaning heavy into AI.

But from a roadmap standpoint, the big thing with Realync, we're not going to become a Yardi competitor. We have no desire to become the end all, be all. Our mindset has always been, we are going to be a sharp tool in a larger toolbox, and that's one thing with Realync is we always try to be the integrated solution, partnering with the other players in our industry well, and making sure that where Realync needs to work. It works.

We've got single sign on and things that we're doing to just make it easier for the site teams. 'Cause the site teams are our end users at the end of the day. And so we're trying to figure out how we streamline that for them, how we make it even easier to get the content they need and then get it where it needs to go.

So there's innovation and innovation's cool, but there's also just how can we make it simpler, easier, quicker, faster, better.

Brent Williams: I love the story, and I think that you've joined a great team. Grace Hill is fantastic. Really excited to see what you all have going forward. Matt, thank you so much for taking the time today.

This has been wonderful.

Matt Weirich: Absolutely, Brent. I always love telling this story. Anyone who asks, I'll share it. So thank you for giving me a microphone in space to share it.

Brent Williams: And everybody, next time Matt at a conference, flag him down, say hello and Matt. Thank you very much y'all. I'll see you next time.

Hope you join us for Multifamily Demo Day. Take care.